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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433515484 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 01/05/2011 |
| Pages: | 152 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
OUR GRACIOUS GOD
Great God of wonders! All thy ways Are worthy of thyself — divine:
If you were asked to sum up the entire message of the Bible in just one word, which word would you choose? Reconciliation, salvation, justification, atonement, faith, love, eternal life? All of these are wonderful words, but the word I would choose is grace. The very last verse in the Bible summarizes the message of Holy Scripture from Genesis to Revelation: "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all" (Rev. 22:21).
The word grace is found some 150 times in the New Testament alone. A quick look in any Bible concordance will show how grace is used to describe the most basic truths of the Christian faith. The God of the Bible is preeminently the God of grace (1 Pet. 5:10). Jesus came into the world "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of grace (Zech. 12:10). God's throne is a throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). We receive forgiveness according to the riches of divine grace (Eph. 1:7). We are chosen, justified, and sanctified, and one day will be glorified all because of grace. Every Christian is called to be a good steward of the manifold grace of God (1 Pet. 4:10). God's grace brings salvation (Titus 2:11). The good news we proclaim is the gospel of grace, and if anyone preaches a different gospel, Paul does not hesitate to say, in the boldest language imaginable, that he should go straight to hell! Yes, as harsh as it sounds, this is what the Greek phrase anathema esto in Galatians 1:9 means: "Let him be accursed," that is, eternally condemned by God!
Grace is the great theme of the Bible, and it is also present in every act of Christian worship and devotion. We say "grace" at the table before we eat our meals. Christian baptism celebrates the triumph of God's grace in bringing a lost man or woman out of the darkness of sin into the marvelous light of new life in Christ. In the Lord's Supper we remember God's gracious favor in sending Christ to be our Redeemer, even as we commune with him through the power of the Holy Spirit and look forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb, when by God's grace we shall see the Savior face-to-face. Frequently our worship services are closed by a benediction extolling the triune God of grace and love: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Cor. 13:14).
And, oh, how Christians love to sing about God's grace!
Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace,
When I was a teenager I often listened to a radio broadcast called Revival Time with Assemblies of God evangelist C. M. Ward. At the end of every program, as Dr. Ward gave the gospel invitation, the choir sang,
The cross upon which Jesus died is a shelter in which we can hide;
But no hymn is more beloved than John Newton's "Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound." The son of a British shipmaster, Newton entered naval service himself and became a slave trader. Amid the perils of the sea, he was rescued from a life of despair and debauchery. Newton later became, along with William Wilberforce, a major force in the abolition of the slave trade. In looking back on his life and the transformation that had occurred, he could account for this change only by appealing to the grace of God. And so he wrote:
Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound,
On any Sunday you can still hear it sung in great cathedrals and in small country churches, on the radio and television and YouTube, by gospel quartets and rock artists and operatic soloists, in hundreds of languages around the world:
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
There is a sense in which God's grace is so simple that even a small child can grasp its meaning. And yet it is so profound that the most learned theologians cannot fully comprehend its wonder and beauty and power. For grace is not only amazing; it is also perplexing. When we think about it, and God does want us to think about it (see 2 Tim. 2:15; 1 Pet. 3:15), the doctrine of grace raises many questions in our minds. From what source comes God's grace? If it is true that humans can do nothing to save themselves, why are there so many commands and exhortations in the Bible? What about predestination? How does God's sovereignty relate to human responsibility? Is the invitation to believe in Christ really meant for everyone or just the elected few, the "frozen chosen"? What about falling from grace? Is it possible to lose our salvation by falling into sin? Does God really know everything that will happen before it occurs? If God is sovereign, why do suffering and evil exist in the world? How should we understand the grace of God in relation to missions and evangelism? Why are election or predestination sometimes sources of division, even among Bible-believing Christians?
These are some of the questions we are going to deal with in this study. But I want to make clear right from the start that I do not claim to have completely satisfactory answers to all these questions. The apostle Paul had personal revelations and visitations to heaven not available to most ordinary Christians. But even he was forced to admit that "we know in part and we prophesy in part. ... For now we see in a mirror dimly" (1 Cor. 13:9, 12).
