A Voice from the Past: Grace Reigns -- By: Robert Anderson

Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 09:2 (Autumn 1996)
Article: A Voice from the Past: Grace Reigns
Author: Robert Anderson


A Voice from the Past:
Grace Reignsa

Sir Robert Anderson1

“The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God!”2

“Please, show me Your glory,” was the prayer of Moses; and God answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”3 God’s highest glory displays itself in sovereign grace, therefore it is that the Gospel of His grace is the Gospel of His glory.

Let us take heed then that we preach grace. He who preaches a mixed gospel robs God of His glory, and the sinner of his hope.4 They for whom these pages are intended, need not be told that salvation is only by the blood; but many there are who preach the blood of Christ, without ever rising to the truth of grace. Dispensational truth, as it is commonly called, is deliberately rejected by not a few; and yet without understanding the change the death of Christ has made in God’s relationships with men, grace cannot be apprehended.

It is not that God can ever change, or that the righteous ground of blessing can ever alter, but that the standard of man’s responsibility depends on the measure and character of the revelation God has given of Himself. God’s judgments are according to pure equity. They must have strange thoughts of Him who think it could be otherwise. In the Epistle to the Romans we have the great principle of His dealings with mankind. “[He] will render to each one according to his deeds; eternal life to those who by patience continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God.”5

But is the standard of well-doing the same for all? Shall the same fruit be looked for from the wild olive as from the cultured tree? from the mountain side, in its native barrenness, as from the vineyard on the fruitful hill? Far from it. The first two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans are unmistakable in this respect. The Gentile will be judged...

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