grace
Barnes on 1 Timothy 6:21
which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you.
This word properly means favor. It is very often used in the New Testament, and is employed in the sense of benignity or benevolence; felicity, or a prosperous state of affairs; the Christian religion, as the highest expression of the benevolence or favor of God; the happiness which Christianity confers on its friends in this and the future life; the apostolic office; charity, or alms; thanksgiving; joy, or pleasure; and the benefits produced on the Christian’s heart and life by religion - the grace of meekness, patience, charity, etc., “Schleusner.” In this place, and in similar places in the beginning of the apostolic epistles, it seems to be a word including all those blessings that are applicable to Christians in common; denoting an ardent wish that all the mercies and favors of God for time and eternity, blended under the general name grace, may be conferred on them. It is to be understood as connected with a word implying invocation. I pray, or I desire, that grace, etc. may be conferred on you. It is the customary form of salutation in nearly all the apostolic epistles; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2; Colossians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Psalm 1:3.
Spurgeon on Titus 2:11-13
Thus you see that grace has its own disciples. Are you a disciple of the grace of God? Did you ever come and submit yourself to it?
Taken together, we see that the fear of the legalist – that preaching grace produces Christians indifferent to obedience – is unfounded. Grace teaches us obedience. “Wherever the grace of God comes effectually, it makes the loose liver deny the desires of the flesh; it causes the man who lusted after gold to conquer his greediness; it brings the proud man away from his ambitions; it trains the idler to diligence, and it sobers the wanton mind which cared only for the frivolities of life. Not only do we leave these lusts, but we deny them.
The discipline of grace, according to the apostle, has three results – denying, living, looking. You see the three words before you.
Spurgeon on grace amidst affliction
Our graces lie asleep within us like slumbering soldiers until affliction strikes its terrible drum, and awakens them. You shall not know that there is a bird in the woods if you are quiet, but if you break a bough they will become visible, and thus affliction, passing through our soul, startles all our graces, and we perceive them, and God is honored thereby. You cannot see the stars while the sun shines. Wait till it is dark, and then you shall behold them. And many a Christian grace is quite imperceptible until the time of trial, and then it shines out with great luster.
All this supposes that grace is there, but if it be wanting, trial discovers the lack. You know not what spirit you are of till you have been under tribulation. You count yourself rich, but in the fire your gold is tested. You reckon that your house is well-built, but the flames find out the wood, and hay, and stubble. Self-knowledge is never sure if it comes not of tests and temptations. Therefore, we count them happy that endure, because they are less likely to be deceived. God is to be praised for the discovery of our graces, for thus affliction becomes a blessing without disguise.
Barnes on Revelation 2:24
A kind Saviour says, that he would bring upon them no other and no weightier burden, than must arise from his purpose to inflict appropriate vengeance on the guilty themselves. The trouble which would grow out of that would be a sufficient expression of his displeasure. This is, in fact, often now all that is necessary as a punishment on a church for harboring the advocates of error and of sin. The church has trouble enough ultimately in getting rid of them; and the injury which such persons do to its piety, peace, and reputation, and the disorders of which they are the cause, constitute a sufficient punishment for having tolerated them in its bosom. Often the most severe punishment that God can bring upon people is to “lay upon them no other burden” than to leave them to the inevitable consequences of their own folly, or to the trouble and vexation incident to the effort to free themselves from what they had for a long time tolerated or practiced.