Week #1 - Always Grace: Grace Before the Law

Blog Series Intention Recap

Grace.

We sing about it. We name churches after it. We talk about being saved by it. But what exactly is grace? And just as importantly, what it isn’t?

Is grace God’s New Testament replacement for Old Testament Law? Were Abraham, Moses, and David saved differently than we are? If salvation is entirely by grace, do our works matter?

Those questions take us across the biblical story, where we discover something remarkably consistent:

Grace isn’t God’s backup plan.

From Abraham to the apostles, sinful people have always needed what they could never earn for themselves: God’s grace.

Over the next four weeks, we’ll look at what grace is, what it isn’t, and why different ages and responsibilities have never meant different ways of salvation.

Different ages. Different responsibilities. One Savior. Grace through faith.

This page is a post in the series “Grace: A Study On What It Is And What It Isn’t.” Click here to see the rest of the posts.

Let’s jump into Week #1:

"Always Grace"...

Has it always been grace?

Many Christians carry around a simple picture of the Bible without ever saying it out loud. The Old Testament is about Law. The New Testament is about grace. Back then, people had to earn God's favor by keeping commandments. Now, thanks to the cross, God has changed His approach.

It sounds tidy. It is also wrong.

Grace did not begin with the birth of Yeshua (Jesus), with the cross, or with the Church. And the clearest place to see that is not at Sinai or at Pentecost. It is under a night sky, with a man who lived centuries before the Law of Moses and long before the Church.

His name was Abram. Later we would know him as Abraham.

And when Paul needs to explain how anyone is made right with God, he goes right there.

Why it Matters:

• Abraham was declared righteous before the Law of Moses existed and before the Church was formed. Grace was already at work.

• Paul does not treat Abraham as an exception. He presents him as "the father of all who believe" (Romans 4:11, ESV).

• Abraham did not know everything we know. But he believed what God had revealed to him, and God counted that faith as righteousness.

• If grace was there before the Law, then grace cannot be God's replacement for the Law.

Go Deeper:

Grace in the Old Testament Before the Law

Before we look at Abram's faith, it helps to remember where he came from.

"Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods." (Joshua 24:2, ESV)

Abram did not grow up searching for the true God. He came from a family that worshiped idols. He was not chosen because he had climbed higher than his neighbors. God spoke to him first, called him out, and made him promises he had done nothing to deserve (Genesis 12:1–3).

The story of Abraham does not begin with Abraham reaching for God.

It begins with God reaching for Abraham.

That is grace at its simplest: God giving sinful people what they could never earn and do not deserve. Abram received a calling, a future, and promises that reached "all the families of the earth" (Genesis 12:3, ESV), and he did nothing to earn any of it.

Abraham Believed God

By Genesis 15, years have passed since that first promise. Abram is still childless. He is getting older, and so is Sarai. So God meets him again.

"After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: 'Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.'" (Genesis 15:1, ESV)

Abram answers honestly. What good is a reward when he has no heir? His servant Eliezer will inherit everything he has (Genesis 15:2–3).

God does not rebuke him. He takes him outside.

"And he brought him outside and said, 'Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.'" (Genesis 15:5, ESV)

Then comes one of the most important sentences in the Bible:

"And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness." (Genesis 15:6, ESV)

Notice what Abram did not do. He did not offer a sacrifice first. He did not make a vow. He did not promise to do better. He had no commandments from Sinai to keep, because Sinai was still centuries away.

He believed the LORD.

He took God at His word about something only God could do.

Counted is accounting language. It means to credit something to someone's account. Abram did not have a righteousness of his own that God simply noticed and approved. God credited righteousness to him. His faith was not the payment. It was the empty hand that received what God gave.

Genesis 15:6 does not necessarily mark the first moment Abram ever trusted God. Hebrews describes his earlier obedience, when he first left home, as an act of faith: "By faith Abraham obeyed" (Hebrews 11:8, ESV). Abraham's faith was never idle. It moved his feet. What place obedience has in a salvation that is all of grace is a question worth its own study, and we will come back to it later in this series.

