A Gift for the Undeserving
A bite-sized lesson in doctrine: 1 Concept, 2 Definitions, 3 Passages...
Welcome back to Theology Thursday!
Here is your bite-sized lesson in orthodox Biblical doctrine in 3 simple steps:
ONE concept explained
TWO concise definitions that must be kept distinct
THREE Scripture passages to meditate on
Concept: The Grace of God
God reveals His grace in the phases of sin and redemption. Eternal goodness lies at the heart of who God is, and His goodness manifests as grace when poured out upon the guilty.1 The first two attributes God revealed when Moses cried, “Show me Your glory!” were “merciful and gracious.” Grace is God's undeserved gift of love. It is unmerited, unearned, and cannot be secured by human efforts. When God bestows His favor upon the guilty, He provides for them what they cannot provide for themselves; salvation is all of grace, from beginning to end. We deserve eternal separation from God’s favorable presence in hell. But God comes to us, in Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, and renews us, granting eternal salvation through the instrument of faith alone, apart from our works. His grace rescues us from sin’s penalty, but then rescues us from sin's pollution and power. Grace enables and teaches us to say “no” to ungodliness. In the future, He will, by grace, rescue us from sin’s presence when He brings us to Himself for all eternity. Instead of constantly seeing our Father as a cosmic debt collector, always demanding something from us, remember that in Christ, His grace has already paid for every failure. Rest in and praise the One whose grace is greater than all your sin!
Definitions/Distinctions:
Mercy: God shows mercy when we do not receive the just punishment and penalty that we deserve for our sin.
Grace: God gives grace when, instead of giving us His just punishment, He gifts us with the multiplicity of His saving benefits and blessings.
Passages:
“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’”
Exodus 34:6–7
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Titus 2:11–13.
“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Romans 3:23–25.
“God’s goodness is much more glorious when it is shown to those who only deserve evil. It then bears the name grace.”
Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 214.