New Thoughts (07/24/14-08/04/14)
As seems to be the case for each of these studies of late, I shall be breaking my thoughts out under several heads. That said, there are two primary topics: The nature of the church, and the nature of predestination. The first six heads fit under the topic of church, the last three under that of predestination.
The Sound Foundation (07/26/14-07/27/14)
If one would consider the church, one must start with the foundation. It is the same with any undertaking. If we would learn a particular skill or body of knowledge, we begin with the ‘101’ class: the foundational, basic tenets. If we do not get these firmly established, the edifice we build is shaky and of no use. It is true with math and science. If you haven’t the basic principles of arithmetic, the harder matters of trigonometry, geometry and calculus are hardly likely to be understood. If you haven’t the math, the science that builds upon that math cannot be pursued with any success.
It is true of construction, certainly. If you don’t get the foundation right, the building erected on that foundation will assuredly fail in time. The foundation shifts and cracks. The walls lose their true, and sooner or later, that building can no longer remain erect. It becomes a ruin.
It is true of character and of relationships. Jesus set the matter of character out in parable form, pointing to the nature of a tree and its fruits. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. A character with rotten foundation is not going to become good. The foundation must first be rebuilt on solid footing, and then, a character that is good and just can be built upon that footing. Relationships that are begun on the wrong basis are not going to prosper except some intervening force set the foundations to rights.
So the Church. If it does not consider its foundation, it builds itself so as to be fit only for destruction. It cannot protect. It cannot preserve. It cannot stand. Here is the fundamental point with which Peter begins. God has set the Cornerstone. That stone at the corner is the only fit measure by which to assess what is constructed. It is the very definition of True. By reference to this cornerstone we are able to assess whether the walls of the foundation are square, whether the beams are set plumb. Christ, then, is the measure – the sole measure – by which the Church may be properly assessed. Christ is the sole foundation upon which the Church may be properly constructed.
This was always true. Consider the ancient building of altars. You use the stone as is. You cannot improve it by your shaping. It has already been shaped perfectly. Now, we might look at those constructs and find them primitive and unshapely. But, then, what do we know? I could consider the stone walls that are so ubiquitous to New England. There are effectively two kinds. There are those that were built by farmers clearing their land. These were mostly built slowly, and considering only how best to stack the stones at hand. The natural shape of each stone recommended its best spot in the wall. There is a second kind constructed along more utilitarian lines even as it is somehow presented as being more aesthetically pleasing. This kind may consider a stone for its appearance, but not for its utility. It is not held together by the natural fitting of stone to stone, but by cement mortar filling the gaps, attempting to hold what was never designed to be together in the first place. One, we might say, builds a wall according to God’s blueprint, the other by man’s. Guess which lasts longer?
You can wander all over this region and see walls built centuries ago that are still, if you’ll pardon the phrase, rock solid. You can walk atop those walls with little concern. There has most certainly been some shifting of those rocks over the decades that have passed, as frost and thaw have rearranged the footprint of the land underneath. But, the wall just settles more firmly upon its natural lines. The wall holds.
Now, go look at those more permanent structures of man’s devising. The cement has cracked and crumbled and the stones that were held together by it have loosened and fallen out. The walls, if they stand at all, lean perilously, and it is clear that given a few more years and no attention, they will be no more.
Come back to the Church. God has set Christ as the Cornerstone. He is the perfect measure of all that is Righteous and True. It is His very name! He is the sole foundation upon which we may hope to build anything of worth. It is true of the Church. It is true of the life of each one of us in the Church.
The Apostle Paul lays this out in absolute clarity. No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, and that which is laid is Jesus the Christ of God (1Co 3:11). Elsewhere we have the added components of prophet and apostle. (Eph 2:20-22 – The church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building is fitted together and growing into a holy temple of the Lord. In Him you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.)
Now: There are a couple of points that require attention at this juncture. First, it must be said that the foundation having been laid, it does not require further construction. We cannot add to the foundation. Prophet and Apostle have done their respective work, and have done so with constant attention to the Cornerstone. That work is done. I stress this in light of the movements of our day that would insist we still have Prophets and Apostles actively defining how the Church should be.
I can accept that we still have prophets of the lower-case variety. I can, just barely, accept the possibility of apostles of the lower-case variety. But, I suspect the qualifications for that label preclude it being the case. The problem is that many who would lay claim to the title, with or without capitals, are pumping their own vanity, not seeing to the proper construction of the Church. To the degree that they feel the need to add their own revelations to what God has chosen to reveal, I must hold they go entirely too far. I could be stronger and say they necessarily wander into heresy. They are attempting to add onto a completed foundation, and that just never turns out well.
Here is a second point, courtesy of the JFB. By Peter’s words here we must conclude that we are built, not building. Now, I admit there is a good deal of debate as to whether this opening part is to be seen as statement of fact or commanded action, and there’s even room to perceive it as both. But, even if we admit of our own part in the building, we cannot build out. We build up. The foundation has been laid long since. Ours is not to add to the foundation, but to build upon it. Go back to that message to the Corinthians. You can’t lay another foundation. It is laid. It’s done. Don’t mess with it. It’s the same as chiseling those altar stones on the pompous assumption that you can improve on God’s handiwork. You can’t, and you will only succeed in destroying the altar’s worth.
So, then: What is built? What is the nature of this spiritual temple? Matthew Henry allows that what is “by just and necessary consequence deduced from Scripture” is as dependable as Scripture itself. This gives us sound counsel as to how one builds upon the foundation provided. He points us to Peter’s use of the Prophets by way of example. Peter does not find explicit statement in Isaiah to indicate this Jesus Christ he preaches. Yet, he infers Jesus from what Isaiah does say. He puts two and two together and arrives at four. There is a reason why classical theologians tend establish a close connection between logic and faith. God being logical, it is only right that logic should apply. Faith is not a matter of blind acceptance or worse: acceptance of what goes against the evidence. Faith is utterly reasonable, despite what is often said against it.
At the same time, though, God is a higher order being – the highest! His ways are, by His own declaration, above and beyond our own. There is much about Him we are simply not going to comprehend. God is also Spirit. This does not require us to suppose that He therefore ignores what we understand as logic. But, it does suggest there is something more. We can be utterly logical and still be entirely irreligious. We can reason from that which faith reveals. I am not so certain that we can reason our way to faith. Faith, once found, will prove utterly reasonable, but our reason is insufficient to the task of finding it unaided.
I am driving towards a point, believe it or not. Down through the ages there has always been this tension between the purely reasonable and the purely mystical. One or the other always seems to be in ascendance in a given locale and period. You can see it play out between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were, by and large, entirely rational. Oh, they accepted the angels and the resurrection conceptually. The evidence would seem to show, though, that in practice they wanted nothing to do with such things. Give us concrete actions and rules to follow. Give us logical and orderly approaches to righteousness. In the end, this left them devoid of the God Who Is, even as they laid claim to serving Him.
We can also see this play out with the endless battle between Gnosticism and Christianity. Gnosticism, for all that it purports to offer a higher knowledge, does so on the basis of a deep mysticism. It is not knowledge reasoned out, but knowledge obtained through revelation. Sadly, none ever thinks to ask by whom the revelation comes. This, I think, points us to the deep risk of the purely mystical approach to faith. It seems that wherever mysticism is given rein, all the safeties are shut off. Anything that seems spiritual is accepted as being of God. The severe warnings of Scripture are summarily ignored in favor of experience.
