---

Consider —

I. THE PECULIAR BLESSING OF THE GOSPEL. Salvation. This implies a bondage, in which the whole human race is involved. Not content with its sway in this world, sin pursues the sinner even beyond the grave. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." In the midst of this universal corruption, — the voice of the Eternal, re-echoed by the sinner's conscience, rolls — "The soul that sinneth it shall die." "Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." Is not this a yoke from which deliverance is essential? Yes! and from this the gospel proclaims deliverance: "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"; and His disciples are emancipated, not only from the guilt, but also from the power of sin.

II. THE CHANNEL THROUGH WHICH THIS BLESSING IS CONVEYED. "Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." Salvation is not the reward of merit, but the gift of grace; not the purchase of man's desert, but the unearned bounty of God's free favour. As it is freely offered, so must it be freely accepted. No unbelieving doubts and hesitation on account of the magnitude of the gift and our own unworthiness to receive it; no Pharisaical standing-out upon conditions which, if required, could never be fulfilled; but a humbling sense of our own unworthiness, coupled with a grateful sense of God's undeserved mercy. Free grace shines conspicuous throughout the whole plan of man's salvation. It was grace that planned the remedy ere yet the disease was felt; it is grace that renders that remedy effectual. The Church was hewn out by grace, and by grace all its members are, as lively stones, built into a spiritual temple; and when the whole edifice shall be perfected, the Headstone thereof shall be brought forth with shoutings, crying "Grace! grace!" unto it. Unhumbled men will doubtless be offended at this, and rejecting salvation as a gift, will endeavour to earn it as a reward by seeking to establish some distinction between themselves and more vulgar sinners; but this is all labour in vain. It has pleased God to pronounce, on the one hand, that "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight"; and on the other, that man is "saved by grace through faith." Salvation through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only salvation recognised in the Bible; the only salvation that will either exalt the holiness, vindicate the justice, and magnify the mercy of God, or speak peace to the sinner's conscience and assure him of acceptance with God. Such, then, is the peculiar blessing of the gospel. A salvation altogether of grace, decreed by the grace of God the Father, wrought out by the grace of God the Son, and applied and rendered effectual by the grace of God the Holy Ghost.

III. THE EXTENT TO WHICH THIS BLESSED SALVATION REACHES. "We shall be saved, even as they." There is no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile; but "the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him." Our commission, as ministers of the gospel, is as extensive as the globe on which we live. And this is true also of the various degrees of affliction and of crime.

(W. Le Poer Trench, B. D.)

---

---

KJV: But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.

WEB: But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are."