W W
W
W World Wide Web
Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
CHAPTER 10
True and
False Relationships
In terms of
imagery:
The Fickle
Fornication and the Constant
Faithfulness Contrasted:
The latter
with all the Beauty of Coherence and Harmony,
the former like meat, not between but IN the teeth
Chapter 10, considers the special relationship
between grace and liberty, and love, and the confused distortions,
little more than mental disturbances embraced by cultures, that many consider
in lieu of reality.
A) First we consider distortions of
Christianity so that our concern should be justly applied to the facts, and not
to constructions merely associated with Christianity: to the Bible itself.
This is found in Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 9.
B) Secondly we come to the association of grace, love,
liberty and authority, in the interstices of predestination and will, from Great
Execrations … Ch. 9. Seen in some
isolation, these when at length viewed in unison, show again the perfect
harmony of all components in this field. They agree like old friends. It is
seen that love and liberty are correlative, each essential to the other,
complementary and if you will, co-axial; and in particular, that only in a love
beyond man that makes liberty is liberty possible, while at the same time,
predestination is the correlative of both and all.
The result
is to see the irrational reeling in its own dimness, and the Biblical possessed
of that germinal ebullience, that rising into reality with relish, which characterises truth, always fit, always ready, always
consistent, always meeting any challenge, and often with a kind of effortless
rightness that is its own rebuke to the inferior and trailing mechanisms of
illusion.
A
CHAPTER 9
Statistical Spirituality,
Psychic
Subjectivity
and
Statistical Predestination
1) Statistical Spirituality
The sheer glory of having many souls saved, many churches formed and much ado, can become a tonic to the dispirited or a drug to the misled.
First, as is so wisely said so often of 'revivals', ARE the souls saved ? It appears that depending on the methods employed, crassly numerical approaches (MANY churches of vastly diverse approaches to anything like scripture, MANY advertisements and inducements and so on ...) can debilitate the church. It merely tends to promote confusion, superficiality and success stories of one chapter.
On the other hand, some revivals have had enormous effects, but in the last century much revivalism was merely a sordid ending story, leading to Romanism, from which Protestants had for centuries rejoiced to depart. Take the case of Scotland, in the days of martyrs like George Wishart and Patrick Hamilton, a whole bevy of Scottish grouse were shot at by the corrupt ecclesiastical cum political powers that then were, murdered for their holiness, for their godliness, for their gospel zeal and their love (called 'heresy', but such things do not belong in Romanism of the extirpation passion).
The
people were moved from such patent horror, self-indulgence, monastic vices,
greed and lusts of the carnal nature, endless abuse of the very name of
'church', by such intractable love of blood, that when Knox made his leadership
apparent, there was a vast national sigh of relief.
Romanism (or if you will Roman Catholicism, though as George Borrow so rightly says, How can anything not universal be called 'catholic'!) has done far worse in Spain, and proved a veritable bonfire of loveliness in England, in some ways like World War I, in which perished much of the flower of English youth, many prepared by Baden Powell's scouting movement with high ideals, in mud and muck for 4 long years of trenches, with lowlights like Verdun, munching many thousands per night!
Now back there! Is that the path of progress ? The only point on which the current pope has relented is this, that people who were applying the truth had at times taken excessive measures. That in no way covers torture, theft and slaughter, the dispossession of the young of their parents' inheritance, by the slovenly and satanic use of the word 'heresy' as it often was. But the point is this, that Romanism with its triple idolatry (cf. SMR pp. 1032-100H with A Question of Gifts VI) - before which idolised beings, those marked to be slain were slaughtered, as with Moloch of old - is NOT at all truth, but wholly diverse from it. Its many correct tenets are twisted by the underlying principles of idolatry, grabbing the glory from God and so leaving the phrases too feeble to stand! God HATES this sort of synthesis (cf. Zephaniah 1:5), and is prepared to 'cut off' for it!
Hence we are left with the claims to power, to tyrannical authority so that God's 'father' figure, a 'pope', His alleged 'representative' on earth can over-ride and flatly contradict the Bible as attested freely in the SMR passages above. Father ? Is it not clear enough for a 10 year old: "CALL NO MAN ON EARTH FATHER, FOR ONE IS YOUR FATHER, who is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9). Is the pope then in heaven ? Is he not on this earth!
Back then to Romanism, to live in it or with it as one, went much of the so-called evangelism of the 20th century, one of the greatest delusions and misalliances of all time, exactly paralleling that of Jehoshaphat with Ahab, rebuked so heavily by the prophet Jehu (II Chronicles 19:2), leading to Ahab's death, and very nearly that of Jehoshaphat too (II Kings 22:30-35). This is the marvel of evangelism at its magnificent zenith in the twentieth century. This is where a very large amount of it has been delusively leading (cf. A Question of Gifts loc. cit. , Stepping out for Christ Ch. 1, Repent or Perish Ch. 5), while much more of churchcraft has been leading what is left as misleadable, into false alliances, ambitions and doctrines, applications and political séances, through the World Council of Churches, the aptly named 'Swing' Movement and many other instrumentalities (cf. News 87, the 10th Movement, News 121).
Some years ago, when the author was a Minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, in which one had hoped there would be a pure and biblical emphasis and fidelity, there was an opportunity, one was advised, for an entire Presbytery, a regional group of churches, of what was then the Southern Presbyterian Church (PC USA), to seek admittance to this denomination (then termed the RPCES). This entry was discouraged, again as found from information given, by one of the chief ecclesiastical executives. In time, the entire RPCES, a relatively much smaller denomination, though vigorous, was instead, itself swallowed up without remainder, into that Southern church.
This
was done by a simple absorption, so that this smaller church became part of the
break-away group of some 400 or so Southern churches, which became the
Presbyterian Church in
This statistical triumph, this testimony to longevity (for now the smaller church could 'glory' in its historical 'past' derived from the one which consumed it), led to a loss of purity of doctrine so profound, and practices so unseparated (see News 97), so diverse from earlier zeal, that the author found it necessary to leave, after decades of unreformed disorders, talked about, but never rectified.
This general phenomenon of statistical spirituality is dangerously close to delusive. One remembers one of of the professors in the small RPCES wondering WHY there had to be this great push and thrust into the larger denomination. Why could not the smaller, separated denomination continue on its appointed path ? However, the talent for founding new churches, and size and so on, was evidently great enough to weigh against the much more significant dangers of a denomination the separation of which from false ways was at least dubious from the outset. The result was the demise of what held potential to be a vigorous, clear-cut and evangelical church to delight the heart.
Statistics
... and statistical spirituality has its brazen terms Thus one Home Mission
motto reported once, was this: Two years, 200 or too bad! Meaning this
was the amount of time given to a home missionary to found such a church of 200
members. It is not suggested that this was ruthlessly applied, but it certainly
was cited.
2) Psychic Subjectivity
To this statistical confusion (not in the least wrong to be big, provided the heart is bigger and the clothes of faith fit over the enlarged body, without bodices, ah! but then...), is added psychic subjectivity. This also like Summer locusts eats up goodness like a wolf on a carcass. If of course the animal had not been dead, they would have more trouble! This is often the failure story attending spurious 'success'.
