Today I return to a favorite theme, the grace of God. That grace is found in context with two subdivisions: 1) – common grace; and, 2) – divine grace. All persons, whether devout or profane, have the benefit of common grace. It levels the field in nature for all persons, and makes of every person God’s citizen of the world and God’s sustaining of nature’s life. What is the right of one is the right for all. Violations of common grace are sometimes punished by mankind, and sometimes by God. The punishment from God is not easily tracked, but there are strong allusions to how that discipline is meted out. It appears in nature, the context for the functioning of common grace. For example in the mass violation of God’s common grace there was a devastating flood in Noah’s generation. Scripture notes that warfare may be the violation of mankind in sin against common grace. To violate common grace (peace) is to invite violence, either in nature or mankind. It accounts for some illness and death. (James 4:1-2) Even if a person never acknowledges God, it would be well for the individual and society to study common grace, and act accordingly in the management of life. Attempts to protect air and water are related to maintaining grace.
Decades before this writing a worthy book and film, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, was issued. It provides an excellent story of the pattern of the grace of God, in some of its major parts, and the plan of God in the persuasion of mankind to put faith in the redemption of Jesus Christ. The film partly told the true story of a missionary. We must allow for whatever artistic adjustments that directors may put in film patterns. The missionary was as a young candidate actually rejected as unsuited for missionary life. Nonetheless, she proceeded on her own. Going to China, she served the people in selfless ways, teaching the gospel as well as defusing or solving local human problems. The local authority was impressed, and bestowed a humble appointment on her: as Foot Inspector. She pressed on. In the most poignant scene, the governor offers her the greatest gift that he feels he can give her – he witnesses that he has become a Christian. The missionary is carried to tearful ecstasy. Her purpose has been rewarded. The one in common grace has entered the realm of divine grace. Mortality will yield to immortality. From this point, and never to see the governor again, the missionary rescues scores of children and treks over the mountains with them to safety from the warfare between China and Japan. Delivering the children to the city she announces that she will return to the town she served. Now a citizen of China she will return home, to her people. The film is ended at the point of safety for the children, and her meeting with the man who years before had declared she was not missionary material. She senses not only her acceptance from God, but of her humbled contemporaries as well. The administrator recognizing her is visibly humbled.
The biography is an example of what Jesus laid out to his disciples as the story of the call of Christ in common grace to divine grace. They are to work as beneficiaries of his grace, to win others to divine benefit. (2 Corinthians 6:1-3; John 9:4) One reason for Christ as the identity of God is that there is little difficulty in getting persons to believe in God, but they feel generic about the matter so not to differentiate between the one that God wants identified, and the god images that mankind chooses to conjure. If the pluralistic gods are equal, based on the sincerity of the devout to those gods, we are left with a stew of gods. They have a variety of characteristics, and may inhabit some idol, some ephemeral heaven, even some absorption in the cosmos. God needs to be identified. One way he achieves this in the Christian context is to identify with mankind, rescue us, hear prayer, offer hope everlasting, and ask only for the whole person of this faith. What fault can be found in this? I find none. A study of common grace, mingling with divine grace, offers the Christian’s biography, vital to Jesus Christ. I had just landed at a leading airport in Canada for a week-end conference. Walking along the concourse I was intrigued by a large gathering of persons, and excitement. I stopped to take it in. A missionary had just landed from the Far East, with about seven or eight children. I knew him from my own denomination. He had rescued the children from despair, perhaps death in a war-torn land. By the force of his character and purpose he had succeeded in getting them on a plane and to safety. In that moment I saw divine grace in human. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020