Precious Remedy: Understanding Saving Grace

Device 3.4: in keeping souls in a sad, doubting, and questioning condition is, “by suggesting to them that their graces are not true, but counterfeit.”

Remedies:

Consider that grace is taken two ways.

It is taken for the gracious good-will and favor of God. This is saving grace, where it pleased God in his own free love to accept some in Christ for his own. This grace makes a man gracious with God.

This is positional grace, where God acts to save those whom he chooses, draws them to himself, revealing the person and work of Christ, His son. ; ; ; .

it is taken for the gifts of grace, and they are two types; common or special.

it is taken for the gifts of grace, and they are two types; common or special.

Common - in the sense that, both believers and non-believers special graces are proper and peculiar to the saints, as faith, humility, meekness, love, patience, etc.

Common - in the sense that, both believers and non-believers.

Special graces are proper and peculiar to the saints, as faith, humility, meekness, love, patience, etc.

Consider the differences between renewing grace and restraining grace, between sanctifying grace and temporary grace.

Consider the differences between renewing grace and restraining grace, between sanctifying grace and temporary grace.

True grace makes all glorious internally, and externally; true grace changes a man’s nature. . Moral virtue only restrains the outward man, it doesn’t change the whole man. A lion in a cage is still a lion, he’s restrained, but not changed. True grace would turn the lion into a lamb. (Paul’s Conversion)

The objects of true grace are supernatural. True grace is knowledgable about the choicest and highest objects; meaning, God, The Father, Christ The Son, His precious Holy Spirit, and precious promises of life and his kingdom are held high and prized above all. Verses the objects of temporary grace, the transient things of this world, which pale in comparison.

True grace enables a Christian, when he is himself, to do spiritual actions with real pleasure and delight. ; ; ; However, temporary grace, moral virtues, religious services are a toil and pleasurable, but a burden.

True Grace makes a man most careful, and most fearful of his own heart. True grace keeps a man’s heart in the examination room. In other words, he is first concerned with his own heart before God rather than being concerned with his neighbor’s heart. ; ; ; ;

Grace will work a man’s heart to love and cleave to the strictest and holiest ways and things of God, for their purity and sanctity, in the face of all dangers and hardships. ; . However, temporary grace doesn’t sustain the soul in adversities ; .

True grace will enable a man to step over the world’s crown, to take up Christ’s cross; to prefer the cross of Christ above the glory of this world. . However, temporary grace will ultimately choose the world’s crown; ; .

Saving grace, renewing grace, will cause a man to follow the Lord fully in the desertion of all sin, and in the observation of all God’s precepts . Where restraining grace and temporary grace cannot enable a man to follow the LORD fully. It only allows him to follow the LORD partially, unevenly, and reservedly . True grace works in a man’s heart to hate sin and love truth ; ; ; ; ; ; .