To the Praise of His Glorious Grace

Maybe you don’t like predestination. Ask yourself, do you like predestination? If you don’t, let me ask you this question. How do you feel about praising God? And how do you feel about the grace of God? See God’s Word does not see predestination as putting a shadow over God’s greatness, but rather dispelling the shadows from God’s greatness, because we see the praise of the glory of God’s grace. Isn’t that an interesting conjunction of concepts, that we are praising the glory of God? Well, of course the glory of God is worthy of praise, and is worthy of adoration, and is worthy of exaltation. And all Christians know that we should praise the glory of God. But what specific glory is in view here is the glory of His grace.

That’s what we need in the church. That’s what we need in our Christian understanding, is an understanding of the graciousness of grace. That we don’t discount it, that we do not borrow from it, and rob from it, and say that our salvation is partly of grace, and partly of human endeavor and human merit, or human achieving, or human striving, or human accomplishment. Even the preacher who says that your salvation is 99% of God, and 1% of man has stolen from the glory of God, and has discounted, not only by the 1%—it’s not just taking away 1% of the glory of God’s grace—but it’s the decisive percent that we hold out for, the pivotal 1%. The 1% that makes the difference between eternity in hell or in heaven. Now we come together as Christians to express our gratitude and our praise for the glory of God’s grace, by which we have been redeemed.