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God, The Author of Grace by Thomas Vincent

January 7, 2010 by ADMIN

Grace is not found in the nature of men

Grace does not grow in the garden of nature, since there is no seed of grace to be found there­in.  Neither is it a natural power, such as that of the understanding, will, conscience, memory, or affections, which are to be found in all the children of Adam by nature.  Neither is it con-natural, such as original righteousness was in Adam before his fall; neither is it a habit acquired by the multiplicity of acts, whereof there are some disposi­tions in nature, such as the habits of arts and sci­ences, and moral virtues.

Grace is a pure stream which cannot spring forth from the polluted fountain of nature. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean” (Job 14:4)?  You never saw figs grow upon thorns or grapes upon thistles.  Since the souls of all the fallen children of men are wholly corrupt and depraved with original sin, it is impossible that this good could be affected by the power of nature.  Some, by the strength of natural power, cultivated by education and learn­ing, may attain much knowledge in the mysteries of nature, and by studying the Scriptures, they may at­tain a notional knowledge of divine mysteries; but the excellency of these mysteries is hidden from them.  They still remain without the spiritual dis­cerning of the things of the Spirit without the teachings of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Natural men may, through observance and dili­gence, attain a great accomplishment as to many moral virtues, and hereby shine with some kind of luster in darker parts of the world.  But by no natural power or industry can they attain unto any truly sanctifying and saving grace.  The stream cannot be raised up to a greater height than the spring lies from whence it arises.  And that which is natural cannot by any natural power be elevated unto that which is supernatural.

Grace is not found in the power of the Word

It is not from any innate power in the Word or the ordinances to effect this good work of grace in the soul of any.  Indeed, the Word is an instrument, and the ordinances are means of grace; but they are only instruments and means which have no virtue and ef­ficacy in themselves unless they receive it immedi­ately from God, the efficient cause of this work.  They are but channels, not the fountain of grace. The Word is a sword, but God’s hand must draw it forth and strike with it that it may wound. There was no virtue in the waters to heal (John 5) unless the angel troubled them; and there is no virtue in ordinances to change and sanctify the soul unless the Spirit moves in them and works by them.

The Word in itself is dead; it is the Spirit that quickens it, and quickens by it.  All the arguments which ministers may draw out of the Word in preaching, though pressed with never so much earnestness and affection, cannot possibly produce this gracious change in people unless God sets in with the Word and sets it home upon the heart.  We may as easily tear hard rocks to pieces and bend great bars of iron with our breath as, by our preaching, break the stony hearts and bend the iron sinews in the necks of the impenitent.  We may as easily lift a mountain with one finger and toss it up to heaven, or, with a whisper, raise those who are dead in their graves as lift a carnal heart towards God and raise such as are spiritually dead, unless the Lord accom­panies the Word which we preach with the Holy Ghost from heaven (1 Peter 1:12).

We may bring the light to a carnal man, a hard­hearted sinner, open it in his face and tell him never so convincingly of his sin, his guilt, the curse of the law, the wrath of God, the damnation of hell, and what dreadful torments he is hastening towards in his sinful courses, yet he is insensible and secure, and not at all moved unless it is with anger against the minister who reproves and forewarns him of his danger.   And, notwithstanding all that can be said, he goes on resolvedly in this way, which will cer­tainly and may suddenly bring him to hell.  Or, if he trembles a little with Felix, if some slavish fear of punishment arises in him for the present through the impression of arguments upon natural con­science, yet however he hears sin aggravated as it re­flects dishonor upon God and defiles his own soul, he is not moved to the least true, godly, evangelical mourning and sorrow for it.

Let us set God forth in His glorious excellencies and perfections before such a sinner in His infinite greatness, power, holiness, wisdom, goodness, truth, faithfulness, mercy, and lovingkindness, yet we cannot persuade him to fear God filially, to desire Him truly, to love Him entirely, or to choose Him for his chief good here and his portion eternally.

Let us set forth the Lord Jesus Christ in His beauty and transcendent loveliness, in His mercy and in­comparable grace and love; let us speak to him never so undeniably of the great need which he has of Christ to be his Savior because he is a sinner, and in such danger because of sin; let us call upon him never so earnestly, entreat him never so pathetically to leave his sin and accept Christ so freely offered unto him; not he!  Yet He holds fast to his sin; he shuts his ear like the deaf adder who will not hear the voice of the charmer though he charms ever so wisely.  And when he harbors base lusts in his heart, which will destroy him, he shuts the door against Jesus Christ, although he might have pardon and salvation, grace and glory with Him.

Let us propound to him ever so clearly the grounds of faith; let us direct him, invite him, and persuade him to believe with the greatest possible Scripture encouragements, and yet as easily may we persuade him to lift up the earth in his arms as to put forth the least true act of faith.  Let us commend to him the ways of God with the highest praises, and call him into those ways with the most powerful mo­tives of peace, satisfaction, sweetness, advantage here, and happiness to eternity; and yet nothing will prevail with him to set one step into that path.

Surely, then, there is no inherent virtue in the Word, or any arguments, though never so persua­sive, to effect this good work of grace.  Indeed, we must urge and press arguments upon sinners to dis­suade them from sin and draw them to God and this holy path, because God works upon rational crea­tures in a rational way; yet all arguments are in themselves insufficient to produce this work, as we find by the different effects which the very same ar­guments make on those upon whom they are urged.

Some are moved, repent, and turn to God; others are obdurate, obstinate, and continue in their impeni­tency and way of disobedience whatever is said against them.  Yea, some who are more unlikely to be wrought upon, more defiled and hardened before, when also they have resisted and withstood stronger arguments, have afterwards yielded and been over­come, and have fallen down before the force which has accompanied weaker arguments.  This differ­ence in the operation of the Word plainly shows that this work of grace is not from the Word, how­ever preached and pressed, but from the power of God’s Spirit.  All that has been said to the negative makes way and proves also the positive.

God Alone Is the Author of Grace

Positively, God alone is the Author of the good work of grace. It is God who begins the work, and it is God who performs it.  In this work we are born again (John 3:3), and we are said to be both be got­ten of God (James 1:18: “Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth”) and to be born of God (John 1:13: “Which are born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God;” and 1 John 4:7: “Whosoever loveth is born of God”).  We can no more beget ourselves anew than we can beget ourselves in our birth—it is a supernatural work, and therefore can be effected by none but God, who is almighty; who, by an immediate and real influence upon the soul, effects a spiritual change whereby all the faculties are changed, not in regard of their essence, but in regard of their quali­fications.  In this work, lions are turned into lambs, wolves into sheep, stones into flesh, yea, into chil­dren of Abraham.  What I mean here is that the fierce and ravenous disposition is changed into a mild and gentle temper; the stony obdurateness is removed, and the heart, which was as hard as flint before, is made soft and pliable to the will and law of God.  And who can do this but the God of nature, who first formed the spirit within man, and who alone can newly form and newly mold it after His own image?

This good work is called “a new creation” in Ephesians 2:10: “We are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ unto good works.”  Ephesians 4:24: “Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”  And therefore such as have this work done in them are called new creatures in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”  And then it follows in the next verse: “All things are of God.”  All these new things are His more immediate work.  It was God alone who created all things at first and it is God alone who can create all things anew.

