New.Demonstration

Divine grace is the sovereign and saving favour of God exercised in the bestowment of blessings upon those who have no merit in them and for which no compensation is demanded from them.

Nay, more; it is the favour of God shown to those who not only have no positive deserts of their own, but who are thoroughly ill-deserving and hell-deserving.

It is completely unmerited and unsought, and is altogether unattracted by anything in or from or by the objects upon which it is bestowed.

Grace can neither be bought, earned, nor won by the creature. If it could be, it would cease to be grace. When a thing is said to be of grace we mean that the recipient has no claim upon it, that it was in nowise due him. It comes to him as pure charity, and, at first, unasked and undesired.

Eternal life is a gift, therefore it can neither be earned by good works, nor claimed as a right. Seeing that salvation is a “gift,” who has any right to tell God on whom He ought to bestow it? It is not that the Giver ever refuses this gift to any who seek it wholeheartedly, and according to the rules which He has prescribed. No! He refuses none who come to Him empty-handed and in the way of His appointing. But if out of a world of impenitent and unbelieving, God is determined to exercise His sovereign right by choosing a limited number to be saved, who is wronged? Is God obliged to force His gift on those who value it not? Is God compelled to save those who are determined to go their own way?

But nothing more riles the natural man and brings to the surface his innate and inveterate enmity against God than to press upon him the eternality, the freeness, and the absolute sovereignty of Divine grace.

That God should have formed His purpose from everlasting without in anywise consulting the creature, is too abasing for the unbroken heart.

That grace cannot be earned or won by any efforts of man is too self-emptying for self-righteousness. And that grace singles out whom it pleases to be its favored objects, arouses hot protests from haughty rebels. The clay rises up against the Potter and asks, “Why hast Thou made me thus?” A lawless insurrectionist dares to call into question the justice of Divine sovereignty.

The distinguishing grace of God is seen in saving that people whom He has sovereignly singled out to be His high favorites. By “distinguishing” we mean that grace discriminates, makes differences” chooses some and passes by others. It was distinguishing grace which selected Abraham from the midst of his idolatrous neighbors and made him “the friend of God.” It was distinguishing grace which saved “publicans and sinners,” but said of the religious Pharisees, “Let them alone” (Matt. 15:14). Nowhere does the glory of God’s free and sovereign grace shine more conspicuously than in the unworthiness and unlikeness of its objects.

The grace of God is proclaimed in the Gospel (Acts 20:24), which is to the self-righteous Jew a ”stumbling block,” and to the conceited and philosophizing Greek “foolishness.” And why so? Because there is nothing whatever in it that is adapted to gratify the pride of man.

It announces that unless we are saved by grace, we cannot be saved at all.

It declares that apart from Christ, the unspeakable Gift of God’s grace, the state of every man is desperate, irremediable, hopeless.

The Gospel addresses men as guilty, condemned, perishing criminals…

It declares that the chastest moralist is in the same terrible plight as is the most voluptuous profligate; that the zealous professor, with all his religious performances, is no better off than the most profane infidel.

The Gospel contemplates every descendant of Adam as a fallen, polluted, hell-deserving and helpless sinner.

The grace which the Gospel publishes is his only hope.

All stand before God convicted as transgressors of His holy law, as guilty and condemned criminals; awaiting not sentence, but the execution of sentence already passed on them (John 3:18; Rom. 3:19).

To complain against the partiality of grace is suicidal. If the sinner insists upon bare justice, then the Lake of Fire must be his eternal portion. His only hope lies in bowing to the sentence which Divine justice has passed upon him, owning the absolute righteousness of it, casting himself on the mercy of God, and stretching forth empty hands to avail himself of the grace of God now made known to him in the Gospel.

The third Person in the Godhead is the Communicator of grace, therefore is He denominated “the Spirit of grace” (Zech. 12:10). God the Father is the Fountain of all grace, for He purposed in Himself the everlasting covenant of redemption. God the Son is the only Channel of grace. The Gospel is the Publisher of grace. The Spirit is the Bestower. He is the One who applies the Gospel in saving power to the soul:

…quickening the elect while spiritually dead, conquering their rebellious wills, melting their hard hearts, opening their blind eyes, cleansing them from the leprosy of sin.

Thus we may say with the late G. S. Bishop,

Grace is a provision for men who are so fallen that…

they cannot lift the axe of justice, so corrupt that they cannot change their own natures,

so averse to God that they cannot turn to Him,

so blind that they cannot see Him,

so deaf that they cannot hear Him,

and so dead that He Himself must open their graves and lift them into resurrection.

—A.W. Pink, The Attributes of God: The Grace of God

Read the rest of this most spiritually profitable work here. I am convinced that this humble work by A.W. Pink on the attributes of God is a must for every Christian to read and study as it exposits the nature of God from the text of Holy Scripture. As Pink introduces his work, “An unknown God can neither be trusted, served, nor worshipped.” That is quite true. True worship for that matter can only be done in proper and conscious reflections of God. To be ignorant in this matter is to live nothing else but a delusional religion, having the form of godliness without the power thereof. This book has been a great, great help to me in my worship, in my vision of the greatness and majesty of God, in His supremacy, His ineffable holiness, His awespiring righteousness. Read this book, and know your God…for who He revealed Himself to be…not by the popular mindset of how we “feel” Him to be.