The Freeness of Grace

Jonathan Edwards, On Knowing Christ

The grace of God in bestowing this gift [i.e., His Son] is most free. It was what God was under no obligation to bestow. He might have rejected fallen man, as he did the fallen angles. It was what we never did any thing to merit; it was given while we were yet enemies, and before we had so much as repented. It was from the love of God who saw no excellency in us to attract it; and it was without expectation of ever being required for it.—And it is from mere grace that the benefits of Christ are applied to such and such particular persons. Those that are called and sanctified are to attribute it alone to the good pleasure of God’s goodness, by which they are distinguished. He is sovereign, and hath mercy on whom he will have mercy (37).

Now whatever scheme is inconsistent with out entire dependence on God fall, and of having all of him, through him, and in him, it is repugnant to the design and tenor of the gospel, and robs it of that which God accounts its lustre and glory (47).

Aaron Orendorff

It is a profoundly frightening thing to be exposed to the sheer graciousness of the gospel. To understand, as Edwards writes, that God might have simply rejected fallen humanity and been none the less glorious, just or perfect is to simultaneously understand that nothing (save the free and sovereign activity of God) stands in the way our rejection. There was and is no “excellency” inherent to us us that motivated God to act; not even the prospect of our repentance, which is itself an outworking and result of grace, propelled God toward us. God and God alone—through the unmerited (and, in fact, counter-merited) grace of the gospel—is all that separates us from who we are, what we deserve and the rescue of forgiveness and eternal life.