Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

INVENTION OF ENORMITIES

John 1, 3, 8, 15, Colossians 1, I Corinthians 2-4

From remedies that misfire

to the irresistible fire of the word of God (Jeremiah 20:9):

A Review Stimulated by a Particular Case

A STRANGE ATTACK -

Not so very long ago, one had a visitor who, like Nicodemus came by night.

Things went reasonably smoothly, until the issue of predestination and the love of God, came up. Then there was a certain species of surliness, coldness, distancing, a kind of muteness and not participation, soon stirred into open hostility and rampant judgmentalism of what apparently was the only target available, since the Bible is so clear on this topic, that is, oneself!

1) Two personal attacks were made, and the visitor remained irreconcilable. These were on words (reminding of John 8:43) and on motive both inaccurately and extensively. They required rebuttal, provided as a prelude to endeavour to resume intelligible discussion.

So often people like Calvin, in seeking to interdict what is far from the biblical system of doctrine, go to an opposite extreme and also condemn what is far from error, what is indeed the very word of God. The Lord, they may assert, like Calvin, has a mystic and unknown ground for keeping some out of His kingdom and who knows what it is, the rhyme goes. They can become very upset and make scathing comments on the person not conforming to such concepts, or bringing in light from the Bible, or become numb in mind, or blind in eye, and find it hard to see what is meant; although it is clarity itself.

Such a view^*1 has the eminently fatal problem of meeting the express rejection of the words of Jesus Christ, and Calvin in dealing with Matthew 23:37 shows this, by postulating that the Father, when Christ was so indicating His desire to save all of Jerusalem, had a mind somewhat distant from that shown by Jesus Christ, a rankly ludicrous Christology (John 5:19-23, 12:48-50).

2) The topic, centring on doing justice to the love of God, was alleged to be a futile pursuit (despite I Samuel 2:30); and he mischaracterised the meeting in terms of argument undesired, while tending neither to receive exposition nor even face the principles raised, however categorical and central these might be.

3) Exhortation to acknowledge the importance, significance and value of the thematic area was rejected repeatedly. No requests for clarification were received and issues were all but routinely bypassed. Questions at times were asked of the pastor, but answers often ignored.

4) Indeed, the visitor indicated it to be useless to defend this aspect of the Gospel; but to the contrary, Paul says he is set for the defence and confirmation of the Gospel, and is an example we should follow (Philippians 1:7, I Corinthians 11:1). The defeatist ideas presented thus defy and deny faith. It was alleged that nothing could be gained by it and it was unneeded: for Christ's sake, this required answer, provided in some depth, but left unmet by the visitor.

This active reasoning, made for the honour of Christ and His Sender, was evidently confused with a desire for agreement. It was in essence also noted that biblical accuracy opened up a far better testimony to unbelieving critics, the word of God being unique in its power, reasonably and consistently, to cover this entire area of liberty, predestination, love, responsibility, duty and creativity. Being all things to all men is important, as is doing justice to the word of God.

5) Paul in I Corinthians 2:13 speaks of dutifully comparing spiritual things with spiritual, yet the controversialist made this appear - with reference to his own personality - a fruitless function, not a challenge to grow. Comparing scripture with scripture is crucial for wisdom.

6) A pastoral appeal not to be misdirected by the wiles of the devil, and thus to avoid personal attacks, approaches and judgments (as in I Corinthians 4:3-6), and instead to deal with the issues themselves carefully, by necessary means and at whatever appropriate level, he categorically rejected: and departed in the midst of this appeal, into the night.

Thus you see the strange, latent vulcanism of these issues, where gentility can become hostility, hearing and heeding become subjects of irreparable-seeming divorce, and judgmentalism comes in like a Winter downpour, despite the admonition: JUDGE NOTHING before the time (I Corinthians 4:1-5). Simple DIVINE ORDERS such as DO NOT say, I of Apollos, I of Paul as expressly in I Cor. 3:1ff., become strange things requiring vast cogitation or intensive thought, and ordinary statements as in Colossians 1:19ff., become subjects of possible years of research.

PAUL ON THE DIVINE PROGRAM IN CHRIST

What does it say in Colossians 1:19ff. ? It pleased the Father to have all things reconciled to Himself, having made peace through the blood of the cross. What ALL THINGS were they of which God the Father desired this ? What was the scope of His good pleasure ? What could they be ?

This PLEASED the Father! Yes ? tell us then. It was so in the light of this, that having made peace by the blood of the cross, it pleased Him to reconcile this ALL THINGS, this PANTA, transliterated from the Greek, this all-inclusive concept. It meaning: comprehensively ALL THINGS, that is the scope of this kind of love, concern, interest; and this is the nature of what pleases the Father in the light of the blood of the cross. THAT, the cross, is the depth of it; THIS, all things, is the breadth of it.

When we also find in this text that this is the case both in heaven and on earth, and that this forms a phrasing repeated with emphasis, does the idea strike the mind ? God was pleased to have ALL in heaven, ALL reconciled, and this to the extent of the vicarious death of His Son. Difficult to understand ? Hardly. Further, there is even a parallel in the text, for it pleased the Father that in Jesus the Christ ALL FULNESS should dwell, and with His having made peace through the blood of the cross, to reconcile ALL THINGS to Himself. There is even a further repetitive element in this, that it pleased the Father by Him to reconcile all things, by Him , whether in heaven or on earth. Thus comes the amplitude of deity incarnate in Christ, all fulness, and the amplitude of the scope of His action, seen in the light of the cross, all things, and the thrust of this, to be reconciled, together with the concentration on Him. Not only is it by Him, but the vastness of the scope of the enterprise, of the depth of the dealings on the cross to secure it and the good pleasure of God towards the entire creation, is concentrated in one, to One, repeated in His singularity in the face of the entire latitude of the presentation for reconciliation.

Nothing could be more intense, intensive, more thorough, emphatic, dramatic, crafting form and fact, purpose and grounds, entirely God and entirely toward creation, centred in a man, a man who is God to the full, than this. It is a perfect parallel to John 3, where God and the world are the environment of terms, Creator and this entire world of mankind, a prodigy of giving is the action, a positive purpose to save the world is explicit, a negative purpose, not to judge the world, is impressed on this, a particularisation to each person is in focus, one means is provided for the contact to this consummate gift, believing in Him who is His only begotten, and an escape clause is put in the consequential domain, there being neither other access nor other result to the preferring of darkness, anything other and outside this, to light. And the light ? It is that eternal life (I John 1:1-4) which was in Him, and this life was the light of men (John 1:1-4).

