GRACE defined.
“Grace is what God may be free to do, and indeed what he does, accordingly, for the lost after Christ has died on behalf of them” (Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, 7:178).It is thus apparent that God’s grace is to be distinguished from His mercy and love (Eph. 2:4-5), “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
Mercy is therefore the compassion of God that moved Him to provide a Savior for the unsaved. Had God been able to save even one soul on the ground of His sovereign mercy alone, He could have saved every person on that basis, as Lewis Sperry Chafer points out, and the death of Christ would not have been a necessity.
Divine love on the other hand is the motivating plan behind all that God does in saving a soul. But since God is holy and righteous, and sin is a complete offense to Him, His love or His mercy cannot operate in grace until there is provided a sufficient satisfaction for sin. This satisfaction makes possible the exercise of God’s grace.
Grace thus rules out all human merit. It requires only faith in the Savior. Any intermixture of human merit violates grace. God’s grace thus provides not only salvation but safety and preservation for the one saved, despite his imperfections.
--Merill Unger
(spacing and emphases mine)
The impact of grace becomes greater when understood alongside God's mercy and love. Amazing.
“Grace is what God may be free to do, and indeed what he does, accordingly, for the lost after Christ has died on behalf of them” (Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, 7:178).It is thus apparent that God’s grace is to be distinguished from His mercy and love (Eph. 2:4-5), “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
Mercy is therefore the compassion of God that moved Him to provide a Savior for the unsaved. Had God been able to save even one soul on the ground of His sovereign mercy alone, He could have saved every person on that basis, as Lewis Sperry Chafer points out, and the death of Christ would not have been a necessity.
Divine love on the other hand is the motivating plan behind all that God does in saving a soul. But since God is holy and righteous, and sin is a complete offense to Him, His love or His mercy cannot operate in grace until there is provided a sufficient satisfaction for sin. This satisfaction makes possible the exercise of God’s grace.
Grace thus rules out all human merit. It requires only faith in the Savior. Any intermixture of human merit violates grace. God’s grace thus provides not only salvation but safety and preservation for the one saved, despite his imperfections.
--Merill Unger
(spacing and emphases mine)
The impact of grace becomes greater when understood alongside God's mercy and love. Amazing.
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