Flowing out of the goodness of God are the attributes of mercy and grace. Because God
is a good and loving God, He bestows His mercy and His grace where He sovereignly wills to do
so. Like all of God's attributes, mercy and grace are part of His very nature and being, so that in
order to glorify Himself as God, He must show mercy and He must exercise grace. Let's look at
each one individually.
I. GOD'S MERCY --
Mercy is inseparable from God's goodness in that it is an effect or result of goodness. "O
give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever" (Psa. 136:1).
Mercy is that attribute of God that presupposes man's misery. Mercy works from love to relieve
this. Mercy is natural and essential to Him as God. It is natural and essential that God as Creator
and Governor should have the misery of His creatures at heart. We see this in God's longsuffering
in the fact that He does not readily and quickly visit all the sins of men with swift justice. Israel's
history as a nation was a history of God's longsuffering, providential and temporal goodness and
mercy towards a rebellious and stiff-necked people.
It is natural that God, as a Father, should show mercy towards the elect who have been
chosen and adopted to make up His eternal family. God's mercy is sometimes general toward all
men, appealing to man's natural faculties, and exercised in a providential and temporal way (Ps.
103:8; 145:9). But God's sovereign, eternal mercy is special and exercised only towards the elect
in Christ in the actual removal of sin's guilt and defilement from those of His sovereign choice
(Rom. 9:10,18).
The mercy God bestows on the wicked is only temporal, confined strictly to this life.
There will be no mercy extended to those who die in unbelief beyond the grave. But then how
can His mercy endure forever? God can never cease to be merciful because this is a quality of His
Divine essence, but the exercise of His mercy is regulated by His sovereign will. The display of
mercy from God has no cause outside of Himself. Man cannot earn God's mercy, for then it
would not be mercy. Even in eternal salvation, the work and merits of Christ are not the cause of
God's mercy, but are rather the effect or fruit of mercy.
GOD'S SOVEREIGN, ETERNAL, REDEMPTIVE MERCY IS IN CHRIST. In the
Old Covenant tabernacle in the holy of holies, there was the ark of the covenant, and that ark was
covered with a lid called the mercy-seat. This was a symbol of God's sovereign mercy towards
His chosen people. This mercy-seat was a type or a picture of eternal atonement, propitiation,
satisfaction, accomplished by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is the eternal mercy-seat
for God's elect.
When we speak of God's mercy in eternal salvation through Christ, our mercy-seat, we
must think in terms of propitiation. Propitiation means satisfaction by way of atonement that
results in reconciliation. It is the complete removal of the guilt and defilement of sin that stands
between God and sinners by the atoning blood of Christ. Now, God's saving mercy is in Christ
(Eph. 2:1-5). It is by Christ satisfying law and justice on behalf of all the sinners whom He
represented, for whom He substituted Himself, and establishing a righteousness that would enable
God to be just and justify them (Rom. 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10; Heb. 2:17). Remember, the work
and merits of Christ are not the cause of God's mercy. They are the result of mercy. But the
work and merits of Christ enable God to do right and justly bestow spiritual and eternal mercies
on His elect, justice having been fully satisfied by the Surety (Ps. 85:10; 86:15; 89:14).
This is why all whom God chose from the beginning, for whom Christ lived and died and
arose again, are the recipients of the "sure mercies of David," all the eternal, spiritual blessings
of salvation in Christ. Salvation then is not by works of righteousness or even works of faith that
we do but what Christ has accomplished for us (Titus 3:5). All who trust in Christ and who plead
His righteousness alone as the ground of salvation are recipients of the saving mercy of God (Gal.
6:14-16). All who seek after this mercy shall be saved (Luke 18:13-14).
This shows that all who believe in a universal atonement and a conditional salvation can
lay no claim to the mercy of God in salvation. They deny God's mercy as they deny the propitiation that Christ made on behalf of His church. They deny the unmerited favor of God when they
say that God's mercy is conditioned on their faith, repentance, and/or perseverance. They deny
God's mercy when they claim that multitudes perish in Hell for whom Christ made an atonement
for sins. So God's saving mercy, to them, is no more effectual than His impotent love. But God's
mercy is sovereign mercy. God's elect are designated as "vessels of mercy." His mercy, as all of
His attributes, insures the salvation and final glory of all whom He loves. It is all conditioned on
Christ and based on His righteousness alone.
II. GOD'S GRACE --
God's grace is a perfection of the Divine character which is exercised only toward the
elect. The grace of God is never mentioned in the Bible in connection with mankind generally.
Here it is distinguished from God's attribute of mercy. Grace flows from God's love towards His
elect in Christ. It is the eternal and absolute free favor of God manifested in His choosing a
multitude of guilty sinners out of Adam's fallen race and conditioning all of their salvation upon
His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is God's sovereign and saving favor exercised towards
those who have no merit and no power to earn the least of God's blessings. Even more so, it is
God's bestowment of eternal favor and blessings upon those who deserve the opposite -- eternal
damnation. When salvation and blessings are said to be "of grace" it means that the recipient has
met no conditions to earn it or appropriate and that he has no claim upon it by way of merit. We
must define grace then as God's provision of salvation conditioned on the Lord Jesus Christ. The
Gospel is the Gospel of God's free and sovereign grace. It is a specific truth wherein is
revealed how God in grace promises to save sinners and entitle them to the whole inheritance of eternal life and final glory based on the righteousness of His beloved Son.