Meanwhile, the rationalist, seeing this excess, becomes excessive in his response. See? Experience is not to be trusted! We can only take the clear word of Scripture. Well. Cannot the clear word of Scripture be applied in assaying experience? Yes, it can. Will it always be a deeply rational, logical chain that connects one to the other? I’m not so certain. What I am absolutely certain of is that experience of spiritual, mystical faith cannot, if it be of God, stand opposed to the clear word of Scripture, nor to that which can reasonably be inferred from that clear Word. The principles of one must accord with the principles of the other, because the God of one is the God of the other.
I must confess that at present I err on the side of reason. I have seen sufficient of what passes for spirit-led church to recognize that the lion’s share of it is wanting for legitimacy. There are too many charlatans abroad, men seeking a name for themselves at God’s expense. There are too many seeking to make the faithful a source for their own fortunes. Sadly, there are WAY too many of the faithful willing to hear every word such men say without question. Too few are willing to take up the effort of diligently checking. Too few are sufficiently trained in either logic or theology to be sufficient to the task. I fear I cannot blame them entirely for their failure. We have failed them in large degree. We have not provided them with the tools to assess the flood-tide of information that breaks over them.
They are not without blame in this, though. The warnings in Scripture are plain. The devil disguises himself as an angel of light. Test the spirits. Antichrist comes with signs and wonders. All of these points are made unambiguously. Yet, we will see the signs and wonders and simply assume they authenticate the worker. Indeed, we will not even bother to have the signs and wonders authenticated.
I’m sorry if this is taking on the nature of a rant, but it needs venting at the moment. Consider the example of Jesus healing. He heals the leper, and what is His instruction? Go show yourself to the priest. Make the required offering for your cleansing. Why is this? Of course it was in part to give the priests evidence that their Messiah had come. But, it also served to confirm what had been done. This leper was seen by an impartial judge to have been cleansed. He was known to the priest as a leper. Now he would be known as cleansed.
We see this play out in many of the other examples as well. The man born blind? He was well known to the town, but even so, the Sanhedrin questioned the event. They hauled his parents in, and all but accused them of lying about their son’s condition. He’s been seeing all along hasn’t he? Confess! But, no. The evidence was overwhelming and the story could not be gainsaid. Lazarus? Half of Jerusalem had been out to see his grave. There were way too many witnesses who could attest to his being dead. Having him, then, walking the streets together with Jesus was all the evidence needed to confirm that something unheard of had happened. The Pharisees were proven right! The dead can rise. Not that they wished to hear it at the time.
But, what can be said of the modern day healing ministry? Are those who are healed certifiably sick in the first place? Are they certifiably cured in the second? There may be cases of this, but it seems that far more goes on base appearance. We see a man wheeled in by wheelchair. We see him walk out. No more than a very, very few can possibly have knowledge of this man. For the rest, it could as easily be that this same guy has wheeled into every event the ministry has ever held, and walked out ‘healed’ every time. We have no knowledge of either history or result. We have only the evidence of a few moments before our eyes, and our eyes are notoriously easy to fool.
People make their living on such things, and do so far more honestly. A magician fools our eyes, and we know it. We take it for the entertainment it is, but we understand that it is appearance only. Street artists may carefully arrange their image so that from one particular angle, things suddenly appear to have a depth and dimension that exceeds the flat surface of the road. Architects and interior decorators work, in part, at creating visual input that makes the brain think things are different than they are. If we do this, the room will appear larger. It isn’t. But, we will feel like it is.
“Aha!” says the rationalist. See? It’s feelings. Feelings mislead. You must apply reason. But, reason already knows. The feelings do not deny reason. It is only when feelings leave reason behind, refusing its input, that we run into danger. I dare say the rationalist who refuses the input of feelings is just as much at risk.
Somewhere there is this point of tension in which the rational and the spiritual are in balance. I write that and I cannot help but remember the high school class on Robert Frost. Everything is about tension and balance. Everything is a both / and rather than an either / or. Of course, there’s a touch of Kierkegaard in that, isn’t there? But, the tension between poles is valid in this case. We need both. We are, after all, made in the image of God. God is Logos. God is also Spirit. Should it really shock us to discover that we have both a logical and a spiritual side? No. Should we be denying one or the other? No. Will we ever learn to hold the two simultaneously? I would love to say yes. History, however, would seem to say the answer is no. Is this cause to cease from trying? No. It is, though, a serious caution to do so with the utmost care. It is a warning against pushing either mode to extremes. It is a necessary recognition of the both / and nature of the case. I love the logical consistency of sound theology. I dare not allow this to cast aside all appreciation of the spiritual, the supernatural. I also dare not allow acceptance of the supernatural to overthrow sound theology. God will not do such a thing. If He chooses to act outside the normal laws of nature, He will yet be self-consistent. He cannot be otherwise. God is Truth and Truth cannot be self-contradictory. He will ever act consistent with His character and being, for His character and being are His essence, and this cannot change.
We have a foundation. It is a firm foundation. That foundation is the very Word of God. But, it is not a building of stone, concrete or steel that is built thereupon, but a spiritual temple. Let us not lose sight of that fact. It is a spiritual temple set upon a sure foundation, as Barnes reminds us. He is not on this particular theme, but his point is apt. A spiritual construct set upon anything else would be utterly untrustworthy. Any other construct set upon that foundation would not be spiritual. It would be humanistic, limited and ultimately destroyed by the distortions inherent in our fallen perspective. It needs both, and both are capable of coexisting. They do so in the God we seek to serve and to emulate. They ought to do so in us.
I dare say, this is not the conclusion I thought to be driving towards when I started writing this section yesterday. But, it is the conclusion I have reached. It is not a new one. Were I to go back and look at my earliest studies, I should find the same balance being urged. It is merely that the pendulum of my own perspective has been swinging between the poles of logic and spirit. It is, I must suppose, the word of God come to bring me back nearer to balance myself.
Lord, I am willing. Lead me and let me be led. Let it be that I am true to You and true to the best of my understanding of that which You have revealed in Your word and explained by Your Spirit. Guide me, Lord, that I may be guided. Grant me the understanding that I might also bring understanding and balance to those you set in my charge. All for Your glory, God. It has naught to do with my talents.
A Better Temple, A Better Priesthood (07/28/14)
One point on which I find myself at odds with most of the commentaries here is the question of Peter’s audience. They seem convinced he is writing to a primarily Jewish audience, and this leads them to particular interpretations of the comparison Peter is drawing. For my part, I do not believe this to be the case. The churches Peter addresses are in Asia Minor, a region Paul had planted. The companions he notes at letter’s end are Paul’s companions. The sole reasons we have for supposing these to be Jewish churches are Peter’s role as Apostle to the Jews and his use of the term diaspora. But, the first point does not preclude him addressing Gentiles any more than Paul’s being Apostle to the Gentiles prevented him from addressing Jews at every stop. The latter term could as easily describe the whole of the Church in this present age. We are all scattered abroad in foreign lands, for heaven is our home and our citizenship is there. On this Peter and Paul concur.
In light of that, I do not see that Peter is attempting what the book of Hebrews attempts: Arguing for the continuity of Judaism into Christianity and demonstrating Christianity’s superiority. There were more than enough stone temples in the region without having reference to the one in Jerusalem. And, it could be argued, the contrast between dead stone and living stone is more apt in that case. As concerns the sundry temples of that region and those who worshiped there, Scripture has this to say. “Their idols are silver and gold worked by the hands of man. They have mouths that can’t speak, eyes that can’t see, ears that can’t hear and noses that can’t smell. Their hands feel nothing. Their feet cannot walk. They cannot so much as make a sound. Those who make them will become like them, every one of them” (Ps 115:4-8). There is your point of contrast. On the one hand, fancy constructs of man’s creation; dead and deadly. On the other hand, a living, organic edifice built by the Living God, upon the Living God and imparting life to all who are made part of it. Now, which is better is easily seen.
