Grace is more than mercy and love. It super-adds to them. It denotes, not simply love, but the love of a sovereign, transcendent Superior. One that may do what He will. That may wholly choose whether He will love or no. Now God, who is an infinite Sovereign, who might have chosen whether ever He would love us or no; for Him to love us, this is Grace.
Interpretation
Grace is an elevation of love that shows a sovereign power to choose to love without obligation.
This quote explores the concept of grace as not merely an act of mercy or love, but as a transcendent quality that reflects a sovereign's ability to choose to love freely. It emphasizes that divine grace is a profound gift, highlighting the distinction between the mere act of love and the unconditional love bestowed by a powerful and sovereign being, such as God, who freely chooses to love despite having the option not to.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to discuss the nature of divine grace.
The Indwelling of Christ by faithis to have Jesus Christ continually in one’s eye, a habitual sight of Him. I call it so because a man actually does not always think of Christ; but as a man does not look up to the sun continually, yet he sees the light of it. So you should carry along and bear along in your eye the sight and knowledge of Christ, so that at least a presence of Him accompanies you, which faith makes.
Value God and his love more than all the world, though there were millions of them. He valued you before the world, and therefore is beforehand with you in his love. He not only loved you from everlasting, (whereas your love is but of yesterday,) but in the valuation of it, he loved you before all worlds, and preferred you to all worlds: though you loved the world first, before you loved him.
Oh despise not election! therein lies all your hope, that there is a remnant who shall infallibly be saved.
What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
She was in that highly-wrought state when the reasoning powers act with great rapidity: the state a man is in before a battle or a struggle, in danger, and at the decisive moments of life - those moments when a man shows once and for all what he is worth, that his past was not lived in vain but was a preparation for these moments.
We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.
If you could pack for heaven, this was how you'd do it, touching everything, taking nothing.
The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.
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