Hi BillG,
I don't know if this is your website or not, but I noticed an error on the one quoted above where the author stated the below:
"unmerited love and favor of God which is the spring and source of all benefits men receive from Him, including especially His assistance given man for his regeneration or sanctification. (Grace is) a virtue from God influencing man, renewing his heart and restraining him from sin. (Compare this more "modern Webster" with Noah Webster's original definition of grace) "
According to the author, grace is unmerited love and favor, but for something to be unmerited, it would require absolutely nothing from us, not even faith, and it wouldn't matter if we sinned in the first place, and the entire point of Christ's sacrifice would be defeated and was wholly unnecessary since we have unmerited love and favor.
So if you make grace = unmerited love and favor, it basically creates a Universalist's doctrine where nothing is required to stay in God's grace, not even a sacrificial lamb, or faith, or anything at all and it's a license to sin as well. Requiring my faith is putting a merit on that grace and contradicts the idea of "unmerited favor."
So my bottom line is, grace doesn't mean favor without merit. That isn't what the definition is in any lexicon or dictionary.
I don't know if this is your website or not, but I noticed an error on the one quoted above where the author stated the below:
"unmerited love and favor of God which is the spring and source of all benefits men receive from Him, including especially His assistance given man for his regeneration or sanctification. (Grace is) a virtue from God influencing man, renewing his heart and restraining him from sin. (Compare this more "modern Webster" with Noah Webster's original definition of grace) "
According to the author, grace is unmerited love and favor, but for something to be unmerited, it would require absolutely nothing from us, not even faith, and it wouldn't matter if we sinned in the first place, and the entire point of Christ's sacrifice would be defeated and was wholly unnecessary since we have unmerited love and favor.
So if you make grace = unmerited love and favor, it basically creates a Universalist's doctrine where nothing is required to stay in God's grace, not even a sacrificial lamb, or faith, or anything at all and it's a license to sin as well. Requiring my faith is putting a merit on that grace and contradicts the idea of "unmerited favor."
So my bottom line is, grace doesn't mean favor without merit. That isn't what the definition is in any lexicon or dictionary.
We all have faith in things.
Some have faith in works.. that is where their heart is
Some have faith in a religious system
some have faith in the world and its system
some have faith in Christ and all of his work.
The last one is what Grace allows and calls us to do. To stop trusting in self. The world and religion. But to trust in God. And his word. His work and his promise
Thats salvation. That is why Christ died for the world. That whoever trusts in him will never die. But be born again to eternal life.