This work of grace is called “a resurrection,” and hereby sinners are quickened out of their spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1).  It is God who gives natural life, and He alone can give spiritual life.  He raised Christ from the dead on the third day, and He will raise up all who are dead on the last day; and only He can raise up a soul when it is dead in sin and quicken it by His Spirit, which requires the same power as was put forth in Christ’s resurrection (compare Ephesians 1:19-20 with Ephesians 2:5).  God indeed makes use of the Word in quickening and changing the soul, but the Word effects this work only instrumentally—God works it efficiently.  As there went forth a power with Christ’s Word when He called and raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:42-43), so the power of God’s Spirit goes forth with the Word of His grace to quicken dead souls and effect a gracious change within them.

Why does the Lord begin this good work in any of the children of men?

The reason, as to the motive, is only God’s free grace and love. The reason, as to the design and end, is partly that God might be glorified by them upon earth, and partly that they might be prepared for glory with Him for­ever in heaven.

The motive which induces God to begin this good work in any of the children of men is only His free grace and love.  It is a gracious work of God not only with regard to the grace which it effects, but also with regard to the grace from whence it pro­ceeds.  It is according to the good pleasure of God’s will that He chooses us (Ephesians 1:5), and it is ac­cording to the good pleasure of His will that He changes us (James 1:18).

Natural agents, in producing effects, act neces­sarily.  God is a voluntary agent, and in this work acts freely. Ephesians 2:4-5: “God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He hath loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us to­gether with Christ.”   Romans 9:15: “For He saith unto Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and compassion on whom I will have compassion.’”

If God hides the mysteries of salvation from the wise and prudent, suffering them to remain in a dark and unconverted state, and reveals those mysteries unto babes; if He chooses and calls the foolish, mean, and most despised persons, and puts His image and likeness upon them, we must say that nothing but free grace could move Him thereunto.  And then we must, with our Savior, acknowledge, “Even so Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight” (Matthew 11:26).

And not only when the most unlikely person, the ignorant or notoriously wicked is graciously changed, must we cry out “Grace! Grace!” but also, whoever they are, however morally qualified before conversion, there is not the least merit in any of their works, nothing to move or incline God unto it, no disposition in the nature of any unto this gra­cious change.  And therefore it is only of free grace that those who have escaped the more gross pollu­tions which are in this world through lust are washed by the Spirit in the layer of regeneration from the inward pollutions of their hearts, from which none are free.  Titus 3:4-5: “But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared.  Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”  And 2 Timothy 1:9: “Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own will and purpose.”

The design and end why God begins the good work of grace in any of the children of men is:

1. That hereby they might be fitted for His ser­vice, and glorify His name upon the earth.

All grace-less persons are not only children of wrath, but children of disobedience.  They are children of darkness and of the devil, yea, they are his servants; they serve the devil and divers lusts, and their whole life is a continual offense and provocation of God, a continued course of rebellion against Him and His laws.  The Lord therefore brings some of the chil­dren of men out of a state of nature into a state of grace that He might have some servants in the world, some to bear His name and stand up for His honor and interest, and oppose the sins of the times and places wherein they live; that He might have some service from them.  Hebrews 12:28: “Let us have grace that we may serve God acceptably.”  Without a work of grace upon the heart and a sanctified prin­ciple within, no services are acceptable unto God, “for they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).

2. That hereby they might be fitted for glory with God forever in heaven.

God gives grace here to pre­pare for glory hereafter.  Only the pure in heart are fit and have the promise of seeing God (Matthew 5:8).  Without a new heart and life, there will be no admission into the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:27).  God is glorious in holiness, clothed with majesty, all brightness, perfect purity, the high and Holy One of Israel who inhabits eternity, without the least spot, and with whom dwells no iniquity.  The heavens are not pure in His sight, and He has charged His angels with folly.  The pure seraphim proclaim His holiness and veil their faces before the splendor thereof.

And this God who is so infinitely pure and holy Himself infinitely hates and detests sin.  There is an infinite contrarity between the holy nature of God and the unholy nature of man; and therefore they cannot live together with eternal delight in heaven unless the nature of man is changed by the renew­ing grace of God.  God will not permit unsanctified persons to approach so near His glorious presence.  He will not receive such defiled creatures into the dearest and closest embraces of His infinite and eternal love.  And while they are unrenewed, heaven (which is a place of holiness whose company and employments are all holy) would be so unsuitable unto their natures that they could not find sweet­ness and delight there because none can delight in anything unless it has a suitableness to the nature of that thing in which they delight.  Therefore, the Lord changes the nature of such persons here in a work of grace whom He intends for eternal glory in the other world.

From The Good Work Begun in the Day of Grace Continued Until the Day of Christ.

Posted in Thomas Vincent |

The Exceeding Riches of Grace by C. H. Spurgeon

January 7, 2010 by ADMIN

“That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”-Ephesians 2:7

From this verse, it is clear that Paul fully expected the gospel of the grace of God to be preached in the ages to come.  He had no notion of a temporary gospel to develop into a better, but he was assured that the same gospel would be preached to the end of the dispensation.  Nor this alone; for as I take it, he looked to the perpetuity of the gospel, not only through the ages which have already elapsed since the first advent of our blessed Lord, but throughout the ages after he shall have come a second time.  Eternity itself will not improve upon the gospel.  When all the saints shall be gathered home, they shall still talk and speak of the wonders of Jehovah’s love in Christ Jesus, and in the golden streets they shall stand up and tell what the Lord has done for them to listening crowds of angels, and principalities, and powers.  Paul did not believe in the quenching of the light of the testimony of grace, but expected that throughout the ages to come it would burn on with the selfsame brilliance.

This I infer from the fact that he looked upon the believing Ephesians and himself as having been converted in the dawn of Christianity on purpose that to after ages they might serve as specimens of what the gospel can do.  He looked upon these Ephesians newly drawn out from the slough of idolatry in the same light as he looked upon himself when he said that the Lord had shown towards him all longsuffering for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe on his name.  Paul and these Ephesians, and all those early Christians, were types to us of what God can do by the gospel, and of what he will continue to do until the present dispensation shall close.  From this statement, we may gather with most sure logic that the gospel is altogether unalterable; for if its results eighteen hundred years ago are to serve us as proofs of its power, then it must be the same gospel.  It is clear that the converts of the first century would not be to us any kind of testimony to the power of the gospel as it now exists among us if meanwhile there had been a change in the gospel itself.  At best, such facts could only show what the old-fashioned gospel did in its day, but we could not infer from them what a new-fangled gospel will now accomplish.  Paul did not at all anticipate any removal of the old landmarks.  He held it forth that the same results would follow in all ages from the preaching of the same gospel with the same power from heaven, and hence he regarded the first converts as pledges and proofs to all succeeding ages of what the gospel could achieve.  Hold you, my brethren, to that gospel which has been delivered unto you, which we have received by the Spirit of God through the teaching of Christ and of his apostles, and you shall yet see repeated in your midst the self-same things which were wrought in those early days.  Those who will may drink the new wine of the modern vintage, my conviction is that the old is better.

