What Is Grace?
Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
“The father of lies” always hates the truth, but he
does not always oppose it by the same methods. If he fails to succeed
as a roaring lion he may appear as an angel of light, suggesting that
surely a God of love will not condemn Christ-rejectors forever.
Sinners, he will contend, are not responsible for their sins anyway,
for does not Eph. 1:11 teach that “[God] worketh all things after
the counsel of His own will”? And thus God Himself is supposed to
have conceived the idea of sin as “a gracious means to a glorious
end,” and to have caused man to fall into sin so that He might
finally save him from it!
Why an almighty, all-wise, all-loving God permitted sin
to enter the universe must, for the time being, remain an
impenetrable mystery to us, but one thing is certain: He is not the
author of sin, and never accepts the responsibility for it — except
that in grace and love He bore its penalty for man.
God calls sinners “children of disobedience” and
“children of wrath” (Eph. 2:2,3), explaining in the clearest
language that He hates sin and that His anger is kindled against it
(Rom. 1:18; Eph. 5:6; John 3:36). But if God meant man to sin and
caused him to sin, how was man disobedient and what cause could God
have to be angry? Those who would shift the responsibility for sin
from themselves to God should remember that He proclaimed His
standards of righteousness in the Law “that every mouth may be
stopped and that all the world may be brought in guilty before God”
(Rom. 3:19).
The contention that all will finally be saved may at
first sound like wonderful grace, but actually there is not one
particle of grace in it, for it is based on the theory that since God
got us into sin it is only just that He save us from its penalty. But
grace is God’s mercy and kindness to the undeserving. In Eph. 2,
after calling sinners “children of disobedience” and therefore
“children of wrath,” the Apostle Paul goes on to say:
“BUT GOD, who is RICH IN MERCY, for His GREAT LOVE wherewith he loved us… hath quickened us… raised us up… and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might show THE EXCEEDING RICHES OF HIS GRACE IN HIS KINDNESS TOWARD US THROUGH CHRIST JESUS” (Eph. 2:4-7).
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