One has met this psychic subjectivity syndrome, especially in predestination. The "mystery" doctrines of Calvin, so vastly overdone, are seized by some with relish. One said, Am I going to heaven ? I will be if I am elect! Such 'faith' may seem sublime to the hyper-orthodox, followers of man, of Calvin in his weakest point, but its very query is its knell.
Where
then does such a thing stand ? It is of course a dodge from the doctrine of the
Book. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you WILL be saved! ... is
what is written (Acts
But what then is salvation (cf. Luke 1:77, Titus 3:5) if it does not as Paul indicates, include the mercy of God and the washing of regeneration, together with the renewing of the Holy Spirit! We are SAVED, the apostle affirms, by these very things in the mercy of God. It is a past thing: we WERE saved by this. If then you are regenerated, there is no hope for hell (I John 3:9), since the SEED by which you are regenerated STAYS in you. Again, as in I John 5:12-13, John is writing expressly to assure believers that theirs is eternal life, which as Christ makes clear, involves being raised up in life on the last day (John 6:51-54).
Again, it is not possible to ENTER that DOOR (John 10:9) without being assured of SALVATION, and further, it is spelled out in particular, such that you never perish, and none (and that includes all, and hence yourself) can snatch you from the Father's hand.
Further,
if washed and forgiven, then you are justified (cf. Isaiah 53:11, Romans 8:34,
10:9, 3:25-26); and again, testifying of the Lord with your mouth and believing
in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, involves salvation. Such a
person "will be saved". If justified, then, you are certain to have
been foreknown, predestinated, called effectuallly so
that you will be glorified (Romans
There is no escape from the word of God. Now if you want psychic subjectivity, you can say in your heart: UNLESS He gives the following shopping list (to be visited on sundry churches which might be visited in search of it), I shall NOT BELIEVE (a sort of Thomas on the topic of assurance). Unless I see the following emotions/visions/events of the psyche, I SHALL NOT BELIEVE. At least, Thomas was objective about it, and was at once convinced by the evidence, as those who "believe" the Bible should be by the word of God! But in this case, it is sometimes not so. Like the woman who visited many physicians and was not healed, some like this can visit many churches, and always withhold faith. The case then of course, like any health resisted or dismissed, tends to grow worse.
Thus a romance, a virtual extravaganza can arise, in which doubt is treasured above the word of God, and it can even become a sort of point of honour NOT to receive from the indubitable teaching of the word of God, the Bible, what it categorically provides!
· This psychic subjectivity, this command performance for God OR ELSE, and so forth, it can mislead just as surely as the World Council of Churches, or statistical evangelism, or churchcraft.
For this reason, like the woman bound for many years, the blood flow, the haemorrhage not stanched, in such cases, people can go
about from church to church, from psychic state to psychic state, and still
miss the bus, the bus for heaven, still so concerned about their requirements
of God, that they have all but forgotten in this, God's requirement of them:
BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus Christ and you WILL BE SAVED. What is not saved is
lost, a flat contradiction. Often people get troubled by scriptures about
churches 'falling away' which are wholly irrelevant to the issue. Their
personnel can change, or their rules can be manipulated by ecclesiastical
engineers. Nevertheless, the word of God does not change!
Statistical Spirituality, Psychic Subjectivity and Statistical Predestination alike lead to crises and calamities for many, and to each of these as to all, it is well to give a wide berth. None does the favour to the word of God of treating it with simple objectivity: what it says it means, what it declares is right and what is right is to be followed. In this there is great reward*1, whether for Christian Apologetics, or for the individual life.
Of
the former two of these errors, we have now taken some account.
3) Statistical Predestination!
It is however when we come to statistical predestination that we come to a downthrust on the crown of thorns; for it is here that the very nature and character of God can be wrongly presented, almost, as Spurgeon once said, to the point of a hideous caricature.
People sometimes act as if the fact that GOD RULES, and SELECTS whom He will, is the same as some MYSTERY in which you never know. The ball might not land, as it were, in your number, and so you do not win the prize. Bad luck! You're out.
Such a representation is by no means excessive of some of the things which one hears as people apparently wish to make GOD responsible for what, Biblically, is to the point of guilt, exclusively their own WILL and responsibility.
Often we have examined this topic (e.g. Predestination and Freewill (PF), The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4, and the present volume Chs. 2 and 7, as well as in Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 11). At present, our concern is not so directly with the love of God in its amplitude, to show it (as in Ch. 2) or the faith required to receive it (Ch. 7), but with a sort of depersonalised 'mystery' which seems to seduce some away from the simple realities of the faith, in this sphere.
There
is a great mystery in godliness (I Timothy
It wonderful that He SHOULD BE like that, to be sure, and in a deep sense most mysterious that there should be such a latitude and wonder to His love. Again, the manner in which He chooses to exist, the very "form of God" (Philippians 2) is a great mystery. There is nothing in the slightest degree irrational about it (cf. SMR Ch. 7, pp. 532ff., 524ff.); but it is what it is, and it is something for a deep understanding of the whole glory of which, we await the time of heaven, when we shall see Him face to face, and know Him as we are known (I Corinthians 13:11-12, Revelation 22:3-4).
It is just that the extent of His love is NOT a mystery because He has STATED numerous times, and exhibited and exemplified numerous times, what that is.
· It is all a matter of a profound confusion that people like Calvin
· (whose 5 points, when read in a Biblical context, and not in the midst of his error about the amplitude of God's love to the lost, are quite valid and very valuable indeed! cf. Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 2, end-note 1, PF Ch. 2 - on Calvin)
· extend the mystery to contradict what is quite categorically written!
Confusion can come from simple
mixture of sovereignty, as if it meant arbitrariness, or the wholly unknown.
What is WHOLLY KNOWN as in the above references, is this, that HOWEVER God
predestines (in the form of God, and it is in His own sublime infinitude of wisdom
and knowledge), it is done in the MIDST of a SOVEREIGN desire that all might
come to a knowledge of the truth, together with a sovereign determination not
to VIOLATE that will of man: it is this will, that of man, which He so
often cites, in the midst of His insistences on His love, as the ground of
exclusion. Thus in Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff., we are without any vagarious
hope of dismissing (as does Calvin with an appalling misuse of Christology cf.
PF loc. cit.) the love of Christ in some diversification from that of His
Father, or in any other odd way (as exposed in SMR Appendix
B). To dismiss His clear attestations in the end, is to deform.
You need virtually a new christ for that, one who made no such claims that he who has seen Me has seen the Father, and if you had known the Father, you would have known Me also! ( as He does in John 14). These things are there, stated and contrasted with the work of man in diverting himself FROM IT.
It
is just the same in Ezekiel 33:11. There is no point in saying of this
magnificent depiction of the breadth of the love of God for the wicked, Ah,
but this is for the covenanted people, it is to THEM that God is so speaking!
