Chapter viii
grace for grace.
Joh. i. 16. – Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Psal. xxxvi. 11[sic]. – For with Thee is the fountain of life.
In the last chapter we have had much to say about the applications of sanctifying grace, and in the last but one something of its nature. Here is a Scripture which speaks of it again, and describes a delightful special aspect of our derivation of grace from its fountain.
On the first clause of the quotation from St John I say but little. Only observe that it points to Jesus Christ as the embodiment, the reservoir, the fountain, of all that grace means for us. And it speaks of the vital connexion of us, of His believing followers, with Him as a definite and accomplished fact. “We have received,” or, somewhat more literally, “we did receive.” Of himself and of all believers St John says this. They have come into receptive contact with Jesus Christ, with the divine fulness that is in Him. “The Spirit of faith” has come. The work of submissive trust has been wrought in the soul, the trust which looks not at itself but at the trusted One alone. Then the soul is not only in the hands of its blessed Rescuer; it has come into spiritual continuity with His exalted Life. “Virtue is gone out of Him”; His strength into their impotence, His peace into their nature’s war. Because He lives, they live also.
The last clause of the quotation speaks of a certain mode, or phase, of our reception of this fulness, this “grace of life” which once could not flow into us, but to which now our will, our being, thanks be to God, has opened wide the door. Let us examine it.
“Grace for grace.” On the word “grace” I have said a little already,* and will not repeat it. I assume the reader’s rememberance of the truth that sanctifying grace is no mere impersonal “substance,” but “God working in us”; the Lord in action in our very springs of thought and will. Now observe the phrase before us here; “grace for grace.” Quite literally – I know not how to render more exactly – the words run, “Grace instead of grace.”
What does it mean? Surely the thought, the image, is of a perpetual succession of supply; a displacement and replacement ever going on; ceaseless arrivals of all that is needed for the ceaseless changes of need and demand. The picture before us is as of a river. Stand on its banks, and contemplate the flow of waters. A minute passes, and another. Is it the same stream still? Yes, assuredly, the same Thames, or Wye, that ran ages ago in our forefathers’ sight. But is it the same water? No. The liquid mass that passed you a few seconds ago fills now another section of the channel; new water has displaced it, or if you please, replaced it; water instead of water. And so hour by hour, and year by year, and century by century, the process holds; one stream, other waters, living not stagnant, because always in the great identity there is perpetual change.
Even so in the Christian’s life, and in that derived fulness which is its secret of plenty and of peace. Hour comes instead of hour, joy instead of joy, snare instead of snare, trial and pain and loss instead of other like things of yesterday. But so also with the supply, the successions and exchanges of strength and blessing that come of the unchanging and unsuccessional presence in the believing man of Him whom he has received. Grace takes the place of grace; ever new, ever old, ever the same, ever fresh and young, for hour by hour, for year by year, through life.
*Ch. vii.
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