'By grace ye have been saved.' There is another threadbare word. It is
employed in the New Testament with a very considerable width of
signification, which we do not need to attend to here. But, in regard of
the present context, let me just point out that the main idea conveyed
by the word is that of favour, or lovingkindness, or goodwill,
especially when directed to inferiors, and most eminently when given to
those who do not deserve it, but deserve its opposite. 'Grace' is love
that stoops and that requites, not according to desert, but bestows
upon those who deserve nothing of the kind; so when the Apostle declares
that the source of salvation is 'grace.' he declares two things. One is
that the fountain of all our deliverance from sin, and of our healing of
our sicknesses, lies in the deep heart of God, from which it wells up
undrawn, unmotived, uncaused by anything except His own infinite
lovingkindness. People have often presented the New Testament teaching
about salvation as if it implied that God's love was brought to man
because Jesus Christ died, and turned the divine affections. That is not
New Testament teaching. Christ's death is not the cause of God's love,
but God's love is the cause of Christ's death. 'God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son.'
When we hear in the Old Testament, 'I am that I am,' we may apply it to
this great subject. For that declaration of the very inmost essence of
the divine nature is not merely the declaration, in half metaphysical
terms, of a self-substituting, self-determining Being, high above
limitation and time and change, but it is a declaration that when He
loves He loves freely and unmodified save by the constraint of His own
Being. Just as the light, because it is light and must radiate, falls
upon dunghills and diamonds, upon black rocks and white snow, upon
ice-peaks and fertile fields, so the great fountain of the Divine Grace
pours out upon men by reason only of its own continual tendency to
communicate its own fulness and blessedness.
There follows from that the other thought, on which the Apostle mainly
dwells in our context, that the salvation which we need, and may have,
is not won by desert, but is given as a gift. Mark the last words of my
text--'that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.' They have often
been misunderstood, as if they referred to the faith which is mentioned
just before. But that is a plain misconception of the Apostle's meaning,
and is contradicted by the whole context. It is not faith that is the
gift of God, but it is salvation by grace. That is plain if you will
read on to the next verse. 'By grace are ye saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man
should boast.' What is it that is 'not of works'? Faith? certainly not.
Nobody would ever have thought it worth while to say, 'faith is _not_ of
works,' because nobody would have said that it _was_. The two clauses
necessarily refer to the same thing, and if the latter of them must
refer to salvation by grace, so must the former. Thus, the Apostle's
meaning is that we get salvation, not because we work for it but because
God gives it as a free gift, for which we have nothing to render, and
which we can never deserve.
Now, I am sure that there are some of you who are saying to yourselves,
'This is that old, threadbare, commonplace preaching again!' Well! shame
on us preachers if we have made a living Gospel into a dead theology.
And shame no less on you hearers if by you the words that should be good
news that would make the tongue of the dumb sing, and the lame man leap
as a hart, have been petrified and fossilised into a mere dogma.
I know far better than you do how absolutely inadequate all my words
are, but I want to bring it to you and to lay it not on your heads only
but on your hearts, as the good news that we all need, that we have not
to buy, that we have not to work to get salvation, but that having got
it we have to work thereafter. 'What shall we do that we might work the
works of God?' A whole series of diverse, long, protracted, painful
toils? Christ swept away the question by striking out the 's' at the end
of the word, and answered, 'This is the _work_' (not 'works') 'of God,'
the one thing which will open out into all heroism and practical
obedience, 'that ye believe on Him to whom He hath sent.'
III. That leads me to the last point--viz. the Christian requirement of
the condition of salvation.
Note the precision of the Apostle's prepositions: 'Ye have been saved
_by_ grace'; there is the source--'Ye have been saved by grace,
_through_ faith'--there is the medium, the instrument, or, if I may so
say, the channel; or, to put it into other words, the condition by which
the salvation which has its source in the deep heart of God pours its
waters into my empty heart. 'Through faith,' another threadbare word,
which, withal, has been dreadfully darkened by many comments, and has
unfortunately been so represented as that people fancy it is some kind
of special attitude of mind and heart, which is only brought to bear in
reference to Christ's Gospel. It is a thousand pities, one sometimes
thinks, that the word was not translated 'trust' instead of 'faith,' and
then we should have understood that it was not a theological virtue at
all, but just the common thing that we all know so well, which is the
cement of human society and the blessedness of human affection, and
which only needs to be lifted, as a plant that had been running along
the ground, and had its tendrils bruised and its fruit marred might be
lifted, and twined round the pillar of God's throne, in order to grow up
and bear fruit that shall be found after many days unto praise, and
honour, and glory.
Trust; that is the condition. The salvation rises from the heart of God.
You cannot touch the stream at its source, but you can tap it away down
in its flow. What do you want machinery and pumps for? Put a yard of
wooden pipe into the river, and your house will have all the water it
needs.
So, dear brethren, here is the condition--it is a condition only, for
there is no virtue in the act of trust, but only in that with which we
are brought into living union when we do trust. When salvation comes,
into my heart by faith it is not my faith but God's grace that puts
salvation there.
Faith is only the condition, ay! but it is the indispensable condition.
How many ways are there of getting possession of a gift? One only, I
should suppose, and that is, to put out a hand and take it. If salvation
is _by_ grace it must be '_through_ faith.' If you will not accept you
cannot have. That is the plain meaning of what theologians call
justification by faith; that pardon is given on condition of taking it.
If you do not take it you cannot have it. And so this is the upshot of
the whole--trust, and you have.
Oh, dear friends! open your eyes to see your dangers. Let your
conscience tell you of your sickness. Do not try to deliver, or to heal
yourselves. Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they
leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own
Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the
toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python.
You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you can build a
railway to the moon. You must sue _in forma pauperis_, and be content to
accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an
undeserved seat at His bountiful table, an unearned share in His wealth,
from the hands of your Elder Brother, in whom is all His grace, and who
gives salvation to every sinner if he will trust Him. 'By grace have ye
been saved through faith.'