Put simply, this is the grace of God extended to all people. Since human beings are a rather foul and rebellious bunch, who would rather crucify their God than serve Him, they are not entitled to anything other than the penalty due them for their treasonous crime. However, because God is gracious and realizes how unbearable life would be if all were given their just desserts, He extends this common grace on both the religious and the irreligious, on the reverent and the irreverent. Those who can walk have been bestowed with a measure of common grace. Those who can see have been bestowed with a measure of common grace.

Those born in a culture of materialism and affluence, who have all their basic needs met from the git-go, have been given a boatload of common grace and should be grateful they do not have to endure the treacherous life of those in deepest darkest Africa who are born cold and naked in a straw hut and die shortly thereafter in the same conditions.

In a fallen world, all that is good is from God, who is the source of all good. Common grace is the method of injecting that good into a world ransacked by sin.