Thus does Colossians 1 show and John 3 confirm this glorious Gospel, giving, broad to the extremities, high to the infinitude, focussed to a point in a Person. The path is no more broad in itself, in HIM, that it is narrow in its provisions.

THAT is the scope of what, in the event of the cross now wrought in the Messiah, this vicarious, sacrificial death 'accomplished' as we read in prospect in the Transfiguration, and in retrospect here in Colossians 1, and there is the pronouncement of what the Father statedly would be pleased to RECONCILE to Himself. Such is the thrust of His enterprise, the desire of His heart, even to the uttermost, and so narrow is the method of it, an utter contrast to the scope. The ALL is the commissioning content, and the NO OTHER is the decommissioning consequence for man, for each person, for any, whether in heaven or on earth, whether in things past or present, in cultural clutches or devilish domain: to one, to all, we find His good pleasure. How good is He whose desire is so just, so loving, so clear, so uninvolved, like the passion of love, toward man as in Titus 2-3, for the "grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men," so that "when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared ... He saved us," and this, "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy," the nature of which has been exposed to the uttermost parts of the universe, and it comes not by psychological, sociological or specious theological twistings and turnings, but "through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit."

THIS has pleased Him, in scope, in depth, in height, in love, in grace, in kindness, in total coverage of mission, in narrow confinement of means, so that rejection becomes before Him who has known all before anything of this world even was, a dismissal of an amplitude of enterprise inconceivable to be extended, and a pivotal necessity which cannot be extended. He stares down ALL.

There is no excuse, for such is His love; there is no possibility of error for such is His timeless knowledge, and such is His power. There is no other way either in kind, than that of love, nor in conclusion when this is rejected; for just as the one is both necessary and provided for salvation, so its preferential omission on the part of man as known to God, leaves without solace those who sunder themselves not only from righteousness, but from remedy as well. What was offered with yearning to all (as in Romans 8:32, Isaiah 48:16ff., Ezekiel 33:11, Colossians and John), now has, if this as before Him be foregone (as in John 15:21ff.), the sentence in itself. That before even such a tempest in depth and scope of love as this, on the part of Him with all power, wisdom, and knowledge, temporal and eternal, there should be an alien preference, becomes for a lamentation (Jeremiah 48:36, Lamentations 3:33ff., Luke 19:42ff.).

Indeed, you can even SEE He in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells, who IS the salvation which only God has (Isaiah 43:8-10), cast in flesh as man, DOING the weeping, and STATING this in His heart: "IF you had known, even you, the things which belong to your peace ...". There is God weeping in flesh, as God, as man, and showing in no mere facsimile, but in the factual features of His face, in His dripping eyes, as in His words, the lamentations for love's labour lost. But it is better, more lovely even than this, for there is no talk of the loss of such cost here, but the loss to what has refused to have the cost paid for it, wilfully closing the eyes LEST He should heal them (Matthew 13). God laments.

Yet it is not all lost; God is glorified in those found, His plan perfected in its qualitative attainment, His pure sovereignty fulfilled to the uttermost in the integrity of His love, which man would limit either in heart or in theology, but in both cases, in raucous collision with the scope of the divine passion and compassion. That HE should so limit Himself, who is illimitable, and that He should have such burning purity that He indulges nothing, and brings all freely, without favour of variability of desire, but with a desire of His own infinite scope, is the beginning of the perception of His perfection.

	Man loves to muse, even when he is merely confused.
	Could it mean that secretly, it ... 'did not please Him' ?
	Such a calamitously contradictory proposition,
	even the most blatant of theology,
	in its frequent marauding and illusions
	(for the word of God is a great treasure and is persistently, if not almost consistently, attacked)
	could scarcely raise a smile here.

Yet some even cluck contentedly at this ruction wrought on the word of God, this defamation on His love. Is this not something to become excited about, or zealous and vigorous in speech, as if to awaken the dead! HE rose from the dead, and we at least might seek to awaken them. Are we not to arouse the sleeping for such a topic as this!

Could ALL mean just some in a highly selective manner ? Not at all, for that is merely a form of contradiction, putting your own words into His mouth, which to say no more, is not polite. The scope is the creation in heaven or on earth, the position is God on the one side and man on the other as in I Timothy 2. The action si thus trumpeted, repeated, clad in iron, issued with fire around it.

Love embraces the salvation in totality of all, but it does not force, and reaches perfection without self-violation by violence or ignoring realities, or changing something into a shanghai job, as happened to unfortunate British sailors often enough in the war before Waterloo! GOD KNOWS, and He knows His own and He knows on what basis others are excluded, and He says so. Overwhelming ? yes in one way, that He COULD love so magnificently, with such self-control despite total power!

THE CONGENIAL CHRIST,

ALWAYS LOVING, NEAR TO SEEKERS,

FROM FAR STRANGULATORS OF SPIRITUALITY

(Matthew 11:27ff., John 4, Matthew 23)

But why are any excluded ? In John 3, is it really so abstruse ? the Lord indicates that when He came to this earth it was emphatically NOT to condemn, judge it (John 3:17, 12:47), but to save the world. Not only so, but when the quite natural question which follows from this comes to light, and we might ask: Since this is so, why did you not do it ? the answer trumpets from the battlements of truth. The answer is not this: I was not sufficiently powerful, nor is it this, I had a deviant moment and changed, and so forth (contrary to James 1, where in Him there is no shadow of turning - He MADE time and its changeabilities). In God all such things are majestically missing we find from His word. Their omission is ground for the relish of rejoicing, that such love and truth could be, but above all, could be HIS who made us, and made us in His image, that we might desire and understand and find consummation in His creation by His grace alone, His unmixed truth, justice and mercy as in Psalm 89, and 49.

What then is the answer. It has already started, and now it concludes.

Thus the answer ? It is written.

"AND THIS IS THE CONDEMNATION,
THAT THE LIGHT HAS COME INTO THE WORLD,
AND MEN LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT,
BECAUSE THEIR DEEDS WERE EVIL."

Not only does God exclude judgment from the itinerary in His coming into this world (John 3:17), and indicate that He came to save the world, which is a neat double definition of what are His terms, but He states, in view of the scope of those terms (exactly as in Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:11), that there is a principle here which determines the issue, and the issuance concerning salvation.

What is this principle out of the mouth of God ? It is this. THE LIGHT came into this world (the One who IS the light of the world, not a glitter, glimmer or luminary), a vast undertaking. It was indeed here an infinite matter of incarnation of the eternal into the temporary, of the Creator into the creature. For and in this, there were results. What things He did (cf. John 15:22-24), and said, these were testings! Ignoring them and discarding them is a stated criterion of judgment, we there learn, for then there is no excuse as He states (John 15). Had it NOT been so, had He NOT done and said such things, then by this His word, there would be excuse available, not for being sinner, but for not finding this path to another outcome, even one the good pleasure of God for itx eventuation, its happier resultant in man.