Further, this temple God is constructing transcends every boundary. It is not the church of a tribe nor of a nation nor of an empire. It is universal in scope. It is not even a church of this particular century, enduring through all ages until the ages themselves come to an end. Add to this that you are not merely being called to attend at this marvelous church. You are being made a part of the very church itself. You are being fashioned by the God of Life to be part of His own living, life-giving temple!
This new and improved temple is being built up, Peter says, as a house for a holy priesthood. But, this is not to suggest you are being used to build something for somebody else. It’s not as though you’re stuck being the rock as a supporting actor in the school play and somebody else gets the lead role. No! You are not only built into the temple. You are a priest in the very temple you build. That is clear from Paul’s instruction to the church in Rome. “I urge you by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Ro 12:1). This is what goes on in this new temple. Every man is a priest and fully authorized to offer the one sacrifice to God that is acceptable. Every man offers himself.
But, with privilege comes responsibility. As temple of the Holy God, you already had great cause to be holy. As priests in that temple, you have cause to be doubly holy. God is holy – perfectly holy. You house this perfectly holy God who cannot abide the presence of sin. How, then, must you be? You are walking every moment of life in the Holy of Holies. The high priest of old had to undergo rigorous rites of cleansing to prepare for the one brief time in the year when he was permitted to enter. And even then, he went with a rope tied to his leg such that, if he was found wanting and slain for his sins, his compatriots could pull his carcass out so as not to defile the place. And you’re there every moment. How ought you to be?
Beyond that, you are a priest. You are presenting the sacrifices of God’s people before Him. You are bearing their prayers up to His very throne room. You have one foot in heaven, friend. That is an incredible privilege. It is also cause for utmost circumspection. Think of Isaiah’s recognition of his situation. Seeing the courts of heaven before him, his response was not that of a tourist gawking at marvelous scenes. No! It was nearer despair than anything else. “Woe is me! I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa 6:5).
We have the great benefit of living this side of Christ’s sacrifice, of having His righteousness as our clothing before God. Our sin, for the nonce, is protected from His sight such that He is able to accept our presence rather than destroy us. But, this is not cause for laxity; only profound thankfulness. You are sanctuary and priest. You have utmost cause to be holy. God, Who dwells within you, is Holy – a Consuming Fire. The warnings that follow upon this description of our estate are clear. You are either building your temple upon the foundation of Christ our Cornerstone, or you are being crushed by the setting of said Cornerstone. You are either being made holy by a holy God and willing partners in that work or you are an enemy of the Lord of hosts, whose only future consists in utter destruction. That stone of stumbling is not merely a thing tripped over. It will fall atop the one who trips and grind him to dust. Is that severe? Absolutely. Holiness demands it.
While I remain on the topic of this incredible, universal, eternal temple of the Living God, I would touch on a point made by Calvin. We are, as Peter has been saying, living stones composing this temple. We are, each of us in himself, a living temple of the Living God. He abides in us. The Holy Spirit dwells within me, within you, and this is cause, as Paul writes, to refuse to allow our bodies to be aiding and abetting sinful actions. But, we are not each a temple in isolation. “No man is an island”, wrote John Dunne, and nowhere is that more true than in the Church of the Living God. Each of us has a particular duty in this Church. Further, each of us has ‘something to do with regard to others’, as Calvin writes.
We do not come to our weekly services to take and take some more. We come, if we are rightly fitted to the building of this Church, to give into the work as well. Let me observe this from a different angle. There is no other component stone of this Church that is such that it does not contribute to our own growth. There is none so lowly as he cannot be used of God to advance the highest of men. There is none so wise he has come to need no other. There is none so right that he need not seek the voice of correction, whomever God may choose to deliver the word. There is no independence in the house of God, only inter-dependence as we all remain wholly dependent upon God.
This is the priesthood of all believers. It consists first in the offering of oneself as a living sacrifice to the living God of the living temple. But, it doesn’t stop there. It consists as well in pouring oneself out as a drink offering, a sweet aroma before the Lord. How is this? It is in doing that which He has created us to do, taking up our own particular tasks in His house, and doing so in a fashion that serves not self, but our brothers and sisters in this new family that has Christ as its head.
This is much the point Paul made to the Corinthians in discussing their use of the charismata. It certainly has application there. If you are using these gifts to suit yourself, to feed yourself and to no further purpose, you are using them wrong. If they have become a matter of prestige and honor to you, you have wholly misapprehended the point. Love reigns supreme over every display of these spiritual powers, and frankly, your ability to use said powers says nothing about you anyway. It speaks volumes about God, but nothing about you. If you have gifts it is because He gave them. If they are useful it is because He employs them. If you are used, congratulations! You have as much to brag about as Balaam’s ass. And only as much.
But, it’s not just the charismata. It applies to every aspect of service. If we go off on missions, why do we do so? If we teach, what’s our motivation? If we feed the poor, is it to help them or to assuage our own guilty feelings? Motive is everything, and if love of neighbor is not there together with love of God as the cornerstone of our motivation, we are doing nothing of worth. We are not building the living temple of the living God, but a deaf, dumb, utterly dead idol which we are destined to resemble if we do not repent and return to the God Who Is.
What Is Church? (07/29/14-07/30/14)
As I begin looking at how we might define the church, I begin with much the same thought as was pursued in the preceding section. The Church, being a living construct built by God out of the lives of the elect, is a kingdom of priests. We are all priests. None can lay claim to that as an office, for we have our one High Priest in Christ Jesus for all eternity. But, we are all priests as not only qualified to offer sacrifices, but required to do so.
The sacrifice we offer consists primarily in ourselves, but to this we add prayer, thanksgiving, worship, and service. We each have our particular gifts or talents to put into service for Christ. Some are called to office; be it as ministers, elders, pastors or evangelists. But, all of these rest atop the fundamental aspect of priest. Those called to exercise gifts of administration or helps, song or music, writing or reading, or whatever other activity may be applied to the spread of the Gospel; every gift rests atop the fundamental aspect of priest.
So, then: We are all priests offering sacrifices, and the first sacrifice we offer is our own person. But, we are not priests for our own benefit alone. Matthew Henry notes that we priests, sacred to God are to be serviceable to others. Alternately phrased, we are to have an outward focus; first to our fellow believers and then to all who might one day be our fellow believers – thus all of mankind. We cannot remain self-involved. We must look to our own estate, yes. But, that cannot remain our sole focus. When we look inward we must find Christ active, and finding Christ active, we can rest in Him. Finding Christ active, we can take direction from Him. Having our direction from Him, we must needs be about those duties He sets before us. He arranges these good works that we may do them. What shall be said of us if we refuse?
What does all of this say about the Church? It points to a key factor, a factor we may find in the reality of our shared priesthood. Consider that in the shadow which the Church fulfills, the priests were all drawn from one tribe, one family. I am pretty sure that wives might be taken from other tribes, but having been married into the Aaronic line, the children of that marriage would be accounted sons of Aaron. Therein we might find the Gentile inclusion foreshadowed. But, to my present point the observation I make is that this priesthood is family.
