• Title Page
• Introduction
• The Nature of God
• The Nature of Moral Being
• The Nature of Sin
• The Nature of Moral Government
• The Nature of Justice
• The Nature of Mercy
• The Nature of Substitution
• The Nature of Grace
• The Nature of Salvation

The Nature of Grace

Chapter VIII

We now have before us an outline of the outstanding facts about what sin is and does. We have seen the inescapable reaction of a holy God toward sin, and the threatened heart-rupture in His love for both the sinless and the sinful. We have seen the necessity in such a Being as reason demands God should be, that both justice and mercy shall find a way to act both in full freedom and in mutual harmony in the presence of sin. And we have seen that God has provided Himself a living Way on the principle of substitution, in that He Himself did the work of a Substitute in the Person of His own Son.

Now we are to learn that this union of justice and mercy through the death of God in His Son on the cross, is His love becoming grace, and grace making available a salvation from sin that never otherwise could have been possible. It is this harmonious union of justice and mercy, acting together to save those who deserve the very opposite, that constitutes grace.

In order, however, to come into any adequate appreciation of such a salvation, we need to look more deeply into the “pit from which we were digged.” A medical remedy that saves from otherwise inevitable death, is esteemed far above one that merely hastens relief from an ailment that would have passed away anyway with a little more time.

So we must first take our stand before the cross and see for ourselves the full and final uncovering of sin, that we may