Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 08:1 (Spring 1995)
Article: A Voice from the Past: Grace
Author: D. L. Moody

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JOTGES 8:1 (Spring 95) p. 45

A Voice from the Past:
Gracea

D. L. Moody1

I am going to take tonight a subject rather than a text. I want to talk to you about Free Grace. I say “Free Grace”; perhaps I had better drop the word free and say just grace. There is a sermon just in the meaning of the word. It is one of those words that are very little understood at the present time, like the word Gospel. There are a great many that are partakers of the spirit of Christ or of grace that don’t know its meaning. I think it is a good idea to go to Webster’s dictionary and look up the meaning of these words that we hear so often but don’t fully understand. You seldom go into a religious assembly but you hear the word grace, and yet I was a partaker of the grace of God for years before I knew what it meant. I could not tell the difference between grace and law. Now grace means “unlimited mercy,” “undeserved favor,” or “unmerited love.”

I had a man come today to see me, and his plea was that he was not fit to be saved. He said there was no hope for him because he had sinned all his life and there was nothing good in him. I was very much gratified to hear him say that. There is hope for that man—and I suppose he is here tonight—and there is

JOTGES 8:1 (Spring 95) p. 46

hope for any man who thinks there is nothing good in him. That was the lesson Christ tried to teach the Jews—the lesson of grace. But they were trying to prove themselves to be better than other people. They were of the seed of Abraham and under the Mosaic law, and better than the people about them.

Now let us get at the source of this stream, that has been flowing through the world these hundreds of years. You know that men have been trying to find the source of the Nile.2 Wouldn’t it be as profitable to try and find the source of grace, because this is a stream we are all interested in. I want to call your attention to the first chapter of John, the 14th and 17th verses:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.3

Then the 17th verse:

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Then the 5th chapter of Romans, the 15th verse:

But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the ...

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