Despite the wonders of work and witness associated with this prodigious action in love with power for peace on the part of God (John 10, Ezekiel 35, Hosea 13:14, Hebrews 9:12), men loved darkness, the opposite of light. They still did so. Then the damage is irreparable. There is one repair shop, the cost of which is infinite. There is no other. God laments for their loving darkness, but the shop does not extend, nor does the method change, nor the scope of the invitation nor the reason for it, nor the scope in the passion, which it has.

They saw which way darkness went clearly enough; and now this intimate, this infinite wonder, this deity-as-man who showed heart and power alike, to the uttermost, and seeking to the ultimate, He is not received. What then ? Why not receive Him ? Oh, He gives the reason as the Great Physician. Having evil deeds in heart, they do not want Him, and they prefer it that way. They did this instead of loving the light. Before time it was known to be so, in time it is shown to be so.

If that is what God says is the ground of exclusion, what has man to say ? Is he going to do a Peter and instruct the LORD, and perhaps go further in this case, and quote Calvin against Him on this topic!^*1

Indeed he might; for in theology you see rebellion without limit; but it would have nothing to do with the divinely-defined reason for this action. That is that God in His foreknowledge (Romans 8:30ff.), being unchangeable, and Christ in His definition of the heart of God (Hebrews 1) being clear in His will (cf. Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff., John 15:19ff.), and being a man who told the truth (John 8), being eternal and unchangeable in His own self, and even BEING THE TRUTH (John 14:6): THEREFORE, this principle stated on earth worked in heaven. The scope of His personal desire is defined over and over again. Illimitable in breadth, impassioned in depth, it is immiscible in kind. Such is the love of God.

Otherwise you are telling God to get with it on first principles, to start changing from time to time, or to start changing His word. Even to an earthly author you would hesitate (one hopes) to do that; but to the author of your life! For such a case, a person would come close to seeking to make God after his own created image, in an impudence of kind which almost stuns.

AVOID CONFUSION, and

VOID MISREPRESENTATIONS
OF THE CHARACTER OF GOD

It is enough. This case is merely being cited as a warning from an older, under-shepherd. While many go to one extreme, to make the human will operative on earth, in this field, an approach denied simply in John 1:12, others go to the other extreme, to make God's often stated principles in this field, inoperative in heaven, obscurantist on earth. In this way, there is confusion, rebellion and schism. It is unnecessary, obtainable only by contradicting the Lord, departing from His word. Further it means that the immense power of the biblical depiction is then lost, even that of God and man, able to resolve issues which philosophy in itself CANNOT do, being in intense melt-down on the topic for millenia. When then is this lost, thrown away, sometimes even with vaunting and taunting added by those who so fling this wonder about ? When ? Why when and if such an extreme on one side or the other is followed. It is like prostituting the daughter of a King: inimitably horrible.

Now it is clear that culture is not your determinant, for before time (Ephesians 1:4), God acting in His own unchangeable character, nature and way, on His own principles, has secured His own, because He knew who they were, not on works done as if an illustration of their superiorities (Romans 9:11, 3:23ff., Titus 3)), but in terms of divine total KNOWLEDGE, and in this case, foreknowledge. We learn in Romans 8:30ff., that this is what lay behind the clear defining by God of who is who, in which fold each soul is to be found, in predestination. WHOM He foreknew, it is written, those He predestined. The one is womb to the other, and logically precedes it. The predestination is the joy of certitude for what is validated and verified by God, before and beyond sin, so that no mistake in execution could ever mar the perfection of His breadth of desire and precision of attainment within the bounds of love.

Being love, this is more than solace, it is divine satisfaction; and being love again, this is and can be so only when there is no limit to what the case permits, no cost left to be borne, so site for further work in the splendour of such majesty as lies here in the Lord, the God of all creation. If you are created, then rejoice, to you it is addressed with all heart. If you are your own, then preferring such darkness of desire, and deletion of truth (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!), begone with it. Sin snatches you from the very cradle of salvation, in terms of the stoutness of the divine heart and the wonder of His remedy. He knows it. He foreknew it, but He still wept! We who are in His own image, we can understand well enough, if we will; for who does not find such a surge of grief for what is loved and lost to its own ruin, despite all our provisions and desires. Yet we would not desire to vitiate reality with our desire; only to deliver it.

WITH the love defined in Christ, such that

	this world is its object,
	His coming to this earth is wrought as a consequence,
	its ambit is in parallel to the scope of that heavenly love: we find more, that
	the entire procedure involves not a desire to judge (the world)
	but to save (the world),
	as from His own mouth.

All is and are foreknown (Romans 8:28ff.). With the foreknowledge divinely available, of EACH ONE prior to sin, fall and indeed creation, God then predestines each one. Error being excluded, impetus is included. Christ as in John 3, gives the qualities and the quest, Paul as in Colossians 1, provides the overview. Man as before God, whose eyes behold, whose eyelids test, provides the deviation. Avoid this. On the other hand, if you want it, it is there; If you despise it, you are not there.

What then ? Man in sin is never on this earth so free that as and of himself, he can simply choose God (John 1:12), nor so bound before the ever-vitalising Lord of heaven and earth, that He cannot be found by Him. His finding is wrought in heaven and worked on earth, and when on earth, then in accord with that liberty which was true in heaven, where God knowing all has no barriers; for on the contrary, the heart and mind and will of each, it is before Him like an open book. Note His severity to tricksters and manipulators, so that the best fraud is useless against Him! (Luke 11:52ff., Matthew 23), and see how He insists that it is all of grace and as the Father appoints (John 6:65).

God did not need to love. But He did. He did not need to save any; but He did save many. He did not need to make a Gospel so gracious and glorious that human works and efforts are not even relevant to His decision; for it is not based on human achievement and differential gifts, but on the heart, and even then, not on ITS performances, but HIS knowledge of it, sin apart in eternity (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 9).

His attitude and action to traducers and tricksters is intense and severe (John 6:64-65). Jesus knew from the beginning (as with Judas' case) who did not believe, we read, and "THEREFORE" He said this about the total unavailability of God to the merely pragmatics, the God-users and the like, that none can come unless this be granted from the Father. In His grace He seeks; in His wisdom He knows, in His purity He acts on stated principles, in His truth He is inveigled by none, and there is no room for manoeuvre. There is protection of the integrity of His love just as there was none for the extremity of His payment. Such is His love and His truth and so vast and incandescent His mercy.

