Grace means unearned favour from God. It is actually the right word, although it often confuses people.
I understand what it means but disagree with how Van Til is applying it to the reprobate, especially considering there are three different views.
There is no such thing as common "grace,"
“Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.” James 5:5
Dr. Gill comments,
when beasts were slain for some extraordinary entertainment, or for the solemn festivals and sacrifices the Jews, when they lived more deliciously than at other times; and then the sense is, that these rich men fared sumptuously every day; every day was a festival with them; they indulged themselves in intemperance; they ate and drank, not merely what was necessary, and satisfying, and cheering to nature, but to excess, and gorged, and filled themselves in an extravagant manner: the Syriac version, instead of “hearts”, reads “bodies” and one copy reads, “your flesh”: and the last phrase may be rendered, as it is in the same version, “as unto”, or “for the day of slaughter”; and so the Arabic version, “ye have nourished your hearts, as fattened for the day of slaughter”: like beasts that are fattened in order to be killed, so were they preparing and fitting up by their sins for destruction.
“But thou, O LORD, knowest me: thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter.” Jeremiah 12:3
Again, John Gill:
either out of the fold, or from a fat pasture; so fat sheep are plucked from the rest, in order to be killed: this shows that their riches, affluence, and plenty, served but to ripen them for ruin and destruction, and were like the fattening of sheep for slaughter; which the prophet, by this imprecation, suggests and foretells would be their case, as a righteous judgement upon them;
Yours in the Lord,
jm