Learn also from this language of Paul that every age is a gainer by those which preceded it.  I have smiled often in this place at the conceit of this nineteenth century which holds up its head among the ages as far excelling them all, though if it knew itself it would sing to a more modest tune; but now I will moderate my tone, and admit that this century is superior to all the ages that have been before it, superior in this one respect, that it has received by the lapse of time the fullest and most repeated evidence of the gospel’s power.  Whereas in the second century men could only refer to the experience of the saints during one hundred years, we have at this hour the accumulated evidence of nineteen hundred years, and all this is put in evidence as proof of what grace can do.  Whereas in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries men had the accumulated personal testimonies of those who had till then believed in Christ, and had been saved thereby, we, upon whom the ends of the earth have come, have now far larger evidence, because the time has supplied us with a greater cloud of witnesses.

For nearly two thousand years has this gospel been preached among men, and every year has brought fresh trophies to its power: every day, I might say, is now producing evidence of its divine power.  We have not today, dear friends, to begin to test the gospel; the ice is broken for us: experiments have been made so frequently that we have now entered upon another stage.  It is not ours to analyze the bread, but to feed upon it.  We have not today to enquire, Can we ford the stream?  Lo, these nineteen centuries the hosts of God have gone through the flood in safety, and we have but to join their ranks and follow where they lead the way.  Surrounded by evidence that is altogether overwhelming, we behold the gospel of Jesus going forth, conquering and to conquer.  We hear from ten thousand times ten thousand voices the cry, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  We cannot cease to proclaim the mercy of God as displayed in the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, for infallible assurances strengthen our confidence, and set our hearts on fire.

The multitudes of converts in past time make known to us in these ages that there is salvation, nay more, that this salvation is to be had, for they obtained it; nay, further, that it is to be had upon the terms that God has laid down of simply believing in Jesus Christ: for they obtained it in that way, and in none other.  Doubt ought now to be out of the question; every needy, trembling sinner should hasten away to the refuge supplied by Jesus.  Because so many have been to him with success; because he has never rejected any; because he has saved to the uttermost all those that have come to him, therefore sinful men ought eagerly and unquestioningly to come at once, and put their confidence in the Lamb of God.  Then will God’s purpose, as described in the text, be accomplished, that to the ages to come should be made known by all who have tasted of his kindness the exceeding riches of his grace toward men in Christ Jesus the Savior.

This morning I have a text before me which is a great deal too full for me: I can never draw out all its supplies.  I have gone round the walls of this city text, I have counted its towers, and marked well its bulwarks, and I am utterly unable to express myself by reason of joyous astonishment.  I feel as if I must sit down and lose myself in adoration.  I am a poor dumb dog over such a theme.  I believe that if I were shut up to preach for twelve months from this text I should not be straitened for matter; but rather, when I had finished the fifty-two Sabbath-days, I should be eager to enter upon another year’s consideration of the same topic.  Here is a vast and fruitful country,-a land of hills and valleys, a land of fountains and brooks of water, who shall spy it out and set the bounds thereof?  I shall try to exhibit a cluster from Eshcol, but the whole land I cannot show you, it behoves you to journey thither for yourselves.  It is a right royal subject, “The exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”  Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better than I do, but they could not preach a better gospel.

I shall preach with the longing desire that others may be enticed to come and taste of the dainties of Christ’s marriage-feast.  To this end I shall rehearse the lovingkindnesses of the Lord.  Oh that the Holy Spirit may help me, and draw you.  We begin with:

I. The Kindness of the Lord toward Us in Christ Jesus.

What kindness he displayed in choosing such sinners as we were. These Ephesians had been most superstitious idolaters.  You know how loudly they shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”  There was no preparedness in them to cast away their idols and to worship the great Invisible.  There was nothing in them to draw them towards the light that shineth in the Christ of God.  They were far off, as Paul says, having no hope, and really and truly without God in the world; and yet these were the very men whom the exceeding riches of God’s grace brought out of darkness into marvelous light.  They were “dead in trespasses and sins;” they walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air; they fulfilled the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were sunken in all manner of loathsome lusts and vices; and yet the grace of God came to men of Ephesus, and called out a church to show forth the praises of God.

Now, what were we, my brethren?  We were not idolaters, nor sunk in all the degradation of Ephesus, but we were all sinners in some fashion or other.  All the sheep went astray; though each one followed a different way, all took the downward road, and we among them.  We, to the utmost of our power, fulfilled the lusts of the flesh and of the mind: we did evil even as we could.  If it had not been for the restraints of education and the checks of our surroundings, I know not into what crimes we should not have plunged.  It is a happy circumstance for some of us that God met with us very early, or else we should have been swept away by the torrents of our youthful passions into the worst possible vices.  We ever had a strong will and a firm purpose, and courage equal to any daring: these qualities under the devil’s influence would soon have forced for us a passage to hell.  If we had been left to sow our wild oats, what a crop we should have had long ere this.  Thanks be to God for his preventing love!

Alas, some, left to wander far, were allowed to prove in their lives the sin which dwelt in them; and what a wonder of grace, what a miracle of love, that God should have selected them, after all, and brought them near to himself.  Dear brothers and sisters, I will not enlarge upon this, for this is a point for your private meditations.  Shut yourselves up in your closets and think of what you were and what you would have been if it had not been for the kindness of God toward you in Christ Jesus.  Forget not that the Lord has shown this kindness toward us in order that others like us may be induced to believe in the same kindness.  Are any here the children of pious parents, and have you done violence to your consciences?  After the same fashion did many of us terribly rebel, and yet the Lord has had mercy upon us.  Have some of you fallen into the lusts of the flesh, and followed after the pleasures of sin, and thus defiled yourselves greatly?  Do not despair of pardon, for there are some here who tearfully remember how the God of pardons forgave them after they had fallen into like sins.  Whatever form your transgression may take, God has saved others who aforetime fell into similar sins, in order that in them he might make known to you his willingness to clasp you to his bosom, and to cast your sins behind his back.

No doctrine, however clearly stated, will ever have such influence over men as living examples; but when we can say of this one and of the other, “These were great offenders, these were open sinners, these were grievous transgressors, but they obtained mercy,” we do in effect say to all of the like character, “Come you, and you shall not be refused: leave your sin as they have done: loathe it as they do: trust in Jesus as they have been taught to do, and you shall find equal mercy with them, and shall rejoice in the common salvation.”  The kindness of God toward us how I delight to dwell on the word “us,” and then to take it up and acknowledge my own personal share in it:the kindness of God toward me.  Do this, my brethren, and then go and display to others the kindness of the Lord towards your own souls.

But our attention is called not only to the persons whom God chose, but to his kindness displayed in the gracious acts which he has done towards them.  Mark the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us.

What has he done for us? He chose us before he lit the stars, those torches of the sky: he wrote our names upon the heart and hands of Christ ere he laid the foundations of the hills.  In the fullness of time, he gave Christ for us, even that blessed Christ of whom we say, “Who loved me and gave himself for me.”  He made with us in Christ Jesus a covenant ordered in all things and sure, which shall stand fast when all created things dissolve.

