Galatians 1:15
‘By his grace’
Read Psalms 106:1-12 ; Psalms 106:43-48
Our salvation is not according to our merits in its commencement, in its continence or in its consummation. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, least any man should boast.”
The sovereign love and unmerited grace of God are the cause of our salvation. Since his love and grace are unchangeable, their effect must be unchangeable. That is to say, God constantly communicates his love and grace to every believer. Once his love is revealed and his grace bestowed upon the heart, he never takes them away: ‘For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.’ God was not moved to bestow his grace upon us by anything which he saw meritorious or attractive in us. And the absence of everything good in us will not cause God to withdraw the grace he has bestowed. When he first bestowed grace upon us, the Lord knew that we were totally depraved and sinful. He knew that we were full of evil and void of good. And though, since our conversion, we have all been guilty of ingratitude, unfaithfulness and sin of every kind, these things do not provoke the Lord our God to change his mind and withdraw his sustaining grace. He knew what we would be before he saved us. He chastens us because of our sin, like the loving Father he is, but he never withdraws his love. If he had not intended, from the beginning, to bear with our sin in longsuffering and patience and to forgive our sin for Christ’s sake, he would never have saved us and called us in the first place.
This is what I am saying: the cause of our salvation is entirely in God. His electing love, redeeming grace and saving power were given to us by an act of his sovereign goodness, without any consideration of what we were or might become. There was nothing in us to attract his grace. And there is nothing in any true believer’s heart or conduct which can ever, cause the Lord Our God to alter his purpose of grace and withdraw his love from us.