Grace, all that five-letter word,
how much it entails, what volumes it speaks. Those that have been
made known the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ by God. those whom
God has revealed Christ to. That's a word that we use often.
It simply means unmerited favor. You can't leave out the thought
of that word unmerited because grace would cease to be grace
if it was merited in any way. Grace is unmerited favor. It's God giving you what you
don't deserve and not giving you what you do deserve, grace
and mercy. And in the same way that grace
would cease to be grace if it weren't considered unmerited,
it's the same with the word sovereign. There is no grace but sovereign
grace. There is no grace from anyone
other than God who is in the heavens and who does as he pleases,
how he pleases, when he pleases, to whom he pleases. To put sovereign
in front of grace doesn't change the word grace, for grace is
sovereign. whether it's there or not. It's
the only kind of grace there is. And in verse 32 of Romans
chapter 8, we see the amazing grace of God. It says, He, that's
God, that's God, that spared not His own Son but delivered
him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give
us all things?" God's gracious character is shown here in the
gift of His precious Son. Now this is a familiar passage
of Scripture. We've read it many times. We've
studied it many times. But I want us to consider it
again this morning in this light. We see the gracious character
of God in the gift of His Son. The gift of His own Son is God's
guarantee to His people of all their needed blessings. You see,
the greater always includes the lesser. in the Scriptures. His unspeakable spiritual gift. Now listen, who is the Lord Jesus
Christ? That's the gift that God gave
His own Son. It's the pledge and the promise
of all other needed temporal mercies. If God gave Him the
greatest gift, will He not much more, as we've seen, give good
things unto you? Yet we worry, yet we fret, just
sinners tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. But if
we could truly get a hold of this marvelous truth that God
gave His own Son, The other things in life would seem of less consequence. The greater includes the lesser.
The divine truth is that God did not spare his own son, but
he delivered him up for his elect people, that they might be spared. God didn't spare His own Son
so that He might spare you. If God did that, it should go
without saying that in Him who was delivered up for us, we're
freely given everything else that we need. My God shall supply
all your need. Philippians 4, 19. According
to what? His riches and glory in and by
Christ Jesus. If God gave Christ all the blessings
in Christ freely given in Him, God provides everything we need.
Now some have interpreted that to say God shall supply all our
greed, but that's not what it says. That's not what it says. If God delivered by determining
counsel, turned His back on His only begotten Son, whom He greatly
loved, so that you and I might live, Does it not bear witness
to your heart this morning and to your soul that He loves you
with an everlasting love and He will not withhold any good
thing, any needed thing from you? What kind of God would He
be if that were not so? The Lord hath appeared of old
unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn you." Now, I want you to consider four things with
me this morning and I'll be brief. The first is here we have a costly
sacrifice. That's what the Gospel is, is
substitution. It's God sacrificed Himself so
that you and I might be reconciled to Him. And this brings a side
of the truth in which I don't believe that we very often truly
consider and meditate on. Oh, we delight to think concerning
the wondrous love of Christ whose love was stronger than death
and who considered no suffering, absolutely no suffering to be
too great for His people in the redemption of them. No. But what
must it have meant, I ask you this morning, to God to have
given His only begotten beloved Son and spare Him not? We know that God's holy. We know
that God's just and righteous. We know that religion pretty
much paints a picture of God is love. And I think sometimes
that we kind of go on the defensive, but He's holy and He's righteous
and He's just, and He is. This book is a holy Bible. His
angels are holy angels. But let's don't completely throw
out the baby with the bathwater as they say, God is love. God
is love. No place is it demonstrated more
than in the fact that he spared not his own son. In the story
of the prodigal son, that parable was told by our Lord Jesus Christ
and it came from His lips. And we see in that story how
much the Father loved His wayward son. Why, it says, when the son
came to his senses and headed back home, he said his father
saw him far away. And what did he do? He ran. And
he threw his arms around his son and he kissed his son and
he called for the fatted calf and the ring and a beautiful
robe. Oh, what a picture that is of
God and what He had, the love that He had for His Son. I believe
the sending forth of the Son of God was something which the
heart of God the Father felt. I believe that it was a real,
real sacrifice on His part. You think about the love that
you have for your children, those of you that are parents. You
think about that love. And it falls infinitely short
of the love that God had for His Son. And now has for all
His sons and daughters. And I encourage you to deeply
consider the solemn fact that God spared not His Son. What expressive, what profound,
what Melting words for the child of God to meditate upon. Knowing
full well that His justice demanded. Now listen, back to the holy
part of God and the just part of God. We know full well what
the law of God justly demanded. Perfection. Something you and
I can't give. And all the redemption involved,
that law, it was rigid, it was unbending. And it insisted upon
perfect obedience and holy righteousness, demanding death for its transgressors. That's what God's law demanded. And God's justice was stern and
relentless. inevitable and unavoidable, required
full satisfaction, which refused to clear the guilty. Even your
salvation, God didn't just clear the guilty. God just didn't wave
His hand and say, okay, you're forgiven. Christ died. He spared not His Son. No, His justice wasn't excused. He didn't just say, OK, well,
I'll back off on this one a little bit. No. He spared not his own
son. You and I might have life. And
you think about that. Oh, we want the best for our
children. And yet God in His all-sufficient grace and mercy
delivered His Son and spared Him not. And He sent Him into
the world knowing that He'd be born in a manger in Bethlehem. He would suffer the ingratitude
of men. And yet God spared not His own
Son. Knowing His Son would have, as
the Scripture says, no place to lay His hand. That divine
Head of the Son of God No place to lay it. He says foxes have
their holes, but the Son of Man doesn't have a place to lay His
hand. God knowing the hatred and opposition of the ungodly,
the enmity and the bruising that would come at the hand of Satan. Yet God didn't hesitate, friends,
and He spared not His own Son. Oh, can you get a hold of this?