For mockers, for maestros, for marvels, there is nothing; for those who before God are found with His universalising LOVE, there is no barrier. Let God be God; and let Him be as He so defines and declares His nature. He is ruled neither by some philosophic fantasy of another sovereignty, but by Himself, and He is as He states Himself to be, and not any other thing. Additives from pre-conceptions are as void as any other cheque to provide, which does not have the relevant signature, in this case that of His own word!

For the devious even in the realm of salvation, even when it is entirely of grace, even when His Gospel is correctly presented, even when they do not have to HAVE or MAKE any action in themselves, recipients of the perception of God: to these there is severity (John 12:44-47). If some depart from this, it is not I, said Christ, who judges Him, but the word which I have spoken. He departs from His stated principles NOT AT ALL. He is altogether lovely, utterly faithful, with mercy and truth always before His face (Psalm 89:14-15).

His mercy has indeed been built up (Psalm 89:2) and that for ever. When less was known (Deuteronomy 29:29), it was because less was shown; but now is the revelation of the mystery and nothing is left for the distortions of man, if he adds or subtracts illicitly (Ephesians 1:8ff., Colossians 1:25ff.). It is then like putting a building in front of the sun, and complaining of the light, or a candle in a dark cave, and speaking of revelation. Thus neither the obstructions of flesh nor its denials have any bearing. God has spoken. It is written. It is applied. It will not vary, for His faithfulness (Psalm 89:1) is to all generations.

Man deviates from this, adding, subtracting, distorting, what then ? Standing on their own perception, performance, pride or power, they are nothing at all, they score zero. The kingdom is a shut door to them, and the windows are not available (John 10:1). It is so with much that is precious. With God it is supremely so. It is even imperceptible to the passions of the flesh (John 3:3), and no entry comes, for then the door is not even seen! (John 3:5). If by grace, any in error enter in, it is as in all things, a massif of mercy. It is Christ and not any human perfection which is the way in; but to disturb His word, it is a work of woe! Great is the danger (II Corinthians 4). The fear of the Lord is clean, and like the ocean, despite all that comes in from abroad, it stays in its vast depths, both clean and cleansing, providing access in its waters to all that is required, found on land, issuing into the sea of grace.

It is however in this case, not the cognoscenti, not the great or the gifted who THROUGH greatness or gifts gain access (I Corinthians 1:26ff.). Those who relish their own wisdom, they have no access: they are not in seeking mode, being filled with their own fruits, like those who having already drunk 10 gallons of fluid, need no glass of water. Where there is thirst, where thirst leads to drinking, where His is the water, then not only is the God-need met for man, but it is met in such a way that the supply is like a SPRING welling up (John 4:14).

Nor it is fitful or insecure. It even springs up to eternal life. One does not believe it would be possible to make it any clearer; for some stew for ever, clipping off this corner of this, and that part of that. The word of God as written leaves nothing out, and adds nothing needless. Man before this wonder of words and witness and divine action, can make, inanely or profanely, some caricature of the character of God, but God rules it out. It is NOTHING to do with God and His love, that some go to permanent exclusion from Him. It is CONTRARY to His stated purpose in sending Christ, and stated scope for salvation in His heart. It is however a provision which follows (as in John 9:35-41).

Even here, there is a certain vigour of expression. When it comes to this foreknown and now visible trickery and treachery of man not even willing to receive what God is freely offering, with that scope of love already noted, then there is a consequential office. Just as the path provided gives immediate access because of its perfection for the case (Galatians 1, 3), so in the voiding of the point and pith and path of His coming, there is the very sure result. Just as love did what was done because it was necessary, despite the cost, so nothing less is availing (Hebrews 2). Thus what is STILL scorned, what is yet about to be suborned, scrutinised with the strictures of wiliness is foreknown by God, exhibited on earth and inherits, as a resultant, what was found at the first. There is then nothing less than appointment for the disappointment.

That it was foreknown has nothing to do with the keenness of its divine feeling before time or after it, and hence Christ wept. NEVER therefore attribute to an UNKNOWN DIVINE DISINCLINATION what God states is the result of the contrary human aborting of a KNOWN AND STATED DIVINE DESIRE. Such is made manifest in terms human, in actions divine, as made manifest in the love of God. HE determines the terms in truth; HE applies the terms in reality; HE knows the resultant meta-time, meta-fall; He secures the results of such procedures and principles in operation, predestining without pomp, but with knowledge.

He is not a self-centred sovereign, nor is desire and power a unity; for beyond mere desire is truth, and beyond truth is nothing, for God not only IS love but is THE TRUTH. It is personal because He is, and no proposition is ever proposed that is not personal, even computers being merely electronic fingers of their users. Their terms of reference may be anything; the inventor of the same however and of their use, He like His communication is personal, and all the derivatives, however systematic or programmatic, are for, through and by a personal Being to personal beings.

What then of what He has to say ? Application does not alter origination, and His truth is not mangled in His mouth, but expressed there with precision and if necessary, incision! (cf. Jeremiah 23:24-29). Thank God that He has exalted His word above all His name! (Psalm 138:2). Thus His communication of, with or through concepts, using or deploying controlled collations of ideas, with assignable purposes, is from mind, for mind and through mind. His use in creation of what man can similarly conceptualise is the token of the same sort of mind, the one making concepts inherent, the other finding them out and spelling them out in terms correlative (as in E=MC²).

What intellect can capture in its own terms, the thing coded in the same mode as its own mental mould, this is of one kind, that of mind. What man in his conceptualisable estate has to consider is that truth is not his to make, but only to find. It is necessary to consider then the mind which speaks as well as the one which hears; and then to hear what it says, as well as what one wills, and not to confuse the two (which would be like confusing the universe with a match-box).

To ignore, deplore, deviate from God who speaks and both logically and evidentially attests His own mind, is to take mind, matter and spirit for granted, as if they came out of nothing, at once or in stages, as if logic failed, though the controversialist uses it, and causality was on holiday, though it is inherent in our very speech (cf. Causes, Jesus Christ Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4). There is however no holiday from logic, casuistry available with causality, nor any ground for the denial of that absolute truth without which man stands alone, in that case merely modelling himself on the assumption that he knows what he is doing and yet cannot know it: a blithe affair.

To will without even the knowledge of truth is merely the avenue to death and the priority road to desolation, moving witless of wisdom, immune to God, like someone sipping polonium in his tea, and wondering why there is all this talk of radioactivity!

WHEN the word of God is duly found (cf. SMR), then to pollute, corrode or bypass it merely leads to angst, anxiety, inordinate pride, justifiable desolation and the various members of the family of disorientation, which reproduce rapidly on this terminal phase of the Gospel call of God in Christ. Indeed, not only must it be heeded, but watched, lest one plough in it, instead of gathering the crop of HIS communication. God is one; He needs no partners in the declaration of His mind, and chooses His OWN words as He depicts His thought (I Cor.2:9ff.).

