Sermon Tone Analysis

The grace of God

Grace is a favorable disposition towards the unworthy and wretched, and the free bestowal of kindness on one who has no claim to it.

It is the exercise of love towards an inferior or dependent object and is commonly described as undeserved favor.

God’s grace is his unmerited goodness freely given to those who have forfeited it and who are, by nature, under the sentence of eternal death.

The grace of God is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature that appears to us as a self-caused tendency to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who before were under just disapproval.

Divine grace means that God takes the initiative and seeks to communicate His favors and blessings to His creatures.

He stoops to embrace the worthless and unattractive, and to bestow benefits on the undeserving.

a.

The grace of God is eternal.

Just as God’s essence is eternal and immutable, so His unmerited love to man is from everlasting to everlasting and without the slightest hint of change.

What has God always been and always will be ___________________________ ()?

When was this grace given to us? ____________________ ()?

This grace certainly will last through endless ages.

It was planned before it was exercised, purposed before it was imparted, eternal before it was revealed.

b.

The grace of God is free.

Divine grace cannot be bought or won or claimed by right.

It cannot be earned by the performance of religious and spiritual works, or secured by some excellence in man.

It is not a matter of debt, for God no more owes a debt to fallen man than to fallen angels.

If grace could be deserved because of works and merit, what happens to grace?

_________________________________ ().

The truth is that God was under no obligation to pity our misery and repair our ruins; He could have justly left us to our fate.

Grace is divine love freely shown to guilty sinners, who deserve only eternal damnation.

How’s it described in ?

__________________________________________________________ Grace is both priceless and free—priceless in that it is beyond price, and free because nothing needs to be given in return for it.

c.

The grace of God is sovereign.

The unmerited favor of God rests on His sovereign will.

It is dispensed according to His what? _______________________________________________ (; cf )?

And bestowed on who? _____________________________().

No one is consulted by God as to the choice of the objects of grace and he is uninfluenced by the actions of His creatures.

His grace cannot be resisted or extinguished, and it always accomplishes the purpose for which it was given.

It is best demonstrated in the electing love of God that secured, at immeasurable cost, the blessedness of undeserving creatures.

d.

The grace of God is fully revealed in Christ Jesus.

It is perfectly manifested and exemplified in and by and through Whom? _____________________________().

‘The law was given through Moses: grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (,).

As the ‘radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being’ (), the Son of God is the perfect and complete expression of divine grace, and the channel through whom all the unmerited blessings of salvation flow.

"But the gift is not like the trespass.

For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many.”

(; cf 5:17,21).

e.

The grace of God is bestowed on sinners for their eternal salvation.

What do we believe?

_____________________________________ (; cf ).

The whole of salvation, from predestination to glorification, is for the praise of what?

__________________________ (; cf 1:12,14; 2:6–7).

We are chosen by grace () and predestined to be adopted as His sons "He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.” ().

We are pardoned ‘according to the riches of His grace’ () and ‘justified freely by His grace’ (; cf 4:16; ).

We are raised up with Christ in order that in the coming ages God "...might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift-

not from works, so that no one can boast.”

() Oh, amazing grace, so rich and free, and so able to save completely and eternally the worst of sinners ()!

Shenton, T. (2005).

Our Perfect God: A Summary of the Attributes of God (pp.

46–48).

Leominster, UK: Day One Publications.