Quotes about Grace
Faith looks away from itself to Christ ... sola fide (by faith alone) and sola gratia (by grace alone) ... mean the same thing ... let the sound of sola fide-sola gratia ring in the life of the Church. Let it be a warning against the pride of the treacherous heart.
— GC Berkouwer
The object of Christology is not a purely theoretical knowledge but a profitable, wholesome knowledge of the salvation of God in Jesus Christ.
— GC Berkouwer
The grace of God is never the cause for glorying in one's own power ... Perseverance is always opposed to false self-confidence.
— GC Berkouwer
The fundamental fact about baptism will always be its involvement with the death of Christ ... The prevenient aspect of the grace of God lies not in the temporal priority of the acts of God in baptism in comparison with the conscious acceptance of the divine promise, but in the temporal priority of the cross of Christ with respect to the baptized person, whether child or adult.
— GC Berkouwer
Lord, will those who are saved be few?" ... Jesus' answer seems so noncommittal, so evasive ... Strive to enter by the narrow door (Luke 13:23f.) ... this evasiveness is only apparent ... This is the answer to this question ... this question has been answered, once for all time.
— GC Berkouwer
Grace is at work even in fallen man ... to bend partially back in the right direction those human powers and endowments which were man left to himself would be wholly perverted.
— GC Berkouwer
Common grace ... an imperfect solution ... does centre our attention on the gracious act of God in protecting man's corrupt and apostate nature from total demonization.
— GC Berkouwer
The true nature of good works cannot be understood apart from Christ who is our 'sanctification' (1 Corinthians 1:30).
— GC Berkouwer
Sanctification is not the humanly operated successor to the divinely worked justification.
— GC Berkouwer
Genuine sanctification has a 'continued orientation toward justification.
— GC Berkouwer
The Spirit alone could perform the miracle of making man walk on the road of sanctity without a sense of his own worth.
— GC Berkouwer
God ... is hidden from corrupt eyes, from the proud and disdainful, but revealed to those who in confession of sin and receptive faith are open to His grace. Salvation is preached in Christ: it is not necessary for one to travel a long way to overcome its hiddenness: he should simply accept this gift in faith.
— GC Berkouwer