These are to be received neat, unmixed (cf. Jeremiah 23, I Corinthians 3, II Corinthians 4). Many mislead, and hence one must keep to one's own faith when it comes to finding what HE means (I John 2:17), for being a camp follower is far from safe: as Paul says, for me to live, is Christ (Philippians 2), not Christ plus or Christ minus, or Christ filtered. It is the word of God itself which endures (I Peter 1), not the co-ordinates of man and God, synthetically created.

Therefore, DO NOT hang your spiritual or theological, your name-calling, your fleshly hat on Calvin or Wesley or Luther and so on. Much good has each shown with great courage. Yet they are not standards or even subordinate standards. They help and one praises God; but there it stops. Take the good and avoid the errors. When therefore you are TOLD not to call yourselves in groupings of "I of Apollos" or "I of someone else", DO NOT DO IT. It is as disobedient as adultery. When Paul says NOT to do this, he does not have a deep and meaningful intention to convey that it is REALLY perfectly all right to do it. This is simply tradition made into truth, and rebellion made theologically palatable, as in Mark 7:7ff..

Just as the Liberals acted in their renewed onslaught on Christ and His word (cf. John 14:23ff.), as His return has grown nearer (Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8), seeking to replace straight text and straightforward meaning with lost and illogical substitutes, so their rebellion rapidly became just another tradition to make void, if possible, the word of God. As they acted, so the word of God was fulfilled, that thus it should be (II Peter 2, II Timothy 3-4, I Timothy 4).

Whatever the variant, the declination, the declivity, the debasement, therefore, whether in terms of a fault in a leader, or a misleader to inventing the word of God, like smugglers in hell, it is like the coastal outcrop of that name, a Point Avoid!

The word of God says it, so DO IT! What ? AVOID these things. Let us revert to the distortion element.

In this case, cease to be wise in your own eyes, saying, Yes but I am a Wesleyan, no I a Calvinist. This is schism. God has said, Don't do it!

Say rather, I find such joy in this or that point stressed by Wesley or Calvin, and thus be free not to fear to be called a this or a that-ist (as some undoubtedly are), but to learn and grow, with Christ only as your doctrinal base. Be helped by this and by that, yet NEVER go after any name but that of Christ. Never DARE to break this command in I Cor. 3, and thus do what it forbids. It leads to foolish argument and especially to efforts (because some one or two or five good things that someone says or has done), to get round some other point which biblically is simply an error, and so confuse yourself. There is only one source to doctrine, but many help you see. There is only one perfect point of reference, determinant of propositions concerning divine doctrine, who showed His quality on the cross, His power in the resurrection and His truth from His own mouth (John 17:17, 12:48-50).

What then ? You do or you do not. You obey or you do not. This is the realm of action. While all are sinners all should seek with a God-fearing heart to avoid imposition on the Lord; and just as taking Communion is one office for the administration of grace, SO is NOT using this or that name in defining or declaring your theology; for by OBEDIENCE here, you avoid a multitude of irrational, unrealistic, intrusive, competitive, clangorous contentions. DISOBEY and in this you only blight His Church; and if you are part of it, blight yourself. In making such points from the Bible, from time to time, one meets such riled response or raw returns; for it frequently appears that a CONVENIENT practice of man-leader terminology is not going to be yielded by traditionalists or the wilfully assertive; or if it will be, yet this is far from readily. Thus is the body of Christ afflicted.

If you have a good dentist, it is easier to avoid rotting (spiritual) teeth, and so one the more readily can eat spiritual meat. Not that this is so profound; yet it has in its final heart, much that is profound, that God COULD even consider being so loving to such as we are, and so forgiving to such as we who are His, alas in our multiple imperfections, are! There is the marvellous mystery which is as apples to the intellect, and myrrh to the flesh, so to the spirit.

How well it is now declared which before was not so entirely divulged! It is shown for example in Colossians 1:19ff., and its results are seen immediately after this (Colossians 1:26-27), Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Thus, as Paul states here is to be found NOW, "the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to the saints." There are indeed "riches of the glory of this mystery," now manifest; for not all even understood all in the Old Covenant (cf. Romans 16:25ff.). What was prelude has become the movement; and the bud has bloomed with the scent of the savour of the Saviour, who even thus for the whole world, has not come to judge, whose concern for the Gentiles is surpassingly great, whose testimony through Israel was a building up, and now is the edifice in the New Testament (Psalm 89), magnificently protrayed.

For whom is He pleased to look wit heartfelt love ? It is for ALL, PANTA in the Greek, THIS is statedly what God would want, and it is in the realm of things now more thoroughly revealed (cf. Deuteronomy 29:29 was a prelude),; and what could be MORE so, than this as the scope of His salvation and the situation, to which such yearning leads, on the part of Christ.

He yearns for the heart of man but will never merely subvert its will; and in saving, will never remove its relevance (John 3:19, Isaiah 48:16ff., Proverbs 1), SO citing it as the ground of NON-SALVATION in the light of His divine desire for TOTAL SALVATION. Man and man only is responsible, not only for sin in terms of regrettable imperfection, but of the sin that squirms and will not repent, being integumental even in the presence of the grace that saves, which it pleased the Father, in the light of the cross, to extend to ALL THINGS .Indeed, and include heaven in that 'all things', for Paul does!

God does not simply secure by storm, or do a circuit about the situation, as if to ignore the ultimate will in man, breach the image of God in him, and take His options in a mysterious way, contrary to His express declaration to the contrary! While only God is ulitimate in Himself, He knows what is the ultimate point in any issue spread before Him (cf. Isaiah 57:15-16). When God says He has made it manifest and STATES what this manifesto of mercy actually is, how on earth can ANYONE call it anything but confusion at best or confrontation at worst, to make up the hideous decretum, decretum horrible, based on an allegedly^*1 unknowable mystery, a calamitous concoction of man for this poor earth, one invented by created man in contradiction of the revelatory claims and substance from God!

How exalted so to know His mind in opposition to His statements, and what a height is this so achieved, to read not only the mind of another man (I Cor. 2:9ff.), but of the Maker of man, and that not only without His authority, but contrary to His speech. Truly we find a remarkable thing here!

But it is not so. God would have, but does not, in this field, the ALL. He would have it but stops, not at the cost, but at the truth, in its pursuit. The spirit would fail before him, man being but a slender creation, if He persisted beyond bounds and reality. Thus He is satisfied in having done all to cover any, and failing never to find and focus on what is His.

