Tag Archives: Grace

Willing to Will as God Wills

Posted on by under Alexander Maclaren, Wilbur M. Smith

Practical conformity to God’s will cannot be attained by our own efforts. We cannot will to will as God wills, but we can turn ourselves to Him and ask Him to put the power within us to subdue the evil conqueror, the rebels, and make us masters of our own troubled spirits. There is only one power that can draw us out of the land of rebellious disobedience where the famine and the rags are, and that is the convicting Spirit of God which is given to all them that desire Him and will lead them in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. If He be my God… and therefore longing to have me obedient, He will not withhold what is needed to make me so.

Alexander Maclaren in Wilbur M. Smith, Peloubet’s Select Notes on the International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching (Boston: W. A. Wilde Co., 1948), 287.

Blessing Is Conditioned on Christ’s Perfect Obedience

Posted on by under Jerry Bridges

To live by grace means we understand that God’s blessing on our lives is not conditioned by our obedience or disobedience but by the perfect obedience of Christ. It means that out of a grateful response to the grace of God, we seek to understand His will and to obey Him, not to be blessed, but because we have been blessed.

Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991), 99-100.

If Obedience to God’s Law Is Optional…

Posted on by under Jerry Bridges

Ironically, the law of God, viewed as commands to be obeyed, should actually promote promote living by grace. When we view God’s commands as optional — or think that as God’s children we are no longer under the law as a moral requirement — we subtly slip into a works mentality. If obedience to God’s law is optional, then in our minds we begin to accumulate merit or extra points. “After all, we didn’t have to obey, so we must gain some voluntary obedience.”

But the person who knows that he is required to obey God’s commands, even as a child of God, will see more and more how far short he comes in obedience. And if that person understands the biblical concept of grace, he will be driven more and more into the arms of the Savior and His merit alone.

Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991), 92.

Standing Daily in Grace

Posted on by under Jerry Bridges

The grace of salvation is the same grace by which we live the Christian life.  Paul said in Romans 5.2, ‘We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.’ (emphasis added).  We are not only justified by grace through faith, we stand every day in this same grace…. [We must] be so gripped by the magnificence and boundless generosity of God’s grace that we respond out of gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty.

original emphasis, Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991), 75.

Grace Meets Us in New and More Abundant Measures

Posted on by under Horatius Bonar

We often feel as if grace had done its utmost when it has carried us safely through the desert, and set us down at the gate of the kingdom. We feel as if, when grace has landed us there, it has done all for us that we are to expect.

But God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. He does exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think. It is just when we reach the threshold of the prepared heavenly city, that grace meets us in new and more abundant measures, presenting us with the recompense of the reward.

The love that shall meet us then to bid us welcome to the many mansions, shall be love beyond what we were here able to comprehend; for then shall we fully realize, as if for the first time, the meaning of these words, ‘The love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord;’ and then shall we have that prayer of Christ fulfilled in us, ‘That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’

It was grace which on earth said to us, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest;’ and it will be grace, in all its exceeding riches, that will hereafter say to us, ‘Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’

Horatius Bonar, “The God of Grace”

HT: Of First Importance