Grace means primarily favour, or that kindly disposition in the Mind of God.
It has been called, “Pure un-recompensed kindness and favour”; or “Unmerited favour”. As such, Grace cannot incur a debt. Whatever God bestows He bestows as a GIFT. So we cannot recompense Him or pay for it.
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| Salvation is a gift not a reward. |
Salvation is always presented in the Bible as a Gift, an undeserved and unpayable favour, a pure benefit from God.
Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Myer Pearlman: Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible. P. 233
Grace is God dealing with the sinner absolutely apart from the question of merit or demerit.
It is God treating the sinner graciously without the slightest reference to his deserts. Grace is ‘God’s Infinite love expressing itself in infinite goodness’.
Grace is seen in the fact that God does not just overlook sin, but as the perfect Ruler of the Universe, through the Atoning Death of Christ, paid in full the penalty for our sin; therefore He can justly pardon our sin without regards to the sinners merit or demerit.
We can be pardoned, not because God just excuses our sin, but because there is Redemption through the Blood of Christ.
Rom 3:24 By his grace they are justified freely through the redemption that is in the Messiah Jesus,
Rom 3:25 whom God offered as a place where atonement by the Messiah's blood would occur through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because he had waited patiently to deal with sins committed in the past.
God’s pardoning of sin is based upon strict justice. God is both Faithful and just. 1 John 1:9. God’s Grace is revealed in His providing an atonement whereby He could both justify the ungodly and yet vindicate His Holy, unchangeable law.
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Under law or Under Grace.
Grace is independent of man’s works or activity. When a person is ‘under law’ he cannot be ‘under grace’; when he is ‘under grace’, he cannot be ‘under law’.
A person is ‘under law’ when he attempts to secure salvation or sanctification as a matter of reward, by the performance of good works or the observance of religious ceremonies.
He is ‘under grace’, when he secures salvation by trusting in Christ alone. It is faith in God's work for him and not his work for God.
The two spheres are mutually exclusive.
Gal 5:4 Those of you who are trying to be justified by the Law have been cut off from the Messiah. You have fallen away from grace. ISV
Gal 5:4 Christ has become nothing to any of you who are seeking acceptance with God through the Law: you have fallen away from grace. WNT
Adam Clark comments:
Christ is become of no effect unto you - It is vain for you to attempt to unite the two systems. You must have the law and no Christ, or Christ and no law, for your justification.
Ye are fallen from grace - From the Gospel. They had been brought into the grace of the Gospel; and now, by readopting the Mosaic ordinances, they had apostatized from the Gospel as a system of religion, and had lost the grace communicated to their souls, by which they were preserved in a state of salvation. The peace and love of God, received by Jesus Christ, could not remain in the hearts of those who had rejected Christ. They had, therefore, in every sense of the word, fallen from grace; and whether some of them ever rose again is more than we can tell.
The Law says, “Pay all”; Grace says, “All has been paid.”
Deeply rooted in the human heart is the idea that man must do something to make himself worthy of salvation. In the early church Jewish Christian teachers insisted that converts are saved by faith and the observance of the law of Moses. Acts 15. Today some sections of the Christian church insist on this error by opposing forms of self-punishment; or the performance of certain rites, or the making of pilgrimages, or the giving of alms.
The underlying idea to all these things is: ”God is not gracious, man is not righteous, therefore man must make himself righteous so that god can be gracious.” False. Martin Luther thought ”Oh when I am pious enough then I may have a gracious God.” But he finally discovered the truth, that is at the basis of the Gospel, : God is gracious and therefore wills to make man righteous. The Grace of a loving heavenly Father revealed in the atoning death of Christ is an element in Christianity that differentiates it from all other religions
Louis Sperry Chafer says: “Salvation is the imputed righteousness of God; it is not the imperfect righteousness of man. Salvation is Divine Reconciliation; it is not a human regulation. Salvation is the cancelling of all sin; it is not the cessation of some sins. Salvation is being delivered from and being dead to the law; it is not delighting in or doing the law. Salvation is Divine regeneration; it is not human reformation. Salvation is being acceptable to God (by faith); not becoming exceptionally good. … Salvation is always and only of God: it is never of man.”
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