Having done this, he watched over us when we were bondslaves to the tyrant Satan.  Graciously he guarded us from going further still into transgression and committing the sin which is unto death.  Then he called us, and when we would not come, he drew us yet more forcibly by his effectual grace, till at last we yielded.  Oh, I cannot tell all that he did for us when we at last came to Jesus, but this I know, he washed us, and we were whiter than snow; he brought forth the best robe and put it on us, and made us comely in his sight.  He gave us the kiss of sweet acceptance, and he put us among the children, and since then he has given us the children’s portion, and has dealt with us as he uses to deal with those that love his name.  We have been adopted into the family, and we have lived on the children’s bread; we have been guided, and led, and instructed, and upheld, and sanctified, and the almighty Savior is still performing for us miracles of mercy.  The old tale of the giants piling mountain upon mountain, Pelion upon Ossa, is outdone by our God: he has not only heaped up one hill of mercy, but he has laid mountain upon mountain; he has piled up Alps on Alps to make a pathway for us, that we may ascend to the right hand of God, even the Father, and sit in the heavenly places with Christ.

What has he done? I answer, what has he not done?  What more could he do?  Can you suggest a mercy?  He has already given it.  Can you desire a favor?  It is yours already, and was yours from before the foundation of the world.  Oh, the goodness, the manifold goodness, the overflowing, surpassing, inconceivable goodness of God in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

I am bound to dwell a moment on that last word: his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.  That is the channel through which all blessing has come to us.  God gives common mercies to men as his creatures; but these riches of his grace, these covenant blessings, all come to us as his chosen, through the Mediator.  You can see the mark of the cross on every spiritual favor which the Father has bestowed: some drops of bloody sweat have fallen upon every treasured gem of the covenant casket.  And does not this endear the mercy of God to you, that it does come through Jesus Christ?  It seems to me to enhance its value, and to make every covenant blessing more and more dear, because it is brought to us by the hand of the Well-beloved.

By his atonement, it is procured to us, and by his matchless intercession it is actually bestowed.  Said I not right well that I have a theme which is too deep and high for me?  I might detain you many a day upon this one word, “through Christ Jesus,” through the incarnate God, through his life and death and resurrection, and his intercession at the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high.  All things come to us through Christ Jesus: he is the golden pipe of the conduit of eternal love, the window through which grace shines, the door by which it enters.  Get these two or three words, and sit down and turn them over and over and over in your souls, and see if there is not the very music of heaven sleeping within them, which your faith may call forth, and coin into hallelujahs.  “The exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus”— this is an anthem worthy of the choirs celestial; sing it, O ye chosen of the Lord, while ye are waiting to ascend his holy hill.

II. But now I take a step further, and get into the soul of the text.  Let us consider, “The Exceeding Riches of His Grace.”

Here our English is a poor language as compared with the Greek, and I believe that Paul groaned even when he was writing the matchless Greek of the text, because he could not make it express all his meaning.  Even the Hebrew, which seems to be the most expressive of all human tongues, and might well have been spoken in Paradise, cannot contain or set forth the fullness of God’s great thoughts but here the Greek is wonderful.  What if I read the words, the hyperbolical wealth of grace, or the superabounding, excessive, overflowing riches of the grace of God?  If I were to heap up epithets, I could not give you all that Paul means.

Only notice, first, that the riches of the grace of God are above all limit. A man is not rich when he can count his money, or miss this and that when he has spent it.  We used to read in our first Latin books, “It is the mark of a poor man to number his flocks: the rich man has so many sheep that he cannot count them.”  When a person becomes immensely wealthy, he is richer than he needs to be, and has not only enough, but much to spare. So is it with the grace of God: he has as much grace as you want, and he has a great deal more than that.  The Lord has as much grace as a whole universe will require, but he has vastly more.  He overflows: all the demands that can ever be made on the grace of God will never impoverish him, or even diminish his store of mercy; there will remain an incalculably precious mine of mercy as fall as when he first began to bless the sons of men.

In a country village, if a man has a few hundred pounds he is thought to be quite rich.  You get into a large town, there a man must have several thousands; but when you come to London, and frequent the Stock Exchange, you enquire of so-and-so, “Is he a rich man?” and some one will perhaps reply, “Yes, yes; he is worth a hundred thousand pounds.”  Put that same question to a Rothschild with his millions, and he answers, “No, he is a little man, he is not rich; he only owns a hundred thousand pounds;” for these great bankers count their money by millions.  Well, but what are these great Rothschilds with all their millions when they are reckoned up according to the wealth of heaven?  They are nowhere at all.  The Lord alone is rich. “If I were hungry,” says he, “I would not tell thee, for the world is mine and the fullness thereof.”

He says, “The silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.”  God is so rich in mercy that you cannot tell how rich he is.  His is overflowing riches, marvelous riches, exceeding riches.  God is excessive in nothing that I know of except in his mercy.  He is boundless in all his attributes, but emphatically so in his love, for God is love.  His grace is above all observation.  The little grace which you have seen, you stop me and exclaim, “Sir, I have seen great grace.”  So you have, for you; but the little grace you have seen, I say, bears no proportion to the glorious whole.  You have not seen as much of God’s grace as a man might see of the sea if he stood upon the beach at Brighton or at Hastings.

“Why,” you reply in surprise, “I can see as much of the ocean there as ever mortal man can see.”  That may be; but men’s eyes have but a narrow range.  I tell you, you have never beheld the sea, but only a trifling portion of it.  If a man crosses from America, he has gazed upon a narrow furrow along which his vessel has ploughed its way, but no one has ever beheld to the full the vast, majestic ocean in all its length, and breadth, and depth.  Nobody can see it in all its far-resounding shores and hollow caves.  Such is the “exceeding riches” of God’s grace, unsearchable, passing knowledge.  Oh my poor tongue, and my dull language. I must leave my subject, for it overflows my soul and drowns my speech.  You must think it out for yourselves.  The grace of God surpasses all you know, all you see, and all you think.

So I remark next that this grace is above all expression, ay, even inspired expression. Paul, though full of the Holy Spirit, could not speak out all the love of God in Christ Jesus, for his love is unspeakable.  “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable grace.”  If we had all the tongues of men, and of angels, we could not declare all the riches of the grace of God.  No, if all the orators that ever lived made this their one and only theme, and if all of these were under the influence of the divine Spirit, yet human language could not compass this divine thing.

“Words are but air, and tongues but clay,

And this compassion is divine…”

If we knew the language of angels, we could not then declare the grace of God.  The most experienced saints bewail the weakness of every form of speech to describe the exceeding riches of the grace of God.

We are compelled to add that it is above all our ways of action. The gospel has taught us to forgive, but we do not take to it naturally.  If anyone treats us very ill, it is with some difficulty that we forgive; but there are certain base, cruel, and ungrateful treatments which it becomes almost impossible to overlook; and, if we forgive, yet we do not always forget.  But such is the greatness of God’s mercy that we who have wearied ourselves with iniquity, and wearied him with our sins, yet have not outworn his compassion.  It is hard for us to pardon, but it is spontaneous with God.  He delights in it – “He delighteth in mercy.”  Twenty-six times in one psalm the sweet singer proclaims that “his mercy endureth for ever.”  How he  rings that bell again, and again, and again, “For his mercy endureth for ever.”  Your mercy is very short, and your temper is quick, so that you speak unadvisedly and angrily very soon; but it is not so with God.  So wondrous are his ways of grace that they are past finding out.  We cannot follow them, and can scarce believe them because they are so unlike ours.  His ways are above our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts, as much as the heavens are above the earth.  The gentlest, meekest, and most loving minds are left far behind in this race of love.  Man is a niggard of forgiveness, but the Lord is rich in mercy.  Our little stream of goodness runs after much pumping and pressure, but the river of divine love flows freely on.

