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The thought of themselves as creatures fallen from God’s image, rebel...
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guilty and unclean in God’s sight, fit only for God’s condemnation, nev...
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2. The retributive justi...
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The way of modern men and women is to turn a blind eye to all wrongdoing as l...
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Parents hesitate to correct their children, and teachers to punish their pupils, and the public puts up with vandalism and antisocial behavior of all sorts with scarcely a murmur.
one should punish only as a last resort, and then only so far as is necessary to prevent the evil from having too grievous social consequences. Willingness to tolerate and indulge evil up to the limit is seen as a virtue, while living by fixed principles of right and wrong is censured by some as doubtfully moral.
we take it for granted that God fe...
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Those who uphold it find themselves accused of projecting onto God their own pathological impulses of rage and vindictiveness.
the Bible insists throughout that this world which God in his goodness has made is a moral world, one in which retribution is as basic a fact as breathing.
God is not true to himself unless he punishes sin. And unless one knows and feels the truth of this fact, that wrongdoers have no natural hope of anything from God but retributive judgment, one can never share the biblical faith in divine grace.
3. The spiritual impotence of man.
A whole technique of business relations has been built up in recent years on the principle of putting the other person in a position where he cannot decently say no.
This has confirmed modern men and women in
the faith which has animated pagan religion ever since there was such a thing—namely, the belief that we can repair our own relationship with God by putting God ...
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Ancient pagans thought to do this by multiplying gifts and sacrifices; modern pagans seek to do it b...
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they still have no doubt that respectability henceforth will guarantee God’s accep...
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the Bible position is as stated by Toplady: Not the labours of my hand Can fulfil Thy law’s demands. Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears f...
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Thou must save, and Thou alone.
To mend our own relationship with God, regaining God’s favor after having once lost it, is beyond the power of any one of us.
4. The sovereign freedom of God.
Modern paganism has at the back
of its mind a similar feeling that God is somehow obliged to love and help us, little though we deserve it.
The God of the Bible does not depend on his human creatures for his well-being
nor, now that we have sinned, is he bound to show us favor.
God does not owe it
to anyone to stop justice taking its course. He is not obliged to pity and pardon; if he does so it is an act done, as we say, “of his own free will,” and nobody forces his hand.
Grace is free, in the sense of being self-originated and of proceeding from One who wa...
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Only when it is seen that what decides each individual’s destiny is whether or not God resolves to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision whic...
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one begin to grasp the biblical v...
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The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit. It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity
We have seen why the thought of grace means so little to some church people—namely, because they do not share the beliefs about
God and man which it pr...
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once a person is convinced that his state and need are as described, the New Testament gospel of grace cannot but sweep him off his feet with wonder and joy. For it tells how our Judge has become our Savior.
As Isaac Watts put it,
in his most evangelical if not his most exalted strain, we
But there’s a voice of princely grace Sounds from God’s holy Word; Ho! ye poor captive sinners, come, And trust upon the Lord. My soul obeys the sovereign call, And runs to this relief; I would believe thy promise, Lord, Oh, help my unbelief.
To the blest fountain of thy blood, Incarnate God, I fly, To wash my soul from scarlet stains, And sins of deepest dye. A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, Into thy hands I fall; Thou art the Lord, my righteousness, My Savior, and my all.
The people who can sincerely take Watts’s words on th...
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soon tire of singing the prais...
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The New Testament sets forth the grace of God in three particular connections, each of them a perpetual ma...
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1. Grace as the source of the pa...
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Justification is the truly dramatic transition from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance.
Justification is free to us, but it was costly to God, for its price was the atoning death of God’s Son.
2. Grace as the motive of the plan of salvation.
The analysis begins with eternal election and predestination to sonship in Christ (vv. 4-5), proceeds to redemption and remission of sins in Christ (v. 7), and moves on to the hope of glorification in Christ (vv. 11-12) and the gift of the Spirit in Christ to seal us as God’s possession forever (vv. 13-14).
So we believers may rejoice to know that our conversion was no accident, but an act of God which had its place in an eternal plan to bless us with the free gift of salvation from sin
since it is executed by sovereign power (1:19-20), nothing can thwart it.
Well might Isaac W...
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Tell of his wondrous faithfulness, And sound His power abroad; Sing the sweet promise of His grace, And our performing God. Engraved as in eternal brass The mighty promise shines; Nor can the powers of darkness rase
Those everlasting lines. His very word of grace is strong As that which built the skies: The voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises.