This is wholly beside the point. The tension between God and man at that stage,
between God indeed and ISRAEL, as expressed in the prophecies of Ezekiel,
Jeremiah, and others, is as profound as it well might be. Already in Amos we
are seeing (quite some time before the tide of
There
is in fact no limitation or qualification in the Ezekiel 33 statement, and the
whole book of Jonah shows that the mercy of God is not limited, that His erring
prophet is without understanding of the breadth of God's mercy to PEOPLE AS
PEOPLE! Did it matter that it was
It seems that lesson still for many, has to be relearned theologically!
Very well, let us look at Ezekiel 33:10-11:
“Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house
of
“Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and
live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of
AS I LIVE, asseveration, strong and most vigorous
annunciation, as John Murray expounded it (and the rest of this paragraph
is in line with his exposition). I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ... Negation. But that the wicked
should turn
(affirmation) - this
being the contrary expression to the former one. He should turn from way and
live. Turn,
turn - exhortation. For why should you die, O house of
AS GOD LIVES, it is so - this we read.
No
more profound wish or determination, resolution of desire or declaration of
intent is conceivable. Unlike any passing thought that mere men might have,
this is to the depths of the divine being! It is NOT His wish to afflict the
children of men (Lamentations
It IS His wish that they turn from their evil way, for HE SAYS SO, as in Colossians 1. Reconciliation through Christ is the offer there displayed to all worlds, spiritual or physical, and to this one to the uttermost, as in John 3:16 with Colossians; and precisely accordingly, knowledge of the truth is the direction of His desire as in I Timothy 2. For all men.
To be sure, Arminianism has thrown away the sovereignty in order in some things, to avoid the false point of Calvin, that the Father was diverse in His love from that of Christ, more restricted or restrictive or both. This is of course involves a total exposure of the depth of Calvin's error. Yet it makes error of its own in the process, being too exuberant in its negation, to allow for the rest of Scripture.
Incidentally, one does not regard Calvin's teaching as heretical, since the subject is deep, but certainly ON THIS POINT it is unscriptural and erroneous. To say less would be to fail in fidelity. At this point, Calvinism contradicts what is written, over and over, and this as further exemplified in multiple cases, expressed in multiple forms and language.
This however is no reason to follow either it or Calvin in his own error. Some, however, understandably most impressed with the latitude and scope of Calvin's understanding, seem determined to follow him when he falls, as if the breach with scripture is not there explicit.
What then must be said of this ? Perhaps, as one has noted, even profound and brilliant theologians err in some thing in order that people should fail to (virtually) idolise them, by FOLLOWING THEM, as some do, as when they call themselves Calvinists, for example, and this is not the ONLY NAME so misused. It is forbidden quite expressly, and whether or not the result is EFFECTUAL IDOLATRY (putting this person, as RC's tend to do with the pope, where the WORD OF GOD should be put), it is still wrong (cf. I Corinthians 3:1-6). It is CARNAL, as well as CONDEMNED and CONTRARY, to use Paul's language. It results in hideous errors, almost as if pollution, and not purity, were the objective.
The worst features of someone's theology, presented for the great gain of the church, can thus become chains and tend to defile the good points!
Seeing,
then, that it is not statistical predestination, as if some mystery did some choice and some numbers
came up, as with the sadly unfortunate person mentioned above, the Christian
can rejoice. It is not mystery but mastery which predestinates, and the Master
is Christ who in all things co-operates with the most intense intimacy with His
Father (John
That
is why it is expressly stated that "THIS is the condemnation," NOT that you sinned, no, that is not
what does it IN THE END, but that "light has come into the world and men
have loved darkness rather than light" - John
HOW can God have such an inveterate, classical, uncontained love and yet hate Esau ? (Romans 9). That is predestination. Before that, however, in logical sequence as in Romans 8, is foreknowing*2 His people. Because of predestination everything is fixed; but it is because of foreknowledge that it IS SO fixed. IN this foreknowledge, God has TOLD us the scope of His love multiple times. It is the same as Christ showed Himself personally, and in His lament for those concertedly, perversely and finally lost.
Christ ? HE WHO HAS SEEN ME has seen the Father (John 14). Thus GOD IS LIKE THAT. What a horrendous distortion to pretend that sovereignty in THIS respect is a mystery, concerning the lost! It is one of the least mysterious things ever known. The condemnation is in the very face of the declared love, and it is only in the face of HIS BEING THERE and rejected that condemnation occurs, and indeed, this IS the condemnation, that He so loved, so came and so was the light, and men preferred darkness.
WHY
then would God allow this to happen. Could He not construct puppets and
MAKE them love
Him ? That is simply a contradiction in terms, like saying, Can't zero
really be the same as one!
Puppets are by nature without personality and cannot love.
God has elected to love, and love is not the thing which forces its object, since it is not possessive ("seeks not its own" - I Cor. 13): that is the way it is, its very nature. Friends are not make at the point of a gun, nor healthy marriages either. Love has RESTRAINT, and it loves to be so. Nothing is frustrated, therefore, though lament indicates the reality of the self-restraining magnificence of this glorious love of God. The exuberance of divine love does not distort its purity, nor does His word lie when it asserts its total scope. It is moreover ONLY when such love as God repeatedly, categorically and in many applications attests, actually is there, that freedom has any meaning. It is only then that without manipulation, in purity, a Higher Person taking the lower, the Creator taking the creature, real liberty exists: for then the option to be quit of God is real, liberty and hence responsibility is operative, yet this is done not in the carnal sinfulness which so blinds that is not liberty but sin which controls! but in a love which is true, profound and effectual.
Neither tyrannical,
nor inept, this love knows all, does all, implements all, and never varies from
the truth. In this love, man basks as at the Gold Coast, without cancer; in
this God, man may glory with utter unreserve, for HE,
He is good! and it is from Him that such a life as ours can be good, and being
good, bring glory to His name.
NOTES:
For more on the love of God: see Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 9-12.
For
more on liberty, see Licence
for Liberty and PF; also The Flashing Falls of Freedom
and
It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls… Ch. 9.
*1
Psalm 19 has always been a
strong favourite. Required to learn it at age 11 or
12 at
"The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever; the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
"More to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
"Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
"Who can undestands His errors! Cleanse thou ME from secret faults."
(capitalisation
and emphasis added to assist perception).
Not
only is there great reward in following HIS judgments, but there is no fault to
be found in Him (Deuteronomy 32:4), rather is there fault in oneself, who must
thus be clean, cleansed, keen and rightly directed, construing not what appears
desirable, but what is found written, as it comes, and this with great profit.
*2
Romans 9 makes it crystal
clear that divine foreknowledge has NOTHING to do with a man's future works,
merits or attainments. There is NOTHING of merit in it. Alas, Calvinism can
readily (and entirely unintentionally) come so close to ascribing merit, that
it is sad. Thus WHY should someone be chosen by God ? because of NO
differentiation ? That is caprice, not wisdom, which God personifies and essentialises, being its true and only ultimate source.