Ay, and the ways of grace are above our understanding. Some famous minds have been born into the world every now and then, men who have explored the sun, threaded the stars, and pried into the bowels of the earth, and told us of its ancient history.  God raises up every now and then master minds to perceive and reveal his wisdom in nature; but there never was, and never shall be, a human understanding that can fully grasp the incomprehensible riches of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  Sit down and think it over, and look intently into this mystery, and you will find it far beyond you.  “It is high, I cannot attain unto it.”  I have set myself this day to study this matter, but I have barely touched it as with a swallow’s wing; I have not dived into the fathomless depths, nor can I.  Jehovah is such a marvelously forgiving God, so rich in his mercy that our understanding cannot count the mighty sum.  Ay, and if our thoughts were raised to the utmost, if we were sanctified to the highest degree, if we were so pure in heart as to see God, not even then should we be able to know all the exceeding riches of his grace to usward who believe.  The loftiest thought of the most saintly mind never rose to the height of this great argument.

The most masterly poetic conception faints, its wing droops, and it falls to earth in the presence of this mercy which is higher than the heavens, and far above the clouds.  I wish I could say something that would make men know how vast is the mercy of God.  Oh that these lips had language!  Perhaps my failure may be better than fluency.  If so, I would gladly be dumb to let mercy itself speak.

Furthermore, dear friends, the exceeding riches of God’s grace may be guessed at by the fact that divine mercy is above all our sins. You cannot sin so much as God can forgive.  If it comes to a pitched battle between sin and grace, you shall not be so had as God shall be good.  I will prove it to you.  You can only sin as a man, but God can forgive as a God.  You sin as a finite creature, but the Lord forgives as the infinite Creator.  When I received that thought fairly into my soul last night I felt like Abraham when he laughed for joy: I sin like a man, but he forgives like a God.  We will never sin that grace may abound; that were infamous and detestable.  But what a blessed text is that: “Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.”  Your sin is like a mountain, but if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you shall say to this mountain, “Be thou removed hence, and cast into the midst of the sea of God’s infinite mercy,” and it shall be done unto you.  The atoning blood will wash out all transgression, and not a trace of it shall remain.  Does not this fact magnify the mercy of God?  Gross and intolerable as your sin may be, yet it is but as the drop of a bucket compared with the immense ocean of forgiving love.

Try again.  God’s mercy is greater than his promises. “Oh, no,” say you, “that will not do.  We have read of ‘exceeding great and precious promises.’”  I tell you his mercy has a glory beyond his promises, for his mercy is the father of his promises.  The Lord had mercy and grace before he had spoken a single promise; and it was because his heart was flaming with love that he made a covenant of grace, and wrote therein the words of peace.  His promises are precious streams that come leaping up in the deserts of our lost and ruined state, but the depth that lieth under, which Scripture calls “the depth that coucheth beneath,” is richer than the fountain which comes out of it.  The mercy of God as the source and well-head is greater than the promises which flow from it: infinitely greater than our straitened interpretations of the promises, which fall far short of their real meaning, and even that meaning, did we know it, cannot set forth all “the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”

Let us try again.  God’s mercy is greater than all that all his children ever have received as yet. His redeemed are a multitude that no man can number, and each one draws heavily upon the divine treasurer, but notwithstanding all the grace he has ever given to them (and he has given to each of them a measureless portion), yet is there more grace in God than he has given forth as yet.  “Oh,” say you, “how can that be?”  It is so because his mercy is not all given out in this life; much of it is laid up for enjoyment in the world to come.  The grace which we have not yet tasted is the very crown of the feast.  The Lord hath prepared for them that love him an inconceivable bliss.  There is heaven, there is glory, there is all the bliss of the endless ages yet laid up in store.  Oh the wealth of these heavenly reserves.  I am sure I stated the truth when I said that what the Lord has given does not comprehend all the exceeding riches of his grace: he has infinitely more to give.  You have seen the river Thames go rolling along, the abounding and rejoicing river, and, on a hot day, you stand knee deep in the stream, and drink, drink, drink.  There is more water in the Thames than all the bullocks in all earth’s pastures ever drank, or will drink.  They may be driven from every prairie under heaven and stand on the river’s brink, and drink as though they would suck up Jordan at a draught, but they will never diminish the wealth of Father Thames: but even if they could do so, you and I would be still as far off from all possibility of draining the wondrous flood of mercy which comes flowing forth from beneath the throne of God.  The rain of grace has filled the pools, but it will rain again none the less plentifully.  God’s ability to give is greater than our capacity to receive.

The fact is that this grace is above all measure.  Yet we have four measures for it – height, depth, breadth, length — and this mercy of God is so exceeding great that in each of these measures it baffles description.  It is higher than our sin, though that be exceedingly heinous and proudly threatens the gates of heaven: it is higher than our thoughts, though our imagination sometimes takes a condor’s flight.  Oh, the height of divine mercy!  It rises to the throne of the Eternal.  As for the depths of grace, the sea has immense depths, but the mercy of God is altogether unfathomable.  Great sins sink into it and are lost; but grace is just as deep after it has swallowed up a world’s sin as it was before.  There are inconceivably deep places in God’s mercy where the blackest sins are lost.  Out of these come the choicest pearls of grace.

Oh the depths!  As for the breadth of mercy, David says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”  What greater breadth can be conceived?  As for the length of it, it is from everlasting to everlasting.  Can anybody tell me the length of that?  My sins began less than fifty years ago; but the Lord’s mercy began – oh, when did it begin?  It was always with him, and his plans of mercy are from everlasting.  There is a beginning to man’s sin, but there is no beginning to pardoning love.  I shall cease to sin, I hope, long before another fifty years are over, and I shall be beyond fear of further fault; but the mercy of the Lord will never end, world without end.  Who then can compass a matter which in any one of its measurements far surpasses all human computation?  Grace is above all calculation.

Hasten hither, you great sinners.  You are not great as compared with the Lord’s great mercy in Christ Jesus.  We cannot allow you to apply the word “great” to your sin, we need to reserve it for the mercy of God.  We must monopolize the word; for all greatness dwells in the love and mercy of our God.  However much you may have wandered, however black you may be, however defiled, God delights in mercy: it is the joy of his heart to pass by transgression and sin through the precious blood of Christ.  Do not do my Lord so great a dishonor as to measure your sin and affirm that it outstrips his mercy.  It cannot be!  You know nothing about the glorious nature of my Lord.  A child may fill its little cup out of the great sea, but the sea never misses it.  Your sin is like that cup, and you may fill it to the brim with mercy, but the ocean of love will never miss all that you can take from it.

