It is the very nature of the love that is good will, kindness, favor, that it is gratuitous. But that is not the kind of love that grace is. Grace is the love that is good will, kindness, favor, and the love that is good will, kindness, favor is in the nature of the case gratuitous. At all events this is what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of the grace of God. He carries the idea, indeed, to its extreme height.
Grace is very distinctly and very emphatically love to the ill-deserving.
This is the third idea which is conveyed by the word grace when we are told that it is by grace that we have been saved. Our salvation is a pure gratuity from God. God has fixed upon us in the riches of his mercy and the greatness of his unconstrained love, pouring out upon us in the exceeding riches of his grace his pure kindness in Christ Jesus. This is then what Paul means when he tells us with reiterated emphasis that it is by grace, by grace and nothing else than grace, that we have been saved. He means that we have not saved ourselves.