GRACE-GRATITUDE

Scripture’s denial that our best works are sufficient in themselves to please God or to compensate for our weaknesses makes our spiritual desperation more acute and, thus, our appreciation of grace becomes more emphatic. Overwhelming gratitude for the spiritual deliverance our Savior alone provides will engender a humble and glad willingness to dedicate the strength of our lives to our Savior’s glory.

Bryan Chapell

Holiness by Grace, Crossway Books, p. 33.

Saving grace makes a man as willing to leave his lusts as a slave is willing to leave his galley, or a prisoner his dungeon, or a thief his bolts, or a beggar his rags.

Thomas Brooks

Leadership, v. 16, n. 1.

We all want grace, but we cannot enjoy grace when there is an attitude of comparing.

Jerry Bridges

The friends of free-will are the enemies of free-grace.

John Trapp

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 130.

I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.

John Newton

If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it.

C.H. Spurgeon

Some are greatly troubled by the fact that grace is bestowed sovereignly, but what other basis is there for its distribution? In Romans 9:14 Paul asks the question: Can God be just when grace is given to some but not to others? He answers his own question by reminding the reader that justice can only condemn all men, for all have sinned. We dare not plead for justice with God, for justice can only be satisfied by our condemnation. Grace operates on a totally different basis. Grace does not give men what they deserve, but what God delights to give, in spite of their sin. God is only unjust if He withholds from men benefits which they rightfully deserve, but He is gracious in bestowing upon men salvation and blessings which they could never merit.

Bob Deffinbaugh