There’s a problem, though. God doesn’t appear to love all people the same way. He certainly does not save all people. In fact, the Bible also contains references to God’s hatred for certain people and groups of people. ¹⁰ So, either God loves some people and hates others (cosmic waste) … or God can righteously have two kinds of love: a common love ¹¹ that relates to His imago Dei and applies to all people, and a more specific saving love that only applies to some people.

Common love is insufficient to save people, but it does allow them to participate in God’s perfect plan to bring about His Kingdom. It results not in saving grace, but common grace, which is not eternal, can be resisted by our hardness of will, and does not fundamentally change the heart.

So what does common grace look like? Theologians talk about it in three categories:

1. Natural blessings and gifts. This is the most basic expression of common grace, and is found in several places in Scripture. For example, Matthew 5:45 says, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

2. The restraining of sin. People don’t sin all we could, and we don’t experience all the immediate consequences of sin we should. ¹² God’s common grace restrains this sin (of Christians and non- Christians) and its effects.

3. The ability of all sinners to do good. Listen to Jesus as He questions the rich young ruler in Mark 10:17-18:

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good— except God alone.”

Without the saving grace of Christ, we are not capable of producing righteousness, the type of pure “good” that God requires.

But what about the moral and personal goodness we see? Everybody’s capable of that, aren’t they? How does that differ from righteousness? It seems there are not only two kinds of love and two kinds of grace, but also two kinds of goodness.

Think of common grace goodness as conformity to God’s law, though unmotivated by faith – “horizontal” goodness rather than “vertical” goodness. John Calvin beautifully describes this capacity for goodness as a gift from God. He characterizes an unbelieving mind as “though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts”. ¹³

This kind of goodness is not enough to save anyone … but it is real. It’s not an illusion, not a cosmic waste for God’s plans. He will use it for the salvation of some and the judgment of others; to bring shalom, healing and restoration to creation; to reflect His image; and to serve His glory. It is a real response to the natural law, the moral sense of right and wrong and need for God that He has placed within the heart of every person. ¹⁴

We don’t have to devalue the gifts of common grace just because they aren’t as exalted as the gifts of saving grace. For if God can delight in that kind of goodness, you and I can too.

Let’s pull all these ideas together – God’s purposes, love, grace, and our response – into a picture of “Inner-Ring Redemption” and “Outer-Ring Redemption”: ¹⁵

LIVING COMMON GRACE

Let’s apply common grace and outer-ring redemption in two areas: personal relationships and broader cultural engagement.

COMMON GRACE IN PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

How does common grace change the way we interact with unbelievers?

INNER-RING REDEMPTION God’s saving love fuels God’s saving grace by which God works in regenerated people to redeem their souls as the Kingdom reigns in their hearts and which God calls us to participate in through the Redemptive Mandate (a.k.a. Great Commission) all for His glory

OUTER-RING REDEMPTION God’s common love fuels God’s common grace by which God works through all people to redeem entire cultures as the Kingdom reigns over creation and which God calls us to participate in through the Creation Mandate (a.k.a. Cultural Commission) all for His glory

You can truly love unbelievers for their own sake.
It’s axiomatic in contemporary Christian circles that most people need “authentic relationships” before they are open to the Gospel. And common grace is the only basis for authentic relationships with non-Christians. It’s the only way you can love someone for their own sake, which means you’d love them even if you knew they wouldn’t be next to you in heaven. In doing so, you are simply following God’s common grace pattern of merciful love for all who bear His image. You earn the privilege to be moral without being a moralist, exercise judgment without being judgmental, and insist on fundamentals without being a fundamentalist.

Outside of common grace, when you encounter an unbeliever, you may hate her, pity her, or want to possess her; but you cannot love her.

Bob Lupton sees this problem anew when he finds himself the target of door-to-door evangelism by a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses: “I still resent being treated as a lost soul and not valued as a neighbor … perhaps if I sensed that the person at my door had a genuine interest in me, not as a disembodied soul or a prospective recruit or a decision to be tallied, but in me as a human being, I might feel somewhat more receptive.” ¹⁶

Common grace helps you offer a richer apologetic.
I remember a conversation with a friend about ten years ago. He asked me point-blank if my Christianity meant I believed there was nothing good in him. I panicked because I’d been taught the answer was yes – that everything in him was evil. I had literally just heard of common grace somewhere and hardly understood anything about it – but I threw it out there and said that it meant he wasn’t all bad. I got off easy that day … but the memory of that experience made me start investigating common grace many years later. He later came to Christ, by the way, though from an apologist’s perspective I think I did everything else wrong.

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