I was many years a professing Christian before I ever encountered the phrase ‘The Doctrines of Grace’. When I did hear the term and was introduced to the teaching I was appalled at the ‘doctrines’ the phrase encompassed. They seemed to contradict just about everything of the Christian faith I had been taught. Fancying myself a trainee student in the Lord’s school, I was busy learning how to argue against Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and how to debate with atheists and argue with agnostics. Little had I realised there was such folly within the camp I thought myself a part of.

Today, there seem to be very few people who will simply acknowledge that all our righteousness must be in Christ, and from Christ, because outside of Christ we have no righteousness at all. This is the clear teaching of the Scriptures. Many of us give assent to the doctrine of total depravity but continue to harbour strange notions of there being yet something good within us. Sure, we are totally depraved, but we are not as bad as we could be! Hmm. How does that work? 

The new man in every believer is formed by God and inseparably united to Christ. We are ‘created in righteousness and true holiness’. The new man is a perfect work of grace whereby the Holy Ghost in regeneration makes all things new. He quickens, converts and creates a new heart and spirit in those born again. It is a transformative change. The old man represents the corruption of our fallen state in Adam. The new man is our new, holy state in Christ.

One of Paul’s purposes in writing the book of Romans was to encourage the Lord’s people in their troubles and show how ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’. He tells us ‘all things work together’ for our good. This ‘all things’ is comprehensive. It includes all the divine persons and all the elements of the everlasting covenant. It includes everything created. Let there be no doubt, God is for us. 

In Romans 8 Paul tells us all things work together for our good, that is, all things work together to deliver the glory God has promised to His beloved people. It is important to distinguish what is earthly good and temporal and what is spiritual good and eternal. The people of this world, being spiritually blind, measure joy and success in terms of earthly prosperity which is deceptive and fleeting. Spiritual men and women know with Paul, ‘that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’.

Jude in his little epistle uses an interesting and unique expression to describe the gospel. He calls it ‘our common salvation’.  In doing so he encompasses all the stages by which God’s purpose of love for His chosen people is revealed in the covenant of grace. The phrase is a kind of shorthand. Jude does not unpack the elements of so great salvation here, yet by referring to it as the salvation common to all to whom he is writing, he shows it to be the whole work of God’s grace in the salvation of His elect.