Tuesday 11 November 2008

God being gracious to all

Again, from the book, Knowing God by J. I. Packer:
God is 'abundant in oodness' - ultro bonus, as Latin-speaking theologians long ago used to put it, spontaneously good, overflowing with generosity. Theologians of the Reformed school use the New Testament word 'grace' (free favour) to cover every act of divine generosity, of whatever kind, and hence distinguish between the 'common grace' of 'creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life', and the 'special grace' manifested in teh economy of salvation - the point of the contrast between 'common' and 'special' being that all benefit from the former, but not all are touched by the latter. The biblical way of putting this distinction would be to say that God is good to all in some ways and to some in all ways.
- p. 184, from Knowing God by J. I. Packer

I don't know how more succinctly express the biblical truth of God's sovereign grace than this. I don't know how some may feel about that last sentence, "...that God is good to all in some ways and to some in all ways", but I found it amazingly comforting.

No comments: