Like true love, true grace is often seen as being unconditional. But even unconditional love cannot be received unless it is received in true faith. So the Bible says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith†(Eph 2:8). True faith can be viewed as the condition by which we receive God’s grace. Grace came through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:17). Grace comes freely, but it must be received in faith. The Bible says faith comes through hearing the gospel and believing in it (Rom 10:14, 17). Without faith you cannot receive God’s saving grace in truth (Heb 11:6). The Bible says God’s grace comes by faith so that it may be by grace (Rom 4:16). So we see that grace is, in some sense, conditioned upon our faith. However much faith we have, the grace of God follows. A true faith in God means we rest ourselves on God’s sure foundation, i.e., we have total trust and confidence in God (Heb 3:14). Faith entails belief (Acts 13:39), obedience (Rom 16:26), and trust (Jn 12:36). A true faith will not lie dead and dormant. We can say we have all the faith in the world, but without any action to back it up, faith is meaningless. Like seeing a person say so convincingly, “I love you†only to stab the same person in the back probably sickens us, saying “I have faith in God†and then living in sin should sicken us (Jas 2:18ff).
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