Christ is made to us wisdom, and this is because as in Proverbs 8 (Barbs,
Arrows and Balms 27),
this is Himself.
Again,
IF there is differentiation, is it because of something nearer, dearer or
clearer at least to godliness, or not ? If not, then is it perverse ? Of
course not.
What then is the basis ? ungodliness ? Biblically it is love, unrestricted in outreach, glorious in power, grand in kindness. It is in nothing divorced in its ample procedures, from itself, by the God who IS love.
However, it is precisely this wholly unscriptural divorce from the citation of the will of man as relevant which leads to such fuzzy things.
In fact, it is the WILL of man which is cited. Now at once, it is to be noted that sin has made it operationally defunct (that is one of the best of all the features of Calvinism, to make this so very clear, as in I Cor. 2:14, Ephesians 4:17ff.). Indeed, the insistence on the 'choice' of man in his own unsaved state, is one of the glaring foci of Arminianism which makes the corresponding error of Calvinism, itself vastly nearer to Scripture as a system, the more readily understandable. They often fight it out, quite foolishly, in this, where both are wrong.
Operationally defunct, however, though it be, it is as we have seen, directly and repetitively cited by God in terms of the non-salvation of the loved sinner. It is therefore in principle perfectly certain that in SOME way, God does not proceed because of the will of man, in HIS OWN knowledge, which OMITS any thought of future attainments or performance (Romans 9). In principle, this is very easy to understand, though in the form of God, He may of course implement this revealed principle in any way, except in this, a feckless or dysfunctional way, for it is sure to be successfully wrought by Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11). With God, the knowledge will be knowledge indeed, be it foreknowledge or any other kind; for in Christ is all the fulness of the Godhead, and in God are all the riches of knowledge and wisdom (Colossians 2:3, Ephesians 3:8, Colossians 2:8-9).
In PF, as in SMR Ch. 8, one has shown how it MIGHT have been wrought. It is necessary to do this in that context in order to DEMONSTRATE the coherence and competence of the Biblical picture of these things, in contrast to the necessary and intrinsic failure of all else to cover all the components, guilt, liberty, deterministic elements, sovereignty and the like. That this is so has been shown in some detail in Sparkling Life ... Ch. 7.
However, there is no necessity, of course, since the form of God is an infinite reality, that it be done in that way; nor is it the intention, nor has it ever been in these writings, to suggest any such thing. What is in fact necessary, in view of His REVELATION, is that there be
· His love to the depths of His Being for the lost.
· His provision for that love.
· His foreknowledge in such a way that this love for them is to His entire satisfaction implemented.
· His knowledge of the relevant feature of the human will, itself inoperative AT THIS LEVEL as shown, on this earth, which concerns Him, to ensure the integrity of His love is met, and its virtue.
Will
is not merit. God's knowledge of it, is not a knowledge of merit. It is a
knowledge of need. As to the will of man, it is only when it is corrupted that
its exercise would involve a RELATIVE merit. In its uncorrupted state, it is
merely proceeding without loss, to follow the way it is. In wickedness, it
would enter into comparabilities, one will with the
other; in the goodness of an unspotted creation, however, it is merely what it
ought to be, no better than made, a blessed function not misaligned.
Moreover, if Adam had chosen otherwise, when sinless, that would be no merit in the slightest degree. This is manifest. What would then have been the case ? This: He had the need, he stayed with it, and went as one would hope he would do. One formulation, then would be this: that God knows what man, each man, would have willed, had be been free to will, and not polluted by the confusions and blindnesses of sin. As to God, He does not need time to know this, nor does He need to refer to it, and He in His divine majesty is in no respect limited.
Whether God proceeds in this way, in some such METHODOLOGY as this, it is not now for us to know; that He MIGHT do something of this kind is the point. In principle, there is no problem. It meets moreover all the scriptures. What is sure is that He is not oblivious of man as a willing being, in making His choice, nor is He in the slightest degree directed by man (to become, to the point, incompetent). It is a wise sovereignty, lovingly selecting, without abuse of the nature of what He has made. Man is citable and cited for any loss, and THIS IS the condemnation, that in the presence of HIS light, this divine outreach without limit, man has preferred darkness, in HIS own very presence, man has not received Him.
This is certainly what the scripture teaches, and Wesley's unlovely Arminianism with which he appears to have tried to protect it, and Calvin's unlovely mysterious predestination (in the sense, relating to the selection and love) with which he appears at such loss to scriptural fidelity to try to protect the sovereignty: these are two of the byways of the church. The men are not. They erred, each, and Wesley, it would seem, quite as grievously in his inadequate system as Calvin in his restrictive intrusions into what is written (cf. PF). Thus, in this precise point of the love of God, Wesley was right and Calvin wrong. In the theology of the whole matter, Calvin has magnificent points to make, and Wesley fails.
It is time to get away from these forbidden things, I of Calvin, I of Wesley (and for that matter, I of Luther) and to be thankful for what each of them contributes, for each has a wonderful provision to make, in this area or that, and none is perfect. The TEST is the scripture, and as in any provision, when it is made, one can see the error and delight in the true tones where they are. Greatness is no excuse for violating the scripture on this point; and as to that, it speaks and has spoken for itself. The ONLY wisdom is to follow it, in all doctrine.
The great delight is this, that God IS love, is not the author of sin, but of liberty, and even when liberty is de-licensed through the breaches of sin, making man defunct in adequate spiritual knowledge, distorted and distorting in his comprehension, God is ABLE to find the lost, and is on record in this, that it PLEASED HIM, having placed all fulness in Christ as man, the Messiah incarnate God, to RECONCILE ALL THINGS to Himself. If it pleases man to demean this scope with his inept and inadequate philosophies, whether miscalled theology or not, this does nothing to diminish the glory of God, but by contrast to highlight it. Blessed be God.
B
Now we consider the associative elements of love, grace
and will, and compare them with force where faith is: these in their beauty of
harmony in the word of God, that in its eccentric confusion.
This is taken from part of Ch. 9 of Great
Execrations …
Chapter 9
EXPLORING DOORS
Grace Grapples, Doesn’t
Dabble, is Profound
1. Preliminary
Understanding
GRACE AND LOVE
If you consult Revelation 3:7 and
But how does grace relate to love ? Grace has the concept of
pleasantness, good pleasure, kindness, expansive contribution, generosity. Love
is like that, but has a deeper sense of personal involvement, in that it
REQUIRES that one not only has this vast generosity of spirit, not exacting but
desiring to ennoble and develop, but has within it, as if a core, an attachment
which yet is pure, a solicitousness which is yet not possessive, a desire which
is not touchy or tedious, but persistent and of a tender goodwill. Love does
not fail, but those loved may fail (Ephesians 1:6, 11).