Thus the liberty of responsibility for man is not partly but rather entirely preserved, while likewise the horror of sin's love of darkness is not fictionalised, but allowed its path where this is the known way for that soul from before time; and God intervenes as He will, to make those who are against the truth, to serve in history as is fitting exhibition of their hearts. So it was in the case of Pharaoh, and so it is for those who are so known, once their hearts are in themselves eternally set for evil. Outlaws inhabit things awry, and their hearts set on evil, can find it where not expected!

THEREFORE watch what you do; and if you feel in salvation, something of the reality of choice, though you are currently inoperative at that level as in John 1:12, recall this, that GOD is not inoperative at that level. It is for Him as sovereign to resolve how it happens in history. It is entirely His affair how much He chooses to reveal of the underlying dynamics. But it is based on KNOWLEDGE, foreknown persons, not characters with attractive differentials, X-factors pleasing to God by superiority, achievements in word or nature, of those so made. It is not our knowledge but His, in which the operative principle of eternal selection is as stated.

The woe of the will as known meta-history, before time, this is the ground of condemnation, not instead of salvation as in the mind of God, but to its devastation for that person in fact. That operates and takes effect precisely as God has declared. Love darkness more than light as seen beyond sin in the eye and mind of the Maker ? love light less when you are so known before sin and time, by God ? Do this ? then have it.

Then endure what you enjoy, and ponder what you have chosen. So it will be. Thus does Proverbs 1 most piquantly show!

Love deception and put on an external garment of religion to deceive the church ? It will get you nowhere with God. You see, HE KNOWS. He so acts. His principles and procedures are as stated. If not all is known yet, nevertheless the DEEP THINGS of God HAVE been revealed (as in I Corinthians 2:9ff.). We have them in possession through formal revelation in the Bible. This is the statement there made. This is a simply wonderful deliverance from fear and bureaucracy; and in this, perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:18): not the godly fear which has awe and abhors to offend God in His beauty and truth (I Peter 2:17), but the fear that He will not or cannot keep what is committed to Him against the day of judgment (Paul's faith in this way is shown so clearly and beautifully in I Timothy 1:9-12).

That is the only way in which responsibility is real, liberty has meaning, love without force has fulfilment in its own purity, and loss though lamentable, in the very face of such love, leads to a divine lamentation.

Praise God for HIS word, and not at all for erratic counter-words, even if they be from theologians who in most things are sound, or even eminent. How we are as a race humbled, and brought back remorselessly from our little preferences of right and left, earth and heaven, to the realities of our Maker, by considering the errors made, even at times amidst abundance! It is to His word alone among words, that we must look, and it is He who gives the grace for it (I John 2:27); helpers are to help IN the truth, not yelp outside it, as having any authority therein.

All the double-talk denying now this and now that biblical passage in this field (as with any other), is as unnecessary as baneful. Indeed, its removal is for the good of the church, the removal of fighting corners, of what are often in various topics, two eminent, fallacious extremes; just as it is for the expansion of genuine Christian fellowship. Obey in this our day, learn from His word, and add to it notionally, nothing. Defend the faith as Paul was set to do (Philippians 1:7), and rejoice at the privilege; but believe it, and act on it, undaunted because directed by our Commander-in-Chief, who never varies from His own prodigious self-control, patience and tender-heartedness, which makes plain the path to eternity, and null the presumption that creates out of its own created mind, the philosophies of disobedience towering like an ambitious particle of sand, over an ant-hill.

On this, more broadly, in more areas of truth, see:

The beauties of its reality are seen in the Heptad on this subject area. In particular, one might read: Bay of Retractable Islands: Mission for the Mainland.

THE FACT OF OBEDIENCE, FAITHFULNESS

AND DIVINE CONQUEST OF THE CONQUERORS OF LIBERTY

The simple fundamental fact is this, that without God beyond but interpretive of human will, there can be no liberty OF the person, the will itself being self-imposing, limited in options by sight, as by the lack of a due sense of significance and of the realisation of where this lies. Determinism lushly but lifelessly seeks to exploit this side, but see Repent or Perish Ch. 7, and The Incomparable Christ ... Ch. 2, with Barbs ... 6 -7, for example. Others, lordly, want to be rulers and not ruled, by anything or anyone, and erect towers to themselves, but neither their birth nor talents nor understanding is within their own power, try as they might, so that neither gods nor automatons are men, but creatures captured by sin, under sentence for its ways, addressed with grace.

WITH GOD, creator and omniscient, there is indeed liberty PROVIDED ONLY THAT He is not subservient to needs so that He uses things, not for their best but for His own. That would be liberty merely to be a tenant of flesh.

Since however God has no need of anything, being without dependency of any kind, and He on whom all depends for life, existence and being brought into affairs, whether this be psychic, personal or other, has no cover or constraint: therefore He is trustworthy, and since the creation is His choice, that it should be and exist, therefore this outlay of His will is met by the outlay of His willingness. This has moved in triumphant grace, so far as the creature is concerned, though not as far as sin is concerned, since this aborts relationship; thus limiting the liberty to those receiving it.

In our affairs, His nature and action here is the criterion of our affairs, as for creations of His own. The sin question, as above, is resolved by the prodigious character of the love of the Creator and its practical demonstration in His incarnation, via the cross to bodily resurrection, even this, on our behalf. In principle this is so; in practice, it is often bypassed; and so Jesus wept, knowing all, but finding it done. The pang is not destroyed by the passing of time, in time!

Complete knowledge with complete charity along with a complete, divine understanding and nullity in terms of scope for His being hoodwinked gives freedom to the uttermost; though it is never released till the transaction offered is the one completed, and His personal relationship restored, so that people can resume as children of God, and better, eternally redeemed ones.

That, it is as they would. It is as He would. It is good. It is also coherent, consistent in its parts, understandable in its schedule, frank in its feelings, just in its apportionments, judicious in its accomplishments, bountiful in its provisions, neither suffering self-launching as if gods, nor self-demolition as if robots, and holding all to account most justly, and drawing all, most kindly (John 12:32).

This is what the Bible states, and so let us possess our possessions and rejoice in Him who in love has made them available, and in wisdom has made them work!

On these things further, see Index at predestination.

NOTES

In Radio, TV or the Bible:

Interference Distorts

Calvin's Institutes, Book 3, Ch. 23, Part 7 relates the all but incredible lapse in Calvin's talk, in that he expressly, in review of the actions and choices of God, declares that "the decree is horrible, I confess, yet no one can deny that God knew what end man was to have before He created him...".

As to God's foreknowing, this is true, but irrelevant. And it is not 'man' as one body that is in view, but mankind in two sections, on the one hand, those to whom mercy reaches in salvation, and on the other, those who love darkness rather than light, to permit God to use His own terminology from John 3! He knew indeed what SOME would do and what OTHERS, and what HE would do. But this is an entirely different question from some assumption of unknowable sovereign secrecy of a horrible kind: that is, He knew that there are outcomes. He knew that, but not that His whole work on man would move as if it were to be a case of, one outcome.

There are treasures gained and there is chaff lost. God knows what He is doing. These two things are true; but this sovereign fact has no more to do with the divine motivation as expressly stated repeated in the Bible as in I Timothy 2, Colossians 1, Ezekiel 33, and attested in all but countless implicative cases, such as Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff. Ezekiel 20, Jeremiah 13, than does a war with the slain, as if this were the secret desire of those who engaged in it.

The sovereignty is not some secret thing, horrible because uninvestigable, and having such uncharming results; it is a thing declared, and not only investigable but invested with a mercy of such profundity towards all that it is to be seen, as given, in terms of the colossal sacrifice which God made for His zest and love for the whole world, in a plan exclusive in motivation, of judgment, but not in resultant. Such is the teaching of truth in John 3:16ff..

The decree of God is neither secret (in the sense of being unknown in principle as to its basis), nor horrible, but rather miraculously marvellous, for there is nothing at all or in the least horrible about God. If some prefer darkness as foreknown to Him, and their image-of-God status gives them this privilege, what is the use of trying to put on God's plate the whole writhing supper of worms which has it as if His secret does it, rather than its being a matter of His plain plan in which their KNOWN and foreknown love of darkness permits them to be just as responsible in the very face of mercy, as John 3:19 attests. There is no vile violation of their integrity as persons, even if this is a gaunt and haggard relic. It is theirs, and rather than being hypocrites in a heaven, to them intolerable, they are free for their will and light, though it be darkness. They are neither twisted nor tormented, neither subverted nor manipulated, for they are respected with respect to their will on this point. THIS is their condemnation when GOD HIMSELF in this whole Gospel episode had NO judgment in view in its thrust and integrity of purpose: that they LOVED something else more.

Ï would ... you would not. This is the testimony so frequently that the endeavour to falsify it by means of the necessity for foreknowledge, which in any case is adequately stressed in Romans 8:29ff., and the idea that pathology prevents God from applying His own and stated principles, is at once demeaning to His wisdom and to His power. He can not only reach before history in reality in prospect, apart from all its works, finding it as it is in each heart; but He can equally readily reach down into history to convict both the orphan to grace, self-made and hence with a different sort of pity than those who would merely inherit it without relevance to grace, and the child of God.

He can awaken at will what He will, in the heart of either, and put aside the layers of sin as so many outside lettuce leaves if He so desires; but it is best to realise that it is all as arranged in the foreknown, before sin was, so that on no account is any mere mood the basis of things eternal. Praise God for His grace and for its eternity, and for the love which animates and applies it with such passion, such payment as the very cross, and with such restraint, in not simply seizing what He wants. Where that is, love is not.

Consider the case more generally of sovereignty. It suffers nothing to the heart by manifesting and securing what it wants. If it is dictatorial of persons, directly or indirectly, so be it. It would then be a dictatorial sovereignty. God is statedly not like that.

To be sure He has not resigned HIS sovereignty because He does not force those who have this avidity for darkness persistent, as foreknown and before sin was or the world was put in place. On the contrary, this IS His sovereignty, not that of a tin-pot dictator, a Jesuitical assailant on the minds of those in prison as in the Inquisition, or a similar Communist dictator seeking to force the will by various means: but a thing most wonderful. It is a beautiful sovereignty of restraint and true love, which seeks the good of its object, with compassion and passion, but never with insurgence. Certainly, the Spirit of God WHEN the Lord is dealing with one of His foreknown ones, convicts, convinces and converts (John 16); but this is where it is found apt so to do. He is a Good Shepherd and a Good Sovereign, and there is indeed no sovereign like Him, as Psalm 89 makes so clear. Mercy and truth go before Him, and these extend outward from His throne, like a preliminary wave, for He NEVER leaves them (Psalm 89:14).

But look once more at this error of the confused Calvin, in this matter. Thus, again, in Institutes Ch. 23, Part I we find this that God condemns "for no other reason than that He wills to exclude them from the inheritance which He predestines for His own children," thereby flatly contradicting Col. 1:19ff., John 3:17-19. He calls, in this latter Chapter, what God has in mind, "God's incomprehensible plan," in terms of reprobation and election, whereas Christ makes it manifest as a manifesto of mercy toward all, judgment divinely undesired for any, and condemnation, in God's knowledge, found in terms of the principle of some desiring light in the presence of declared light, even as foreknown to be such.

Calvin, however, not only confesses in acknowledgement that this is the horrible decree, but it even follows from his adamantine refusal of the scriptural texts concerning the sort of sovereign God is and the scope of the love for mankind which is His in His vast project of sending His Son. This horrible decree is that of Calvin's conception, not God's declaration; and it is the direct and logical result of his roistering if not reckless impermeability to this repeated aspect of biblical truth.

This is a fatal flaw in Calvin's theorising, a strange assault on mercy, this providing an entry point for various diseases and devious twistings of truth, on the part of many who foolishly follow him, in this his greatest failure, and that one amid his most remarkable successes in many fields. Alas, however, that such sheer wonder of the Good Divine Sovereign should be so treated with such sheer confusion, when biblically stated precisely to the contrary: for it is a grating in time, and never a matter for congratulation for the misled and mystificatory Calvin.

See further on the unhappy invention of the horrible decree on the part of Calvin: in Christ's Ineffable Peace ... Ch. 2, Massifs of Pure Splendour Ch. 7, Possess Your Possessions Ch. 2, and concerning the comment of Spurgeon that relates to election, in Life Story ... Appendix 1.

This fallacious and unscriptural model is given treatment in many places on this site, as seen in the Index. One however is chosen here for an excerpt, namely Christ's Ineffable Peace ...
Ch. 2

Without the Cross (Galatians 6:14), there is no fund for dispelling of what is freely lost, and needs restoration, nor is there ground for cancellation of guilt,so that not human powers, but divine mercy might assimilate the people of God.

Without God becoming man, there is no adequacy in the justice, intimacy in the payment or security in the translation of mercy into redemption, so that truth otherwise would be compromised.

Without that unique person, God as man dying, there is no sating of justice; without His rising, there is no demonstration of power, so that to man and to all is demonstrated that the author of death is the giver of life, in the second instance, by gift, as in the first, by creation. Adequate suffering, meeting of the exact penalty, one for many because the One is the creator of all and adequate for any, single or multiple, of the actual penalty, God for man: this is a pre-condition of justice, as of liberty in the dower of the results to the recipients.

