Of Common Grace and Loving Our Enemies

I would like to talk a little bit about common grace. 

Common grace is the grace of God by which he gives people innumerable blessings that are not part of salvation.˙

The LORD is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and rich in love.

The LORD is good to all;

he has compassion on all he has made.

                         

                      Psalm 145:8-9 NIV

You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 

                     Matthew 5:43-45 NIV

The 17th century Puritan devotional writer Matthew Henry in his classic commentary says this about Matthew 5:43-45:

That you may be like God our Father; "that ye may be, may approve yourselves to be, the children of your Father which is in heaven." Can we write after a better copy? God maketh his sun to rise, and sendeth rain, on the just and the unjust, v. 45. Sunshine and rain are great blessings to the world, and they come from God. Common mercies must be valued as instances and proofs of the goodness of God, who in them shows himself a bountiful Benefactor. These gifts of common providence are dispensed indifferently to good and evil, just and unjust. The worst of men partake of the comforts of this life in common with others which is an amazing instance of God's patience and bounty. The gifts of God's bounty to wicked men that are in rebellion against him, teach us to do good to those that hate us. Those only will be accepted as the children of God, who study to resemble him, particularly in his goodness.

So we see here that common grace is given to all men in some measure. The LORD is good to all. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good. In this, we see the love of God. None of us deserve even this sort of kindness from God. Though we are created in the express image of God, through the fall we have inherited the sin of Adam. Because of sin entering the human race, we are unable to come to God on our own. It takes a special grace from God; an enabling grace to turn our hearts toward God and to give us the ability to choose Him. He chooses to make His goodness known to us through the cross of Christ and through the preaching of the gospel. It is precisely because of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection that we have hope in God because God is just and was not willing to leave sin unpunished so the wrath of God was poured out on Jesus the perfect Son of God who was fully God and fully man. 

God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

                                    Romans 3:25-26

I am speaking of the justice of God in declaring sinners righteous simply to speak of the difference between common grace and God's special sovereign grace that leads His people to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Wayne Grudem says this about common grace in his Systematic Theology:

In distinction from common grace, the grace of God that brings people to salvation is often called "saving grace." Of course, when we talk about "common grace" and "saving grace" we are not implying that there are two different kinds of grace in God himself, but only that God's grace manifests itself in two different ways. Common grace is different from saving grace in its results (it does not bring about salvation), in its recipients (it is given to believers and unbelievers alike), and in its source (it does not directly flow from Christ's atoning work, since Christ's death did not earn any measure of forgiveness for unbelievers, and therefore did not merit the blessings of common grace for them either). However, on this last point it should be said that common grace does flow indirectly from Christ's redemptive work, because the fact that God did not judge the world at once when sin entered it was primarily or perhaps exclusively due to the fact that he planned to save some sinners through the death of his Son.

I hope this may help some of you to better understand what the Bible teaches concerning the doctrine of common grace. It is something that He does everyday that is easy to forget. Yet, it is something that we should be thankful for that He gives sinners a chance to repent and turn to Him. 

˙ Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction To Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.