Category Archives: Grace

At the Free Throw Line

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Wake Forest v DukePhilip Yancey describes the discrepancy between our instincts and God’s instincts in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace?

By instinct I feel I must do something in order to be accepted. Grace sounds a startling note of contradiction, and every day I must pray anew for the ability to hear its message.

Eugene Peterson draws a contrast between Augustine and Pelagius, two fourth-century theological opponents. Pelagius was urbane, courteous, convincing, and liked by everyone. Augustine squandered away his youth in immorality, had a strange relationship with his mother, and made many enemies. Yet Augustine started from God’s grace and got it right, whereas Pelagius started from human effort and got it wrong. Augustine passionately pursued God; Pelagius methodically worked to please God. Peterson goes on to say that Christians tend to be Augustinian in theory but Pelagian in practice. They work obsessively to please other people and even God.

Each year in spring, I fall victim to what the sports announcers diagnose as “March Madness.” I cannot resist the temptation to tune in to the final basketball game, in which the sole survivors of a sixty-four-team tournament meet for the NCAA championship. That most important game always seems to come down to one eighteen-year-old kid standing on a freethrow line with one second left on the clock. He dribbles nervously. If he misses these two foul shots, he knows, he will be the goat of his campus, the goat of his state. Twenty years from now he’ll be in counseling, reliving this moment. If he makes these shots, he’ll be a hero. His picture will be on the front page. He could probably run for governor. He takes another dribble and the other team calls time, to rattle him. He stands on the sideline, weighing his entire future. Everything depends on him. His teammates pat him encouragingly, but say nothing.

One year, I remember, I left the room to answer a phone call just as the kid was setting himself to shoot. Worry lines creased his forehead. He was biting his lower lip. His left leg quivered at the knee. Twenty thousand fans were yelling, waving banners and handkerchiefs to distract him. The phone call took longer than expected, and when I returned I saw a new sight. This same kid, his hair drenched with Gatorade, was now riding atop the shoulders of his teammates, cutting the cords of a basketball net. He had not a care in the world. His grin filled the entire screen.

Those two freeze-frames—the same kid crouching at the free throw line and then celebrating on his friends’ shoulders—came to symbolize for me the difference between ungrace and grace.

The world runs by ungrace. Everything depends on what I do. I have to make the shot.

Jesus calls us to another way, one that depends not on our performance but his own. We do not have to achieve but merely follow. He has already earned for us the costly victory of God’s acceptance.

HT: Tullian Tchividjian

The Scandal of Grace

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Grace, grace is exactly and entirely opposite to that! The scandal of grace is that God saw us as His sworn enemies, as children of wrath, children of the devil, and with His image marred and trampled in the dirt, and while we were still shaking our fists at Him, engaged each day in cosmic treason and total defiance of Him, He was willing to pay the ridiculous ransom price of the death of this precious Son to redeem us.

It is not boring grace that saved us, as if God, paid the ransom price because He saw we were worth it – no, a thousand times, no. We are saved by unspeakable and amazing grace – a grace that makes all the angels aghast and perplexed that God would set His love on such hostile, rebel sinners! The devil never for a moment thought that God would be willing to pay this price… that Christ would endure the pain of the cross and absorb the punishment due to us rebels as the full fury of God’s wrath was meted out on Him. Who would ever have thought such a thing – the just would pay the price for the unjust? That He who knew no sin would be made to be sin for us, so that we may become the righteousness of God in Him? Who could have forseen this kind of love? But oh, what a love the Father has for us, a love He had for us from all eternity. And oh, what a perfect and wonderful Savior!

The saints of old knew this so well. They sang “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me”… and “Oh what a wonder that Jesus loves even me!”

Simply Staggering!

