As a result, mercy does not appear to be as free as grace. Whereas grace is God’s goodness toward sinners, mercy is God’s goodness toward sufferers. It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and who had no reason to expect anything but severity” (see Packer, Knowing God, 120).Īlthough they are similar and undeniably related, grace is not the same as mercy. Packer put it this way: “The grace of God is love freely shown towards guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit. Louis Berkhof defined it as “the free bestowal of kindness on one who has no claim to it” (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 71). We turn now to the “grace” that “saves.” Defining Graceĭutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck defined the saving grace of God as “his voluntary, unrestrained, unmerited favor toward guilty sinners, granting them justification and life instead of the penalty of death, which they deserved” (see Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, 208). Thus, when we speak of the operation of God’s grace to save, we have in mind what Paul referred to in Ephesians 2:8–9, where he spoke of our having been saved “by grace … through faith” in Jesus Christ. 5:10), and under the curse imposed by divine law (Gal.
5:18–21), subject to his righteous wrath (John 3:36 Eph. The Scriptures consistently speak of our desperate plight apart from Christ. The greatest threat to the human soul is not economic collapse or militant fundamentalism or psychological anomie. But the focus of Scripture is on our deliverance or salvation from the well-warranted judgment of an infinitely holy and righteous God. We often speak of being “saved” from perilous circumstances, political oppression and tyranny, famine, plague, or the many and varied threats posed by natural catastrophes. The term “salvation” is not here used with reference to self-realization or the experience of being delivered from low self-esteem.
And when God’s goodness “is shown to those who only deserve evil,” it “bears the name grace” (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation, 214).īut before we examine the meaning of this expression of God’s grace, we must determine what is meant by the word “saving” or the grace of “salvation.” The God of Scripture is consistently portrayed as not only great but also good. Millard Erickson reminds us that a great God “might conceivably be an immoral or amoral being, exercising his power and knowledge in a capricious or even cruel fashion” (see Erickson, Christian Theology, I:283-84). But to say that God is great is not enough. We see this in his attributes of eternality, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, immutability, and aseity. That God is great almost goes without saying.
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