Let me turn, at this point, to Adam Clark. I will say from the outset that there is much in his theology that I find wanting. But, on this topic he appears to be on track. This Church, this spiritual house, is the Christian family. That family is composed of sons and daughters of God. Any family, taking the example from humanity, rests on the foundation of the father. But, as concerns human families, the father is ever a transitory being, a foundation that cannot last for the father cannot last. In Christ, we are given the cornerstone laid by our Father in heaven – an eternal Father. He establishes this living and life-giving foundation in Himself. He imparts life into His own. He establishes the family which is the Church. The Church is not, then, a collection of families, as the NCFIC folks would have it. The Church is a family. It is the family. It is the family of the regenerate, those born again out of humanity, as it were, and into the spiritual tribe of Aaron, or more properly of Melchizedek, I suppose.
At our old church, we were fond of singing the song, “We are Family”. No, not that Sister Sledge song; the other one. “Together hand in hand…bound together by the Father’s love.” This is true, to the degree that our lives are being built upon the Cornerstone of Christ Jesus. This is true, to the degree that as we seek to grow in Christ we are set upon the one foundation which can be laid, true to the Prophets and the Apostles. We are family. We are family because we are born of one Father. How could we be otherwise? This, then, is the compositional material of the Church; what is often referred to as the invisible church. By Christ’s own teaching we understand that the church as we find it manifested in our time is a mixed bag, just as the temple membership in Israel was a mixed bag. Yes, there were and are true believers. There are also a large number of poseurs.
We often hear it said that 20% of the church does the work of the church. We get all upset about this statistic and think it ought not to be so. But, what percentage of the visible church do we suppose constitutes the invisible? God consistently speaks of a remnant. A remnant, by definition, is not the majority, but a distinct minority. If we have 20% of the church working, it may well be that we have far more than the remnant already participating. Who’s to say?
But, this segues me to a second point regarding the nature of the Church. Calvin reminds us that “those in office are not always God’s true and faithful ministers.” Looking around at other churches, that may seem sufficiently obvious. But, we have to be mindful that it’s not just those other churches. Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall (1Co 10:12). That’s us. We are never so safe that we can afford to spend our time in pointing out everybody else’s errors. Indeed, experience shows that the errors we are so busily pointing out in others are very likely the exact errors we battle ourselves. Nothing offends us quite so badly as the sin by which we are ourselves beset.
Many of our commentaries on this passage look back to Jesus’ use of the same scripture from Isaiah. “Did you not read this part? ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the corner stone. This came about from the Lord and it is marvelous in our eyes.’ I tell you the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation that produces the fruit of it” (Mt 21:42-44). It is all well and good to hear that in its historical context and see the Church moving from the perceived exclusivity of Israel to a world-encompassing faith. This is clearly the immediate application. But, it doesn’t stop there. Wherever the Church becomes unfruitful, we can expect a replay.
I’ve used the example of England before. We could go back further to the ‘Holy’ Roman Empire. We could as easily move forward to modern day America, that nation established as a city on a hill. It is well that we remember that the kingdom of God is not about any tribe or nation. It is about all tribes and nations. It transcends every boundary and every empire. God, being infinitely good and infinitely wise, is able to use the fallen governments of man. He continues to control all of those governments anyway. He determines the rulers. He determines the length of reign. It’s true of individuals. It’s true of nations. It’s true of empires.
It’s true of churches as well. Be it denominations or movements or individual congregations, the same truth holds. Just because a man is in the pulpit does not make him automatically a man of God. We pray it is so, but again: Look around. It is painfully clear that in many cases, it simply is not so. We pray that our elders, or whatever other governing structures we may have in place are likewise populated by godly men who will steer the church under the navigational hand of the Holy Spirit. But, we are fools if we think this is necessarily the case. It requires constant prayer and constant attention. The congregant is by no means let off the hook when it comes to knowing the Truth of the Bible, and knowing how to arrive at and maintain sound theology. We are all of us priests. We are all of us responsible together.
We certainly, who lead, cannot assume our own condition is somehow pristine because we have been set in such a position. This ought to be the first place we are watching for danger signs! But, then, we must surely not assume that every visitor or attender at our church is indeed counted among the elect. Our first mission field must be the pews in our own facility. We are not permitted to judge, but we are required to assess. We must lean the more upon God to reveal to us by His Spirit where we are become unfruitful, what needs trimming, what needs fertilizing. We must look to the care of one another because we are family.
Let me next turn to the purpose and function of the Church, because we are much confused on this subject. What is that purpose? Is it to come sing songs of praise together? Is it an evangelistic outpost? A mission house? Perhaps it’s a field hospital for the army of God? We might find traces of all these things in the Church today, and we can find some churches which seem almost entirely consumed with some one of these activities. But, as the JFB points out, the Church is modelled after the synagogue, not the temple. You are the temple. The Church is the synagogue.
What does that tell us about the purpose of this Church? Well, the synagogue was a place primarily for reading Scripture and praying. We can add that it is a place of learning, for we read Scripture to learn of God. We also have, by God’s assignment, those whose purpose is to teach us from this source, to exercise us in the practice of holiness. “He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, and to build up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God; until we all mature to the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:10-13).
It’s a school, a training facility. Yes, it has evangelists. Why? To encourage new students to come and learn. Yes, it is a house of prayer. Why? That we might see God’s will done on earth; that we might be more thoroughly attuned to His program. Yes, there is worship. Why? That we might be strengthened in heart so as to be strengthened in deed. Is there healing? To be sure. It is an arduous work we are given, and injuries are more common than we would like to think. But, fundamentally, it is a school in which we are discipled, and discipled for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission, which is to say, in order to go make more disciples.
If we have made it a feeding trough, or a social club, or an entertainment center or any other thing, we have refashioned the institute to our own tastes. This is a terrible thing! The Church may not be the Temple, but it is every bit as much in need of adhering to the blueprint set forth by its Lord and King. God laid out the construction and furnishing of the tabernacle in excruciating detail with stern instruction that it must be made according to that pattern. Likewise, the temple that Solomon built was built to God’s spec. Our own temple, this spiritual temple of which Peter is writing, cannot but be built with the same care to follow God’s blueprint. The Church, being so integral a part of that building process, must likewise accord to God’s blueprint. If it has taken to chiseling the living stones on its own, it is only going to succeed in corrupting the result, just as those who would have thought to improve the stones from which the altar was made.
You can’t improve on God’s plan. You can only work with Him or else against Him. As we look to our own congregations and efforts, we do well to remember this. We do very well to consider, with each and every program and effort and focus and study and teaching; are we pursuing God or attempting to improve on Him?
Lord, how this hits home! Even these morning studies, I know, can so easily wander astray either in thought or in result. If they are just exercises in thought, I have made Your good an evil. Far more, as You have seen fit to include me in the leadership of this church, I need to be more attentive to Your voice, less convinced of my own wisdom. For what wisdom do I have if it is not from Your own? I am a foolish man at heart, as You well know. Yet, You have made me a man concerned for Truth. You are Truth. Help me, Father, to uphold this office to Your glory. Help me to lead as You lead me. Help me to be strong when strength is needed and gentle when gentleness will serve. How many years, Holy One, have I come to You in search of an end to pride? Yet, I know it remains. Even with these writings, I see it. But, I also see that this place to which You have brought me is humbling indeed, for every aspect of it is beyond me. Comfort zone? I vaguely remember it. No, You have set me in places I feel wholly inadequate to stand, but I shall stand in You. There is no other way. Guide me, Holy Spirit of the Living God, and I shall be guided. Point and I shall go. Speak, for Your servant listens. Oh! May that be more than empty words! May that be the truth of my life.
