Grace you see is a distinct thing from mercy. Grace is the same thing for substance with love and mercy, yet it holds forth something more eminently than both; this expression ‘grace’ is more than mercy and love, it superadds to them. It denotes, not simply love, but the love of a sovereign, transcendently superior, one that may do what he will, that may wholly choose whether he will love or no. There may be love between equals, and an inferior may love a superior; but love in a superior, and so superior as he may do what he will, in such a one love is called grace: and therefore grace is attributed to princes; they are said to be gracious to their subjects, whereas subjects cannot be gracious to princes. 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.
‘The LORD, gracious and merciful’
(Exodus 34:6)
In Exodus 34:6, when God proclaims his name, what is the first word? ‘The LORD, the LORD,’ and ‘gracious’ is the next. I am the sovereign Lord of all creatures; if I shew mercy, this is grace.
Grace notes the greatest freeness
Grace notes the greatest freeness, God is not necessitated to love any, and when he loves he loves freely – that is, his love is not caused or motivated by anything in the creature (man fallen in sin has forfeited any hope that God is ‘obliged’ to love him). Therefore, where the Apostle uses the word ‘grace’ or ‘graciously’, our translators often render the word, to ‘give us freely’. Thus in 1 Corinthians 2:12, and Romans 8:32, ‘freely’ is the same word, ‘graciously’. Now for God to give us freely implies this truth, that he set his heart on us merely out of his own good will. Mark how his will and grace are joined together in Ephesians 1:5-6.
Ephesians 1
5he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
In the 5th verse he said God ‘predestinated us . . . according to the good pleasure of his will’; and in the 6th verse he says, ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace’. When God doth thus choose and predestinate merely out of the motion of his own will, this is freeness and this makes it grace.
Romans 5
18Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Mind this then, that in the work of salvation God has so ordered, and designed, and plotted all things, to the advancement of his free grace. In Romans 5:21 it is said ‘grace reigned’ . . . It reigneth, mark it; of all things else, God hath set up his free grace as a monarch, and hath so set it up as that it shall reign; and there is no work of man, or anything in man, that shall in the least impair the sovereignty of it. We are therefore said to be ‘under grace’ in Romans 6, and that therefore ‘sin shall no more have dominion over us’, because we are under the dominion of grace, implying that grace is a mighty king and sovereign. God has so ordered salvation that free grace alone shall be magnified.
Grace you see is a distinct thing from mercy.
Excerpts from Thomas Goodwin's Commentary on Ephesians in 1650. Goodwin was a theologian, pastor, and President of Magdalene College, Oxford who was known as "The Readable Puritan".
Comments