Come, take all that you can take, and none shall question you.  Wash out your crimson stains in this pure flood, and it shall remain as pure as at the first.  I would not speak lightly of your sin: it is an exceeding great and grievous thing: but still I do say over again that as compared with the infinite mercy of God it is but as a shadow to the sun, or a grain of sand to the full ocean at its flood.

III. These riches of grace deserve TO BE STILL FURTHER ILLUSTRATED; and I shall illustrate them only by hints.

What exceeding riches of grace it was on God’s part that when we resisted him in the days of our sin he resolved to overcome our folly.  If you offer a man a great kindness, and he will not have it, you say, “Well, then, he must do without it: I am not going down on my knees to him to ask him to receive a favor from me.”  Yet the Lord pleads with sinners to accept his grace.  “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.”  He begs and beseeches men that they will be saved: he entreats them, pleads with them, argues with them, that they would turn to Jesus and live.  Oh, the exceeding riches of his grace.  My Master, the Lord Jesus, came along to me, and he said, “Soul, will you have pardon and forgiveness?” and fool that I was I answered, “No.”  Then he came again and said,” Wilt thou have me and my salvation?  I will take thee to heaven with me.”  And I answered, “No.”  Ah, but he would not take “No” for an answer.  He had a sweet way of getting at my understanding and my will, and he drew me till at last I cried after him.

How I ate my black, and rebellious words.  “O Lord,” I said, “take no notice of what thy poor, poor child has said: throw his obstinate refusals behind thy back, and let me come to thee.”  But, oh, the exceeding riches of his grace that he should stand waiting, waiting long, and knocking at our door though we would let him in.

The exceeding riches of his grace were seen in making no conditions with us.  When the Lord Jesus Christ met with us, he did not stand out for terms.  I heard one say the other day, “I do not feel enough brokenness of heart nor enough humiliation of spirit.”  Who said that Christ demanded so much brokenness of heart and so much humbling of spirit before he would give his mercy?  He who dared to say it knows not the freeness of the gospel, for the gospel comes to bring you the broken heart and the humbled spirit; and Christ comes to you just as you are, in all your alienation and your enmity, and brings everything in his hands that you can want.  This is what we call free grace.  A sharp critic said the other day, “Do not say ‘free grace,’ it is a tautology: grace must be free.”  Ah, my dear sir, but we shall say “free grace,” so that there shall be no mistake about it; for some, I dare say, will not know where we are unless we are even redundant in our expressions upon this point.  There was nothing in us to draw Christ to us; we had nothing good, but everything evil.  When he came he did not say, “Bankrupt sinner, you must pay twopence in the pound, and I will pay the other nineteen and tenpence.”  He paid all our debts, asking not a farthing from us.  He saw us lying by the roadside bruised and broken, and he did not say, “Come hither, poor man; rise up, and I will bind your wounds.”  No, but he came where we were lying unable to stir, and poured in the wine and the oil, and did it all without our help.  This is the “exceeding riches of his grace,” in not standing stipulating and huckstering with us, but freely giving to us all we need, only asking that we would receive it, that we would be empty, and that he might fill us with his love.

Beloved, I think I never knew “the exceeding riches of his grace” better that when I was thinking, the other day, of how his grace works.  Why, he does all this with a word.  He speaks a black sinner white he speaks a dead sinner into life by a word.  “Live,” saith he; and he that was dead lives.  He that had been accounted unrighteous is, by God’s will, reckoned righteous, and he is righteous, for him whom God reckons to be righteous by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is righteous indeed; yea, and he shall be rewarded for that righteousness which God with a word gives to him.

If you want another proof of “the exceeding riches of his grace,” think of the power of the blood.  Once washed in the crimson fount your every sin is gone, every spot is washed out; ay, and gone never to return, for he that is once washed in the atoning blood will never be black again.  The cleansing is perfected forever.  The glorious High Priest made one offering for sin, only one: he did it once, and by that he annihilated all the sins of all his people at a single stroke, once for all.  Oh, “the exceeding riches of his grace.”  His word, his blood have wrought such wondrous mysteries of grace.

And since then, dear friends, have not “the exceeding riches of God’s grace” been marvelous to you?  To think that he should accept us as believers though we had not more than half a grain of faith!  He has even treated us as believers when sometimes we have been more doubters than trusters.  As for our repentance, it seemed such a poor shallow regret, yet he has reckoned it repentance, and accepted it as such.  Our love to him!

Oh, our poor love to him has been like a spark hiding away in the ashes, yet he has called it love.  He has known us better than we know ourselves, and he has known we loved him notwithstanding the feebleness of our affection.  These poor, frail graces of ours that we have been ashamed of, he has nevertheless rejoiced in them, and had a joy in them as being the gift of his Spirit, of “the exceeding riches of his grace.”

Ever since our conversion, the Lord has held on to us, and helped us to hold on to him.  We have tried him sorely time out of mind.  Sometimes we talk about our trials.  There is another side to that.  Think of Christ’s trials: how we have grieved him.  We must have provoked his spirit ten thousand times, yet he loves us infinitely, and does not give us up. He has espoused us to himself, and he never will divorce us.  He never sued out a divorce against a soul that was married to him, nor ever will he.  He has not grown cold in his love; notwithstanding our chilliness he loves us now with all his great and infinite heart; and by-and-by he will open the golden gates, and he will say, “Come up hither.”

“Then, Lord, shall I fully know,

Not till then, how much I owe.”

But if when I get to heaven, I shall know what I owed him here, I shall be in a greater difficulty than ever, for I shall not know what I then owe him in his glory.  It is an enormous debt we owe him for the blessings of time, and perhaps in eternity we shall begin to calculate their value; but then we shall be sweetly oppressed with a new burden, in a sense of the amazing mercy which he will then be giving us at his right hand.  We may give up the endless task.  We cannot possibly calculate the sum.  Brethren, we are all in an  equal difficulty, and shall be so for ever, for the Lord will go on to deluge us with mercy, grace, favor, for ever and for ever, and we shall say to one another, when millions of years have gone, “Brother, is it not still astonishing?  Do you seem to know much more of it than you did in the Tabernacle that morning when you heard the poor preacher try to do his best with his subject, and he was utterly lost in it?”  And you will say, “I know far more, but I am as far off as ever from knowing all, for now I know more of my ignorance; I know more of the extent of what I do not know.”  Brothers, if what we do know and what we do not know are added together to make up the total sum of the Lord’s grace, what must it be?

“God only knows the love of God:

Oh that it now were shed abroad

In these poor stony hearts.”

God grant it, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Delivered on Lord’s-day morning, June 18th, 1882.

Posted in C. H. Spurgeon |

The Grace Of God by A. W. Pink

January 7, 2010 by ADMIN

Grace is a perfection of the Divine character which is exercised only toward the elect.  Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New is the grace of God ever mentioned in connection with mankind generally, still less with the lower orders of His creatures.  In this it is distinguished from mercy, for the mercy of God is “over all His works” (Psalm 145-9).  Grace is the alone source from which flows the goodwill, love, and salvation of God unto His chosen people.  This attribute of the Divine character was defined by Abraham Booth in his helpful book, The Reign of Grace thus, “It is the eternal and absolute free favor of God, manifested in the vouchsafement of spiritual and eternal blessings to the guilty and the unworthy.”