Spiritual Sacrifices (07/30/14)
What is it we do in this temple God has made? We offer spiritual sacrifices. We are, after all, a spiritual priesthood in a spiritual temple. Well and good. What do these sacrifices look like? Of what do they consist? I’ll let Calvin give the initial answer. “Of the spiritual sacrifices, the first is the offering of ourselves.” He points us to the familiar opening line of Romans 12, concluding, “We can offer nothing until we offer to Him ourselves as a sacrifice.”
High sounding words, John. But, what does that mean? Shall we take up the knife and plunge it into our heart? Of course not. Yet, that passage from Romans makes plain that there is a very real sacrifice happening. It’s not just spiritual. It’s not just figurative. “Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice” (Ro 12:1). Well, a living sacrifice: That’s a relief. What is living cannot have been slain. But, there can be no real sacrifice where we have given nothing up. As we cease from our conformity to the world, we do indeed give things up. We give up a degree of comfort and ease. The Apostles left behind whatever life they had been living at His call. Indeed, Jesus rejected those who felt need to take care of matters at home before following Him. No! He called. Follow now or follow not at all. You’re going to have to let that go.
I think of David, given property by one of his countrymen when he was looking for a place to build for the Lord. No! How could I make an offering of that which cost me nothing? He would pay for that property else he would not have it at all. Sacrifice isn’t sacrifice if it does not cost us. It is as true as the fact that grace isn’t grace if it comes in payment for services rendered. So, we offer ourselves. We remain alive, but the life we live is no longer for our own purposes and desires. The life we live is for Christ and in Christ. That, at least, is the intent.
Let me add a necessary caution: The value of the outward consists solely in its truly reflecting the inward. A sacrifice made without a correlating inward desire to honor God is but going through the motions. An offering given from the desire to be seen giving an offering is worse than nothing. Jesus told the woman at the well that God sought those who worship in spirit and in truth (Jn 4:24). That matter of truth is key. It is the congruity of inward state and outward appearance, the leaving behind of every pretense. We might describe it as transparency. If you don’t think that living transparently is going to necessarily require living sacrificially, I suspect you’ve not yet approached transparency.
We are by nature inclined towards masks. We like to put a good face on things. We like to project the image we think will put is in the best light as far as others are concerned. We generally like to please people. To a degree, this is both good and necessary. We will not become righteous in our thoughts and deeds by God throwing some switch in us that shuts down the evil generator and turns on the good generator. No. Holiness will require practice – constant practice. There are seasons in which we are establishing the habit of holiness in one regard or another. We may feel we are but going through the motions. It’s probably true at that moment. Our inward self does not much like what the outward exercise is doing; at least at the outset. No discipline is pleasant at the time (Heb 12:11). But, discipline (that necessary activity of the disciple) brings results. Comes a time when this outward habit has trained the inward man, and the two are congruous. What may have been affectation at the start is now reflective of the true estate.
Let it be said, though, that even then we have nothing to boast of, no works to set before the Lord as demanding payment. We have but another cause to give thanks to God for granting that we might draw that much nearer.
The JFB takes up the same theme that Calvin started us off with. “We can never offer anything to God until we have offered ourselves.” Now, obviously, we could come in and put some coin in the plate as it passes without this precondition. We may have joined in the songs of worship without belonging to God. For the charismatic among us, we can go forward to altar calls, be slain in the Spirit, and any number of other things that will confirm to one and all who see us that we are of the same mind as they; and still be entirely our own man. We are adept fakers. But all of this activity, however righteous in appearance, however commendable in the eyes of man, will be nothing if we have not first given ourselves to God in Christ.
And this is a thing we cannot do except He has first come calling. It only stands to reason. The sacrificial system which was set out as a type and shadow of the perfect order of worship to come required that every animal sacrificed must be perfect – unblemished, free of disease, and in every way the best one had to offer. We are by nature utterly blemished and diseased. Sin is a disease and we all suffer from it. If we are going to offer ourselves and have that offering accepted by a holy God, then something’s going to have to be done about this disease of ours. Somebody’s going to have to repair the damage, clean up the blemishes. We sure can’t do it ourselves. It needs the blood of Christ, His atoning work and His righteousness clothing us. It needs Christ coming for us, calling us, renewing us and rebirthing us, that we might start over in this family of God.
His sacrifice having once for all made expiation for our sins, we understand that our own sacrifices are not by way of expiation. That’s done. No! We give sacrifices that are acts of worship. We have, in effect, nothing but thank offerings to consider. What are these spiritual sacrifices, then? Well, after the giving of self, “Our sacrifices are prayer, praise, and self-denying services to Christ.” There, I again take from the JFB. Prayer and praise: They don’t seem much like sacrifices, do they? But, they are. In prayer, we give of our time, if nothing else, returning to God a portion of that which He has given us. In prayer, if it is earnest, we also give of our pride, our ego. Prayer confesses our need, our incessant need and utter dependence on God for our every good. We cannot pray in earnest without it leading to a humbling, a lessening of self.
Praise? Let’s be honest. We’d far prefer to receive praise. Nobody dislikes that. We thrive on the old pat on the back. We will labor long and hard to hear the occasional, “well done!” We will drift into apathy if our labors show no sign of being appreciated. But, in our sacrifice of praise, we are giving what is truly most precious to us. It’s nice to have heard it, but really, God, the credit is all Yours. You alone are worthy. Too often, I suspect we spout the words with little thought to meaning. Yes, Lord, You are worthy. But, my thoughts are on what I’ll be doing this afternoon. My thoughts are on me even as my songs are on You. But, there are times. There are times when our worship is in spirit and truth, when we are really engaged with the things we are singing and we mean it. I don’t mean we get all demonstrative and bow down when the song says bow down and raise hands when the song says raise your hands. No. I mean we really believe and feel the very things our words are saying about this God of ours. He is the only one worthy. He does deserve all the glory, all the power. He really is more to me than life and breath. And, given how much I love myself, it can be a real sacrifice to recall this to mind.
God is all. I must decrease. I must decrease, first and foremost, in my own estimation. This is a daily sacrifice, because ego is a stubborn thing. Pride is a persistent affliction. Faith must persevere the more, and it shall by the grace of God. To Him be the glory!
Mission (07/31/14)
The Church, as we have seen, is a place for prayer and the reading of Scripture. It is a place of training. That training is to a purpose. The purpose is clearly delineated for us in the Great Commission. In summary form, it consists in, “Go and make disciples.” That is what the Church is for. It is for training us as disciples and sending us out as disciplers. To be successful disciplers, we shall find it needful to evangelize, but if we evangelize without following that effort with discipling, we do ourselves and our victims a great disservice. I should think it comes very near to the charge laid against the Pharisees, that you wind up making not disciples, but misguided rebels who are ‘twice as much sons of hell as yourselves’ (Mt 23:15).
What really turned my thoughts in this direction, though, was the correlation of this commission to that which was given Adam and Eve. “Be fruitful and multiply” (Ge 1:22). I confess that where I find this in my earlier notes, I had quoted it as “Go forth and multiply”, which sounds a stronger note of correlation, but I’m clearly borrowing that ‘go forth’ from elsewhere. Let’s say it comes from the call of Abram. “Go forth from your country to the land I will show you” (Ge 12:1). These two combined, though, just make the case that much better.