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“There are multiple volumes to write about each step in Romans 8:28-30’s outline. There is beauty within beauty within beauty. A mustard seed of faith planted in the broken heart of a desperate sinner is the culmination of God’s foreknowing this sinner from before the foundations of the earth. Even in eternity past God, in grace, predestining him in love for adoption as a cherished son. And then God sent his only begotten Son to provide the sinless atonement for him, that he could be justified by the righteousness of Christ upon the Spirit’s regenerating of his stony heart. It’s simply staggering, isn’t it? And that this seed of justifying faith would grow through the faithfulness of the Father to administer a sanctifying faith, again through the Spirit’s work, all the way to the promise of glorification, is more staggering still.” – Jared Wilson

No Kicking and Screaming Involved

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“The doctrine of ‘irresistible grace’… is simply the belief that when God chooses to move in the lives of His elect and bring them from spiritual death to spiritual life, no power in heaven or on earth can stop Him from so doing… It is simply the confession that when God chooses to raise His people to spiritual life, He does so without the fulfillment of any conditions on the part of the sinner. Just as Christ had the power and authority to raise Lazarus to life without obtaining his ‘permission’ to do so, He is able to raise His elect to spiritual life with just as certain a result.

God ordains the ends and the means. The ends is the salvation of God’s elect. His decree renders their salvation a certainty… Just as God’s grace is irresistible, so the result of that grace (regeneration, the imparting of a heart of flesh after taking out the heart of stone, etc.,) is just as certain. God changes the heart so that my act of faith toward Jesus Christ is the natural result of my changed nature.

I am a new creature, not because the old rebel decided to become something other, but because of the resurrection power of God by the Spirit. The very idea of someone kicking and screaming seems a bit ironic, in light of the Reformed insistence upon the deadness of man in sin. Surely the heart of stone contains no desire to be changed, but ignoring the impartation of resurrection life as the means by which a radical change in the will of the elect is effected again presents a fundamentally distorted view of the (Reformed) position…” – Dr. James White

The doctrines of grace are intricately related one to the other. It is easy to see in this case how “irresistible grace” relates also to the “perseverance of the saints.” This is because the One who starts the work, finishes it. To quote John Newton’s hymn Amazing Grace, “Twas grace that caused my heart to fear… and grace will lead me home.”

“As grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace.” – J.I. Packer

Common Grace and the End of the World

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Justin Taylor writes:

John Murray’s definition of “common grace” is perhaps the most concise and helpful one available:

every favour of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God (Collected Works, II:96).

Sam Storms has written a very helpful overview of the doctrine, originally written in light of Hurricane Katrina and its damage. He summarizes the biblical evidence under four headings:

1.God exercises restraint on sin and evil.
2.God freely suspends the immediate manifestation of his divine wrath due unto sin.
3.God holds in check the destructive tendencies that are part of the curse of sin upon nature.
4.God bestows upon both nature (see esp. Ps. 65:9-13; 104:10-30; 145:1-16; 136:25) and humanity manifold blessings both physical and spiritual that fall short of redemption itself.

At the end of the essay, he looks at what this means for the end of the world. If you’ve ever been confused about the way in which the Bible seems to talk about things getting worse and worse, while also talking about things getting better, here is an introduction to what Storms thinks is the biblical perspective:

As we approach the second coming of Christ, whether that be one year or one-thousand years in the future, I believe the presence and power of common grace will progressively diminish. The restraining power of the Spirit on the sinful souls of men and women, as well as on the natural creation, will incrementally weaken. The manifestation of human sin and wickedness and unbelief will therefore expand.

Common grace is much like the emergency break on a car that is parked on a steep incline. The weight of the car, together with the force of gravity, would naturally result in its descent down the road and its eventual crash. But the emergency break resists and impedes this otherwise natural inclination. So, too, with human sin. The Holy Spirit is like an emergency break on the human heart. But one day, perhaps imperceptibly and certainly in gradual fashion, the restraint on the sinful and depraved inclination of the human soul will be removed.

But here is the good news. I also believe that together with the progressive withdrawal of common grace will be a corresponding increase of special grace! The people of God will experience fresh and ever-increasing manifestations of divine favor and power and blessing and anointing simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Spirit’s common grace work of curbing the sinful impulses of the lost. This is why there will be an increase of wickedness and persecution (and, yes, martyrdom) in the world at large at the same time there is an increase of righteousness and perseverance in the church in particular.

My “theory” (which I do believe has Scriptural support) is that the Church will experience great revival, ever-increasing impartations of supernatural power, unprecedented expressions of love and unity, all the while she is being oppressed and persecuted and increasingly hated by the unbelieving world. Special grace will intensify even as common grace will diminish.

I should also point out that this process will culminate eternally in what we know as heaven and hell. Heaven is the unabated overflow of special grace. Hell is the utter absence of even common grace. Forever.

So what should be the Christian’s response to Katrina and the devastation she wrought? We should, no pun intended, flood the people who are suffering with expressions of kindness and compassion and generosity, knowing that such devastation could as easily fall on us (cf. Luke 13:1-5). As the Spirit’s provision of common grace diminishes, may the recipients of his special grace overflow in the goodness of Jesus to the glory of God the Father.

Do you thank God?

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Christian – Do you “thank” God for your conversion? You do because you know that God was entirely responsible for it. You thank God because you do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, or sound judgment, or good sense. Or do you?

Why do you believe the gospel and not your neighbor? Was the soil of your heart better than his by nature? Did you have wisdom that he did not? Where did this wisdom come from? From Christ or elsewhere?

We all must have faith in order to be justified. Question is, why do you have faith and not others. Do you attribute it to your own wisdom? Why were you more humble? Was it not grace itself that made you humble?

– John Hendryx

One of the Most Important Principles in Reading the Bible

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By John Piper: Website: www.desiringGod.org. Email: mail@desiringGod.org. Toll Free: 1.888.346.4700.

Sometimes readers of the Bible see the conditions that God lays down for his blessing and they conclude from these conditions that our action is first and decisive, then God responds to bless us.

That is not right.

There are indeed real conditions that God often commands. We must meet them for the promised blessing to come. But that does not mean that we are left to ourselves to meet the conditions or that our action is first and decisive.

Here is one example to show what I mean.

In Jeremiah 29:13 God says to the exiles in Babylon, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” So there is a condition: When you seek me with all your heart, then you will find me. So we must seek the Lord. That is the condition of finding him.

True.

But does that mean that we are left to ourselves to seek the Lord? Does it mean that our action of seeking him is first and decisive? Does it mean that God only acts after our seeking?

No.

Listen to what God says in Jeremiah 24:7 to those same exiles in Babylon: “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.”

So the people will meet the condition of returning to God with their whole heart. God will respond by being their God in the fullest blessing. But the reason they returned with their whole heart is that God gave them a heart to know him. His action was first and decisive.

So now connect that with Jeremiah 29:13. The condition there was that they seek the Lord with their whole heart. Then God will be found by them. But now we see that the promise in Jeremiah 24:7 is that God himself will give them such a heart so that they will return to him with their whole heart.

This is one of the most basic things people need to see about the Bible. It is full of conditions we must meet for God’s blessings. But God does not leave us to meet them on our own. The first and decisive work before and in our willing is God’s prior grace. Without this insight, hundreds of conditional statements in the Bible will lead us astray.

Let this be the key to all Biblical conditions and commands: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13). Yes, we work. But our work is not first or decisive. God’s is. “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Augustine on Effectual Grace

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Five quotes:

(1) Some might interpret ‘It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God Who shows mercy’ (Rom.9:16), in this sense — that salvation comes from both, that is, both from the human will and from the mercy of God. In that case, we must understand the saying, ‘It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God Who shows mercy,’ as if it meant that the human will alone is not sufficient, unless the mercy of God goes with it. But then it would follow that the mercy of God alone is not sufficient, unless the human will goes with it! Therefore, if we may rightly say, ‘it is not of man who wills, but of God Who shows mercy,’ because the human will by itself is not enough, why may we not also rightly put it the other way round: ‘It is not of God Who shows mercy, but of man who wills,’ because the mercy of God by itself is not sufficient? Surely, no Christian will dare to say this, ‘It is not of God Who shows mercy, but of man who wills,’ in case he openly contradicts the apostle!

