“The story of grace is the story of God’s doings in grace with this world of ours.
If we speak of it in reference to the Father, it is the story of His thoughts and purposes from eternity. And what grace there is in these!
If in reference to the Son, it is the story of His doings and sufferings upon earth. And what grace there is in these!
If in reference to the Spirit, it is the story of His witness-bearing to this manifested grace of the Godhead. For He is the narrator of the wondrous tale!
Thus, the loving purposes are the purposes of the Father, the loving deeds are the deeds of God the Son, and the loving testimony is the testimony of God the Holy Ghost.
The story of grace is the truest that has ever been told on earth.
He who tells it is true, and He of whom it is told is the same. In it there is no intermixture of true and the false; it is absolutely and altogether true, in every jot and tittle.
Only this may be said of it, that whilst it is ‘a true report which we have heard’ (1 Kings 10:6), yet the half has not been told us.
It contains God’s own proposals of friendship to us. It speaks of peace—a purchased, finished peace, through a divine peace-maker-peace between the sinner and God, between earth and heaven.
It points to rest, rest for weary man. Its object is to fill us with God’s own joy, to make us sharers of God’s own blessedness.
In listening to it we find the burden of our guilt unfastening itself from our shoulders, and the bondage of a troubled conscience giving place to the liberty of reconciliation and love.
It is a story of the heart. And the heart whose feelings it transcribes, whose treasures it unlocks, is the heart of God.
It is this story of grace that has brought back something like sunshine into this world of ours. For though light has not yet displaced the darkness, still it is no longer midnight.
“Through the tender mercy of our God, the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:7-8).”
Morning still lingers, as if struggling with prolonged twilight, or as if the sun were rising under an eclipse: but the promise of day is sure: the noon is near.
It is this story of love that has shed peace into so many souls, and unburdened so many consciences of their loads of guilt.
Many a wound has it healed; many a broken heart has it upbound; many a feeble limb has it strengthened; many a care-worn brow has it unwrinkled; many a dim eye has it rekindled.
It has gladdened earth’s melancholy wastes with fresh fragrance and verdure, sadly reminding us of the paradise we have lost, yet brightly pledging to us the hope of the better paradise hereafter, when, under the dominion of the second Adam, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
It is this story of love that God has been telling for these six thousand years. He calls it ‘the gospel, or the good news, or the glad tidings of great joy.
And so it is. Yet how few receive it as such, or give God the credit for speaking the truth when He makes that gospel known to us! ‘Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?“
–Horatius Bonar, The Story of Grace: An Exhibition of God’s Love (Geanies House, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1848/2025), 13-15.
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