Frustration of the Grace of God

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Galatians 2:21

I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

1. He that hopes to be saved by his own righteousness rejects the grace or free favour of God, regards it as useless, and in that sense frustrates it. If we can keep the law and claim to be accepted as a matter of debt, it is plain that we need not turn supplicants and crave for mercy. Grace is a superfluity where merit can be proved

2. He makes the grace of God to be at least a secondary thing. Many think they are to merit as much as they can, and that God will make up for the rest by His grace. Every man his own saviour, and Jesus Christ and His grace make-weights for our deficiences.

3. He who trusts in himself, his feelings, his works, his prayers, or in anything except the grace of God, virtually gives up trusting in the grace of God altogether. God will never share the work with man's merit. You must either have salvation wholly because you deserve it, or wholly because God graciously bestows it though you do not deserve it.

4. This doctrine takes off the sinner from confidence in Christ. So long as a man can maintain any hope in himself, he will never look to the Redeemer.

5. This doctrine robs God of His glory. If man can save himself, then the glory is his own, not God's. What an awful crime, then, is this doctrine of salvation by human merit. It is a sin so gross that even the heathen cannot commit it.. They have never heard of the grace of God, and therefore they cannot put a slight upon it: when they perish it will be with a far lighter doom than those who have been told that God is gracious and ready to pardon, and yet turn on their heel and wickedly boast of innocence, and pretend to be clean in the sight of God. It is a sin which devils cannot commit. With all the obstinancy of their rebellion, they can never reach to this. They have never had the sweet notes of free grace and dying love ringing in their ears, and therefore they have never refused the heavenly invitation. What has never been presented to their acceptance cannot be the object of their rejection.

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I. TWO GREAT CRIMES ARE CONTAINED IN THE DOCTRINE OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.

1. The frustration of the grace of God. The self-righteous

(1)  reject it as baseless;

(2)  make it at least a secondary thing;

(3)  virtually give up trusting in it;

(4)  renounce their confidence in Christ;

(5)  rob God of His glory.

2. The making of Christ to be dead is vain.

(1)  Christ's finished work is rendered imperfect;

(2)  the covenant sealed with Christ's death is rejected;

(3)  each person in the Trinity is sinned against;

(4)  fallen man is sinned against, who can have no mercy but; through Christ;

(5)  the saints are sinned against, who have no hope but through Christ.

II. THE TWO CRIMES ARE COMMITTED BY MANY PEOPLE. By —

1. Triflers with the gospel.

2. The senseless as to guilt.

3. The despairing.

4. Those who have misgivings about the power of the gospel.

5. Apostates.

III. NO TRUE BELIEVER WILL BE GUILTY OF THESE CRIMES.

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