Chapter
XXIII
Salvation by Grace
THE Bible declares that the salvation of sinful men is a matter of
grace. From Eph. 1:7-10 we learn that the primary purpose of God in the
work of redemption was to display the glory of this divine attribute so
that through succeeding ages the intelligent universe might admire it as
it is made known through His unmerited love and boundless goodness to
guilty, vile, helpless creatures. Accordingly all men are represented as
sunk in a state of sin and misery, from which they are utterly unable to
deliver themselves. When they deserved only God's wrath and curse, He
determined that He would graciously provide redemption for them by
sending His own eternal Son to assume their nature and guilt and to obey
and suffer in their stead, and His Holy Spirit to apply the redemption
purchased by the Son. On the same representative principle by which
Adam's sin is imputed to us, that is, set to our account in such a way
that we are held fully responsible for it and suffer the consequences of
it, our sin in its turn is imputed to Christ and His righteousness is
imputed to us. This is briefly, yet clearly expressed in the Shorter
Catechism, which says, "Justification is an act of God's free grace,
wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His
sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received
by faith alone." Ans. to Q. 88.
We should keep clearly in mind the
distinction between the two covenants: that of works, under which Adam
was placed and which resulted in the fall of the race into sin; and that
of grace, under which Christ was sent as a Redeemer. As stated in
another connection, the Arminian system makes no essential distinction
in principle between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace,
unless it be that God now offers salvation on lower terms and instead of
demanding perfect obedience He accepts only such faith and evangelical
obedience as the crippled sinner is able to render. In that system the
burden of obedience is still thrown upon man himself and his salvation
in the first place depends upon his own works.
The word "grace" in its proper sense
means the free and undeserved love or favor of God exercised toward the
undeserving, toward sinners. It is something which is given irrespective
of any worthiness in man; and to introduce works or merit into any part
of this scheme vitiates its nature and frustrates its design. Just
because it is grace, it is not given on the basis of preceding merits.
As the very name imports, it is necessarily gratuitous; and since man is
enslaved to sin until it is given, all the merits that he can have prior
to it are bad merits and deserve only punishment, not gifts, or favor.
Whatever of good men have, that God has given; and what they have not,
why, of course, God has not given it. And since grace is given
irrespective of preceding merits, it is therefore sovereign and is
bestowed only on those whom God has selected for its reception. It is
this sovereignty of grace, and not its foresight or the preparation for
it, which places men in God's hands and suspends salvation absolutely on
His unlimited mercy. In this we find the basis for His election or
rejection of particular persons.
Because of His absolute moral
perfection God requires spotless purity and perfect obedience in his
intelligent creatures. This perfection is provided in Christ's spotless
righteousness being imputed to them; and when God looks upon the
redeemed He sees them clothed with the spotless robe of Christ's
righteousness not with anything of their own. We are distinctly told
that Christ suffered as a substitute, "the just for the unjust"; and
when man is encouraged to think that he owes to some power or art of his
own that salvation which in reality is all of grace, God is robbed of
part of His glory. By no stretch of the imagination can a man's good
works in this life be considered a just equivalent for the blessings of
eternal life. Benjamin Franklin, though by no means a Calvinist,
expressed this idea well when he wrote: "He that for giving a drink of
water to a thirsty person, should expect to be paid with a good
plantation, would be modest in his demands, compared with those who
think they deserve heaven for the little good they do on earth." We are,
in fact, nothing but receivers; we never bring any adequate reward to
God, we are always receiving from Him, and shall be unto all eternity.
2. GOD MAY GIVE OR WITHHOLD GRACE AS
HE PLEASES
Since God has provided this redemption
or atonement at His own cost, it is His property and He is absolutely
sovereign in choosing who shall be saved through it. There is nothing
more steadily emphasized in the Scripture doctrine of redemption than
its absolutely gracious character. Hence, by their separation from the
original mass, not through any works of their own but only through the
free grace of God, the vessels of mercy see how great a gift has been
bestowed upon them. It will be found that many who inherit heaven were
much worse sinners in this world than were many others who are lost.
The doctrine of Predestination cuts
down every self-righteous imagination which would detract from the glory
of God. It convinces the one who is saved that he can only be eternally
thankful that God saved him. Hence in the Calvinistic system all
boasting is excluded and that honor and glory which belong to God alone
is fully preserved. "The greatest saint," says Zanchius, "cannot triumph
over the most abandoned sinner, but is led to refer the entire praise of
his salvation, both from sin and hell, to the mere good-will and
sovereign purpose of God, who hath graciously made him to differ from
that world which lieth in wickedness."