What however if grace intervenes. If the grace is effectual,
as in donation of life to the dead, then that is the result. If it is again,
effectual, as in spiritual life from the dead, that too is the same. Love with
grace means that there is a gift, with an exuberance, a donation with no
residue of bitterness or any qualification of queasiness. But what if the gift
is not transformative ? Then grace would not be sufficient for its object. What
however if it IS transformative ? Then of what ? If it is restricted to the
financial situation of its object, that may fail; to his/her mental powers,
this may age; but if it is to grant life of spirit in the presence of God, and
if it includes adoption as a privilege GRANTED, even to the family of God, then
this effectual grace is eternally transmutative:
eternal life is there.
What however would happen if it were without love ? Suppose
some vast contribution of spiritual life were possible in which you still
retained the option to love yourself more than God, and prostitute grace to
your own selfish advancement, as if you were the hub and God the road ? Then
such grace would not be effectual; and God would not be God.
In what way would God not be God ? In this way: that He is
not like that. He does not cast pearls before swine, or give His life TO untransmuted lead. IN giving it, He transforms
(regenerates) the one who receives it, so that this then becomes a transaction
so vital, so profound, that it is no longer even possible for the recipient to
change, just as born a Smith, you cannot then acquire the genes of a Jones. As
the joke has it when a daughter writes home from Camp: Mother I did not bring
my jeans, the Mother replies, If you do not have them now, it is too late to
get them.
Of course it is a play on genes, but the issue is this: IF
when you are born again as I John 3:9 expressly intimates, you have a spiritual
inheritance and nature, or ‘seed’, then you simply cannot divest yourself of
this. It is quite as designate as other sorts of birth. What you are born, YOU
ARE! What have you, asks Paul, that you did not receive ? (I Corinthians 4:7).
Is it a body ? did you make it ? Is it a spirit ? Did you
construct it ? Is it susceptibility ? Did you manufacture and instal it in your frame ? Is it the willingness to be
susceptible ? Is this chosen equipment, specified for supply ? Past all this is
God, who knows YOU with all your equipment, not only incomes and outcomes, but
the essential being which you are, in spirit; for the spirit of man in the end,
would go this way or that, and wills this or that; and though sin control the vision
without the light of God, it does not control God who knows those with whom He
has to deal.
But someone may say: Is this fair ? Is this the love of God,
that you should be swept into someone else’s domain by a dynamic irresistible
and into a state in essence, irreformable ( or more
accurately in this case, undeformable, but let that
pass, the point is unchangeable in NATURE) ? One notices the addition of the
concept of ‘irresistible’ in this formulation, but in one sense, if we move
into the scriptural concept, it is just. When the wind blows, the eyes are
opened and one enters (John 3), or as Jesus put it in John 6:65, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me
unless it has been gratned to him by My Father.” There
is a grant which is or is not made. In that sense, it is irresistible, for if
the grant is given, you are governed by it. It is yours. It is not left on the
doorstep to be picked up or let go: it is YOUR new nature!
In all such thought, however, there is an almost ludicrous play
upon analogy. HOW and WHY does God so grant ? Does He grant to bits of blank
paper, to be written on ? Are you selected for grants, not like some university
program, or even like some deserving race, or some needy group, and of course,
not like some scheming abuser of social service privileges who hoodwinked the
giver, or in any other way whatsoever that relates to YOU, but by caprice, by
whim, by mysterious effluences, or because you are attractive to God ? Such is
rubbish. There is NO MERIT in the grantee whatever (as in Ephesians 2, Romans
3), and there is a removal of any opportunity to BOAST in being chosen of God.
If you would boast of selection in terms of His desire for
you because of your intrinsic character seen in terms of desirability, for your
singularity, then freedom would be nil – your inheritance your ground of
selection, so that moral responsibility would be nil, and man could logically
accuse God of erratic creation, meaningless love and now bold dictation.
It is a PERSON who is CHOSEN in Ephesians 1:4, not a piece
of blank paper or a type of ‘hype’ or generalised
image. What is chosen is a distinctive entity, and not another. It is not
summary, simply because it is selective, and it is most certainly NEVER
assigned in the Bible to granting because of some alchemy between the spirit of
the man or woman or child, and the captured heart of God, or the drawing of the
recipient’s pleasantness to the divine desire. It is not some sort of spiritual
attractiveness (Romans 1-2); and since IT IS A SPECIFIC PERSON as distinct from
any other, in selection, is there then some quality, in something other than
nullity, which draws the divine favour ?
Certainly not, for all our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags (far below the divine threshold of acceptance as meritorious
for adoption – Isaiah 64:6, and we were ‘children of wrath’ in our natural
estate – Ephesians 2:1-3), and we are told in Deuteronomy 7:7-8, that the
ground of selection was LOVE and faithfulness. This, however, is vigorously
denied in the Biblical revelation, both in the breadth of His love (Colossians
1:19ff.), and in the incpaaicty of man to boast
- “I was a model X, th best!, so you see, that is
how I am where I am today, with the Lord!” Choice is selective, but the
love toward man is total as seen in Colossians, I Timothy and II Peter 3, John
3 and their allied reminders.
LOVE AND WILL
Indeed, GOD loved in view of the oath to Abraham, just as
the total sphere of love in John 3:16 is THE WORLD. To this He is committed.
LOVE however is not possessive (I Corinthians 13:5). It is not a matter of
setting your heart on something that fulfils yourself, attracts your desires,
selectively, and grabbing that. In what way then does God view the sinners who
are called man, in making selection for grace by love, so that some become His
children ?
We do not have to hypothesise, for
our present purpose is to show what the scripture says in order that the depth
and wonder of grace be realised, in contradistinction
to all other things, and its comprehensive meeting of man’s need be
appreciated.
God says almost endlessly in various situations, that it is
the WILL of man which interferes with His love so that its fulfilment
is not co-extensive with the human races. We considered the depth of the divine
heart involved in grief at the finally lost, in our last Chapter, and in Ch. 7
above, considered the impartial profundity of God’s love relative to things in
heaven or on earth, while in SMR Appendix B,
this is reviewed at some length. Indeed, we find the quoting of the human will
by Christ in the most decisive fashion, as in Matthew 23:37, as the agent in
the obstruction of blessings that are eternal. In Ch.
8 above, we saw that there is nothing merely instrumental in the love of
God, that it is heartfelt and integumental, just as
in Ch. 7, we found that there is no qualification or diminution in the love of
God in its extent.
Our present interest is this: Granted that His love is so
profound and its extent so undiminished, how is there meaning in the liberation
of man (unlike the Communist ‘liberation’ case, only to servitude to the will
of the new masters) that relates to man as a being, rather than a mere
instrument for somebody else ? In short, how is such love able at one and the
same time to be effective in its object and yet pure in its unselfish
motivation ?
We have then now a number of elements. Speaking to
In I John 2:2 accordingly, we see that the AMPLITUDE of the
offering of Christ is co-extensive with the whole world. Like the sacrificed
animal in Leviticus 16, it is for all. It is however ON BEHALF of all (like
that animal), so that there is none for whom it is not presented, the recipient
being impelled by truth and righteousness, to receive it. Yet a person MAY NOT
so receive it (Deuteronomy 29:18ff.), and in that case there is no cure for the
curse. Cancer untreated by nature has a deadly aspect. A will to reject it –
the cure, not the cancer! - has a fatal function.
