Hymns: Only By Grace

I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the in-between hymns.

Today’s song is Only By Grace from 1990.

Like so many 1990s song, I only discovered this one in the 2010s. Back in the 1990s, I was big into the old hymns. But I suppose this one is old now 😀. I think of grace as an evangelical word, but all Christians believe in the need for grace. When I was growing up, we had the following rhyme:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
All good children go to heaven

And people generally believed that you got to heaven by being good. But that’s not Christian teaching. The Bible teaches that we have failed. We need a Saviour. We should aim to be good and do good, but we’ll always need Jesus. We rely on the grace of God for salvation.

Some believe that we get to heaven by a mixture of faith and works. Others (like me) believe that it’s faith alone, but real faith will manifest itself in good works. But even then, we’d never be good enough to merit heaven. We get to heaven by grace alone.

Ephesians 2:8-9
⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.

The hymn refers to an Old Testament statement:

Lord if You marked our transgressions 
who would stand 
Thanks to Your grace we are cleansed 
by the blood of the Lamb 

But doesn’t the Bible teach that God keeps a record of sins? He does for those who don’t trust in Jesus. But when you believe, you cross over from death to life, so you aren’t punished in hell for your sins. Yet, surely God is aware of your progress. I think the statement means that if God shut people out of heaven because of their sins, despite their reliance on Jesus for salvation, who would ever get to heaven? Thanks to His grace we are cleansed
by the blood of the Lamb

So, we aim to live holy lives, but when we get to heaven, all the credit will go to God. No-one will be able to say any of the following:

• I’m here because I’m such a good person 🤨
• I’m not very good, but at least I did my best 🤨
• I didn’t even do my best, but I did enough to merit my place here 🤨
• I’m here because I’m such an intelligent person, and I discovered the truth 🤨
• I’m here because I’m lucky. I guessed the correct religion 🤨
• I’m here because everyone goes to heaven by default 🤨

No – we’ll all say, “I’m here by the grace of God alone, who enabled me to repent and believe in Jesus, who died on the cross to cleanse me from my sin.”

When you delve deeply into any doctrines, you’ll get varying opinions. I sometimes asked people the question, “If God asked you why He should let you into heaven, what would you say?” The correct answer is “because by your grace, I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for my sins.” Sometimes people answered with something like “I did my best.” Because I regard that as the wrong answer, I assume that they’re relying on their works to get to heaven, but maybe not. People don’t always think in precise terms. My hope is that many of the people who are confused theologically will ultimately rely on Christ for their salvation. You don’t need to do well in a theology exam to get to heaven. God can see what’s going on deep within our hearts. The parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector is an example of that.

Still, there’s no harm in exposing people to what Scripture has to say. And those of us who have studied theology should always be willing to amend our ideas according to Scripture or perhaps to accept that in this life we’re not going to have a perfect understanding of theology.

Here are some other versions of today’s song: