Theopedia

Means of grace

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

— Romans 10:17

Definition

The means of grace are the outward, ordinary institutions God has ordained as the channels through which the Holy Spirit communicates the benefits of redemption to believers, rather than every circumstance a Christian might find spiritually helpful. Hodge defines the phrase narrowly for this reason: “the phrase is intended to indicate those institutions which God has ordained to be the ordinary channels of grace… The means of grace, according to the standards of our Church, are the word, sacraments, and prayer.”1 Bavinck states the same restriction: “strictly speaking, the Word and the sacraments alone can be viewed as means of grace, that is, as external, humanly perceptible actions and signs that Christ has given his church and with which he has linked the communication of his grace.”2

Confessional Definition

The Baptist Catechism, compiled by William Collins for the General Assembly that adopted the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, asks directly what these means are: “the outward and ordinary means, by which Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption, are his ordinances, especially the Word of God, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and prayer; all which means are made effectual to the elect for salvation.”3

Biblical Basis

Paul grounds saving faith itself in the preached word: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17), the same word Luke calls “the word of his grace,” able to “build you up” (Acts 20:32). Hebrews directs believers to draw near “the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16), and Peter ties the church’s own gifts to one another back to this same grace: “as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Pet. 4:10). Baptism and the Lord’s Supper stand alongside the word and prayer as the other ordinary channels the confession names.

Opposing Views

Rome teaches that the sacraments themselves confer grace by virtue of the rite performed, apart from the faith of the recipient. Bavinck states the contrast plainly: “Roman Catholics view the visible sign as absorbing the invisible grace so that the sacrament works ‘by the act performed’ (ex opere operato) and only requires negatively that the recipient does not pose an obstacle to its operation. The Reformed hold to a spiritual communication…”2 Hodge draws out what this denies about baptism specifically: the Reformed reject “that baptism conveys grace ‘ex opere operato’ in the sense which Romanists attach to those words,” and that baptism is “the ordinary means or channel of conveying… the merits of Christ’s death and the saving influences of the Spirit, so that those benefits may not, except in extraordinary cases, be obtained before or without baptism.”4 On the Reformed account the means are ordinary, not automatic: the Spirit ordinarily works through the word, sacraments, and prayer, but their efficacy lies in his working through them, not in the rite as such.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 463. ↩

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩ ↩2

  3. The Baptist Catechism (1693), Q. 94, text as reproduced by Theologicus. ↩

  4. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XX. The Means of Grace,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 579. ↩