Category Archives: Grace

Grace is not a Thing

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Jeremy Treat is a pastor at Reality LA and an adjunct professor at Biola University. He is the author of The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology. He “I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” Pacino’s statement taps into a tension that we all sense intuitively but maybe have not expressed explicitly. If God is forgiving, then why strive for a holy life? If the penalty has been paid, then why must progress be made?

I believe the tension felt here ultimately comes from a confused view of grace.

What Is Grace?

I used to think of grace as a spiritual substance that God stores in piles behind his heavenly throne and dispenses to his people below. In other words, grace is stuff that God gives apart from himself.

How wrong I was! Grace is not a thing. Grace is not stuff that God gives us apart from himself. He doesn’t run out of it. God gives us himself when we don’t deserve it; that is grace. The oft-repeated definition of grace as an undeserved gift is right but does not go far enough when referring to the grace of God. Grace is a gift, but God is not only the giver, he himself is the gift. God graces us with himself.

But if that’s what grace is, then what does grace do? How does grace work? I’ll tell you this much—grace is not a flowery bow that you wrap around your already tidy religious system. It’s not the cherry on top of your morality pie. Continue reading →

The Conditionality and Unconditionality of Grace

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From Sinclair Ferguson’s response to Gerhard Forde in Christian Spirituality: Five Views on Sanctification, 1988), pp 34-35:

Reformed theology is as anxious as Lutheran thought to safeguard grace. It has wrestled very seriously with the whole question of conditions. The term conditions has a certain infelicity about it. But there is a difference between what we might call “conditionality” (which compromises grace by saying, “God will be gracious only if you do X or Y“) and the fact that there are conditions for salvation which arise directly out of the gospel message and do not compromise its graciousness.

These conditions do not render God gracious to us, but are the noncontributory means by which we receive his grace.

Our Lord himself says, “Unless you repent, you too will perish” (Lk 13:3).

Only if we suffer with Christ will we reign with him (Rom 8:17).

“If we confess out sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 Jn 1:9).

There is a sine qua non to forgiveness and to justification. They cannot be received apart from faith. This is a biblical condition that does not compromise grace, but arises from it. The important thing is not to deny condition, but to underscore that “It is not faith that saves, but Christ that saves through faith” (B.B. Warfield).”

HT: Jason Taylor