3. SALVATION NOT TO BE EARNED BY MAN
All men naturally feel that they
should earn their salvation, and a system which makes some provision in
that regard readily appeals to them. But Paul lays the axe to such
reasoning when he says, "If there had been a law given which could make
alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law," Gal. 3:21; and
Jesus said to His disciples, "when ye shall have done all the things
that are commanded of you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have
done that which it was our duty to do," Luke 17:10.
Our own righteousness, says Isaiah, is
but as a polluted garment — or, as the King James Version puts it, as
filthy rags — in the sight of God (64:6). And when Isaiah wrote, "Ho,
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no
money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money
and without price," 55:1, he invited the penniless, the hungry, the
thirsty, to come and take possession of, and enjoy the provision, free
of all cost, as if by right of payment. And to buy without money must
mean that it has already been produced and provided at the cost of
another. The further we advance in the Christian life, the less we are
inclined to attribute any merit to ourselves, and the more to thank God
for all. The believer not only looks forward to everlasting life, but
also looks backward into the antemundane eternity and finds in the
eternal purpose of divine love the beginning and the firm anchorage of
his salvation.
If salvation is of grace, as the
Scriptures so clearly teach, it cannot he of works, whether actual or
foreseen. There is no merit in believing, for faith itself is a gift of
God. God gives His people an inward working of the Spirit in order that
they may believe, and faith is only the act of receiving the proffered
gift. It is, then, only the instrumental cause, and not the meritorious
cause, of salvation. What God loves in us is not our own merits, but His
own gift; for His unmerited grace precedes our meritorious works. Grace
is not merely bestowed when we pray for it, but grace itself causes us
to pray for its continuance and increase.
In the book of The Acts we find that
the very inception of faith itself is assigned to grace (18:27); only
those who were ordained to eternal life believed (13:48); and it is
God's prerogative to open the heart so that it gives heed to the gospel
(16:14). Faith is thus referred to the counsels of eternity, the events
in time being only the outworking. Paul attributes it to the grace of
God that we are "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them," Eph. 2:10.
Good works, then, are in no sense the meritorious ground but rather the
fruits and proof of salvation.
Luther taught this same doctrine when
he said of some that "They attribute to Free-will a very little indeed,
yet they teach us that by that very little we can attain unto
righteousness and grace. Nor do they solve that question, Why does God
justify one and leave another? in any other way than by asserting the
freedom of the will, and saying, Because the one endeavors and the other
does not; and God regards the one for endeavoring, and despises the
other for his not endeavoring; lest, if he did otherwise, he should
appear to be unjust."
It is said that Jeremy Taylor and a
companion were once walking down a street in London when they came to a
drunk man lying in the gutter. The other man made some disparaging
remark about the drunk man. But Jeremy Taylor, pausing and looking at
him, said, "But for the grace of God, there lies Jeremy Taylor!" The
spirit which was in Jeremy Taylor is the spirit which should be in every
sin-rescued Christian. It was repeatedly taught that Israel owed her
separation from the other peoples of the world not to anything good or
desirable in herself, but only to God's gracious love faithfully
persisted in despite apostasy, sin, and rebellion.
Paul says concerning some who would
base salvation on their own merits, that, "going about to establish
their own righteousness, they did not submit themselves to the
righteousness of God," and were, therefore, not in the Church of Christ.
He makes it plain that "the righteousness of God" is given to us through
faith, and that we enter heaven pleading only the merits of Christ.
The reason for this system of grace is
that those who glory should glory in the Lord, and that no person should
ever have occasion to boast over another. The redemption was purchased
at an infinite cost to God Himself, and therefore it may be dispensed as
He pleases in a purely gracious manner. As the poet has said:
"None of the ransomed ever knew,
How deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark was the night that the
Lord passed through,
E'er He found His sheep that was lost."
4. SCRIPTURE TEACHING
Let us now notice some of those
scriptures which teach that our sins were imputed to Christ; and then
notice some which teach that His righteousness is imputed to us.
"Surely He hath borne our griefs, and
carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and
afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for
our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His
stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all," Is. 53:4, 5. "By the knowledge of Himself shall my
righteous servant justify many, and He shall bear their iniquities.....
He bare the sin of many," Is. 53:11, 12. "Him who knew no sin He made to
be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in
Him," II Cor. 5:21. Here both truths are plainly stated, — our sins
are set to His account, and His righteousness to ours. There is no other
conceivable sense in which He could be "made sin," or we "made the
righteousness of God." It was Christ "who His own self bare our sins in
His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness; by whose stripes we are healed," I Peter 2:24. Here,
again, both truths are thrown together. "Because Christ also suffered
for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us
to God," I Peter 3:18. These, and many other such verses, prove the
doctrine of His substitution in our stead, as plainly as language can
put it. If they do not prove that the death of Christ was a true and
proper sacrifice for sin in our stead, human language cannot express it.