So it follows that the true interpretation of the saying, ‘It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God Who shows mercy,’ is that the entire work belongs to God, Who both makes the human will righteous, and prepares it in this way for His assistance, and then assists it when it is prepared. For human righteousness of will precedes many of God’s gifts, but not all of them; and it must itself be included among those gifts which it does not precede. We read in Holy Scripture, both that God’s mercy ‘shall meet me’ (Ps.59:10), and that His mercy ‘shall follow me’ (Ps.23:6). Mercy goes before the unwilling person to make him willing; it follows the willing person to make his will effective. Why are we taught to pray for our enemies, who are plainly unwilling to lead a holy life, unless that God may produce willingness in them? And why are we ourselves taught to ask in order that may receive, unless that He who has created in us the wish, may Himself satisfy the wish? We pray, then, for our enemies, that the mercy of God may go before them, as it has gone before us; and we pray for ourselves that His mercy may follow us.

Enchiridion, 32

(2) The kind of teaching we are talking about is spoken of by the Lord when He says: ‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me’ (Jn.6:45). So if someone does not come to Christ, we cannot correctly say of him, ‘he has heard and learned that he ought to come to Christ, but he is not willing to do what he has learned.’ It is indeed absolutely improper to apply such a statement to God’s method of teaching people by grace. For if, as the Truth says, ‘Everyone who has learned comes,’ it follows, of course, that whoever does not come has not learned. But who can fail to see that a person’s coming or not coming is by the choice of his will? If a person does not come to Christ, he has simply made his choice not to come. But if he does come, it cannot be without assistance — such assistance that he not only knows what it is he ought to do, but actually does what he knows.

And so, when God teaches, it is not by the letter of the law, but by the grace of the Spirit. Moreover, He teaches so that whatever a person learns, he not only sees it with his perception, but also desires it with his choice, and accomplishes it in action. By this method of divine instruction, our very choosing itself, and our very performance itself, are assisted, and not merely our natural ‘capacity’ of willing and performing. For if nothing but this ‘capacity’ of ours were assisted by this grace, the Lord would have said, ‘Everyone that has heard and learned from the Father may possibly come to Me.’ This, however, is not what He said. His words are these: ‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.’

Now Pelagius says that the possibility of coming lies in our nature. Or as we even found him attempting to say some time ago, it lies in grace (whatever that may mean according to him), as when he says, ‘grace assists our capacity of coming to Christ.’ But he holds that our actual coming to Christ lies in our own will and act. Now just because a person may come to Christ, it does not follow that he actually comes, unless he has also willed and acted to come. But everyone who has learned from the Father not only has the possibility of coming, but actually comes! And in this result are already included the use of the capacity, the affection of the will, and the effect of the action.

On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin, 1:27
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Effectual Grace

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In so far as I can glean from the historical records, the phrase “effectual grace” was first coined by Augustine in his letter to Simplicianus in 396 AD. It describes grace of such power and magnitude that it accomplishes everything intended for it by God. It is grace that saves, really saves. It achieves no mere hypothetical salvation that only becomes effective if man decides to cooperate. Grace Saves. It raises spiritually dead men to life, imparting to them a new nature as the old heart of stone is removed and a pliable tender heart of flesh is put in its place, one that loves Christ and willingly submits to Him in repentance and faith, trusting Christ alone for salvation by grace alone through faith alone, renouncing all human merit and all other Saviors. No other grace is necessary and no other grace can accomplish this – only a miracle working grace that changes the disposition of the heart and carries the newly born again saint all the way to the heavenly shore, even to be conformed to the image of Christ. It is the grace that calls the sinner to faith in Christ with 100% success, for “these whom He called, He justified,” and it is the grace that causes all those justified to be fully glorified “these whom He justified, He glorified.” (Romans 8:29,30)

