Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Frame on common grace

I am part of a small group that just finished an evening focused on common grace. It was an excellent evening of learning. The discussion was interesting and edifying! I was going through a book that I have been reading for the better part of a year and came across this:

So all the blessings of God come to us by God's sovereign grace. Without his grace, we are nothing. By grace comes the forgiveness of our sins, the power to do good works, and the ability to serve the people of God. And all of these come from the most amazing grace of all: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9)...To my knowledge, Scripture never uses hen or charis to refer to his blessings on creation generally or on nonelect humanity. So it would perhaps be better to speak of God's common goodness, or common love, rather than his common grace. The word grace in Scripture tends to be more narrowly focused on redemption than goodness and love, although the latter terms also have rich redemptive associations. (Frame, John M. The Doctrine of God. New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2002. 429-430)

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