Grace deals with all men upon one common ground, that of being sinners; it levels their moral condition, and comes only to those who have need of it (Luke 5:31, 3231And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. 32I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Luke 5:31‑32)). This, man cannot bear; what he is always seeking to do is to make a difference between righteousness and unrighteousness in man, so that himself may have a certain character before others. Slighting God's righteousness, and magnifying our own, always go together.
On the other hand, there is sometimes the thought, that grace implies God's passing by sin. But, no; quite the contrary! Grace supposes sin to be so horridly bad a thing, that God cannot tolerate it. Were it in the power of man, after being unrighteous and evil, to patch up his ways, and mend himself so as to stand before God, there would be no need of grace. The very fact of Jehovah's being gracious, shows sin to be so evil a thing, that, man being a sinner, his state is utterly ruined and hopeless, and nothing but free grace will do for him-can meet his need.
The triumph of grace is seen in this, that when man's enmity had cast out Jesus from the earth, God's love brought in salvation by that very act—came in to atone for the sins of those who had rejected Him. In the view of the fullest development of man's sin, faith sees the fullest manifestation of God's grace. Where does faith see the greatest depth of man's sin and hatred of God? In the cross; and at the same glance it sees the greatest extent of God's triumphant love and mercy to man. The spear of the soldier, which pierced the side of Jesus, only brought out that which spoke of forgiveness.
I have got away from grace, if I have the slightest doubt or hesitation about God's love. I shall then be saying, “I am unhappy, because I am not what I should like to be;” but that is not what is the question. The real question is, whether God is what we should like Him to be—whether Jesus is all that we could wish. If the consciousness of what we are, of what we find in ourselves, has any other effect than, while it humbles us, to increase our adoration of what God is, we are off the ground of pure grace. Faith never makes what is in my heart its object, but God's revelation of Himself in grace. If we stop half way and see nothing but the law, it will just discover to us our condemnation, and prove us to be “without strength.” If God allows us enough to show us our true state, there is just where grace meets us.
The grace of God is so unlimited, so full, so perfect, that, if we get for a moment out of the presence of God, we cannot have the true consciousness of it; we have no strength to apprehend it; and if we attempt to learn it out of His presence, we shall only turn it to licentiousness.
If we look at the simple fact of what grace is, it has no limit, no bounds. Be we what we may (and we cannot be worse than we are), in spite of all that, what God is towards us is love. Neither our joy nor our peace is dependent on what we are to God, but on what He is to us; and this is grace.
Grace supposes all the sin and evil that is in us, and is the blessed revelation that through Jesus all the sin and evil has been put away. A single sin is more horrible to God than a thousand sins, nay, than all the sins in the world, are to us. And yet, with the fullest consciousness of what we are, all that God is pleased to be toward us is love. At the same time we must remember that the object and necessary effect of grace is to bring our souls into communion with God; to sanctify us by bringing us really to know God and to love Him. Therefore, the knowledge of grace is the true source of sanctification.
A man may see sin to be a deadly thing, and he may see that nothing which defiles can enter into the presence of God: his conscience may be brought to a true conviction of sin; yet this is not “tasting that Jehovah is gracious.” It is a very good thing to be brought even to that, for I am then tasting that Jehovah is righteous; but then I must not stop there: sin without grace would put me in a hopeless state. I cannot say that God ought to be gracious; but I can say, if ignorant of His grace, that He ought to cast me, as a sinner, away from His presence, because He is righteous. Thus we see that we learn what God is to us, not by our own thoughts, but by what He has revealed Himself to be; and this is “the God of all grace.” The moment I understand that I am a sinful man, and yet that it was because Jehovah knew the full extent of my sin, and what its hatefulness was, that He came to me, I understand what grace is. Faith wakes me see that God is greater than my sin: it is not that my sin is greater than God. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” As soon as I believe Jesus to be the Son of God, I see that God has come to me because I was a sinner, and could not go to Him. This is grace. J.N.D.