Do You Rely on God’s Common or Saving Grace? It Makes An Eternal Difference!
If you are solely relying on God’s common grace (Psa 145:9; Matt 5:45) for your blessings, based on this world’s rapid decline, I strongly recommend you make the transfer over to God’s free gift of saving grace (Eph 2:8-9)…ASAP! God’s free gift of saving grace is a supernatural gift given by the Lord upon your repentance, believing, and receiving it. The rewards reaped from God’s saving grace are everlasting, versus the temporary worldly ones that come by God’s common grace. Many take God’s common grace for granted, never even acknowledging it, or Him (Rom 1:18-21). Relying solely on God’s common grace will ultimately leave a person to face God’s wrath at the end (John 3:36)! So choose wisely…as just because you are humanly blessed, you still very well might be in an eternally hot mess (Matt 19:24). Accept the gift of God’s saving grace! Here’s specifics on how to do so…click on this link: http://crustore.org/four-laws-english/
For those interested in more specifics about the differentiation between God’s common and saving grace, read on…
Common Grace refers to the grace of God that is common to all humankind. It is “common” because its benefits are experienced by the whole human race without distinction between one person and another, believers, or unbelievers. It is “grace” because it is undeserved and sovereignly bestowed by God [this definition is taken from http://www.theopedia.com/Common_grace].
Three points of common grace…
The first point pertains to the favorable attitude of God toward all His creatures, not only toward the elect. “The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made” (Psa 145:9). Jesus said God causes “His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt 5:45) and God “is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35). Barnabas and Paul would later say the same thing: “He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17). In addition to His compassion, goodness, and kindness, God also sheds His patience upon both the elect and the non-elect. While God’s patience for His own is undoubtedly different from His patience with those whom He has not chosen, God still exercises “longsuffering” toward those whom He has not chosen (Nahum 1:3). Every breath that the wicked man takes is an example of the mercy of our holy God.
The second point of common grace is the restraint of sin in the life of the individual and in society. Scripture records God directly intervening and restraining individuals from sinning. In Genesis 20, God restrained Abimelech from touching Sarah, Abraham’s wife, and affirmed it to him in a dream by saying, “Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against Me. That is why I did not let you touch her” (Gen 20:6). Another example of God restraining the wicked hearts of evil men is seen in God’s protection of the land of Israel from being invaded by the pagan nations on their border. God commanded the men of Israel that three times a year they would leave their plot of land to go and appear before Him (Exod 34:23). To ensure the protection of God’s people from invasion during these times, even though the pagan nations surrounding them desired their land year-round, God promised that “no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God” (Exod 34:24). God also restrained David from taking revenge on Nabal for scorning the messengers that David sent to greet Nabal (1 Sam 25:14). Abigail, Nabal’s wife, recognized God’s grace when she pleaded with David not to seek vengeance against her husband, “since the Lord has kept you, my master, from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands…” (1 Sam 25:26). David acknowledged this truth by responding, “As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you…” (1 Sam 25:34). This second point of common grace not only includes God’s restraining of evil, but also His sovereignly releasing it for His purposes. When God hardens the hearts of individuals (Exod 4:21; Josh 11:20; Isa 63:17), He does so by releasing His restraint on their hearts, thereby giving them over to the sin that resides there. In His punishment of Israel for their rebellion, God gave “them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices” (Psa 81:11-12). The passage of Scripture best known for speaking of God’s releasing of restraint is found in Romans 1 where Paul describes those who suppress the truth by their wickedness. God “gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another” (Rom 1:28).
The third point of common grace…pertains to “civic righteousness by the unregenerate.” This means that God, without renewing the heart, exercises such influence that even the unsaved man is enabled to perform good deeds toward his fellow man. As Paul said of a group of unregenerate Gentiles, they “do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law” (Rom 2:14). The necessity of God restraining the hearts of the unredeemed becomes clear when we understand the biblical doctrine of total depravity. If God did not restrain the evil that resides in the hearts of all men, hearts that are “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9), humanity would have destroyed itself centuries ago. But because He works through common grace given to all men, God’s sovereign plan for history is not thwarted by their evil hearts. In the doctrine of common grace, we see God’s purposes stand, His people blessed, and His glory magnified. [Taken from: http://www.gotquestions.org/common-grace.html#ixzz3Sgk2Ph2i]
Saving Grace – Scripture says that grace is unmerited assistance from the Lord which is necessary “because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight” (Rom 3:20), so He gives us His assistance: “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested . . . the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (Rom 3:21-22). Grace also results in our sanctification by what is called the “means of grace.” The means of grace are those things, like prayer or reading the Bible, which appropriate God’s grace into our lives. For example, according to Acts 20:32, the word of God builds us up and gives us an inheritance among those who are sanctified. Second Corinthians 9:8 also shows that God’s grace is what enables us to do good deeds. Grace is understood to describe the act of God giving man that which man does not deserve. Grace and mercy (which is the act of God sparing man from the punishment which he does deserve because of his sins) are the major components of what the Bible calls “salvation.”
The phrase “saving grace” fits nicely with the concept of our worth being found only in Christ. He is that “redeeming factor” that makes us acceptable. We have nothing in ourselves that will commend us to God (Rom 3:10-11). And if we are fundamentally unacceptable to God, and if all our righteousness and good works are like a “filthy garment” in His sight (Isa 64:6), we will ask, along with Jesus’ disciples, “How can we be saved?” Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:26-27). The Bible tells us that through belief in Christ—belief in His perfect life (which was fully acceptable to God) and His substitutionary death for His sheep (John 10:11)—we will be saved. Therefore, our “saving grace,” or that which makes us acceptable, is Christ Himself. His work on the cross is what saves us and not our own merit. He is the only thing about us that makes us acceptable to God. He Himself is our worth in God’s sight.
Simply put, saving grace is a grace that saves us, and the only grace that can save anybody is the grace that is applied to the soul through faith in Christ (Eph 2:8). His work is the only merit we have, and His work is our salvation. Be careful of the pitfall here: it is easy to think that, by our faith, we contribute in some small way to our salvation. After all, Christ’s merit must be “applied” to us by faith, and it seems our faith is coming from us. But, don’t forget Romans 3:10-12 which says that none of us seeks after God and Ephesians 2:8 which says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that (faith) not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Hebrews 12:2 also tells us that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith, so our faith itself and our ability to believe and accept His grace is just another gift from God.
To sum up, we have no merit before God. But God, in His mercy, has chosen to author a faith in the hearts of His sheep which, when combined with the sacrificial death and blood atonement provided by the Good Shepherd, results in salvation. The saving grace of the sheep is that they are loved by the Shepherd and that He has laid down His life for them, to give them eternal life. [Taken from: https://www.gotquestions.org/saving-grace.html#ixzz3SgmcrbzB]