Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are by Christ’s own appointment means whereby his grace is imparted to the members of his body—the one, relating to entrance through union with Christ in his death and resurrection into newness of life and the fellowship of the church; the other relating to the nourishment of that life through believing participation in the elements of bread and wine as showing forth the Lord’s death till he come. But there are, apart from the two sacraments, other means whereby God’s grace is imparted to men. As Charles Hodge says, “A work of grace is the work of the Holy Spirit; the means of grace are the means by which, or in connection with which, the influence of the Spirit is conveyed or exercised” (Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 654). Thus the sacraments or ordinances, although unique in their institution, are not the only agencies through which divine grace is received. For both Scripture and life bear witness to the fact that the Holy Spirit influences men in many different ways.
So manifold are these other means of grace that to discuss them within the compass of a brief essay imposes a problem of selection. But the problem may be solved, in part at least, by considering first those means which, although different from the sacraments or ordinances, are in particular relation to them—namely, the Word of God, prayer, and fellowship (communion of the saints)—and then by considering some of the many means that come through common grace.
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper do not stand in isolation. They are intimately related within the Church to the Word of God. Thus Calvin declared, “Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists” (Institutes, ed. by J. T. McNeill, Vol. II, p. 1023). And, as R. S. Wallace shows (Calvin’s Doctrine of The Word and Sacrament), much of the great Reformer’s thought rests upon this indissoluble relationship of Scripture and sacrament.
The Word of God. Foremost, then, among the other means of grace is the Word of God, not only in its true preaching and faithful hearing but also in its daily use by the individual believer. Church history from apostolic times (1 Cor. 1:17, 21, 23, 24) down through the ages testifies to the preached Word as a means of grace unto the salvation and nourishment of souls. If the first-century Church “continued stedfastly … in breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42), the same text tells us that it did so in conjunction with “the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship” and “in prayers.” Indeed, the book of Acts is in large part a record of the apostolic preaching of the Word (Acts 2:14–35; 3:12–26; 4:31; 7:2–53; 8:4, 35; 10:34–43; 13:16–41; etc.). Following the pattern established in Acts, God has made faithful preaching and obedient hearing of the Word a blessing to his people. Therefore, the integrity of Scripture is crucial for the life of the Church, and to impugn the authority of the Word is to call in question one of God’s chief means of grace.
But it is not just in its public preaching and hearing that Scripture is a means of grace; in its private use the Bible is no less an instrument of the Spirit. Recall the relation of the Word of God to some of the loci classici of Christian experience—Augustine in the garden at Rome, hearing the childish voice repeating, “Tolle, lege,” and going into the house to find deliverance through reading Romans 13:13, 14; Luther in the Black Monastery at Wittenberg, converted through meditation on Romans 1:16, 17; Bunyan finding spiritual peace through 1 Corinthians 1:30. What happened to these men has been paralleled countless times by the experience of Christians in all ages and among all peoples. Moreover, along with this function in God’s gracious work of regeneration (Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23), Scripture is also daily food whereby the believer is nourished. The exhortation, “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18), goes hand in hand with the injunction, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Pet. 2:2, 3). Daily reading of the Word is beyond question a continuing means of grace for untold multitudes of God’s people.
Fellowship, Prayer, Worship. Turning again to the record in Acts, we observe that fellowship and prayer accompanied teaching and the sacrament: “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and prayer” (Acts 2:42). Surely the most inclusive of the other means of grace is that of fellowship (koinonia). Samuel Rutherford quaintly said, “Many coals make a good fire and this is part of the communion of saints” (Letters, ed. by A. Bonar, #286). The worshiping, serving fellowship of the church is surely among the other means of grace. It is significant that in the new translation of Calvin’s Institutes (ed. by J. T. McNeill) the original title of Book IV, which deals with the church, is for the page headings shortened from “The External Means or Aids by Which God Invites Us Into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein” to “Means of Grace: the Holy Catholic Church.” In the comprehensive sense the Church is indeed a chief means for the Spirit’s influence upon men. Proper recognition of this fact is a corrective to the extremes of individualism into which certain forms of evangelicalism may possibly lapse.
Again, prayer, public as well as private, is a means of grace. For while prayer offered, as our Lord instructed, behind the shut door is the most intensely personal of spiritual exercises, no believer anywhere prays only as an individual but always as a member of the body of Christ. Nor does he pray apart from the Word of God. The promises of Scripture constitute the warp and woof of prayer. Feeding the soul on the Bible leads to prayer and prayer leads to the Bible. From the perfect prayer life of our Lord on through the intercessions of the great saints of Scripture, among them Abraham, Moses, David and the other psalmists, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Jonah, Ezra, Peter, Paul, Scripture is the book of prayer. Nor is it answered prayer alone that is a means of grace but rather the act of praying in the sense of adoration of God, praise to God, communion with God, which also brings blessing to the soul.
At this point, special mention should be made of corporate worship, including as it does the preaching and hearing of the Word of God, and public prayer. For this too is a means of grace, and a great one. In the words of Calvin, “Believers have no greater help than public worship, for by it God raises his own folk upward step by step” (Institutes, Vol. II, p. 1019).
