
p 43
Costly Grace (1937)
Quoted in "Daily Strength For Daily Needs "
p 43
Costly Grace (1937)
Source: The Gospel in Ezekiel Illustrated in a Series of Discourses (1856), P. 32 (The Defiler).
“They suppose that Woman's Love is Sin; in consequence all the Loves & Graces with them are Sin.”
1780s, Annotations to Lavater (1788)
Costly Grace, p 43.
Costly Grace
Context: Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part of that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.