Divine grace is the sovereign and saving favor of God exercised in the bestowment of blessings upon those who have no merit in them and for which no compensation is demanded from them.  Nay, more; it is the favor of God shown to those who not only have no positive deserts of their own, but who are thoroughly ill-deserving and hell-deserving.  It is completely unmerited and unsought, and is altogether unattracted by anything in or from or by the objects upon which it is bestowed.  Grace can neither be bought, earned, nor won by the creature.  If it could be, it would cease to be grace.  When a thing is said to be of grace we mean that the recipient has no claim upon it, that it was in nowise due him.  It comes to him as pure charity, and, at first, unasked and undesired.

The fullest exposition of the amazing grace of God is to be found in the Epistles of the apostle Paul.  In his writings, “grace” stands in direct opposition to works and worthiness, all works and worthiness, of whatever kind or degree.  This is abundantly clear from Romans 11:6, “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.  If it be of works, then is it no more grace, otherwise work is no more work.”  Grace and works will no more unite than an acid and an alkali.

“By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8,9).  The absolute favor of God can no more consist with human merit than oil and water will fuse into one (see also Romans 4:4,5).

There are three principal characteristics of Divine grace:

First, it is eternal. Grace was planned before it was exercised, purposed before it was imparted: “Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Timothy 1:9).

Second, it is free, for none did ever purchase it: “Being justified freely by His grace” (Romans 3:24).

Third, it is sovereign, because God exercises it toward and bestows it upon whom He pleases: “Even so might grace reign” (Romans 5:21).  If grace “reigns” then is it on the throne, and the occupant of the throne is sovereign.  Hence “the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).  Just because grace is unmerited favor, it must be exercised in a sovereign manner.  Therefore does the Lord declare, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious” (Exodus 33:19).  Were God to show grace to all of Adam’s descendants, men would at once conclude that He was righteously compelled to take them to heaven as a meet compensation for allowing the human race to fall into sin.  But the great God is under no obligation to any of His creatures, least of all to those who are rebels against Him.

Eternal life is a gift, therefore it can neither be earned by good works, nor claimed as a right.  Seeing that salvation is a “gift,” who has any right to tell God on whom He ought to bestow it?  It is not that the Giver ever refuse this gift to any who seek it wholeheartedly, and according to the rules which He has prescribed.  No!  He refuses none who come to Him empty-handed and in the way of His appointing.  But if out of a world of impenitent and unbelieving, God is determined to exercise His sovereign right by choosing a limited number to be saved, who is wronged?  Is God obliged to force His gift on those who value it not?  Is God compelled to save those who are determined to go their own way?

Grace Upsets the Natural Man

But nothing more riles the natural man and brings to the surface his innate and inveterate enmity against God than to press upon him the eternality, the freeness, and the absolute sovereignty of Divine grace.  That God should have formed His purpose from everlasting without in anywise consulting the creature, is too abasing for the unbroken heart.  That grace cannot be earned or won by any efforts of man is too self-emptying for self-righteousness.  And that grace singles out whom it pleases to be its favored objects, arouses hot protests from haughty rebels.  The clay rises up against the Potter and asks, “Why hast Thou made me thus?”  A lawless insurrectionist dares to call into question the justice of Divine sovereignty.

The distinguishing grace of God is seen in saving that people whom He has sovereignly singled out to be His high favorites.  By “distinguishing,” we mean that grace discriminates, makes differences” chooses some and passes by others. It was distinguishing grace which selected Abraham from the midst of his idolatrous neighbors and made him “the friend of God.”  It was distinguishing grace which saved “publicans and sinners,” but said of the religious Pharisees, “Let them alone” (Matthew 15:14).  Nowhere does the glory of God’s free and sovereign grace shine more conspicuously than in the unworthiness and unlikeness of its objects.

Beautifully was this illustrated by James Hervey (1751):

“Where sin has abounded, says the proclamation from the court of heaven, grace doth much more abound.  Manasseh was a monster of barbarity, for he caused his own children to pass through the fire, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood.  Manasseh was an adept in iniquity, for he not only multiplied, and to an extravagant degree, his own sacrilegious impieties, but he poisoned the principles and perverted the manners of his subjects, making them do worse than the most detestable of the heathen idolators (see 2 Chronicles 33).  Yet, through this superabundant grace he is humbled, he is reformed, and becomes a child of forgiving love, an heir of immortal glory.

“Behold that bitter and bloody persecutor, Saul; when, breathing out threatenings and bent upon slaughter, he worried the lambs and put to death the disciples of Jesus.  The havoc he had committed, the inoffensive families he had already ruined, were not sufficient to assuage his vengeful spirit.  They were only a taste, which, instead of glutting the bloodhound, made him more closely pursue the track, and more eagerly pant for destruction.  He still has a thirst for violence and murder.  So eager and insatiable is his thirst, that be even breathes out threatening and slaughter (Acts 9:1).  His words are spears and arrows, and his tongue a sharp sword.  It is as natural for him to menace the Christians as to breathe the air.  Nay, they bled every hour in the purposes of his rancorous heart.  It is only owing to want of power that every syllable he utters, every breath he draws, does not deal out deaths, and cause some of the innocent disciples to fall.  Who, upon the principles of human judgment, would not nave pronounced him a vessel of wrath, destined to unavoidable damnation?  Nay, would not have been ready to conclude that, if there were heavier chains and a deeper dungeon in the world of woe, they must surely be reserved for such an implacable enemy of true godliness?  Yet, admire and adore the inexhaustible treasures of grace—this Saul is admitted into the goodly fellowship of the prophets, is numbered with the noble arm of martyrs and makes a distinguished figure among the glorious company of the apostles.

“The Corinthians were flagitious even to a proverb.  Some of them wallowing in such abominable vices, and habituated themselves to such outrageous acts of injustice, as were a reproach to human nature.  Yet, even these sons of violence and slaves of sensuality were washed, sanctified, justified (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).  ‘Washed,’ in the precious blood of a dying Redeemer; ‘sanctified,’ by the powerful operations of the blessed Spirit; ‘justified,’ through the infinitely tender mercies of a gracious God.  Those who were once the burden of the earth, are now the joy of heaven, the delight of angels.”

Grace Is Manifested in Jesus

Now the grace of God is manifested in and by and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

“The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).  This does not mean that God never exercised grace toward any before His Son became incarnate—Genesis 6:8, Exodus 33:19, etc., clearly show otherwise.  But grace and truth were fully revealed and perfectly exemplified when the Redeemer came to this earth, and died for His people upon the cross.  It is through Christ the Mediator alone that the grace of God flows to His elect.  “Much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ . . . much more they which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ… so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:15, 17,21).

The grace of God is proclaimed in the Gospel (Acts 20:24), which is to the self-righteous Jew a “stumbling block,” and to the conceited and philosophizing Greek “foolishness.”  And why so?  Because there is nothing whatever in it that is adapted to gratify the pride of man.  It announces that unless we are saved by grace, we cannot be saved at all.  It declares that apart from Christ, the unspeakable Gift of God’s grace, the state of every man is desperate, irremediable, hopeless.  The Gospel addresses men as guilty, condemned, perishing criminals.  It declares that the chastest moralist is in the same terrible plight as is the most voluptuous profligate; that the zealous professor, with all his religious performances, is no better off than the most profane infidel.

The Gospel contemplates every descendant of Adam as a fallen, polluted, hell-deserving and helpless sinner.  The grace which the Gospel publishes is his only hope.  All stand before God convicted as transgressors of His holy law, as guilty and condemned criminals; awaiting not sentence, but the execution of sentence already passed on them (John 3:18; Romans 3:19).

To complain against the partiality of grace is suicidal.  If the sinner insists upon bare justice, then the Lake of Fire must be his eternal portion.  His only hope lies in bowing to the sentence which Divine justice has passed upon him, owning the absolute righteousness of it, casting himself on the mercy of God, and stretching forth empty hands to avail himself of the grace of God now made known to him in the Gospel.

The third Person in the Godhead is the Communicator of grace, therefore is He denominated “the Spirit of grace” (Zechariah 12:10).  God the Father is the Fountain of all grace, for He purposed in Himself the everlasting covenant of redemption.  God the Son is the only Channel of grace.  The Gospel is the Publisher of grace.  The Spirit is the Bestower.  He is the One who applies the Gospel in saving power to the soul: quickening the elect while spiritually dead, conquering their rebellious wills, melting their hard hearts, opening their blind eyes, cleansing them from the leprosy of sin.

Thus we may say with the late G. S. Bishop, “Grace is a provision for men who are so fallen that they cannot lift the axe of justice, so corrupt that they cannot change their own natures, so averse to God that they cannot turn to Him, so blind that they cannot see Him, so deaf that they cannot hear Him, and so dead that He Himself must open their graves and lift them into resurrection.”

From The Attributes of God.

Posted in A. W. Pink |

From Our Hearts by Jim & Debbie Ehrhard

January 7, 2010 by ADMIN

Those who hold to the doctrines of grace are often accused of not being evangelistic. We are told that the idea that God predestined some to be saved before the foundation of the world precludes any need for evangelism. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The apostle Paul provides a perfect example. In Romans 9, he advances the strongest explanation of election found in the scriptures. There can be no doubt that Paul believed in God’s sovereign choice in election! But he follows this explanation with a reminder of the reality of human responsibility in Romans 10, culminating with “How shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?”

God’s election does not remove our responsibility; it assures our success when we share. It does not promise that all will respond to the gospel and come to faith, but it does promise that some will. And that God uses our sharing the gospel as a means for bringing them to faith.

In this issue, we have attempted to provide some of the best reformed thinking on the issue of evangelism. The articles by Pink and Spurgeon remind us of our responsibility in sharing the gospel. Both men stood against the twin foes of Arminianism and Hyper-Calvinism in their day to preach the gospel to all who would hear. They believed that their responsibility was to be obedient to the one who had saved them. They believed that the results were in the hands of a sovereign, merciful God.

The articles by Watson, Bridge, and Brooks are intended to stir those who have received God’s grace to become instruments of His grace in bringing others to Christ. We have also include a list of books that might be helpful for you, both in coming to a more biblical approach to evangelism, and in providing booklets to give to those who are interested. Finally, we have included on article by Thomas Boston, “Ye Must Be Born Again,” for those who are seeking to come to the knowledge of Christ. May God use these resources in all our lives to bring many others into His glorious kingdom!

By His Grace, Jim & Debbie

Posted in Uncategorized |

Books on Evangelism by Jim Ehrhard

January 7, 2010 by ADMIN

Most of the books published on evangelism in our century have taken a man-centered approach to evangelism rather than a God-centered approach. What do we mean by this? Simply that most evangelistic books focus on methods and techniques designed to secure decisions rather than emphasizing the sharing of divine revelation and the dependence on God for all the results. Here are a few books that take a biblical approach that we can recommend to you.

Books on Evangelism:

God-Centered Evangelism by Ralph Kuiper. This is certainly my favorite. It provides the most thorough theology of evangelism and provides a number of excellent chapters. We had attempted to gain permission to reprint one chapter in this issue but we did not hear from the publishers in time. The book is published by Banner of Truth—we highly recommend it!

The Soul Winner by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. This book, published by Eerdmans in 1963, provides some of the best teaching and preaching of Spurgeon on evangelism. In it, Spurgeon defines soul-winning, examines the qualifications necessary to be a soul-winner, and discusses “Sermons Likely to Win Souls.”

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer. Published by Intervarsity Press in 1963, this book certainly qualifies as a contemporary classic on evangelism. In it, Packer examines divine sovereignty and human responsibility as they relate to evangelism.

Books to use in Witnessing:

Come Home Forever by Tom Well (Evangelical Press). This book is an excellent resource to give to non-believers. In it, Wells provides a simple, yet very logical presentation of the gospel. Tom’s other books are also excellent for learning how to provided a clear explanation of the gospel. Also consider his book, Faith: The Gift of God and Come to Me both give a clear explanation of biblical faith.

Peter Jeffery has also provided a number of good resources for evangelism. His Seeking God provides a clear explanation of the gospel, written for someone seeking to understand the gospel. My personal favorite is I Will Never Become a Christian. This small booklet examines various objections non-believers may have toward the gospel and answers them in a clear, logical fashion. He concludes the book with testimonies by people from many different backgrounds and occupations. Both books are printed by The Evangelical Press of Wales.

A Bad Heart and a Bad Record by Al Martin. This short booklet is an excellent resource to share. It clearly explains man’s dilemma and points to Christ as the only answer. (Published through Simpson Publishing Company, Box 699, Broonton, NJ, 07005).

Wasted Faith by Jim Elliff. This booklet causes the reader to make an honest examination of his faith to determine if it is biblical, saving faith. This resource is especially good for those who are “nominal Chiristians” and need to examine the reality of their profession. Jim also provides a number of other resources for evangelism, including booklets on childhood conversion, a conversation on conversion and many other resources. You can find his Website (Christian Communicators Worldwide) through the Links page on our Website.

The Narrow Road that Leads to Life and True Godliness by Bill Nichols. Both of these booklets are short but very clear about the gospel. (Published by International Outreach, P.O. Box 1286, Ames, IA, 50010)

Ultimate Questions by John Blanchard. This is an excellent resource for helping someone understand the gospel. It is available from Evangelical Press).

Books for Church Evangelism:

Evangelism and Your Church by C. John Miller. This small paperback is one of the best resources for equipping your church in evangelism. Miller even provided a 10-week training outline that includes readings from some of the books recommended in this article. It was published by Presbyterian & Reformed.

Tell the Truth by Will Metzger (IVP, 1981) is one of the best training manuals for God-centered evangelism. He examines the content of the message we share, the dynamics of conversion, and the character of the people who witness. His appendix also includes an outline for a training session in a local church.

The current formatting and editing is copyrighted by Jim Ehrhard, 2000. You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author; (2) any modifications are clearly marked; (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction; and (4) you do not make more than 100 copies without permission. If you would like to post this material to your web site or make any use other than as defined above, please contact Teaching Resources International

Posted in Jim Ehrhard |

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