Summary of Book 2 - Chapter 17

Christ Truly and Properly Said to Have Merited the Grace of God and Salvation for Us

This is the last chapter in Book 2.

Some highlights are:

1. When we speak of the merit of Christ, therefore, we do not consider him as the origin of it, but we ascend to the ordination of God, which is the first cause; because it was of his mere good pleasure, that God appointed him Mediator to procure salvation for us. And thus it betrays ignorance to oppose the merit of Christ to the mercy of God.

2. He (Jesus) had been pre-destinated to appease the Divine wrath by his sacrifice, and to abolish our transgressions by his obedience.

3. We are chosen in Christ...we are accepted in him. How did God begin to favour those whom he had loved before the creation of the world, but by the manifestation which he made of his love when he was reconciled by the blood of Christ?

4. By the sacrifice of Christ, we obtain gratuitous righteousness, so as to be acceptable to God, though by nature we are the children of wrath and alienated from him by sin...our Saviour bestows upon us what he purchased.