The command to these fathers of God’s people is the same command we have today. It applies on a number of levels. First, take the message to Abram. To go forth, he had to leave behind his country and with it his extended family. It was a distinct departure from society. That is exactly the pressure that was playing on the church as Peter writes. That is exactly the pressure we have today, sometimes in utmost severity, other times more like a low-grade fever. We look around and see the Church being expelled from places like Mosul, like Syria. We see God’s people being put to flight or put to the sword. Yet, they are not, in reality, being chased from their lands for this was no longer their country. It hadn’t been from the time they heard the call of Christ. This world is not our home. We seek a better city.
However, let us understand this: We are not called out of the world to remain a people apart. The monastic urge is not for us. Abram was called out of his country, it is true, but he was sent to a country of God’s choosing. Was this for conquest? After a fashion, yes, but not by way of clan warfare, or nation-building or any other such thing. It was a conquest of the spirit, a spreading of God’s plan to every tribe and every nation. Just think of all the places Abram found himself sent. Think of all the places that Israel, the immediate inheritors of Abram’s mission, found herself. She was salted throughout the nations. Why? Was it so that she could demonstrate her fealty to God by having nothing to do with these heathens? No! That was a thorough misunderstanding of the mission. She was sent out that every tribe and nation might know the God who had made Himself known to them. Hello, Church! Go make disciples. Multiply. Be fruitful.
It’s the same call, the same mission. That can hardly come as a surprise, can it? Does God change that His mission should change? Does not the Church find herself in the place of completing every type and shadow in Christ? That’s not an egotistical statement. It’s a recognition of what’s happening to us and through us. It is not the Church’s doing, though it is the Church’s mission. It is God’s doing or it is not done at all, but only botched. Go and make disciples. It’s a call to multiply. It’s the sort of multiplication we cannot do by remaining carefully within the bounds of our local clan.
I must touch again on the topic of this NCFIC business, with its proposition that the Church is built from family units. That’s the home country. That’s the local clan. To be sure, we disciple our own children. That’s what discipling is, in effect. It’s raising up the young in the way they should go. But, the commission does not say, “Sit tight and disciple your kin.” It says, “Go.” It says, if I might fold in the commission given the new husband, “leave father and mother, and cleave to your wife” (Mt 19:5, Ge 2:24), we have some clear direction as to the bounds of family. Comes a time that family that raised us is no longer the proper definition. We go to establish a family of our own. Maybe it’s nearby. Maybe it’s far away. Distance is not the point. Leaving one’s country to go to the one God is indicating is the point. Expanding the definition of family is the point. Utterly redefining family is the point. God takes us from all our disparate backgrounds and says, “You are a people – My people.” We have one Father, which rather says we are one family.
But, we go forth. We do not stay under the old roof. We spread out, seeking others who will be our brothers and sisters as God adopts them as His own. We spread out with the desire to both call our siblings home and to help them assimilate. We disciple them because we are disciples. We disciple them because Father has made this our work. It is a work we do for Him and at His command. There, in our Father in heaven, is the one Father we shall never leave for another.
If there is an earthly family, which of course there is, it is modeled on the heavenly and not the reverse. A family ought to have as its basis the perfect model and example that is found in the Triune Godhead. But, to suppose a family comprised of fallen beings can be the model for God’s family? Far be it from us! Yes, it may very well be that the Church finds its largest influx from amongst the children of believing parents. I have to wonder, though, if that’s by intent or only because the Church forgets her mission to go.
Concurrence (07/31/14)
I am going to shift to the topic of double-predestination now. I have to say from the outset that I am bemused, if not disconcerted by the way God seems to be bringing this to my attention. There is such a strong convergence of threads touching on this topic. It has come up in the Table Talkdevotionals as they consider Romans 9. It has come up in the Sunday sermons regarding Revelation. It comes up in most of the commentaries as they consider the conclusion of verse 8. It has been my experience that when the same note is being struck by so many different instruments, with no apparent means of coordination, it behooves me to stand up and take notice. The topic is not really new to me, so that would not appear to be the reason. As I consider the matter, I shall pray that God makes clear to my why He has seen it necessary to raise the subject to my attention at this juncture.
That said, I want to address the doctrine of concurrence as a starting point. For, without this understood and in place, we run the very real risk of straying from the sound doctrines of predestination into a pagan view of fate. I have a very similar reaction when I hear God’s children talking about destiny, but I’ll leave that aside for the moment; only to say, “Be careful!” There’s a fine line between understanding God is in control and concluding that man is entirely passive in the whole affair and can only drift on the currents of Providence. The doctrine of concurrence is the curative for such error.
As we hold to predestination, and to the utmost sovereignty of God, we must ever be careful not to so minimize man’s role as to make him slothful. Paul had to deal with it. We have to deal with it. Concurrence, then: God does in His irresistible grace, but at the same time man does of his own volition. The two coincide, come together and intertwine, and proceed in perfect harmony towards one end. How is this? It is hard enough to accept and understand in the case of the elect. Man willingly chooses to come to God, but it is God’s will that makes it both possible and fruitful. Nor does it stop with the matter of election unto salvation. The same applies to the ongoing work of sanctification. We are being built, and yet we are building. We are, Lord willing, made pillars in His house, and we pillars are, to the best of our ability, laboring to hold up the roof of that house. We are given purpose and we seek to fulfill that purpose. And even as we seek to do so, we know we must lean wholly upon the power of God Himself to achieve His purpose. Unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain (Ps 127:1). We know it. We also know that unless we labor, the Lord will not be bothered to build the house. It’s not like He needs it.
This same concurrence of will and effort applies for the reprobate, and that’s where we really start to have difficulty. If God has determined that Pharaoh shall never repent, but die in his sins, how is this Pharaoh’s fault? It’s not as though he could repent if God said he won’t. If Judas was destined to betray Jesus from before the foundation of the world, what guilt can accrue to him for fulfilling his purpose? You know, there are books written in pursuit of exactly that theory. They are written, I fear, in the attempt to sneak out from under the burden of the author’s own guilt. We want nothing so much as to be able to sin in peace. But, this cannot be; not in any real sense of peace. The only peace is found in Christ and His finished work. And that peace is only found by those upon whom the Father chooses to have compassion (Ro 9:18).
There are two facts that must be held up. First, God being Good cannot do evil. He does not sin, nor does He entice to sin. The reprobate cannot look in that direction for his excuse, nor can those who level such charges of God ever hope to make them stick. This fact leads to the second. The sinner does not sin against his own will. “Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned” (Ps 51:4). It could not be otherwise. Scripture may speak of sinning against our brother, but this is so only in an intermediary way. Every sin is against God. It would not else be sin at all. But, the sinner does not sin as a being compelled to act against his own interests. He does so as willingly as you please. He does so as willingly and intentionally as we who are blessed to know the Father’s compassion seek Him out in repentance and love.
For good or for ill, then, we are moral free agents. God has decreed how it’s going to play out, but either way we remain as committed to that course as ever He is. Either way, we are utterly pleased to pursue our choices and the worst that can be said of Him is that He has left us to our pursuits. The greatest ‘crime’ one could reasonably accuse God of perpetrating is of leaving us unmolested. You so value your free will, and here’s the fruit of it! Left to yourself, there is only one outcome. You will sin and sin some more, and you will revel in it, even to the point of encouraging and applauding those who follow your same course (Ro 1:32). But, in this, where is the guilt of God? He allowed you to do what you wanted, and isn’t that the way you wished it to be? Wherefore, then, would you complain that for others He has done what they needed? You should rather complain of their case, that He has kept them from their chosen pursuits. Never mind that they are happier for it. Never mind that they are moved from death to life by this interference. Never mind, even, that they willingly chose to heed His call. You interfered, God! That’s no fair! But, again: No violence was done to the will of man in either case. No coercion was applied, forcing that man to take any path but the one he gladly chose.