The love of God is thus exhibited in this amplitude as in
the divine protestations as in Isaiah 48:16ff. (Ch. 8
above), II Chronicles 36:15ff. – where His explicit compassion to deliver them
is met by their recalcitrance NOT to be delivered so that His justice sweeps
the merciless meander away. He is not thwarted because love does not INSIST and
COMPEL, as we all know, this being an absurdity so gross that we hear of
efforts in this direction, it is both laughable and horrible. Love is not possessive.
Yet it is urgent or even insurgent, because with clarity that is willing to
suffer, it discerns the need of its object. Some have tried to protect the
sovereignty of God as if He were some Eastern Potentate, determined to grab and
fulfil lusts, even if these be spiritual in this
instance.
However, such is contrary to divine protestations and all
such illustrations. Even Paul was not forced to accept that the kicking against
the goads was inappropriate, or for that matter, that even if it were, he
should cease doing it. One is reminded of the childish case when a little boy
was in some way embracing a broom, as if to mount up on it (perhaps like a
witch), and being told to come down, WOULD NOT. After a while, he left the
broom to tell the person instructing him this, “I am NOT going to get off the
broom.” Clearly the fulfilment of one’s will was the
point, not whether or not the thing in question was worth attention anyway. To
TELL it he LET IT GO!
Love is not thwarted, but it DOES suffer, this being part of
its quality and beauty.
Suppose now grace were mandatory, and you HAD to come in an
ULTIMATE sense, because someone WANTED you, like the case of the ferocious
tribesman who TAKES his woman, who suffers from the dire incompatibility and
sheer disgusting grossness of the unloving man (in such a case) as he fulfils
his desire, and could as well have a prostitute. What then ? That is not the
biblical case, for the amount of vast pathos in the refusal of the objects of
God’s love is all but co-extensive with scripture! Hosea 7:1, Jeremiah 51:9,
Proverbs 1, Hebrews 6, 10, Mark 19:17, Luke 19:42ff., Matthew 23:37ff., Hosea
12:10, 11:1-4 and so on.
WILL, THRILL and the OCCLUSION OF OBSTINACY
In Hebrews Ch. 6 case, so near is the spirit of the reprobate
to God, that it even tastes of heavenly things, gains glimpses of such matters,
becomes aware of some of these issues, and yet, for all that, in the very face
of this most summary and essential reality of the sacrificial offering of
Christ, stamps on it! Obviously, such a thing, removing the remedy, induces the
judgment which was there in principle, before any remedy was made available. It
is love’s remedy, and it is stamped on. It is not to be done twice, as if mere
will were the manipulating factor, for to remove remedy is to find judgment,
like removing the offer of protective clothing in a radioactive situation. Such
a repudiation, as in Judas’ case, is fatal; yet of course the spirit concerned
was never Christ’s any more than Judas was, who was expressly called a devil
from an early time (John 6:70).
Now our present point, after this short review of some
aspects more exhaustively covered before, is this. If grace does not grab the
recipient, and if love does not seize its object, as if it were not a person
but a piece of blank paper, but LOVES someone, and so does this in a personal
way, not some fashion which is so perilously principial
that it is mere acquisition, how is it grace in function and fact, as distinct
from rapture!
The answer is this. Grace does not FORCE the person, as the
constant divine laments illustrate so well. Nor does a person’s will, sunk in a
blindness incurable without regeneration (John 3), determine the issue (which
in any case would also be contrary to Romans
SINCE it is not by force, and SINCE it is often rejected,
and SINCE God often laments - as may His servants who speak for Him and
describe their own reactions – for the results of such human liberty as is consonant
with the NON-USE of divine force, while God nevertheless grants to His own
alone, this gift: how can all these things be true simultaneously ? It should
be noted that in any case, they are scripturally precise. The difficulty seems
to include several elements in the thinker, which is one of the reasons that
many remain locked in battle rather than finding the exuberant clarity of the
Bible on this point. Some see ONE point, the sovereignty of God (which is
absolute, unconditional and complete) and ram it home as if it were comparable
with some kinds of human sovereignty, mysterious, private, personal and simply
a datum.
That is a vast distortion of biblical depiction. GOD IS
LOVE, and there is nothing mysterious about that. GOD DECLARES repeatedly (as
seen in Ch. 7 above, and SMR Appendix B), that HIS LOVE is co-extensive with
those on heaven and on earth, for their reconciliation to Himself, which
includes regeneration as in II Corinthians 5:17ff.. How then are some not
reconciled, and yet not abused in their persons, in being merely co-opted,
recipients of a life which may not be desired ?
It is not far to seek. SINCE we are chosen in Christ, who
are His, BEFORE time began, and since Christ is not alterable, the same today,
yesterday, forever, being God as man and God swears He does not change, then
what is true of Christ on earth is in PRINCIPLE true of God in predestining
election. Hence that divine love, that ‘I WOULD’ of Christ is present, as I
Timothy 2 expressly states (cf. Matthew
What does this mean ? It means that He KNOWS who are His. He
does not force; He does not merely listen to ramblings, or acknowledge receipt
of communication. It is dependent on HIS KNOWLEDGE, and what He knows is the
truth.
WILL AND FORCE
On what does it depend ? On THOSE WHOM He can FORCE ? Not at
all, this is excluded by endless scriptures, direct and in implication. Does it
then turn on this, those whom He can receive because of some superiority, some
X-factor of greater assimilability to God, because of some more meritorious,
more godly aspect in the spirit of the man, so that this becomes a mere divine
acknowledgement of greater godliness in some, better character ?
Far from it, by express denial, and this in itself would
merely mean that some were CREATED better, so that the divine laments would all
be stuff and nonsense, God merely making some to fit, and then, seeing them
fit, taking them off, fittingly. It is best not to caricature God or to
disagree with His statements in understanding Him!
Being in the image of God necessarily makes you to have a
select nature, that is, something not merely instrumental. Hence He does not make
you in the image of an object when He predestines! He is not a liar, and knows
what He is doing, knowing the end from the beginning. There are no short-cuts.
He made the wood.
It is no less important to realise
that there are no conditions for a man, as if he would constitute the barrier
to God, who would merely have to sit and watch, if you will. God selects
without man being created, and without any regard to a man’s works whatsoever;
and what he is includes all his works, for his motives and desires are deployed
in what he does through what he is. This is the biblical depiction. There IS
however a situation which GOD regards, and it is other than a mere blank. It is
a PERSON. Since condemnation is based on a person’s PREFERENCE for darkness
over light, and since there is no merit in one above another, all having zero
merit in the severe light of God’s purity, how then can such preference not be
an expression of a latent superiority in man ? whether you think of it as
operational in time or discernible by God, before our time ?