The study of God's grace is like staring into the sun on a bright cloudless day. That is a dangerous thing to do. Our eyes can be damaged, even blinded, by such unobstructed vision. Yet only by means of the sun can we see anything at all — the blue sky, beautiful flowers, mountains, meadows, all of God's multicolored creation. Only a stupid person would decide to live his whole life inside a bunker beneath the ground for fear of walking outside in the sunshine. And so with God's grace, we must not peer too directly into matters God has not revealed so clearly, lest our spiritual vision be blurred. But we must never forget that only by God's grace can we see anything at all. May God — a God who is far greater than our best ideas and infinitely more marvelous than our finest theologies — help us to approach this subject with reverence, humility, and a sense of wonder.
I recognize that not everyone will agree with even the provisional answers I shall offer on some of these disputed matters. Thus in the interest of full disclosure, let me say up front that I write from the perspective of a Reformed Baptist theologian. This view, I believe, represents the mainstream of historic Baptist theology through the centuries. My views on God's grace do not differ from those held by such evangelically committed and missionary-minded Baptist leaders as John Bunyan, Roger Williams, William Carey, Andrew Fuller, Luther Rice, Adoniram Judson, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
In fairness, though, it needs to be said that there has always been within the Baptist tradition a variety of views on how God's grace should be understood, on the proper balance between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Throughout this study, I shall note areas of significant divergence while disclosing my own views as well. Evangelical Christians committed to historic Christian orthodoxy, whether Calvinists or Arminians, share more in common about the doctrine of grace than their disputes and battles have sometimes shown. I want to emphasize this common ground, for it is liable to be blurred by zealous combatants on both sides. At the same time, I want to encourage all of us to a deeper searching of God's Word on this crucial doctrine. Tertullian indicated that the Christians of ancient Carthage had a certain reputation among the pagans of that city: "See," they said, "how they love one another!" When the world looks at the church today, what they need most to see are not Christians carrying on graceless debates about the doctrine of grace. What the world needs to see are believers who have been transformed by grace, who love one another, and who are reaching out to a lost world in Jesus' name.
In recent years, there has been a lively discussion of these issues among many Baptists, and I think this is a good thing. In some measure, this discussion has been prompted by a return to a sounder doctrine of biblical authority. If the Bible really is the Word of God, inerrant and infallible in all that it claims, then it becomes very important to determine exactly what the Bible does teach about such important matters as God's grace and our response to it. While Baptists may not agree on every aspect of interpretation, at the end of the day we will submit our judgment to the final bar of Holy Scripture. We are grateful for Baptist heroes of the past, and we may rightly turn to them for guidance. But W. T. Conner, E. Y. Mullins, Augustus H. Strong, Charles H. Spurgeon, John A. Broadus, James P. Boyce, and other Baptist theologians whose works we can read with much profit may all be quite wrong on this or that matter of doctrine. From first to last, our warrant is God's Word written! Like the disciples of Berea, we must examine the Scriptures to see whether these things are true (Acts 17:11). Like Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, may our consciences remain ever captive to the Holy Scriptures.
WHAT GRACE IS
There are many definitions of grace, but one of my favorites is the one I first learned as a little boy in Sunday school: grace is "God's Riches At Christ's Expense." We must not stumble over the simplicity of that phrase lest we also miss its profundity. It points to three elements that are essential in a biblical understanding of grace.
First, grace originates with God. God initiates grace. As Paul says in Romans 9:16, "So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy." If any creature has any claim on grace whatsoever, it is solely because that grace has been given, bestowed, freely and undeservedly granted by God.
Second, God's grace is inexhaustible, irrepressible, overflowing. God is not stingy. He is "rich in mercy," Paul says (Eph. 2:4). Once a violent persecutor of God's people, a converted Paul declared, "The grace of our Lord overflowed for me" (1 Tim. 1:14). When John Bunyan wrote his own spiritual autobiography, he picked up on this same theme, calling it Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (see Rom. 5:20). One of the problems with the term limited atonement (a phrase we shall come back to in chapter 4) is that it suggests that something is missing or lacking in God's grace. Like cold drinks at a picnic, the supply is said to be "limited" for fear that it might run out, that there might not be enough to go around! But this could not possibly be true of God's grace, for it is infinite and knows no such bounds.
