⁶ “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”

God could have justly snuffed out the entire world, including the first man and woman. He graciously withheld His judgment, when by all rights He could have justly destroyed all humanity—because all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and through sin all have rightly earned death (Romans 6:23). As in the days of Noah, so also in our day, salvation from judgment is by God’s grace alone! Faith is the means of God’s grace becoming effective in our lives, but we are not the initiators of salvation, we do not earn God’s favor, for we have absolutely no merit of our own. Faith is not a work, nor is it something of which we can boast. To be sure, we are called to faith and are held responsible for believing or not believing. But, we must never forget that, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8–9).

God saved Noah and his family, knowing that they were not perfect, but Noah “found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen 6:8). He did not earn that election to God’s salvation from watery judgment, any more than we today earn salvation from God’s eternal judgment of hell. We were chosen, we found favor, when we were as guilty as those lost in the flood.

Our faith does not earn us anything. If salvation is not earned, then how did we get it? It is a gift: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). It is not your faith that saves you; it is, and always is, God’s grace that saves—undeserved, unearned, unmerited. Faith is simply the means, God’s grace is the cause of our salvation.

If we say God is not fair in choosing some, but not others, we err as creatures in questioning the Creator’s goodness. Is God unfair because He doesn’t do the “fair” thing and send us all to hell without any grace. Did the parable of the servants working in the field tell us nothing (Matthew 20)? If the farmer chose to pay a full day’s wage to those who worked only the last hour, the same as those who worked all day, was he being unfair? In the same way, is God unfair for graciously choosing some out of eternal damnation?

The greatest bafflement of all is this, why did God choose me? I might beg to argue with the apostle who wrote, “… Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Tim 1:15). I am the chief of all sinners, for my sin makes me worthy of eternal judgment.

Lord, why did You extend Your saving grace to me? Why me? Praise God, me!