We have both the positive and the negative aspect of this matter set before us in the present passage. As concerns the negative, there is that closing statement: “To this they were appointed.” To the positive, there is the message of verse 5. You are being built. You are living stones. I am turned back once again to the instructions given to Israel when it came to building altars. You don’t fashion the stones. If the stones need fashioning, it shall be done by God’s hand. Your efforts, being accomplished by crooked men, will only result in crooked lines and the building of a crooked, tottering structure. God’s hand is sure, as He is unchanging. God’s fashioning of the stone is perfect as He is perfect. The structure He is building will not only stand the test of time, it will stand the test of timelessness, will stand for all eternity.
For you who are the called, you who are addressed by Peter’s words here, the stone God is fashioning is you! Keep in mind the doctrine of concurrence. God is building. God is fashioning. God is refining. Like a sculptor working in marble, He is carefully chipping away everything that is not part of the final image. He is smoothing out every line until you stand the very image of Him; until you are arrived at the full maturity of the sons of God. At the same time, you are intimately involved in that work. Paul expresses the tension perfectly in that favorite passage of mine. “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Php 2:12-13). Work like it all depends on you. Know that it all depends on Him. Don’t build with Him. Your structure will be unsafe for man or beast. Don’t suppose He will build without you. God has no use for the sluggard.
The Nature of God (08/01/14)
As we have two active agents in these matters, it behooves us to consider the nature of each. I am particularly concerned with the case of the reprobate at this juncture. What can be said of God’s nature as concerns this case? We can have our debates about the nature of God’s grace. I will gladly maintain that His grace is irresistible, and praise God for it! In fact, let me take a step back from that position, in favor of another: God is sovereign.
We have many Scriptures that describe for us one or another of God’s essential characteristics. God is Love. God is Truth. God is Just. God is Mercy. God is Jealous. God is Wrath. The list goes on, and it becomes difficult for us because we see some of these essentials of God as opposite one another and yet God is always all of these. What God is in essence, He cannot not be. To cease of any essential factor of His being is to cease being. God does not cease. He cannot cease, else He is not God. But, He Is. He Is the self-existent One.
We also recognize God by His omnis. He is omnipresent. He is omniscient and all-wise. He is omnipotent. There is nowhere He is not. There is nothing He does not know. There is nothing that as escaped His attention. And, there is nothing He cannot do. Add to this the manifold assurances as to His word. He is not a man that He should lie. His word does not return to Him without accomplishing all its purpose. It is so because He – alone in all existence – has the knowledge, wisdom and power to ensure that it is so. What God says goes.
Can there really be a believer who would dispute that? Is it even possible to be a man of faith and yet hold that God’s word is not certain? Would we not have to deny a fair portion of Scripture to arrive at any such conclusion? The confession of those who know Him must surely be, “You speak it and it comes to pass.” If this is not the case, then how are His promises of any more value than yours or mine? If He cannot be counted on to accomplish His purpose then why give the Bible so much as a glance? Why listen to Him, let alone follow Him? It would be pointless in the extreme.
But, God can be trusted. What He has truly promised will truly come to pass. What He has decreed must happen. It could not be otherwise. He is sovereign. He is declared King of all kings and Lord of all lords. If you would posit other gods, He is God of all gods. There is not a bird in the sky that flies except His hand upholds. There is not a creature in all the earth, neither man nor bug nor amoeba, that exists except He imparts life. There is not an event in the entire sweeping course of history which has or ever shall transpire apart from His permitting it, indeed ordaining it. And yet, it must be held (here’s that concurrence thing again) that He ordains events without commanding sin. Even the devil, our great adversary, cannot act without His express permission, nor can he exceed the bounds God sets upon his actions. He may rove the earth like a roaring lion seeking its prey, but he cannot strike any but those whom God allows, nor can he go for the kill if only wounding is permitted. He is in every wise conscripted and constrained by the sovereign will of God.
Now, turn back to grace. If all of this is so, and I hold that Scripture leaves us no room to say otherwise, then surely His grace is irresistible! If Satan cannot successfully oppose Him or thwart His will, can it really be supposed that we weak humans are capable? This is not a question of free will, in the end. It’s a question of logic. God sets stars and planets in their courses, having created them all, and He maintains the established order of day and night, summer and winter. He scores, directs and indeed plays the music of Creation and has done so from before day one. Planets move at His direction. Stars are born and go through their several stages at His command. And you are going to succeed in refusing Him? It matters not how free the will. The will to act does not infer the power to act. We might even go so far as to say the slave has every bit as free a will as the master. If his actions are constrained by threat of violence or whatever other means the master might employ, yet it is that slave’s free will to comply, else he will not.
In the case of God’s grace, not only are we incapable of successfully resisting Him; but seeing the great goodness of His gift, who would choose to resist? Let it even be supposed a possibility and it must recede to the theoretically possible. It cannot reasonably be supposed that any rational man would, given the free offer of life and peace with God, choose instead to retain death and enmity. If there is a bondage of the will, it is not by God’s grace, but by the blinding, binding, destructive power of sin determined to bear its fruit of death. You would not resist God’s grace because it would make no sense to do so. You cannot resist God’s grace because He has decreed the outcome. It is, then, impossible that an all-knowing, all-powerful God would fail of His purpose.
But, now comes the truly hard part. As irresistible as is God’s grace, so too is God’s wrath. It holds by the exact same principles. God is sovereign and, alone in all Creation, is able to issue His decrees with absolute certainty that His will will be done. There is no question about that. When we consider the Lord’s Prayer with its clause, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we cannot suppose that we are praying that perhaps, finally, God’s decrees would be as certain on this physical plain as they are in the spiritual. That’s already the case! If it were not, He would not be God. No, the prayer is to the point of our willing cooperation in His work rather than opposition to His work. God’s will is done. Period.
I have said it many times over the years, and shall say it many times more before my days are past. Even Nebuchadnezzar did God’s will, though He had no intention of doing so. Even Pharaoh, persecuting the people God had chosen, did God’s will. That did not make him righteous or just. Neither do our deeds make us righteous or just. God can and does use whomever He pleases as He pleases. His will is done. Our prayer is that we might be willing together with Him, that all might be willing together with Him – at least all His own.
We can and do pray for a universal salvation. It is acceptable, for it is God’s will that all would be saved (1Ti 2:3-4). But, understand that this is God’s desire, not His decree. He has not ordained that none should perish, though He would find that outcome preferable. No. His essence requires that Justice be upheld together with Mercy. It is thus that Paul stresses the point that He derived the way to be both Just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Ro 3:26). That’s important. If He had abandoned being Just in order to justify us, then He had ceased to be God in that very moment. But, He did not. And part of being Just in justifying those who have faith is being Just in not justifying those who do not have faith.
So, then, His wrath is as irresistible as His grace. Pharaoh could not have achieved a different end if only he had chosen more wisely. His purpose was established in being utterly opposed to God. His purpose was established in seeking to make of himself a god. This has ever been the nature of sin, and the primal urge of the reprobate. The final root, I suspect, lies in that insistence on being as self-determining as God, on being God. That was Satan’s downfall, and it surely oughtn’t to surprise us if his chief assault on God’s creation is to instill His creatures with that same, sinful urge to usurp the throne.