Finally, grace is God's riches at Christ's expense. We should never think of grace apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, the embodiment of divine grace. It is "from the fullness of his grace" that we have received blessing upon blessing (John 1:16, NIV). This means that while grace is radically free, it is never cheap, for it cost God the dearest thing he had, the sacrifice of his Son.
In chapter 3 we shall take up the theme of God's sovereignty in salvation, but it is equally important to stress the sovereign freedom of God in creation as well. We cannot understand grace at all without considering this question: Who is God and why did he make the world in the first place? Some people teach that God made the world because, way back in the vast reaches of eternity past, he had somehow grown lonely. He created the world, so this theory goes, in order to have something to love. What an utterly pagan notion of God! It supposes that in his innermost being, God lives utterly alone — a monad, superior and transcendent to be sure, but isolated and aloof in his omnipotence. Arius, a false teacher of the fourth century, believed this. He wrote, "We know there is one God, alone unbegotten, alone eternal, alone without beginning, alone true, alone immortal. ..."
The Bible gives us a very different picture of God. Here we learn that within the being of God himself lies a mysterious living love, a dynamic reciprocity of surrender and affirmation, of giving and receiving, among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is not the Alone with the Alone. The Maker of heaven and earth is both one and tripersonal. He is the triune God of holiness and love.
God does not express his ultimate reality in terms of brute power and force alone. This is not the most decisive mark of God's divinity. The relationship of total and mutual self-giving, by which the Father gives everything to the Son, and the Son offers back all that he has to glorify the Father, is what makes God really God. The love of the Father and the Son for one another is established and sealed by the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from both.
If all this is true, then why on earth did God make the world in the first place? Not because he had to, but simply because he chose to, for his "good pleasure," as Paul puts it (Eph. 1:5, NKJV). Contrary to what certain feminist theologians think, God is the Lord of creation, not its midwife. God did not need to create something outside himself as an object for his love, for God is love (1 John 4:8). There is nothing missing or lacking in God. He is the fountain of being. In him dwell all holiness, glory, light, power, happiness, and joy. Yet amazingly, out of the richness and utter sufficiency of his own being, God created the world and human beings within it. He granted them a creaturely reality and freedom and invited them to share in the out-splashing of his divine love for all eternity. Indeed, the Bible speaks of God as "jealous" for his own glory and honor. He will brook no rivals. But he is not a grudging, stingy God like a Silas Marner (in George Eliot's novel) carefully counting his gold coins every night for fear that one of them might have gotten away. No, at the heart of God springs freedom, an unthreatenedness, a generosity that reflects his own character. This forms the basis of all human reality and freedom. This kindles the source of wonder and awe, the kind of wonder that prompted Martin Luther to find sermons in peach stones and to adore the living God who made heaven and earth (and me too, Luther says) of his "sheer fatherly kindness and compassion, apart from any merit or worthiness of mine: For all of which I am bound to thank and praise him, to serve him and to be obedient, which is assuredly true."
Some people accept the idea that God created the world, but they cannot imagine that he has much to do with its continuing operation, much less with our human lives. The British poet and novelist, Thomas Hardy, once wrote in disparaging terms about God as
... the dreaming, dark, dumb Thing That turns the handle of this idle Show.
Hardy believed in the god of deism: he created the world and still cranks it along from time to time, but he wouldn't think of getting his hands dirty in the daily muck and mess of it all. He is like an absentee landlord who neither knows nor cares much about the tenants who occupy his property. An idol of the modern imagination, this god has crippled feet and withered hands, eyes that don't see, and ears that don't hear.
