In all fourteen epistles attributed to the Apostle Paul (I include Hebrews), either in the salutation or conclusion, he invokes the grace of God upon the Church. He does so without any explanation or definition of grace. I believe he does so because he assumes that those who have experienced the grace of God need no explanation. The most common definition of grace is “God’s unmerited favor.” Suppose I should take into my home a vagrant and feed and tend to his needs that would be showing unmerited favor would it not? Suppose I should take the same vagrant into my home feed him and tend to his needs after he had beaten me, robbed me and done me much harm. Now that would be favor where there is positive demerit. THAT’S GRACE! God’s grace is fundamentally characterized by the following principles. His grace is not withheld because of demerit, cannot be lessened because of demerit, cannot incur a debt, and is never exercised in payment of a debt. God’s grace does not issue from the fountain of obligation, but the fountain of His free pleasure. The man (Paul) who wrote of the inspired doctrine of grace said it like this, “When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by His GRACE to reveal His Son in me.” The fountainhead of Paul’s salvation was the grace of God. “By grace are you saved.” Because God is gracious, therefore sinful men are forgiven, converted, purified, and saved. It is not because of anything in them, or that ever can be in them that they are saved. It is because of the boundless love, goodness, pity, compassion, mercy, and grace of God. Faith is the channel of salvation, but grace is the fountain and source even of faith. Faith is the work of God’s grace in us. “No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost”, “No man can come to Me except the Father who sent Me draws him.” So that faith, which is coming to Christ, is the result of divine drawing. Grace is the first and last moving cause of salvation. Faith, essential as it is, is only a vital part of the machinery which grace employs. We are saved “through faith,” but salvation is “by grace.” “By grace are ye saved.” What glad tidings for the undeserving! We must not look to faith as to exalt it above the divine source of all blessing that lies in the grace of God. We cannot make a Christ out of our faith, or think it the independent source of our salvation. Our life is found in “Looking unto Jesus,” not in looking to our faith. By faith all things become possible to us; yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God on whom faith relies. Salvation can come to us though we have only faith as a grain of mustard seed, because the power lies in the grace of God, not in our faith. ~~Terry Worthan, 1938-2023
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