In the previous I defended the existence of prevenient grace and also within the entry I made reference also to justifying and sanctifying grace as well. Surely the audience that reads these posts would fall mostly in the reformed, fundamentalist category, as do I. Moreover, most readers take issue with the Methodist church and moreover Wesleyan doctrines of grace. Wesley spoke of three types of grace, prevenient (prior to conversion), justifying (saving), and sactifying (post conversion). Methodism recognizes these three types of grace and I would argue that we (reformed/fundementalists) ought not to reject the existence of these types of grace simply because of our distast for works based theology. I will not go over what the last post said about prevenient grace, and I am going to skip justifying grace (saving grace) because we all agree on it, instead I will focus this entry on sanctifying grace.
Sanctifying grace is real, and it is very much different than prevenient grace and justifying grace. We have no biblical reason of which I am aware to reject the notion that God continues to dispense grace upon us out of His own pleasure after we are converted for the purpose of sanctifying us. If we reject the notion of sanctifying grace then we ourselves are guilty of works based religon, because our sanctification would not be the result of grace (a work of God) but a result of personal obedience wrought by our own will power. Moreover a rejection of santifying grace is a rejection of the presence of the Spirit in a believer's life. The very prescence of God by His Spirit in the believers life is clearly evidence of grace and its purpose is the sanctification of the believer.
I will leave this topic at that. There is no need for us to reject the notion of prevenient, justifying, or sanctifying grace just for the sake of rejecting it. It is more productive for us to embrace these forms a grace and use them to explain the perfect soveriegnty of the Lord to methodists.
Please comment if something needs added, or taken away.
No comments:
Post a Comment