69. The Nature of Grace

The Nature of Grace

Man’s sin brings out both a quality and a depth in God’s love that never otherwise had been seen, and never could have been known apart from the cross of Christ. Justice and mercy constitute love. But justice and mercy, set against each other by sin, and then forever united through the sacrificial suffering in Christ’s work of substitution on the cross—this is grace.

Before Christ’s death, God’s Law, which is His love working out in the form of government, had been vindicated and established only in justice in judging Satan and his angels to their doom. But in the cross, where justice and mercy came into an eternal union in the righteous salvation of sinners from their execution, His Law became forever established in grace. Holiness goes into action against sin by judgment. Love goes into action for the sinner through that same judgment; and when this judgment is accepted in the Person of the Judge Himself, this is grace.

Grace is therefore forgiveness of sin without condoning or consenting to it, for it is forgiven because it has been already judged and the penalty executed. To have forgiven sin without the execution of the penalty would have justified and legitimized it. Satan and men would then have been right, and God forever wrong. But Christ’s cross vindicated God’s holiness and enthroned grace. For grace is not sympathy and pity winning lenience for the sinner, but love acting in holiness through judgment and condemning sin.

Sin cannot escape judgment. For if we do not acknowledge that God has judged and condemned us for our sin, we will rise up and condemn Him, and summon Him to explain Himself before the bar of our own conscience. Where there is sin there must be condemnation, if not by God, then by ourselves. And our salvation from that condemnation, not because we have been excused from it, but because it has been endured for us by the Judge Himself—that is grace. The cross was man’s last act in his attempt to enthrone sin. It was God’s last act in His glorious enthronement of His love. So the sin that thought to be enthroned by the cross is by it forever dethroned, with grace now on the throne, to reign in absolute righteousness for all eternity.

Grace means favor, but to a certain class of moral beings only. Favor is of various kinds, according as it is shown to various classes. Favor to the suffering is compassion; to the poor it is pity; to the unfortunate it is kindness; to the obstinate it is patience. But favor to those who deserve nothing but the limit of disfavor, that is grace. For it is not simply favor to the undeserving, it is far more; it is favor to the ill-deserving. It is salvation to those who deserve damnation. It is God lavishing everything on the sinner, when there is no obligation to give him anything but the just deserts of his sin.