It was this kind of effectual grace that was in the mind and heart of John Newton as he penned the famous hymn:

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see

T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers toils and snares
I have already come
Tis Grace hath brought me safe thus far
And Grace will lead me home

In speaking of grace in this way, we must always remind ourselves that grace is not a “thing” or “substance.” As Dr. Sinclair Ferguson said so well:

It is legitimate to speak of “receiving grace,” and sometimes (although I am somewhat cautious about the possibility of misuing this langauge) we speak of the preaching of the Word, prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper as “means of grace.” That is fine, so long as we remember that there isn’t a thing, a substance, or a “quasi-substance” called “grace.” All there is is the person of the Lord Jesus — “Christ clothed in the gospel,” as John Calvin loved to put it. Grace is the grace of Jesus.

If I can highlight the thought here: there is no “thing” that Jesus takes from Himself and then, as it were, hands over to me. There is only Jesus Himself. Grasping that thought can make a significant difference to a Christian’s life. So while some people might think this is just splitting hairs about different ways of saying the same thing, it can make a vital difference. It is not a thing that was crucified to give us a thing called grace. It was the person of the Lord Jesus that was crucified in order that He might give Himself to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

John 3:16 and Effectual Grace

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Dr. R. C. Sproul, in his book, “Chosen by God” writes:

“It is ironic that in the same chapter, indeed in the same context, in which our Lord teaches the utter necessity of rebirth to even see the kingdom, let alone choose it, non-Reformed views find one of their main proof texts to argue that fallen man retains a small island of ability to choose Christ. It is John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

What does this famous verse teach about fallen man’s ability to choose Christ? The answer, simply, is nothing. The argument used by non-Reformed people is that the text teaches that everybody in the world has it in their power to accept or reject Christ. A careful look at the text reveals, however, that it teaches nothing of the kind. What the text teaches is that everyone who believes in Christ will be saved. Whoever does A (believes) will receive B (everlasting life). The text says nothing, absolutely nothing, about who will ever believe. It says nothing about fallen man’s natural moral ability. Reformed people and non-Reformed people both heartily agree that all who believe will be saved. They heartily disagree about who has the ability to believe.

Some may reply, “All right. The text does not explicitly teach that fallen men have the ability to choose Christ without being reborn first, but it certainly implies that.” I am not willing to grant that the text even implies such a thing. However, even if it did it would make no difference in the debate. Why not? Our rule of interpreting Scripture is that implications drawn from the Scripture must always be subordinate to the explicit teaching of Scripture. We must never, never, never reverse this to subordinate the explicit teaching of Scripture to possible implications drawn from Scripture. This rule is shared by both Reformed and non-Reformed thinkers.

If John 3:16 implied a universal natural human ability of fallen men to choose Christ, then that implication would be wiped out by Jesus’ explicit teaching to the contrary. We have already shown that Jesus explicitly and unambiguously taught that no man has the ability to come to him without God doing something to give him that ability, namely drawing him.

Fallen man is flesh. In the flesh he can do nothing to please God. Paul declares, “The fleshly mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7, 8).

We ask, then, “Who are those who are ‘in the flesh’?” Paul goes on to declare: “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom. 8:9). The crucial word here is if. What distinguishes those who are in the flesh from those who are not is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. No one who is not reborn is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. People who are in the flesh have not been reborn. Unless they are first reborn, born of the Holy Spirit, they cannot be subject to the law of God. They cannot please God.

God commands us to believe in Christ. He is pleased by those who choose Christ. If unregenerate people could choose Christ, then they could be subject to at least one of God’s commands and they could at least do something that is pleasing to God. If that is so, then the apostle has erred here in insisting that those who are in the flesh can neither be subject to God nor please him.

We conclude that fallen man is still free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. He has no desire for Christ. He cannot choose what he does not desire. His fall is great. It is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.”