That His righteousness is imputed to
us is taught in language equally plain. "By the works of the law shall
no flesh be justified in His sight... But now apart from the law a
righteousness of God hath been manifested... even the righteousness of
God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe... being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in His
blood, to show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins
done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of
His righteousness at this present season; that He might himself be just,
and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. Where then is the
glorying? It is excluded. By what manner of law? of works? Nay, hut by
the law of faith. We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith
apart from the works of the law," Rom. 3:20-28. "So then as through one
trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through
one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to
justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the
many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall
the many he made righteous," Rom. 5:18, 19. Paul's testimony in regard
to himself was: "I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count
them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having
a righteousness of my own, even that which is of the law, but that which
is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by
faith," Phil. 3:8, 9. Now, is it not strange that any one who pretends
to be guided by the Bible, could, in the face of all this plain and
unequivocal language, uphold salvation by works, in any degree whatever?
Paul wrote to the Romans, "Sin shall
not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace."
6:14. That is, God had taken them out from under a system of law and had
placed them under a system of grace; and as their Sovereign, it was not
His purpose to let them again fall under the dominion of sin. In fact,
if they were to fall, it could only be because God had taken them out
from under grace and again placed them under law, so that their own
works determined their destiny. In the very nature of the case as long
as the person is under grace he is entirely free from any claim that the
law may have on him through sin. For one to be saved through grace means
that God is no longer treating him as he deserves but that He has
sovereignly set the law aside and that He saves him in spite of his
ill-desert, — cleansing him from his sin, of course, before he is fit
to enter the divine presence.
Paul goes to great pains to make it
clear that the grace of God is not earned by us, is not secured by us in
any way, but is just given to us. If it be earned, it ceases by that
very fact to be grace, Rom. 11:6.
5. FURTHER REMARKS
In the present state of the race all
men stand before God, not as citizens of a state, all of whom must be
treated alike and given the same "chance" for salvation, but rather as
guilty and condemned criminals before a righteous judge. None have any
claim to salvation. The marvel is, not that God doesn't save all, but
that when all are guilty He pardons so many; and the answer to the
question, Why does He not save all? is to be found, not in the Arminian
denial of the omnipotence of His grace, but in the fact that, as Dr.
Warfield says, "God in His love saves as many of the guilty race of man
as He can get the consent of His whole nature to save." For reasons
known to Himself He sees that it is not best to pardon all, but that
some should be permitted to have their own way and be left to eternal
punishment in order that it may be shown what an awful thing is sin and
rebellion against God.
Time and again the Scriptures repeat
the assertion that salvation is of grace, as if anticipating the
difficulty which men would have in coming to the conclusion that they
could not earn salvation by their own works. Thus also they destroy the
widespread notion that God owes salvation to any. "By grace have ye been
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory," Eph. 2:8, 9. "But if it is of
grace, it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace," Rom.
11:6. "By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified," Rom. 3:20.
"Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but as
of debt," Rom. 4:4. "Who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that
thou didst not receive?" I Cor. 4:7. "By the grace of God I am what I
am," I Cor. 15:10. "Who hath first given to Him, and it shall he
recompensed unto him again?" Rom. 11:35. "The free gift of God is
eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord," Rom. 6:23.
Grace and works are mutually
exclusive; and as well might we try to bring the two poles together as
to effect a coalition of grace and works in salvation. As well might we
talk of a "purchased gift," as to talk of "conditional grace," for when
grace ceases to be absolute it ceases to be grace. Therefore when the
Scriptures say that salvation is of grace we are to understand that it
is through its whole process the work of God and that any truly
meritorious works done by man are the result of the change which has
already been wrought.
Arminianism destroys this purely
gracious character of salvation and substitutes a system of grace plus
works. No matter how small a part these works may play they are
necessary and are the basis of the distinction between the saved and the
lost and would then afford occasion for the saved to boast over the lost
since each had equal opportunity. But Paul says that all boasting is
excluded, and that he who glories should glory in the Lord (Rom. 3:27; I
Cor. 1:31). But if saved by grace, the redeemed remembers the mire from
which he was lifted, and his attitude toward the lost is one of sympathy
and pity. He knows that but for the grace of God he too would have been
in the same state as those who perish, and his song is, "Not unto us, 0
Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for
thy truth's sake."
