Justification: Mediate and Immediate Grace

One could define "mediate grace" as that power of the Holy Spirit that changes our inner man, and thus, also changes our working relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One would then orthodoxly say that mediate grace made us new men, and our relationship with our God and Father is placed on a basis which may be thought of as "covenant keeping," or "being and acting like Christians."  Our relationship with our Father in Heaven is relationship with a Person, and we may therefore expect that that relationship of fellowship is moved forward, through thick and thin, based on the spiritual quality of our our personal relationship with one another.  Innumerable Scripture passages may be quoted to support this.

Likewise, one could define "immediate grace" as that grant of the status of sonship to us regardless of our merits, for the sake of Christ, which is communicated to our souls as a gift, through faith only, and not based on our works.  Definitive passages of Scripture from many places can be quoted to support this.  Happy is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin (David).

It's clear then, that total free grace operates at the same time as the give and take of personal relationship with God in the ethical and religious sphere which is produced by grace-in-us, mediate grace.  God is sovereign and good to his people.  Yet, men are responsible before God, in the give and take of ethical personal relationship.  There is such a thing as discipline for sin.  There are apostates.  There is forgiveness.  There is reward.  Yet there is also superabounding unearned and unearnable grace enveloping our whole life, because of the work of our Savior.

The argument over justification in Reformation time was about this.  Which grace is supreme?  For Romanism, it is grace operative in me, that is, mediate grace, which will determine my destiny at the judgment.  For the Reformers, it is immediate grace.  Mediate and immediate grace are both operative in us or for us, but immediate grace, free grace, is always sovereign.

Does this mean that mediate and immediate grace can conflict?  Can a man under the influence of immediate and free grace fail to show the evidence of mediate grace?  No.  There is no conflict here.  The manifestation of a Christian life, and the presence of free grace always comport properly with one another, whether it looks that way to us or not.  Free grace is not a license to sin, nor is mediate grace in us the ground of our acceptance with God.

Does this mean that a spiritually poor Christian life ought to make us doubt whether free grace is given on our behalf?  Does a sleazy and sinful Christian life mean that mediate grace is absent, and therefore free grace is absent, too?  Not if repentance toward God and faith in the free grace of our Savior is present.  We remember Luther's first Reformation thesis:  Our entire lives should be lives of repentance -- every day!