Defining Means of Grace

What Does It Mean to Grow in Christ?

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”  (Col. 2:6–7)

“Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives…. Many… have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification…drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.” (Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life).

What Are the Means of Grace?

God works through instruments

“All we say is, that God uses the means and the instruments which he sees to be expedient, in order that all things may be subservient to his glory…. Therefore, as by bread and through aliment he feeds our bodies, as by the sun he illumines, and by fire gives warmth to the world, and yet bread, sun, and fire are nothing, save inasmuch as they are instruments under which he dispenses his blessings to us; so in like he spiritually nourishes our faith by means of the sacraments, whose only office is to make his promises visible to our eye.” (John Calvin, quoted in J. Ryan Davidson, Green Pastures)

A working definition

“I define means of grace as the delivery systems God has instituted to bring grace—that is, spiritual power, spiritual change, spiritual help, spiritual fortitude, spiritual blessings—to needy souls on the earth. Grace comes from our Father, through the Son, by the Spirit ordinarily in conjunction with the ordained means…. I will be working with the assumption that the Word of God, prayer, and the church sacraments or ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the primary or ordinary means through which grace from heaven comes to souls on the earth.” (Richard C. Barcellos, The Lord’s Supper as a Means of Grace)

“Those institutions which God has ordained by the ordinary channels of grace, i.e., of the supernatural influences of the Holy Spirit, to the souls of men.” (Charles Hodge, quoted in Davidson, Green Pastures)

Christ purchased grace and Christ distributes it

“Christ is and remains the acquisitor as well as the distributor of grace.” (Herman Bavinck, quoted in Davidson, Green Pastures)

See it in Scripture

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?… So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.  (Rom. 10:14–17)

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  (2 Tim. 3:16–17)

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.  (John 17:17)

And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.  (Phlm 6)

Two errors to avoid

Why Does God Use Means, and What Powers Them?

Why God works through ordinary means

“It is the gift of God. But still it must always be kept in mind that God is pleased to work by means. God has ordained means as well as ends. He that would grow in grace must use the means of growth…. I wish it to be distinctly understood that growth in grace is bound up with the use of means within the reach of all believers, and that, as a general rule, growing souls are what they are because they use these means.” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness)

What makes the means effective: the Holy Spirit