God didn't relax in any of the holy and righteous judgments
that came from His holy and strict law of justice. No, no, no. Because of them, He spared not
His own son. All the payment was exacted. Every drop of the cup of wrath
was drained dry. Every drop. Even when his beloved son cried
from the garden, Oh my father if it be possible, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me, yet God spared him not. God spared
him not. It was not possible if God were
to spare him. And at the same time, forgive
chosen sinners. He must not be spared so that
you and I might have life. God's got to show that to you.
God's got to cause that to mean something to you. Oh, if I could,
I would, friends. Even when the vile hands of wretching
men nailed him to the tree, God said, Awake, O sword, against
my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith
the Lord of hosts. Smite the shepherd. There's an
old song and some of the words aren't so good, but I love what
they call the hook or the chorus. It says, When He was on the cross,
I was on His mind. When He hung on that cross in
pain and agony and faced death and forsaken of God Almighty,
He's thinking of Pat Maddox. He's thinking of George and Gibbs.
Second thing, the gift was for us. Look at it again back in
Romans 8. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up. For who? For us all, it says. Now here we're told why the Father
made such a costly sacrifice. He didn't spare His own Son that
He might spare us. Again, we see the wonderful substitution
of the God of heaven and earth. It wasn't a lack of love for
His Son. No. But it was a wondrous, matchless,
fathomless love for us that God spared not His Son. Oh, marvel at the wondrous design,
dear friends, of the Most High. God so loved the world that He
gave. He gave. He gave His only begotten
Son. And Paul in Ephesians says, truly
such love passes knowledge. We can't understand that kind
of love. But we can believe it. We can bow to it. And we can
thank God for it. The amazing, wondrous, unexplainable
thing to me is that He made this costly sacrifice, not grudgingly,
not reluctantly, but freely out of love. Now you consider that
for a moment. He delivered him up for us. Descendants
of a rebellious Adam. Depraved, defiled, corrupt, sinful,
vile, worthless. That's what we were. And yet,
He spared not His own son, but delivered him up for us. For all those that are His. All
those that He chose before the foundation of the world. He set
his affection on him and he saved him because he spared not his
own son. For us who had gone into that
far country as the prodigal son and had spent in willful alienation
all that we had. We didn't have anything, but
we spent it. We spend it in riotous living. Yes, for us who had like sheep
gone astray, each one turning, as the old prophet said, his
own way. For us who were by nature the
children of wrath, even as others in whom there dwelled no good
thing. For us who had rebelled against
the Creator, hated His holiness, despised His Word, broke His
commandments, and resisted His Spirit. For us, He spared not
His own son, but delivered Him up. For us. For us who richly
deserve to be cast into the everlasting fire of hell and condemnation. That's what we deserve. That's
the just recompense of our reward. Dear friends, the wages of sin
is death. And our sins so fully earned,
those wages, yet we will never again question, will we, the
love of Him who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up
for us all. Now it's necessary, I believe,
that I quickly point out to you that little qualifying pronoun
found here in our text. It doesn't say that God delivered
him up for all, but for us all. That's a little word we need
not to pass over quickly. This can be definitely defined
by the verse before it. Look at verse 31. What shall
we then say to these things? If God be what? For us. Who can be against us? Now, who
is that us? Well, this shows us in verse
30. "...Moreover, whom He did predestinate,
them He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified."
