The following message was recorded at an event hosted by Desiring God.

More information about Desiring God events, conferences and resources is available at

www. Desiring God.org. So then what is the function of bygone grace or past grace?

Answer, it puts solid ground under our faith in future grace.

Because somebody can be really troubled with my emphasis on the future,

faith in the future, they'd say, aren't you belittling Christ?

Aren't you making light of the cross when you constantly stress that the power of the faith that

transforms is a future-oriented faith in grace that's coming to you? Doesn't that treat the cross as small or insignificant

or so let me try to explain how the past grace demonstrated at the cross and the future

grace that is arriving to me moment by moment relate to each other. So I'm arguing that solid ground under faith in future

grace is in the past. Romans 832. He who did not, there's past tense,

did not spare his own son, but another past tense,

delivered him up for us all and now notice the

logical shift how will he not also with him freely give us all things?

Now that's a rhetorical question.

Whenever you have a rhetorical question in the Bible that doesn't have a answer after it, you got to supply the answer and when you supply the answer

you can turn the rhetorical question into a statement, right? So what would the statement be?

The statement would be, surely,

since God did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, he will most certainly give us all things with him.

That's the logic there.

The logic of heaven.

Because he died in the past, because Christ died in the past, he provided a foundation that makes God's commitment to all who are in him for the future absolutely certain.

...