It is however not a superior susceptibility which the chosen
one has, which led to the divine choice; for a man is not even operational
where such things, being inherited, or culturally or even educationally
imparted, can work. This is excluded. What then is INCLUDED ? The person. What
then do we find here ? The thing divinely cited being the WILL of the
target, man, and the WILL as operational being excluded, then it is clear that
the will is included before God, and this not in its own right or action, but in His sensitive NON
forcing of it, and UTTER knowledge of it, past all moods and modes. He does not
MAKE someone who prefers, in the last essential reality, NOT to have Him,
nevertheless to have Him.
This, it is no theory, but the endless parade of the
scripture, as He laments.
What He arranges in predestination is what is to be, and
what is to be is what He evaluates without such force, or rapture. Yet it IS
IRRESISTIBLE, for the one to whom it is granted, gets it. However in fact, that
word in John 6 does not say this, but that you ARE WITHOUT IT unless it be
granted, not that if it is granted, you will HAVE IT. In any case, there can be
no choice by man, since as Christ declared, until you are regenerated you are
blind to the actual field, so that of course you could not wittingly choose
that to which you are blind (as in I Corinthians 2:14). If the natural man does
not receive spiritual things, then of course he has to become something else
BEFORE he can receive them, and as a natural man, as unconverted, he does not
because HE CANNOT, any more than someone with short-sightedness can without
glasses read very fine print!
It is simply a matter of seeing, then, that what God has organised before time, will IRRESISTIBLY be implemented in
it. Otherwise the blind would have to see before having operational eyes, which
means all go to hell, which is other than the scripture declares. The
irresistibility is irrelevant to our quest, since it is a mere result of what
was wrought before time. WHAT however was then wrought ? It was a presentation,
not in history, and not in enaction, but in
foreknowledge (where Romans 8:30 starts its cycle), of life eternal to the
person concerned, a presentation seen as non-violent, non-instrumentalist,
sincerely accepted, genuine in its action, not contrary to love in its
disposition.
HOW could this be known ? There is no limit to the power of
God, and just because it is not here obliterating something, this does not mean
that it is not operative! In what way however is this not a mere superiority
within the breast of the one who so receives this gift, before time, in the
foreknowledge of God ?
It is in this way, that if you are chosen in view your
distinctive properties, where will is excluded, then these have greater
affinity to God, which readily implies a better nature. If however you take
what the BIBLE SAYS, that
it is the human preference which excludes, and this in the very face of God’s
love for the world, and that
those refusing the manner and receipt of its object are excluded BECAUSE OF
THIS (John 1-3:19), and so they are damned (3:36): then you are
not in this dilemma. Simply, then it is RELEVANT to human will, because GOD
SAYS SO.
What however is the inference from this for our present
topic of the nature of grace and the distinctiveness of love from all force and
instrumentalism ?
SOVEREIGN SELECTION,
LOVE’S TOTAL SCOPE and
ABSOLUTE HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY
It is this. If you regard will as a mere expression of
character, it might be urged that its action similarly and likewise, merely
exhibits the superiority of the one who elects to be elected. If however you
regard the will as that of one ESSENTIALLY in the image of God, and seen in God
as not befuddled, limited or susceptible to inferiority or superiority AT ALL,
and THEREFORE, someone regarded in the eye of God outside this whole concourse
of the fall, in ultimate reality, then the case has no difficulty. ONLY SIN
makes worse, so without this in the equation, there is nothing which CAN be
worse, and therefore be BETTER! Hence this consideration evaporates.
Using the criterion the scripture DECLARES is therefore the
resolution of the ‘problem’. Grace gives without being mandatory, though in its
application in history, where sin breeds folly and blindness, it comes on this
our scene, and in terms of the VISIBLE scenario, as irresistible.
Since love statedly, in the Bible,
seeks all, but in its own modesty, does not thrust itself on any, however, we
know that the fact that a grant is not the same as a forced grant merely
reflects the reality of freedom in the image of God in predestination, though
it is one divinely superintended and indeed mandated, so that the STATED ground
of exclusion, the human will, is not other than the fact.
In this way, human responsibility is entire: for if you are
not chosen, it is no mere divine caprice or choice of desired implements for
special reasons, but rather that entire intractability of desire which puts you
where you are to go. ALL the steps on the way are historical expressions, but
not determinants, for what determines is the knowledge of God, which is as far
above the knowledge of man in its totality and perfection, as the heavens are
above the earth.
On the other hand, divine sovereignty is total, for God not
only man made in His image because He wanted it that way, but in so doing made
the essential option, even if sin removed it from man’s conscious sight, as if
he were autonomous. The grace of God is not restricted, as if in some
governmental program where there is some shortage of gifts; for it is not
contained in some disposing preference, but according to the utmost opportunity
which the nature of man admits, this nature itself the creation of God, and
moreover in image, like Him! Man as such, indeed, is not DEFINITIVE of the form
or nature of God, but constructed in His image, as a creature, so that
correlative communication is possible, natural and proper.
He WOULD have all men to be saved, to come to repentance (II
Peter 3:9, Colossians 1, I Timothy 2, Matthew
It is GOD’s knowledge which is the
condition (Romans 8:29, 9:16), and where and how He chooses is not based on
works at all, and since the works of man are expression of his will, not on the
operation of man’s will at all. Man DOES NOT CHOOSE GOD at all. Yet is man’s
election wholly concordant with the divine restraint which does not force, and
is God’s decision expressive of limitless love and grace, that never moves past
the margin that would obliterate the reality of the personal in man.
In short, as shown previously, there is not only no problem
in predestination, but there is insoluble problem without it. Moreover, if it
were not that man COULD become other than he is, there COULD be no freedom, for
you would otherwise always be limited to what you are, and what you are is in
the last analysis, the dower of body and spirit which you are given. What
liberty is there in expressing what has come to you ? But if you can be OTHER
than you are, then there is something outside the mere expression of your
being, which is available, and to this you may come.
If however YOU had to choose yourself, then again, it would
be a filtered or blind or directed decision, based on a being which, after all,
you do not choose, in order that it might be you, including all your sensitivies and sensibilities; and there is no freedom in
that. You merely respond as made.
When therefore GOD chooses you, and with restraint KNOWS
you, and also BRINGS you to what you were not, beyond the whole ambit of your
being, then there is liberty which is co-extensive with responsibility, whilst
likewise, in God, there is love which is co-extensive with the field of
operation as so summarily declared in Colossians 1.
Love is here GIVEN its meaning, and it is as we find it,
though most pure and most effective, and most like itself, not thrusting but
zealous. God has what He wants, for it is not His will to dominate frail
fealties that are not heartfelt! It is ONLY because of this divine love and
grace that freedom is possible for man, and it is in terms which are as much emphasised as any other topic in the Bible, that
predestination and human responsibility thus find their only possible
resolution. It is normative in Bible study so to find, that what it stresses is
what, like the chassis for a car, is necessary, is WHAT IS THERE! Knowledgeability is total, harmony is a colossus, and the
joy in beholding it all is boundless.