This is talking about the elect of God. The people whom God set
His affection on, as I said, before the foundation of the
world. Who is this letter written to?
It's written to believers. It's written to the church of
Rome. It's written to the elect of God. And one of the other
epistles, and religion takes this and runs with it, God is
not willing that any should perish. They say, oh, God wants everybody
to be saved. Who's that written to? written
to God's people, and he's not willing that any of his people
should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And every
one of them will. Every one of God's people. Not
the whole world. I pray not for the world. I pray
for those that thou hast given me. And that's who he spared
not his own son for, but delivered him up. All of the us's. I'm
an us. Thank God. Thank God. God spared not His own Son for
us. Highly favored in heaven. And
it's nothing in you that deserved it. Nothing is unmerited. It's sovereign grace. And yet
in ourselves we are by nature and practice deserving of nothing
but wrath. But yet, thank God, it's for
us all, all of God's people. The worst as well as the best.
You think about that. You remember that parable the
Lord told? This is for the 500 pound debtor as well as it's
for the 50 pence debtor. And the Scriptures tell us in
Luke chapter 7, verse 42, "...when they neither had nothing to pay,
He frankly forgave them both." That's who this is for. That's
who this is for. It's for us. Third thing, the
blessed conclusion. He despaired not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all. What's the conclusion of this
verse? How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? How comforting and how conclusive
is the Apostle Paul's reasoning here. Arguing again from the
greater to the less, Paul proceeds to assure the believer of God's
readiness to also freely bestow all needed blessings. If God
spared not His own Son for you, is He going to hold back anything
else? Let me ask you that again. If God delivered His own Son
and spared Him not and put Him on the cross to die for the sins
of His people, is He going to withhold any good thing from
you? I guarantee you, He won't withhold anything that you need.
Sometimes we ask for things that wouldn't be good for us. He withholds
them. Because they're not for our good.
All things work together, what? For the good of them. The good
of them. We think we know what's best
for us, but we don't. The gift of His own Son, so ungrudgingly,
unreservedly given. And it's the pledge of every
other needed mercy. He has spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us. He shall freely give you all
The sad thing is that our hearts dwell upon what we don't have
instead of upon what we have. So here in this verse, the Spirit
of God steals and it calms our restless thoughts, our consistent
discontent with a soul-satisfying knowledge of the truth. If God
didn't spare His own Son but delivered Him up for you, He's
not going to withhold anything else. Oh, He's going to freely,
freely, freely give us all things. Now let me ask you, did any of
us plead or appeal to God to send forth His beloved Son? Yet
He sent Him anyway. Now we can come into the throne
of grace and present our request in the name of Christ our Lord,
whom God did not spare for us. Oh dear child of God, shall He
not with Him freely give us all things? He gave the ultimate. If a friend were to give you
a valuable picture, a valuable piece of art, worth millions
of dollars, would He begrudge the necessary paper and string
to wrap it in? That's what we're talking about
here. He gave the ultimate gift, the most costly sacrifice, these
other things. He delights in the gift. How
much less will God, He spared not His own Son, withhold any
good thing from them that love and trust Him. Now you consider
that, and the next time you doubt God's love, you think about what
He gave. You think about what He gave.
The one precious gift was bestowed when we were enemies. When we
were enemies. Would God not now be gracious
to us that we've been reconciled and made unto Him sons and daughters? If He gave us the ultimate gift
while we were yet enemies, how much more? I ask you friends,
will He give us now that we're His children, join heirs with
Christ? And the last, the fourth thing
of the four points was a promise of love. That would bring us
great comfort to pay attention to the tense used in this verse. And when I say tense, I'm talking
about the present tense. It doesn't say, how has he not
with him also freely given us all things? That's not what it
says. It doesn't say has. It plainly says how shall. Don't
miss the blessing of that. How shall he not with him freely
give us all things? This promise contains more than
a record of the past. This applies a reassuring confidence
both of the present and for the future. Shall. He shall. Both now and in the present and
forever and ever in the future, God shall manifest Himself as
the Great Giver. Nothing for His glory and for
our good will He withhold. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The same God who delivered up
Christ for us all, He's without bearableness or shadow of turning,
James said. The rite of Hebrew says He's
the same yesterday today and forever. We're the ones that
change, aren't we? We're the ones that are hot and
cold and look warm, by God. Christ came into the world to
save who? Sinners. Do you see by grace
that your sin is all that truly is yours? And for that sin, now
listen, for that sin, He spared not His own Son. but delivered Him up for you. And He will freely give you all
things." Freely. What do you think of this Christ?
Whose Son is He? He's the Son of the One that
spared Him not for us.