What is the Age of Grace?

"The dispensation of the grace of God" (v.2) is God's special way of dealing with mankind at the present time. It is in contrast to the administration of law in the Old Testament. It began with the Lord Jesus manifested among men, He whose blessed death and resurrection gives the purest, fullest character to the abounding grace of God. This dispensation has lasted almost 2000 years, and will continue until the coming of the Lord Jesus for His Church at the Rapture. No other dispensation has lasted this long, and even the Millennium will be only 1000 years. The truth of this dispensation was given to the Apostle Paul particularly for Gentiles (Eph.3:1-11), though Jews are not excluded for Paul himself was a Jew.

(5) From the birth of Christ to His coming again — an age of grace.

The fifth period shown on the Chart is from the Ascension of our LORD till the translation of the Saints to Heaven. "Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:21.) It is the present age, an indefinite period, during which a world-wide testimony to the Risen Son of GOD is being proclaimed; it is the day of salvation, too, during which the heirs of GOD, and joint-heirs with CHRIST are being gathered out from all nations by the effectual testimony of GOD'S SPIRIT and Word. The Age of God's longsuffering grace to a guilty world, the times in which our lot is cast.

During this, the age in which we live, "Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by JESUS CHRIST our LORD," (Rom. 5:2). It is emphatically the age or period characterised by GOD'S long-suffering grace to a world that has been proved guilty not of sins only, grievous as this is, but of the crowning sin of crucifying the LORD of glory Who had come through the tender mercy of GOD in lowly grace to save mankind.

Now this present period of grace, which has already lasted more than 1900 years, may come to a close at any moment, but we should never fix dates, because, in this connection, scripture never does so.

Almost exactly nineteen centuries ago Paul reminded the Corinthian saints that they were living in that wonderful epoch: it was NOW. The epoch of grace and salvation still persists. It is still NOW. May we all be stirred to evangelise, remembering that it may not last much longer.

This period is represented by an incomplete circle on the Chart, because it is an indefinite period; already through the long-suffering grace of GOD it has been nearly two thousand years in duration.

In grace God was not now making demands upon men which it was impossible for them to fulfil; He was offering them richest blessing through faith in His Son whom He had sent to them. Soon there would be the day of vengeance for all who refused His Son, but now it was God's acceptable year, a prolonged period compared with the day in which there would be the short work of His judgment. We are still in the acceptable year; God is still disposed towards men in grace, and all who heed His message receive His blessing.

The time of grace: to bring in God’s full and final revelation in grace, showing the ‘riches’ and the ‘glory’ of His grace, on the basis of the utter failure of man having been fully established; The millennium: to make the objects of His grace into the vessels of the display of His grace. At the same time, righteousness and peace will be established and God’s plan for the earth fulfilled.

In the time of grace, God no longer only shows grace to certain individuals (as He did with Noah, Abraham, Ruth, etc.) with man still being under probation, but — the ruin of man having been established — God makes grace His modus operandi of dealing with man in general. It is not a time of further testing of fallen man (see above), but the time of acting in grace. Now, God’s message to man is ‘the gospel of the grace of God’ (Acts 20:24), grace has ‘overabounded’ (Rom. 5:15, 20; 6:1; cf. 1 Tim. 1:14), grace has ‘appeared’ (Titus 2:11), it ‘has been made manifest now by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Tim. 1:10), grace and truth is come (John 1:17), we are ‘under grace’ (Rom. 6:14), we know ‘the God of all grace’ (1 Pet. 5:10), and we stand in ‘the true grace of God’ (1 Pet. 5:12).

In the New Testament it is a prominent fact, particularly in the epistles, and we discover why it had so small a place in the earlier part of the record. We read that, "the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared," (Titus 2:11), and that in connection with the first advent of Christ. In keeping with this we read also, "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). The earlier age was the age of law. Grace always existed in God, but not until Christ appeared did it come fully and decisively to light.