God’s grace is the manifestation of His goodness toward His creation. In Scripture, God’s gracious disposition to sinners is revealed immediately after the fall, wherein Adam failed to fulfill the covenant of works. In the Old Testament, God exhibited His grace in the various historical administrations of the covenant of grace. In the New Testament, the gospel further reveals that these types and shadows point to Christ through whom God extends His saving grace to His people.
Throughout church history there have been significant debates over the doctrine of grace. In the fifth century, a sharp dispute arose over the nature of God’s grace. Augustine became the principal defender of God’s sovereign grace in his debates with Pelagius. During the Reformation, a sharp debate emerged between Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians over the meaning of God’s grace. Rome taught a meritorious or quasi-meritorious view of grace. The Reformers defended the biblical teaching of the unmerited nature of grace and also described the two classifications of God’s grace—namely, common grace and special or saving grace.
Grace and mercy are distinct but inseparable manifestations of God’s goodness. Mercy is the act of God withholding the judgment sinners deserve. Grace is the act of God showing undeserved and unmerited favor to His people. God’s grace supplies sinners with an unmerited forgiveness and reconciliation.
After the fall, God made His saving grace known to the elect in the line of Seth. After the flood, God made His grace known to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In His covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, God manifested His grace through the promises, types, shadows, and sacraments revealed in His saving acts throughout redemptive history. God set apart Israel to be His special covenant people to whom He manifested His grace. In addition to the covenant, God gave Israel His oracles, worship, law, and gospel. All these were means by which Israel might receive God’s saving grace.
Jesus is the embodiment of the grace of God. God’s Word teaches that Christ is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus is the gracious gift of God for the salvation of all who put their faith in Him alone. By His death and resurrection, Jesus graciously secured salvation for His people. The New Testament makes clear that through Christ, God expanded His covenantal dealings of grace to both Jews and gentiles as He had promised Abraham (Gen. 17:4–6; Gal. 3:16, 28–29). In Christ, by faith, all believers are Abraham’s descendants.
Battles over the nature of God’s grace have been fought throughout church history. At the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine was engaged in a significant theological debate with Pelagius, a British monk who denied any need for divine grace. Pelagius insisted that sin has not fundamentally twisted man’s nature or made him opposed to the things of God. He saw no place for sovereign grace rooted in the predestinating love of God. According to Pelagius, people can sustain a morally upright condition by the mere exercise of their free will apart from any assistance from divine grace. Augustine countered this by insisting that Scripture teaches that fallen man is pervasively depraved. After the fall, all mankind is bound in sin and unrighteousness. Accordingly, salvation can only be on the grounds of God’s sovereign, unmerited, and predestinating grace.
In the medieval church, John Cassian taught a modified version of Pelagianism that theologians have commonly referred to as semi-Pelagianism. Whereas Pelagius denied the fall and the sinful depravity of the nature of man, semi-Pelagians acknowledge the fall while downplaying its severity. During the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers engaged in sharp polemics with Roman Catholic theologians over the nature of saving grace. The Reformers defended the biblical teaching that grace is entirely unmerited and based exclusively on the sinless life and atoning death of Christ. Over the past two centuries, views of grace and salvation influenced by semi-Pelagianism have been widespread within dispensational and evangelical circles under the name Arminianism.
Theologians in the Reformed tradition have commonly accepted the distinction between common grace and special grace. Common grace is the expression of the general goodness that God wishes to show the totality of His creation. Common grace is distinguished from saving grace insomuch as it does not lead men to salvation in Christ. Rather, it merely reveals the general goodness of God toward His creation and is manifested by such things as His sending rain on both the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45). Saving grace, on the other hand, is the special manifestation of God’s goodness in the salvation that He freely provides in Christ. Modern Reformed theologians have also highlighted the doctrines of grace in defense of biblical soteriology.
“What is grace? The catechisms many of us learned as children give us the answer: ‘Grace is the unmerited favor of God.’ The first thing that we understand about grace is what it’s not—it’s not something we merit. In fact, if that is all we ever understand about grace, I’m sure God will rejoice that we know His grace is unmerited. So, here’s our working definition of grace—it is unmerit.”
R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk magazine
“Divine grace changes the human heart, resurrecting the sinner from spiritual death to spiritual life. In this act of God, the sinner is made willing to believe and to choose Christ. The previous state of moral inability is overcome by the power of regenerating grace. The operative word in Augustine’s view is that regenerating grace is monergistic. It is the work of God alone.”
R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk magazine