But here Scripture makes the principle unmistakable: Abram believed the LORD, and God counted it to him as righteousness.

Paul Points Backward

When Paul wants to explain how anyone, Jew or Gentile, can be right with God, he does not introduce a new idea. He goes back to Genesis.

"What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.' Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness..." (Romans 4:1–5, ESV)

Paul's argument is simple. If Abraham had earned his standing with God, he would have something to boast about. But Scripture says he believed, and it was counted to him.

Wages are earned. Gifts are received.

Abraham received.

Then Paul calls a second witness, and this one lived under the Law:

"just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 'Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.'" (Romans 4:6–8, ESV)

Abraham lived before the Law. David lived under it. Both testify to the same thing: a sinner is made right with God by God's gracious crediting, not by his own record.

Paul also points out the timing. Abraham was counted righteous before he was circumcised (Romans 4:10). And in Galatians, Paul adds that the Law came 430 years after the promise and could not cancel it (Galatians 3:17).

Think about what that timeline means. If grace were God's response to the Law's failure, it would have to come after the Law. It came first. God's promise to Abraham, received by faith, was already standing for more than four centuries before Moses ever climbed Sinai.

Grace isn't God's backup plan. It has been running through the biblical story from the beginning.

More Revelation, Same Grace

So did Abraham believe everything we believe?

No. And this is where we need to be careful.

Abraham could not have explained the gospel the way Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15. He had not heard of a cross outside Jerusalem or an empty tomb. He could not have told you that the Messiah would die for our sins and rise on the third day.

What Abraham did know was what God had told him: offspring, land, and a blessing that would reach all the families of the earth through his line. Paul even says that Scripture "preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham" through that promise:

"And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed.'" (Galatians 3:8, ESV)

Abraham believed the revelation God had given him. We believe the revelation God has now given us concerning His Son. God has revealed far more since Abraham's day. But salvation is still received through faith, not earned through works.

The content of revelation grows. The means of receiving salvation remains faith.

That distinction protects us from two opposite mistakes. One says people before the cross must have been saved some other way, by works or by religion. The other says every believer in history must have known exactly what we know. Scripture teaches neither. Faith has always responded to what God has revealed, and grace has always been the reason a sinner could be accepted by God.

One more distinction belongs here. Abraham did not know the name Yeshua, but the righteousness credited to Abraham was never possible apart from the work Yeshua would accomplish.

The revelation Abraham possessed was different from ours. The basis of his salvation was not.

How God could credit righteousness to Abraham before the Messiah had died is a question Paul answers in Romans 3, and we will take it up later in the series. For now, it is enough to see that God did it, and that He did it by grace.

How does this help me understand “Grace: A Study On What It Is And What It Isn’t?”

One Story, Not Two Systems

Abraham keeps us from dividing the Bible into an Old Testament of works and a New Testament of grace. The commandments mattered. Obedience mattered. And when we reach the Law, we will see why. But none of those things provided a second way for sinners to make themselves righteous before God.

Genesis already gives us the pattern: God speaks. Abraham believes. God counts righteousness.

Grace wasn't invented at the cross. At the cross, we see its basis and its cost more clearly than ever.

"Not for His Sake Alone"

Paul closes his discussion of Abraham by turning the story toward us:

"But the words 'it was counted to him' were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord..." (Romans 4:23–24, ESV)

Genesis 15:6 was not written only to tell us about a man who lived four thousand years ago. It was written so that you would know how God receives you.

Not because you finally got good enough.

Not because your record is clean.

Not because you kept the rules of your church, your family, or your own conscience.

God counts righteousness to the one who believes Him.

That was true for Abraham under the stars. It is true for you today.

This week, read Genesis 15:1–6 and Romans 4:1–8 side by side. Notice how often the word counted appears. Then ask yourself honestly:

Am I still trying to earn what God has offered to credit?

Where am I treating obedience as payment instead of response?

What It Is. What It Isn't.

Grace is: God giving sinful people what they could never earn and do not deserve.

Grace isn't: A new plan God introduced because the Law failed.

Abraham believed God.

It was counted to him as righteousness.

It has always been grace.