By the title of this little blog, you should be aware that I'm pretty keen on the idea of all things being by grace alone. Every now and then I think we all need to be reminded that everything we have,
we have by grace. So many want to argue that
they somehow had a hand in their own salvation, and continue to have a hand in
everything, but that does nothing but glorify man when all glory should be
reserved for God alone. God’s grace is
for His glory alone, and we need the humility of being reminded of that. Here is part of a message from Charles Spurgeon
based on Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:10, which “bookend” this quote:
“By the grace of God I am what I am.” And that statement may
be read, first, as meaning this, that Paul ascribed his own salvation to the
free favor of God. He believed himself to be a regenerate man, a forgiven man,
a saved man, and he believed that condition of his was the result of the
unmerited favor of God. He did not imagine that he was saved because he
deserved salvation, or that he had been forgiven because his repentance had
made an atonement for his sin. He did not reckon that his prayers had merited
salvation, or that his abundant labors and many sufferings had earned that boon
for him at God’s hands. No, he does not for a moment speak of merit, it is a
word which Paul’s mouth could not pronounce in such a connection as that; but
his declaration is, “It is by God’s free favor that I, Saul of Tarsus, have
been converted, and made into Paul the apostle, the servant of Jesus Christ. I attribute
this great change entirely to the good-will, the sovereign benignity, the
undeserved favor of the ever-blessed God.”
Now, my dear hearers, let me put this truth very plainly, so
that you may not mistake it. If you are saved, you do not owe your salvation to
anything that you have done; nor, if you ever are to be saved, will it be the
result of any goodness of your own. You may spin, but if you are ever saved,
the first thing God will do will be to unravel that which you have spun. You may
clothe yourself in the gaudy garments of a self-made righteousness, but God’s
first act of grace will be to strip you of them, and to make you feel that all
such garments are nothing but filthy rags, fit only for the fire. You must deny
your own merits, or you cannot have the merits of Christ. Your church-goings,
your chapel-going, your baptism, your so-called sacraments, your confirmation,
your private prayers, your family prayers, your Bible readings, your good
thoughts, your alms deeds, all these put together have no merit in them that
could help you to go an inch towards salvation. Salvation is not of works, but
of grace alone; and they who do not obtain salvation in this way will as surely
perish as the blasphemer and the drunkard. There is but one way of salvation,
the way of free favor. That was the way in which Paul went, and that is the way
in which we must go if we would enter into eternal life.
The word grace, in Scripture, also means something else
besides free favor; it very of then means operative power. When the Spirit of
God works savingly upon the heart, the influence which he exorts is called his
grace; so the apostle means here, “By the grace of God I am what I am;” that
is, “Whatever I am that is right, God made me that. If I am regenerate, I must have
been born again from above by the power of God. If I have repented, my
repentance was the gift of God. If I have believed, my faith was the work of
God. If I have perseverance in faith, that perseverance has been the effect of
the work of God in my soul. If I have ever prayed an acceptable prayer, it was
God’s grace that enabled me to do it. If I have ever sung God’s praise so as to
please him, that praise was first written in my heart by the Holy Spirit.”
“What hast thou which thou has not received?” is a question to which the answer
from every true heart is, “I have nothing which I have not received, except it
be my sin; but all I have that is good must have come from God.” If any of you
are to be saved, God must save you. Sinner, you are lost, and lost beyond
recovery by any hand but that which is divine and omnipotent. “It is not of him
that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” Let that
text roll like thunder over the heads of those who think that they can save themselves.
The Lord must do it from first to last. His is the first act of grace when he
quickeneth the spiritually dead, and his must be the last act of grace when we
lay down our vile bodies, and our spirit enters into the joy of our Lord.
Now, these two things being true, and being surely believed
among us, that salvation is by the free favor of God, and that it is by the
power of divine grace, I think I may say that, if Paul had been here, he would
have pushed this matter a little further. There are some of our dear brethren,
and true brethren, too, who do not see the doctrines of grace quite clearly.
They see men as trees walking, for they seem to attribute the fact of their
salvation in part to themselves. I do not say as to merit, for I believe they
abhor that idea; and I do not say as to power, for I believe they hold as
earnestly as we do that the sinner is dead in sin, and that the power to act
comes from the Holy Ghost. But, somehow or other, they make a great deal more
of man’s will than I think they should; just as, on the other hand, some speak too
little of the will of man, and treat men as if they had not any wills, but were
so many logs of wood. There is truth on both sides of the question; and, as
some of my brethren preach the other view of the truth, I will preach that view
of it which my text gives me.
If I am a saved man, how came I to be saved? Somebody asks,
“But why are you saved, and not other men?” My dear friend, there are two questions
there, so I must take them one at a time. Will you kindly let me take the first
one, only altering it thus, — Why are you saved? If you are saved, there is a
great difference between you and others who are not saved. You were once a
lover of pleasure and of the world, and you are now a lover of God. Now,
somebody made that difference, and whoever did it did a good action, so let his
head be crowned. Here is the crown. Now, sirs, upon whose head shall I put it?
Have you made yourself to differ from what you used to be, and from what others
still are? Are you prepared to wear the crown? You bow your head, and say, “Oh,
no! Let the Lord have the glory of it.”
Well, then, it is quite evident that God has made a
difference between you and others, and that it was a commendable thing for him
to do so; and as it was commendable for God to do it, it must have been so for
God to purpose to do it; and if it was commendable for him to purpose to do it
the day he did it, it was commendable for him to purpose to do it from all eternity;
and thus we get back to the old and glorious decrees and covenant of divine
grace of which some are so afraid, though, as surely as this Book is written of
God, it stands there that he hath “from the beginning” chosen his people unto
salvation. “By the grace of God I am what.”
Soli Deo Gloria!
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