Who are the recipients ?

Without divine selection in sovereignty, there is a necessary ingredient of human differential as given for the construction of each person in the first instance, and hence no sinner could be a participant in freedom, only the resultant of being what one is: the temporal determines the eternal in such a case, and freedom is nil. Such is not the biblical case, but its contrary.

If then it is attained, this differential, then what attains it ? Ifit is granted, then how is liberty found in what is given so that it executes its own position infallibly ? That is not liberty but a mere building of a desideratum by another.

Without divine love, willing for all and seeking all, there has to be an X-factor, some differential in man which makes his condition or being or some aspect in whatever way, preferable to the divine; and hence it becomes a selection based on what man has, or develops in his own powers or in combination with his differential contribution to become vital, or his differential grace per se, to be a contributing factor. Only love for all can remove a ground in some which is given to them at the outset, or developed in terms of what they have been given, some spiritual zest or quest or sensibility or some feature on which divine focus is pleased to dwell because it is better for, or closer to Him than some possible alternative.

Calvinism has no answer, precisely because it does not adhere closely, and constantly to the Biblical teaching. Thus, sovereign selection of those to be saved in terms of an alleged mystery on the point, neither acceptable nor harmonious with other scriptures. Indeed, the Bible is dramatically, emphatically and repeatedly profound in its contradiction of this point (cf. SMR Appendix B, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 2, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4, The Glow of Predestinative Power, Ch. 4), and has a double negation to match it.

Firstly, allegedly and on this model, the sovereignty SELECTS NOT on the basis of human will in any sense: it is MYSTERIOUS and it is such that there is a decretum horribile, a horrible decree, a banishment provision, from mystery to horror. God, it is said, COULD have justly rejected all, but being gracious found some. This is true, but not the whole truth. Spiritual things must be compared with spiritual (I Corinthians 2). GOD WOULD graciously receive all; but in STATED consideration of HIS view of human will, in HIS KNOWLEDGE, the basis statedly of predestination, with great lament, He does not. Some are excluded on the basis of preference for darkness in the FACE OF LIGHT (John 3:19), and that light has been explained in detail in the first three chapters of John's Gospel, as CHRIST COME IN THE FLESH. Before God and as known by God and as found in foreknowledge and then executed into predestination, this is the response to the divine love.

Thus not only is there in Calvinism, not by desire, but by result of the model created, a breach of the concept of NON-MERIT or non-superiority or non-anything which is intrinsically preferable, but it is a flat and pronounced denial of repeated scriptural affirmation.

On the other hand, when the Cross of Christ is given its place as in Colossians 1:19ff., Galatians 6:14, we see that UTTER divine willingness, as in I John 2:2, is consonant with LIMITED divine payment (Romans 8:32, Isaiah 53:1-6 - the 'all' are those 'healed'), because as in John 3:19, there is a preference. The will of man is the cited culprit, and to cite God's will in mystery is a gross distortion of explicit divine declaration.

This preference leads to its correlative lack of salvation in some: and this is NOT due to human superiority, attainment or merit, for God is not talking either of knowledge (but FOREKNOWLEDGE) or human choice but HIS OWN (John 6:65, Matthew 11:27, Romans 9:16), within the ambit of TOTAL LOVE to the point of salvation, directed towards ALL. The will is cited in the face of divine light, as the culprit; and it is not that of God, but of man. The knowledge of that will is cited to exist in the light of GOD ALONE; and the activation of the result is by a divine sovereignty. That is all.

Wrong-headed is the effort for human autonomy, endlessly denied in scripture (e.g. Ephesians 2:1-12, and the above). Just as Arminianism is a gross distortion of divine sovereignty, through its truncation, so wrong-headed also, alas, is the desire to remove the relevance, ex-merit and by foreknowledge, with human action irrelevant (Romans 9:11), of that image of God in man, which has will. Making man autonomous, or God to disregard the reality of the image of God in man, and to relate not at all to human will in His foreknowledge past all that is on earth: these errors are profound and continual. They war on each other, like cat and dog, because EACH has a fundamental error, lapse and shortcoming. Neither is man autonomous, nor is God without the final sovereignty, nor is man degraded nor is preference in him excluded from divine regard.

What then do we find ? It is this. The Cross removes the need to pay and hence any thought of differential capacity in man to do so; it covers the case of justice and grace; it meets the point of total action in the love, as distinct from mere theoretical embalmment of thought.

The deity who does it removes the consideration of how to achieve the ADEQUACY of the payment to cover either so much or so many, and the point that nothing else is pure enough to pay absolutely for everything to any extent and to any number. Deity has no limits. Deity did it, in the form of man (Philippians 2).

Hence in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, we glory: there is no other way. In the love of God we rejoice, it is differential in result, but not in disposition, and the difference in application is because of the liberty to man as in the image of God, and as seen before the universe was so much as created, and far more, before man fell. Where sin is absent, difference of merit is irrelevant, since all have all.

We return now to the excerpt from ... Great Execrations ... Greater Grace, Ch. 7 of the same work gives attention to Colossians 1, in particular, at considerable focus.

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 9:16 and John 1:12). What then is the biblical depiction of this reality ? HOW does grace give, when the gift is a life which is not only granted, but henceforth YOURS! How is such a gift something other than an instrumental use of a person by someone else, albeit the grand and wonderful God of his creation!

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 earthly 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 23:37, Luke 19:42ff., Ezekiel 33:11), and present then because what GOD IS, that is always present. Now since this is NOT a matter of human will, the selection being made neither BY MAN nor in time, and since it is yet made IN CHRIST, who was prepared to love and lose, then past the mere psychology of man, with its transient moods, modes or ways (and where is the BASE!), in the knowledge of God (and not mere knowledge of what would be – for this is expressly excluded in Romans 9:11 as in 3:23ff), there is a divine cognisance.

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, an outcome from the nature of the nature that one has, and not the exercise of liberty in itself; akin therefore to the meritorious, where selection becomes a kind of congratulation on comparative class, an exposé on the X-factor of comparative desirability. 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 ? It moves deliciously away from this, in realms of the kingdom of heaven far removed from charm or force offensives, machinations and mysterious hiddenness. It is all as open as the sun in its brightness.

  See also Great Execrations ... Greater Faith Ch. 7,

Celestial Harmony ... Ch. 2,

Life Story ... Appendix I,

The Glow of Predestinative Power Chs.   8 and   5,

and extensive Index on Calvin and Predestination.