It is the race of salvation by grace, not the grace race, for the race of God: it is
His race made by grace for man, to run in his mortal body through faith back to eat of the tree of Life in the paradise of God (Rev 2:7): By grace through the blood of the Lamb, the way of return is now open to any and all, and yet the flaming sword remains, but it no longer turns
every way forbidding entrance by man, but now turns by grace of God
one way through which we may run by faith, and so God saves by grace through faith.
Here is the key point: Grace is not God. Grace is not the Savior. Grace is not the Sun. Grace is not the One who saves, but rather God saves by grace: grace is the unconditional availability of God to bestow His favor freely upon all, who may be saved through faith, and to give the increase to them that work with faith:
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? (
James 2)
People who claim an unconditional security
of salvation by an unconditional grace, without commandment to continue therein, ;lest we fall short of the promise (Heb 4:1), are literally personifying grace as God Himself, or
above the commandment of God, so that grace is
independent of all things, even the command of God to continue in faith and maintain good works.
They are idolizing grace, as the pagans did, as a goddess of her own power to bestow herself upon men she so chooses: it was called Fortune's Favorite.
A Christian is not one of Fortune's Favorites, where grace of fortune continues to bestow favor upon an individual, without respect to the individual's works and deeds. That is blind fate, where faith is dead, because it is not needed to continue in Grace's favor.
An eternal and unconditional security of salvation, mistakenly assumed from a salvation by unconditional grace, leads directly to the kind of errors of the people at the mount, who
without fear gave themselves to
idolatry, with all manner of lust and uncleanness of soul, spirit, and body: today they would be idolizing grace
above the commandment of God:
Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
If we do not continue in the good works of faith, then the fruit withers and dies, and the ground becomes thoroughly dry, and root and seed perish, and nothing remains for the Sun to give increase to, even though the Sun still shines by grace:
For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. (Heb 6)
We water our ground by faith. We
keep ourselves growing in faith by doing good works of faith, and not falling away by temptation. God produces and gives the increase
to the working of our faith by grace, but without our wooks of faith, there is no increase by God, and our souls produce by nature of man and flesh, that which is rejected by God and is cursed and burned in the end.
These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. (Jude 12)
For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. (
James 1)
This literally means, that the same Sun, which by unconditional grace without respect of persons gives the increase to the field that is well-watered and tilled with good works, will also cause all of it to wither and fall away, so that
fashion of it produced by grace perishes. So is the man that
had been rich in faith fades away in all his ways,
if he leaves the way of Christ to return to the corrupt ways of his old man.
The blessing of salvation is to receive the crown of life, which is only bestowed upon them that endure temptation, overcome evil, and continue in good works to the end: by grace we enter into the race, and by grace we continue therein, but grace in itself cannot keep us in the race, even as the sun cannot give increase to the field that has become overrun with thorns and briers that are rejected of God.