If there is to be salvation for all men, then it must not be based on their ethical achievement but on the grace of a loving God. What every man needs is to have their record blotted out by an act of divine amnesty and to have the assurance of acceptance by God for no merit of their own but by His spontaneous mercy provided in Christ and His redemptive passion at Calvary. Christ then is set before all men as grace personified and the substance of the gospel.All of mankind was once involved in the old solidarity of sin and death, when they lived in the "first Adam" and shared the destructive fruits of his disobedience. Now that old solidarity has been replaced by the new solidarity of righteousness and life by which those of faith are incorporated "in Christ." The old humanity is being done away with; the new humanity, of which Jesus Christ (the last Adam) is the head, is coming to its fullness. And the obedience of the last Adam will accomplish much more in grace than the disobedience of the first Adam accomplished in disaster. Paul said it this way, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." It has been well said, "Christ is much more powerful to save than Adam was to ruin.It is suffice to say with every confidence, "Believers in Christ have entered by grace on a new life." And this incredible grace is freely given to all who are in Christ by faith. Grace is a free gift or it is not grace. Grace is a gift freely given without any consideration owed to a merit system but is fully birthed from a mercy system. Nor was the grace of God ever to be determined by an old covenant legal system (law). But was fully manifest from the finished work of Christ that fulfilled the New Covenant; a covenant that only His Blood could initiate and completely satisfy.
