When we are worshipping the
Lord, we praise Him, rejoicing in this: He has saved us by His grace.
When we say that He has saved us by His grace, we do not deny that that
we have been saved through faith.
We say both these things: "by grace" and "through faith". "Through
faith" reminds us that we must make our personal response to Christ. "By
grace" is God's answer to the question, "Where does this response come
from?" It comes from the Lord. "Faith comes from what is heard, and what
is heard comes by the preaching of Christ" (Romans 10:17). When faith
arises in our hearts, in response to the Gospel of divine grace, we say,
from the heart, "Salvation is of the Lord" (Jonah 2:9).
The relationship between grace and faith is neither (a) co-operative nor
(b) coercive.
(a) We do not contribute to our own salvation. It is always, "nothing in
my hands I bring, simply to Thy Cross I cling." We do not come to the
Lord with our religion in one hand and our morality in the other hand.
We come to Him empty-handed and receive from Him His free gift of
salvation. Receiving God's free gift of salvation through faith in our
Saviour, Jesus Christ, we speak, from the heart, the words of Psalm
118:23 - "the Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes. We
echo the words of Psalm 115:1 - "Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to
Your Name be the glory, because of Your love and faithfulness."
(b) We are not forced to receive Christ. We do not come to Him with
reluctance. We come to Him with rejoicing. Rejoicing in the grace which
has reached out to us in our sinfulness, we affirm the truth of Jesus'
words, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 16:15). Receiving
this grace with gladness, we say, "The Lord is my chosen portion" (Psalm
16:5). We sing, "O happy day that fixed my choice on Thee, my Saviour
and my God." We trace the way in which the Lord has led us to faith and
we sing, "He drew me and I followed on, charmed to confess that grace
divine." We have been "loved with everlasting love." We have been "led
by grace that love to know."
The relationship between grace and faith may be described thus: the
whole of the work is God's (the absolute necessity of grace) and the
whole of the work is man's (the absolute necessity of faith). There is,
of course, mystery here. it is, however, a mystery in which we rejoice -
"Amazing love, how can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?"
A response to a comment by G. R. Osborne on Berkouwer’s understanding of the doctrine of final perseverance
In his contribution to Clark Pinnock (editor), Grace Unlimited (1975), G. R. Osborne states that Berkouwer, in Faith and Perseverance, pp. 9-10, “speaks of the time less ness of the doctrine of final perseverance, founded on ‘the richness and abidingness of salvation” (p. 188, emphasis mine). This single-sentence comment on Berkouwer’s view hardly gives a fair indication of the type of thinking found in Chapter 1 of Berkouwer’s Faith and Perseverance - “Time li ness and Relevance” (pp. 9-14, emphasis mine). Berkouwer insists that “the living preaching of the Scriptures, which offer no metaphysical and theoretical views about … ‘permanency’ as an independent theme in itself, does nothing to encourage ‘a continuity which is … opposed in any way to the living nature of faith” (p. 13). Berkouwer stresses that “The perseverance of the saints is not primarily a theoretical problem but a confession of faith” (p. 14) and that “The perseverance of the saints is unbreakably connected wi...
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