Yet someone might say, If a man is to be made into something
different from what he is, how is this liberty ? How could he possibly know
what it would be like, since he is limited to what he is in seeking to know
what it would be ? Firstly, this however is merely to ignore
the fact that it is scripturally GOD who chooses. We have just seen that in
this choice it is not a sovereignty which is foreign to love, but expressive of
it, and hence in this milieu, the lack of human imagination is not relevant. It
is GOD WHO CHOOSES, but with respect to the nature of man, in whom the meaning
of love is intrinsic, but not its operation, because of sin.
We therefore return to this fact, as a mere extension of the
impossibility of explanation of the whole duty and nature of man, and of this
world and its forces and powers, of liberty such as man expresses, in the
restrictions and distortions of it which man has: without God and His love and
grace and gifts and action.
This, it too is further verification of the scripture, for
in this also, not only does it meet every rational consideration (that is,
every aspect of the case with precision and harmony), but it does so in
principle in ways not elsewhere available, since:
without God, it cannot be done,
without His love it is not
explicative of man, and
without His nature, our nature is a
mere confusion of contradictories.
Yet secondly, note how beautifully the nature of
His love harmonises with the integrity which does not
merely make something ELSE out of a man, but restores him to his own created
nature, ex-sin and cum-Christ, so that restoration not innovation
is the criterion. WITH the restoration, it is true, there goes an enrichment
into an assured eternity and a close-knit correlation with Christ. Yet the
result is not beyond man, made by and for God, and at the first realising a relationship of communing and communication;
but rather is it that in his restored co-ordination with his Creator, there is
renewal to life, the life he lost.
It is thus a passage not to foreign soil, or alien quarters,
but to home both to source and situation, a rebuilding and since this is life,
a rebirth. Since, moreover, God is God, it is to a glory of wonder in His
presence, that man is then moved, one enhanced as dusk to the first full bloom
of dawn. Wrought in love, this transmutation has focus on the plight of man as
it provides his superb yet apposite deliverance.
In this regard, scriptures such as Colossians 1, considered
in depth in the last chapter, with its insistence that it PLEASED the Father to
have all fullness dwell in Christ, and through His blood on the cross to
reconcile ALL things: these provide attestation of the ground of human
responsibility with the utmost clarity.
This, Colossians 1 is the chapter of alls and
we move from the firstborn of ALL
creation (Christ occupying this on arrival, “FOR all
things were created by Him”), a point added in summary, “all things were created through Him and for Him” (
As total backdrop and creator of anything of which it may be
said, “It is created”, and therefore not Himself created, since otherwise He
would have had to create Himself without being there, an absurdity equal to
that of any such thought, it is Christ who is the One in whom “all fullness dwells”, prior to and beyond time,
itself a creation (Romans 8:39). This is both apt and appropriate for the
eternal Creator and word of God, and fittingly, though marvelously, what
pleased the Father was set in a sort of all but geometrical totality
also.
What was this ? It was that “having
made peace through the blood of the Cross” something else should be
wrought BY HIM (Colossians
Let us then pause to recall that in 1:18, we learn that “in all things”, He is to have the pre-eminence, just
as in Philippians 1 we learn that equality with God was nothing to be snatched
at, since He was in the very form of God, before becoming man. Accordingly to
His infinite status, then, so is His total fullness in
incarnation, even of the Godhead, affirmed: it is expressed as ALL the FULNESS,
as declared in
What is to be revealed to be comrade to all these ‘alls’
and consummation to this large prologue of totalities in this passage in
Colossians ? It is that not only did it please the Father that in Him
should all the fullness dwell, but that having thus made peace by the blood of
the cross, it ALSO PLEASED HIM “to reconcile ALL
things to Himself.” Creator of all, pre-eminent above all, having made peace by
His blood on the cross, with all fullness dwelling in Him (cf. Colossians 2:9),
He is the agent, the pivot, the door, the table, the platform, the foundation
on which this particular desire of the Father rests.
In what then does it so rest, and to what is it directed as
it rests in Him ? that THUS and in THIS PERSON He might reconcile ALL things to Himself. It is exactly the same in tenor
in I Timothy 2, where the scope is GOD on the one hand and MAN on the other,
and His desire is that ALL might be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
PRECISE CHARACTERISTICS OF DIVINE GRACE
It is then precisely a characteristic of divine grace, from
which every other may take its name, that it is in terms of TRUTH that it is
operative, not mere largesse; it is in terms of embracive totality of concern
for ALL, by the Creator of ALL, so that ALL being committed to the task ALL might
be reconciled to God. There is no partiality, no indulgence of mere preference
and precisely NO mystery about this facet of the matter. God is emphatic,
dramatically, repetitively, eloquently so on this point as in a nutshell it is
likewise to be found in John 3:16.
HENCE human freedom is co-extensive with the race in this,
that it is THIS preference in the ultimate, administered in terms of Christ and
His Cross, that is operative where election is operative, before this world
(Ephesians 1:4). There is precisely NOTHING else which excludes, and there is
this totality of embracement from God, which is positively affirmed (John 3:19,
Luke 19:42ff., Isaiah 30:15, Matthew 23:37 – SMR Appendix
B, II Chronicles 36:15, Luke 15, Hosea 7:1 with 14-16, Deuteronomy
28:62-63, Matthew 21:28-32, Jeremiah 13:17, Zechariah 7:11-13, Ezekiel 3:27).
GRACE it is which operates with such resurgence beyond mere
self-satisfaction, the enjoyment of one’s preference and so on, in the divine
counsel; and let us be clear, we KNOW this because God has seen fit to TELL it
in these eminently clear fashions! Grace has an aim, it has means, it has
kindness, it is not selfish, it wishes to donate, it is restrained by love. It
is impassioned in its tenor but never stumbling. It is Ephesians 2 which
informs us that this action of God is replete with grace, impelled in grace
just as it is moved in love, like twin streams converging in some vast
junction. Thus in Ephesians 2, it is not enough that it is warmly asserted in
v. 8, that
“by grace you are
having-been-saved persons,
through faith,
and that whole thing
is not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God”.
Certainly that is a somewhat grammatically sensitive translation,
but not one which even slightly distorts, but rather the more accurately
expresses for the English ear, what is being asserted (the gender of the Greek
term for ‘faith’ requires this meaning). Thus grace is a point of entry,
BY GRACE, this whole thing is occurring. That then is not enough, for Paul
insists, or better is moved by the Spirit of the Lord to write this more
briefly in parenthesis ALSO in verse 5, when advising us of an important
fact.
It is this:
“when we were dead in
trespasses, {God} made us alive together with Christ,”
is to be read with the fact that
“by grace you have been
saved”.
It is in verse 8 that
this preliminary notation, flowing over like some flush spring, is given its
classic and comprehensive expression.
Unmerited favour, in a love of
embracive totality, where Christ is the ground and Christ the implement, this
is the depiction of divine grace.
§
This meets every need,
§
feeds every facet of man’s life with feeling, with conspectus,
with elegance of simplicity,
§
without straining at gnats, or swallowing camels,
§
merely tending the facts as biblically given, and
rejoicing in them;
§
for there is the rest of realisation,
lacking nothing, needing nothing, covering everything.