Grace a Great Word of the Gospel
August 12, 2007The following is an excerpt from Gleanings from Paul: The Prayers of the Apostle by A. W. Pink.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Why distinctively ascribe grace to Him if it is of God and the Spirit as well? Because in the economy of redemption all grace comes to us through Him. The word grace is the special token of Paul in every epistle: eight close with “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” sometimes varying the formula to “with your spirit.” Grace is one of the outstanding words of the gospel. Again quoting Chadwick: “It is more than mercy and greater than love. Justice demands integrity, and mercy is the ministry of pity; love seeks correspondence, appreciation, and response; but grace demands no merit. Grace flows unrestrained and unreserved upon those who have no goodness to plead and no claim to advance. Grace seeks the unfit and the unworthy. It is love, mercy, and compassion combined, stretching out toward the guilty, ungracious, and rebellious. It is the only hope for sinful men. If salvation comes not by grace, it can never be ours. Without grace there can be no reconciliation, no pardon, no peace.”
When He became incarnate the only begotten of the Father was beheld by His own as “full of grace and truth,” and as the apostle added, “And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:14, 16). Here the meaning of grace passes from an attribute of the divine character to an active energy in the souls of the redeemed. At the throne of grace we “find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). The heart is “established with grace” (Hebrews 13:9) and by that grace we are enabled to “serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28). It is in “the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1) that we find our strength, and He assures us of its competency to support us under all afflictions and persecutions by the promise “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Therefore we are exhorted to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Those passages all speak of the divine power in the soul as the operation of grace in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ as its Fountain.