Imagine you are half a million dollars in debt. Someone comes to you and writes out a check for $500,000, saying, “This is all for you, to cancel your debt. You don’t have to do anything but reach out and take it, and it’s yours.” So you take the money and pay your debt. You are now debt-free and totally in the clear.
What do you have to boast about? Can you go around bragging that you had the power, the skill, and the brains to reach out and take that check? Can you talk about what a favor you did for your benefactor, taking all that troublesome money off his hands? Does that make any sense?
Of course not. You received grace—nothing more, nothing less. You were impoverished; you received riches from another person. The fact that you are now debt-free is a hundred percent due to your benefactor, zero percent due to you.
Who, then, deserves the praise and glory for your salvation? Clearly, not you! You have received riches from the resources of God. His grace made it all possible.
Galatians 6:14, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”