God's grace is opposed to man's works as to the ground of salvation (Rom. 4:4-5; 11:6;
Eph. 2:8-9). Works is the opposite of grace. Works, then, is salvation conditioned on the sinner.
It does not matter what conditions are put upon the sinner. Any conditions on the sinner for
salvation is works salvation and opposed to grace. Consider the characteristics of God's grace:
(1) It is eternal - Grace was planned and purposed before it was exercised towards
sinners. It was given in Christ as the Representative and Surety of God's elect (Eph. 1:3; 2 Tim.
1:9). (2) It is free - Grace cannot be earned or merited. There are no conditions by which a
sinner can earn grace or even qualify himself for it (Rom. 3:24). (3) It is sovereign - God
exercises it and bestows it upon whom He will (Ex. 33:18-19; Rom. 9:15). (4) It reigns
through Christ - Christ earned salvation and all of its blessings by His substitutionary obedience
and death. His righteousness demands the eternal salvation and final glory of all sinners whom He
represented, and it entitles them to the whole inheritance of eternal life (Rom. 5:21).
In all this we see that salvation is the product of an everlasting covenant of grace. The
gospel is the preaching of the terms of this everlasting covenant of grace. Therefore, the gospel is
the good news of God's promise of salvation conditioned on Christ alone. It is the proclamation
that Christ, as the Representative of a people, satisfied all the conditions by working out a perfect
righteousness whereby God could be just to justify the ungodly (Rom. 1:16-17). All of God's
elect are saved by this same sovereign grace. Abel testified that he was saved by grace when he
brought the blood of sacrifice, signifying that his only hope of salvation was the righteousness of
his substitute, the promised Messiah. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Abraham came
to God who justifies the ungodly based on the righteousness of Christ. David prayed, "Blessed is
the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin," signifying that his only hope was the
imputed righteousness of Christ (Rom. 4:6-8).
So the grace of God shines forth in His election of sinners unto salvation (Rom. 11:5-6).
It shines forth in the covenant He made with His Son as He conditioned all of salvation upon
Christ and sent Him to fulfill those conditions by establishing a righteousness that enables God to
be just and still justify the ungodly. The whole of salvation is "to the praise of the glory of
[God's] grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph.
1:6-7).
Arminianism, universal notions of the atonement, salvation conditioned on the sinner, are
all denials of God's grace. They all claim that sinners must be qualified in some way, or that
sinners must meet certain conditions, to obtain the fullness of salvation. But salvation is not by
human merit, nor by conditions sinners meet. Salvation is by gracious promise. Grace does not
mean salvation conditioned on some lower standard called faith. In fact salvation by faith in
Christ means salvation by the righteousness of another (Rom. 4:16).
God's law MUST pronounce us righteous if we are going to be saved. Therefore, the
righteousness upon which God's law pronounces us righteous must be received by faith. "BY
GRACE" reveals that our salvation is totally conditioned on the doing and the dying of Christ
alone, His righteousness imputed and received by faith. Grace makes God's promise both sure
and certain because Christ's righteousness demands our salvation according to strict law and
inflexible justice (Rom. 5:20-21).
"YOU ARE NOT UNDER LAW" -- As long as a person owes a debt to God's law and
justice, as long as he is not submitted to the righteousness of Christ revealed in the Gospel, that
person is "under law". This means he is a debtor to do the whole law, and, therefore, salvation is
conditioned on him, which means no salvation at all (Rom. 3:20). Believers are not under law.
They are "UNDER GRACE" -- This means that there debt to law and justice has been completely paid by the obedience and death of another, their substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. All of
their salvation, from eternity past to final glorification and beyond, is conditioned solely upon
Christ their Mediator and Surety. They have a righteousness that answers the demands of God's
law and justice, but it is the righteousness worked out by another and freely given to them,
imputed to them by God. This is why "sin shall not have dominion over" them. As long as sin
is imputed to a person's account, as long as he is guilty and defiled, as long as he owes that debt
to law and justice, he is under the dominion of sin. A believer's sins CANNOT bring him back
under wrath or back into the state of condemnation. He is free from the guilt and defilement of
sin because Christ paid his debt to law and justice in full. He has found GRACE in the eyes of
the Lord.
When professing Christians claim to believe salvation by God's grace but also think that
salvation or any part of it is conditioned on the sinner's faith, repentance, works, or efforts, they
are actually denying God's grace (Gal. 1:8; 2:21; 5:4). The problem with those who deny and
frustrate the grace of God is that they cannot see how God's attribute of grace and the exercise of
it can motivate sinners to morality, good works, and sincere attempts at holy living. But when a
person sees the how amazing God's grace really is, so as to give him a complete salvation, a
complete entitlement to all the blessings of eternal life and final glory, all based on the imputed
righteousness of Christ, then the love of God is implanted in his heart. Then, he has the only right
motive by which to obey God acceptably -- the certainty of final glory based on the merits of
Christ.
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