How different is the God of the Bible who is everywhere active, alive, involved. Jesus said that no act is too insignificant for the Father's care. He knows every time a sparrow falls to the ground in a hailstorm. In his great and boundless wisdom, God knows even how to use evil instruments to do good, including the Devil himself. Paul makes this clear in 2 Corinthians 12:7, where he describes his "thorn ... in the flesh" as something "given" by God through the agency of Satan. Through God's providential care, even painful episodes such as this can become occasions for grace.
COMMON GRACE
When we think of God's general providence and care for the world and all its creatures, we are talking about common grace as distinguished from the special grace of God manifested in the coming of Christ into the world to save sinners. We can see evidence of God's common grace in his general revelation — God's disclosure of his reality throughout the created world and also in the human conscience. In speaking to a pagan audience at Lystra, Paul declared that God "did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness" (Acts 14:17). God pours his common grace out indiscriminately on all persons everywhere, causing the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike (see Matt. 5:45).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Amazing Grace"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Timothy George.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface, 11,
Chapter 1 Our Gracious God, 15,
Chapter 2 The Providence Mystery, 25,
Chapter 3 Saved by Grace, 57,
Chapter 4 A Graceful Theology, 79,
Chapter 5 Grace and the Great Commission, 101,
Chapter 6 Living by Grace, 123,
Notes, 143,
Scripture Index, 149,
What People are Saying About This
“Reading this wonderful book resembles exploring a spiritual treasure trove. You encounter one sparkling insight after another regarding God’s marvelous grace. In accessible prose Timothy George helps us to understand better just how amazing God’s sovereign grace actually is. The book’s message will instruct, encourage, and refresh your Christian life. After all, God’s sovereign grace is a worthy subject for our daily reflection and most profound meditation.”—John D. Woodbridge, Research Professor, Church History and History of Christian Thought, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
“Amazing Grace by Timothy George is an amazing little book! It is biblical and practical, theological and missional. It delves into the mystery of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, providing wonderful insight while also allowing the tensions of Scripture to remain. I was blessed by the book the first time I read it. I enjoyed this edition even more.”—Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
“It is hard to be simultaneously boring and polarizing, but the Calvinism/Arminianism debates typically are both. The arguments are often filled with the kind of ‘bitter jealousy’ and ‘selfish ambition,’ the Scriptures identify as ‘demonic.’ Timothy George’s Amazing Grace is different. In this book, a world-renowned Christian scholar walks through the biblical texts about God’s purpose of grace in a way that is honest, easy to understand, and charitable to those who disagree. Whether you are a Calvinist, an Arminian, or somewhere in between, you’ll learn something from this book. You’ll also see modeled how to converse with those who disagree with you. And, more than all that, you’ll put the book down at the end and worship our love-driven, grace-filled God. This is the best book on God’s grace in print today.”—Russell Moore, Public Theologian, Christianity Today; Director, Christianity Today's Public Theology Project
“Biblically faithful, historically well informed, and irenic in tone, this wise work from the pen of Timothy George is a sure guide for anyone perplexed about questions of divine sovereignty, grace, and human responsibility. Highly recommended!”—Graham A. Cole, Emeritus Dean and Emeritus Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; author, He Who Gives Life and Faithful Theology
“Historically informed, timely in its application, and gracious in spirit, George has given us a biblically-based and theologically-formed treatment of the amazing grace of God in the salvation of men and women. This lucid and readable work will be beneficial for many, especially those who struggle with the tensions involved in God’s initiative in our salvation and our response to God’s abounding grace for sinners. I am pleased to recommend this insightful treatment of this important theme, which will be particularly helpful to pastors, church leaders, and church study groups.”—David S. Dockery, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
“Amazing Grace is a gracious and graceful defense of the doctrines of grace. Although this book began its life as a piece dedicated to helping Southern Baptists understand the dispute between Calvinists and non-Calvinists in their denomination, it should help anyone appreciate why the apprehension of God’s grace must be absolutely central to Christian life and worship. May many, by God’s grace, read it and adopt its wise and irenic posture to the various controversies that a biblically faithful affirmation of grace can arouse.”—Mark Talbot, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Wheaton College; author, Suffering and the Christian Life series