GRACE is favor from God, absolutely undeserved, and bestowed in the most pitiful, kind, loving way, that God Himself can possibly bestow it.
The grace of God is God looking upon vile, undone sinners, and bestowing upon them the love of His heart, so as to make them feel they have a place in His heart, and that they are beloved of God, and may be at home with God. In this grace, God met the dying thief, and the chief soldier among the murderers of His Son. In this grace the Gospel was sent first to Jerusalem. In this grace Christ found Saul of Tarsus, and made the chief of sinners the chief of saints and apostles. The grace of God, which carries with it salvation for all men, has appeared.
From Adam until now all the saved are saved by grace. Grace is the child of love and the parent of mercy.
We make this discovery as we hear the voice of God speaking to us in Jesus. I am thirsty; "Come to the waters," says grace. I am hungry; "Eat ye that which is good," is the response of grace. But I am poor and have nothing to buy with; "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price," is the reply.
When we turn our gaze towards the person of Christ, we cannot doubt the grace that is in Him towards us. There it stands a blessed reality; we see it in every action, we discover it in every word of His. I am weary; "Come unto Me... I will give you rest." I am faint; "Casting all your care upon Him," and thus, like breezes from the waters, "He sustains with words them that are weary.”
I find the grace of God put beyond doubt as I gaze upon Calvary's Cross and behold the agony and death of God's only begotten Son. The measure and proof of all the favor comes out in "God so loved." It is not, "How shall I win God's favor?" That favor, or grace, "hath appeared," and has been exhibited by the life and the death of God's own Son.
Our hope is in God, and in His grace.
Simeon said: "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou Nast prepared before the face of all people." Christ, then, is the salvation of God (or, rather, God's salvation). "He hath appeared," not above our heads so that people cannot reach to Him; not under the feet to be trampled upon; not behind the back to be rejected: but "before the face." Nothing less than the blood of Christ is needed to cleanse from one sin, nothing more is required to cleanse from all sin. Christ is trustworthy, and He says, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.”
“We thank Thee for the blood,
The blood of Christ, Thy Son,
The blood by which our peace is made,
Our victory won.
“We thank Thee for the grace
Descending from above,
That overflows our widest guilt,
Our God's eternal love.”