Common grace may be far deeper, and engaged more by God, than we imagine. Grace as we relate the concept and reality to God is the largess of God to all his creation related to mankind. It is inevitable to us. Grace of God is one of his ways of creating a context for human fellowship and peaceful advantage. Common grace extends to all of life – whatever we would identify as God’s creation. The introduction of rebellion, identified with Adam and Eve in their temptations, removed some meaning of common grace for mankind, but factors remained. Divine grace comes directly from God and is motivated by his pleasure. It is identified as spiritual. That representation of his grace given to a wounded creation we call common grace. We perceive it as natural – from nature as God formed nature. It has elements of tolerance in it, but is far more. Without the grace of God, mankind would have been passed over, perhaps annihilated, in the experience of human rebellion. Everything that comes from God has power in it, influence that directs in the human context. Quite complete in himself, God determined to create a fellowship. The freedom, the status, created by that fellowship led to some rebellion, which is characterized as sin. Sin means death, and the only escape is some redemptive plan. This explains the meaning of Christ, church, prayer, and benefit of grace – some of which are extended to earth for sustenance until creative restoration.
There is something in the concept of grace that requires a spiritual element, partly found in the mystery of God in freedom and love. Even in unredeemed persons there is found common grace, because common grace is for all. Even artists and authors, firm atheists or agnostics, have created great art in the name of God and grace. Likely there are more artists and authors than we know who did believe what they portrayed. These unidentified saw no reason to make clear that they did not believe what they portrayed. Some seem to have been driven by an unseen force, which I would identify as the common grace of God. There is a feeling in many persons, sometimes found in philosophy, drama and poetry who declare God’s grace, likely because they feel it ought to be. Even a devout person, like Blaise Pascal, argued for God as a god bet. He felt that mathematics would, in the long run, create a persuasive reason to accept faith. But faith is not proven by the natural facts of nature, in which common grace plays so large a part. To prove God and his grace to the satisfaction of the order of natural evidence would not change faith requirements.
Philip Schaff, a scholar of significance favoring Christian thought, especially related to the church was agnostic. The list includes many others like: Edouard Manet in art, Vaughn Williams and Giuseppe Verdi in music. If we read widely we will run on to these contradictions everywhere. So broad and wide is the grace of God to mankind of earth, that there is a suspicion in many unbelievers that there is something out there to which an offering of some aspiration should be made. One wonders what we might have found in Judas, to have given himself to the ministry of Jesus, only to reveal that he did not believe and was driven to suicide by his betrayal of faith – a faith he felt betrayed him. There are persons who have done magnificent things, in response to some unexplained feeling they have about the largess of life. One man was a tither. He did not go to church. He did not care about personal obedience to Christian nurture, but he gave generously to evangelical Christian ministries. I was present on one occasion when he gave a very generous check to the head of a Christian organization, and made excuse not to remain for the program of the evening. Being a part of the program, I learned afterwards what had happened. He may as well have kept his generous money gift. This drafting on the grace of God is one of the sophisticated ways in which mankind maintains mimicry of spirituality that may dilute the gospel message, and church ministry. It was found during the Middle Ages, when some church leaders violated the gospel, and visited upon the church the negatives of some historians who saw the hypocrisy. In the meantime there were multitudes of priests, brothers/sisters, missionaries, ministers, mothers and lay persons of the faith serving the masses in the message of Christ. This last story is the one to be told. It is the one playing out even as I write. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020