The remarkable thing about the pure grace gospel that was given by the celestial risen Lord to Paul is that the work that empowers that gospel of pure grace has already been completed in Christ at and on the cross. Grace is the only dispensational relationship that effectively works in the life of believers. All other dispensational relationships leave men hopelessly striving and failing, or just plan failing.

One aspect of Paul’s revelation is that He saw all things concerning the believer as already being completed by the work of Christ, through His death, burial and resurrection. Notice the tense of the following verse – it is a past tense, already completed.

Ephes. 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:  

Paul never refers to anything Jesus of Nazareth did in His earthly ministry to and for the children of Israel, except His birth, death, burial and resurrection. Why is that? It is because these four items are what concerns the believer’s status and relationship with god in this day of “the dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph 3:2).

Paul then actually tells us we are not to know or attend to the words of Jesus of Nazareth “after the flesh.”

2 Cor. 5:16 Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.

Paul viewed our inheritance as being related to the resurrected ascended Christ, as opposed to the earthly Jesus of Nazareth who had come to earth came to earth to be “the minister of the circumcision” (Rom 15:8) only.

Under “the dispensation of the grace of God,” there simply is nothing left for us to do, except to receive the gift of God’s grace through faith.

Ephes. 2:8-9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Paul tells us also that “grace” is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ who has come to dwell in our spirit. 2 Tim. 4:22 The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be with you. Amen.

If God has already done all the work, then how is it that we may appropriate the benefit of God’s work that He accomplished in Christ on our behalf, such that our living actually may change? First, it is by our believing in (trusting in and relying upon) Christ’s work at, on the cross and in His resurrection, by identifying with Him and His experience as happening to us.

1. Christ died for us, that is, for our sins.
2. Christ also died as us, as our sin-infected “old man.”
3. Christ rose from the dead to become the life-giving spirit, to be the new life in us, as the new us.

¹⁷ Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come! 2Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)

The fact is that the status or position of every genuine Christian has become changed. Yet the benefits of this truth are only appropriated by our identification with God’s work in the giving of His Son for us and to us. Christ in us is our new life, whose benefit is enjoyed only to the extent that we then trust and rely upon Him. Our faith is based upon the truth of the facts of His death burial and resurrection; we now identify with Him as us in our daily living. Paul wrote of these facts a the basis of His gospel message for the body of Christ.

³ For I (Paul) passed on to you first of all what I also had received, that Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for our sins in accordance with [what] the Scriptures [foretold], ⁴ That He was buried, that He arose on the third day as the Scriptures foretold, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (AMP)