However, to subject these other means of grace to strict analysis is difficult if not impossible. Just as in man the physical, mental, and spiritual components are united, so these agencies of the Spirit’s working are interrelated and interdependent. The Word of God is spiritual seed and spiritual food; prayer is made according to its promises and teaching; the sacraments are administered as it directs; and all this is under Him who is at the center of the Word and who is the great Head of the Church in which believers find gracious fellowship.
Additional Means in Relation to Common Grace. God also confers his benefits to men through common grace, by which is meant the “general influences of the Holy Spirit which to a greater or lesser degree are shared by all men” (L. Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 179; cf. also C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, pp. 654–675; and M. E. Osterhaven, “Common Grace,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, VI, No. 8 [1962], 374 f.). Included in these influences of the Spirit are not only the blessings of the natural order, epitomized in our Lord’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45b); but also the talents God bestows upon men, whether artistic as typified by Bezaleel (Exod. 31:2–4) or administrative as in the case of Moses and Joshua and David, or in the many other kinds of human ability. Thus considered, all human progress intellectually and culturally, science not excepted, stems from common grace. In this fact lies the answer to the parochialism of judging a work of literature or art by the life of its human creator, or of relegating scientific advances wholly to the secular realm. For if God gives ability, then the products of that ability, provided that it is used in the integrity of the truth, are to be accepted as gifts of God’s grace. As Justin Martyr put it, “All that has been well said belongs to us Christians” (Second Apology, p. 13). Therefore, music not simply in conjunction with sacred words but in its own right may be, under common grace, an uplifting and ennobling influence. Likewise with the other arts. For the title of C. G. Osgood’s little book, Poetry As a Means of Grace, is more than figurative and points to the spiritual use of culture as a whole.
Nature. But while the arts and sciences are necessarily subject to limitations of opportunity and ability, there are even more spacious areas of common grace that are open to all regardless of education and culture. In the forefront of these are the works of God in nature. To go down to the sea in ships and to behold the wonders of the deep (Ps. 107:23, 24); to lift up one’s eyes unto the hills (Ps. 121:1, 2; Ps. 36:6); to consider the heavens, the moon and the stars which God has ordained (Ps. 8:3)—these and experiences like them are also, in their wordless but eloquent communication of the greatness of the living God, means of grace.
Work and Service. Of great importance among the agencies of common grace is work. Faithful doing of the daily task brings satisfaction gained in no other way, while even the humblest work done for the glory of God may become a pathway to lofty Christian experience, as with Brother Lawrence (cf. The Practice of the Presence of God). But especially work in the form of selfless service for others, done out of love and compassion, is a means of blessing both to doer and recipient. If some forms of present-day evangelicalism lack social concern, the remedy lies in renewed sensitivity to human need. Said our Lord to those who gave food and drink to the hungry and thirsty, sheltered the stranger, clothed the destitute, and visited the sick and imprisoned, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40). And James, the brother of the Lord, wrote, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (Jas. 1:27). After describing how a group of British officers who, having suffered unspeakable degradation in the notorious Japanese prison camp at Chungkai, shared food and water with destitute Japanese casualties and bound up the wounds of these their enemies, Ernest Gordon declares, “We had experienced a moment of grace.… God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice and had given us the will to obey His command, ‘Thou shalt love’ ” (Through the Valley of the Kwai, p. 222).
Special Human Relationships. Other means of grace include the wide range of human relationships. The sacred union of husband and wife, bearing the precious analogy of the union of Christ with his Church (Eph. 5:22–33), surely conveys a special measure of grace to those who live within it in the fear of the Lord. And additional relationships, such as that of parent and child, friend and friend, employer and employee, doctor and patient, teacher and pupil, citizen and civil authority—all of these may be used by the Spirit to bring blessing to men.
The fact is that the breadth of divine grace is immeasurable. In his sovereignty God is able to make any circumstance a vehicle of good for his children (Rom. 8:28). Even the bitter experiences of life—disappointment and misunderstanding, sorrow and tragedy—may become means of grace through him who is able to sanctify to us our deepest distress. There is no limit to the wideness of God’s mercy. His grace has infinite horizons and the agencies through which it is conveyed are as varied and multiform as life itself.
Use of the Other Means of Grace. A final comment is in order regarding use of the other means of grace. Here the reference, although including the special nonsacramental means, such as the Word of God and prayer, which are no more to be neglected than the sacrament, cannot be restricted to these special means. Clearly there is for Christians the continuing obligation to use talents, to do work, to serve others, to enjoy the beauty and fruits of creation, to live with others, and to experience every contingency of life as unto the Lord. Only by the unremitting practice of Paul’s advice, “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Col. 3:17), can believers use as they should the other means of grace.
Bibliography: L. Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination; J. Calvin, Institutes; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II; Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God; M. E. Osterhaven, “Common Grace,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, VI (January 19, 1962), 374 f.; R. S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament.
Headmaster
The Stony Brook School
Stony Brook, L. I., New York.