Ascribed to God, grace is His voluntary, unrestrained, unmerited favor toward guilty sinners, granting them justification and life instead of the penalty of death, which they deserved.
Grace…expresses two complementary thoughts: God’s unmerited favor to us through Christ, and God’s divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 98-99. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com, All rights reserved. Get this book!
Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 21-22. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Grace…means the full and free forgiveness of every sin, without God demanding or expecting anything from the one so forgiven.
In efficacious grace we are not merely passive, nor yet does God do some and we do the rest. But God does all, and we do all. God produces all, we act all. For that is what produces, viz. our own acts. God is the only proper author and fountain; we only are the proper actors. We are in different respects, wholly passive and wholly active.
Grace is reward, or favor, given to those who deserve judgment. If a judge found a serial rapist guilty, and then stepped down from his bench, agreed to take the death penalty in the criminal’s place, and sent the rapist on an all-expense-paid vacation to Hawaii for thirty years, that would be grace. The severity of the criminal’s crimes would be the measure of the judge’s grace. In the same way, the knowledge of what we deserve, and what it cost God to be gracious, is the measure of His fatherly grace. When it is said and done, the cross is the tape that measures the length and breadth of God’s grace. Like God’s wrath, His grace is holy. It transcends all human conceptions.
Gospel-Powered Parenting, 2009, P&R Publishing, p. 89, Used by Permission. Get this book!
For [the common] acronym to work, we must figure the ugliness of sin into the equation. If the definition read, “G.R.A.C.E. is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense extended to men and women who deserve wrath,” we would have a complete definition of grace.
Gospel-Powered Parenting, 2009, P&R Publishing, p. 88, Used by Permission. Get this book!
Grace is not something that one earns or gets; it is something that one can only receive.
Luke – Exegetical Commentary, Zondervan, www.zondervan.com, 2011, p. 298.
God’s grace is His active favor bestowing the greatest gifts upon those who have deserved the greatest punishment.
Grace is the very opposite of merit… Grace is not only undeserved favor, but it is favor shown to the one who has deserved the very opposite.
[Grace is] the free and benevolent influence of a Holy God operating sovereignly in the lives of undeserved sinners.
The noun [mercy] and its derivatives always deal with what we see of pain, misery, and distress, these results of sin; and grace always with the sin and the guilt itself. The one extends relief, the other pardon; the one cures, heals, helps, the other cleanses and reinstates. With God [grace] is always first and [mercy] is second.
From Interpretation of Saint Matthews Gospel by Richard C. Lenski, © 1932, Augsburg Publishing House, p. 743.
Grace is favor shown to people who do not deserve any favor at all… We deserve nothing but hell. If you think you deserve heaven, take it from me, you are not a Christian.
The Cross, Crossway, 1986, p. 75.
God’s grace is His unmerited favor toward the wicked, unworthy sinners, by which He delivers them from condemnation and death.
Titus, Moody, 1996, p. 107.
[Grace] tells us how our Judge has become our Savior.
Taken from Knowing God by JI Packer. Copyright(c) 1973. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p.132. Get this book!
Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.
What’s grace? In general, grace is favor bestowed upon those undeserving of it. It’s an unmerited gift. As it flows from God, it’s blessings from the One who can provide and override whatever He desires. It’s forgiveness from all past sins, strength for the present and hope for the future. It’s unending, beyond comprehension, infinite, free, sovereign, sufficient, manifold and grounded in the perfect character of God. Due to the work of Christ, it is continually distributed toward those who love Him. Yes, life is difficult, but for those in Christ, you are a child of “the God of all grace” (1 Pet. 5:10).
Sermon, Let Grace Be the Final Word, 1 Peter 5:10-14, April 24, 2022.
The first and possibly most fundamental characteristic of divine grace is that it presupposes sin and guilt. Grace has meaning only when men are seen as fallen, unworthy of salvation, and liable to eternal wrath… Grace does not contemplate sinners merely as undeserving but as ill-deserving… It is not simply that we do not deserve grace; we do deserve hell.
The Grandeur of God, Baker, 1984, p. 124.
Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Distinguish grace from mercy:
Grace-God’s solution to man’s sin.
Mercy-God’s solution to man’s misery.
Grace-Covers the sin.
Mercy-Removes the pain.
Grace-Gives us what we do not deserve.
Mercy-Does not give us what we do deserve
Grace-Unearned favor which saves us.
Mercy-Undeserved favor which forgives us.
Grace-Deals with the cause of sin.
Mercy-Deals with the symptoms of sin.
Grace-Offers pardon for the crime.
Mercy-Offers relief from the punishment.
Grace-Cures or heals the “disease.”
Mercy-Eliminates the pain of the “disease.”
Grace-Regarding salvation it says, “Heaven.”
Mercy-Regarding salvation it says, “No Hell.”
Grace-Says, “I pardon you.”
Mercy-Says, “I pity you”
http://www.preceptaustin.org/matthew_57.htm
Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve and mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve.