But, understand this: As concerns the reprobate, their fall was no accident. Their fall was no mistake. Their fall is every bit a matter of divine arrangement. It is part of God’s plan. This bothers us greatly. You can see it in the commentaries. So many of our authors come to the end of verse 8 and feel the need to somehow reduce the severity of what is written. To this they were appointed? Well, what this, then? Surely, this cannot refer to their unbelief. Peter must only mean the judgment that has come upon unbelief. It is to that judgment they were appointed, and it is their sin which appointed them. We would not ascribe evil to God would we? But, God Himself declares that He is the author of calamity. He does so with no apology. Why, then, would we suppose it needful to apologize for Him?
I come back to that point from a few weeks ago, which Barnes made regarding creation. It is not the case that God made this beautiful, perfect creation, and something went wrong. The plan had a fatal flaw, and now God was forced to take corrective action. No! Peter has established this for us. The plan of redemption was laid out in every detail before the first motions of creation began. When the dust that would form the earth was yet no more than an idea in God’s mind, when light and darkness had not been brought into being, already the entire course of history was unfurled. The fall of Adam and Eve was part of the plan. I’ll even go this one: The fall of Satan was part of the plan. The wonder of redemption, the infinite goodness of the plan of redemption, was so good that God looked upon every seeming failure that would be required along the way and said, “It’s worth it!”
The glory of redemptive grace is so marvelously grand that the deep sorrow of sin and sin’s fallout cannot diminish it in any way. The glory of Mercy displayed is worth the vengeance of Justice that must accompany it. The pleasure God takes in the saving of a single soul far outweighed the true sorrow He feels in the necessity of that soul condemned. But, the condemnation is necessary to the saving. The perfect plan of God requires both. Both are by His divine arrangement. God being good, we must come to recognize that both are, in the end good. True, it cannot be said or even supposed that the end of the reprobate is good for the reprobate. But, it is good. It glorifies God that the unrepentant are punished. It glorifies God that Justice is served. It glorifies God that He is able to save whom He will. It also glorifies God that where He wills no salvation, no salvation comes. It glorifies God most intensely, I think, that there is no mistake in all of Creation. It glorifies Him beyond measure that so vast and intricate a plan has unfolded without a hitch. Who is like our Lord? There is no one!
The Nature of the Reprobate (08/02/14)
Turning to man, we must understand that sin, while it may be done without a thought, is never so thoughtless as to be accidental. Sin is not the committing of an absentminded mistake. Sin is always a willful choice. Opposition to God does not come about due to ignorance of Him. There is no man ignorant of God, “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them” (Ro 1:19). They do not, then, simply act in ignorance, but in willful rebellion. They know God, but do not honor Him as God (Ro 1:21), and therefore they become futile in their speculations as their foolish hearts are darkened.
You see, Peter is really confirming Paul’s teaching here. Those who stumble against the Rock are not suffering an accident. They have proven unwilling to be persuaded. They refuse to believe, as Barnes sets the case. Because they refuse belief, because they are unwilling to be persuaded, they disobey. If you’ve ever met the strong willed child, you recognize this. They may claim ignorance of the rules, but only as a means of manipulating the outcome, of avoiding the consequences. No, they are not ignorant of the rules. They willfully refuse to be persuaded that the rules apply to them. They disobey because they don’t believe your rules matter. A look at the life they pursue as they grow makes this plain. The rules of society are ignored in equal measure.
Sadly, as we look at the strong willed and rebellious child, we can also see Paul’s description of the reprobate play out. They know God. We have seen to that as best we may. But, they refuse to be persuaded. They even become angry at mention of God as if He has any say over their actions. After all, God is rules and rules don’t apply. The rebel shouts, “I will not be ruled!” not recognizing that sin rules him already. And so, we watch in sorrow as their speculations become futile. Knowing the Truth, and knowingly rejecting the Truth, they seek a satisfactory counterfeit; something sufficiently religious without having the power. We cry out in long prayers to God as we see their foolish hearts growing darker. But, even if we are the parents of such a one, there remains the fact that they have refused belief. The offer of mercy was there and they refused it.
When I consider this situation, I cannot but think back on Aaron when his sons had been busted for offering unauthorized sacrifices in the temple. Certainly, they could not offer ignorance as a defense. They knew what they had done, and they received the just penalty for their deeds. What is a father to do? He serves God and yet his sons are dead – dead at the hands of the very God he serves. Aaron provides the answer. He kept silent (Lev 10:1-3). Why? Because he knew God’s command. “By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored.” Sin is a willful choice. It was a willful choice on the part of Nadab and Abihu. The rules did not apply to them, so far as they were concerned.
Understand that we are not required to give up on our wayward progeny. Thank God that my own parents did not give up on me in my waywardness. How far astray I ran! How I sought exactly that lawless life of self-rule. How readily I would accept any sort of spiritual, mystical input apart from God. But, God was not willing that my rebellion should succeed. He had ordained better things for me, and so I have come to better things. Had He ordained otherwise, all the prayers of family or friend would not sway Him from His purpose. Prayer is powerful, it is true, but it is powerful precisely because it pursues God’s purpose. He is not bound by our prayers like some sort of genie. He hears, yes. And thanks be to our Lord Jesus that what He hears has been filtered and corrected by the work of our Counselor so as to be fit for His hearing.
As to the reprobate (and it may well be that our rebel child is in their number) This is their own disposition, this disobedience. How the parent anguishes over the state of their child. What did we do wrong? How did we fail? But, it’s a false guilt, a misreading of the situation. This is their own disposition, not your failure as a parent. Now, if you have been a negligent, absentee parent, letting your children grow up feral, obviously you have your own guilt in the matter. But, it remains true even there: This is their disposition, their disobedience. They could have chosen righteousness in spite of your poor example and training. They are not victims of the fates, that cannot escape the influence of your upbringing. It is as true in the positive as in the negative.
Godly parents are in every way a blessing greatly to be desired. But, they are not a prerequisite for godly children. The child of the godless may give himself to Christ. Indeed, in every family of man there must be such a child at some point in their history. Somebody had to be the first one in the family to come to Christ. But, if it is true in the progress to holiness, it is equally true in the reverse. In the godly family, there may well be that one who just outright rejects Christ and upon whom God does not deign to have mercy.
In the debate of nature versus nurture, it seems to me Scripture lands squarely on the side of nature. Nurture is valuable and valued, but in the end it is one’s nature that provokes one to sin. He who is of a reprobate nature will oppose God no matter the nurture. He who is reborn by the grace of God, having been changed in nature, will pursue God no matter the nurture.
Barnes writes that the disobedience of the reprobate is their own disposition. He notes that they are commanded to believe but refuse to do so, and therefore unbelief is a direct breach of the Law. Let me interject that this is a clarion call for compassionate mercy on our part, for what is true of them yet was true of us as well and would be still had not God intervened on our behalf. We, too, disobeyed because this was our disposition, too. We, too, had been commanded to believe and refused to do so. It may seem almost incomprehensible to us now that it was ever so, but we know it was. It is because God moved, God called, God brought about this rebirth in us that we are not still that way. It is only because God did this. It is only because He did it that we have confidence, knowing that He who began the work will be faithful to complete it (Php 1:6).
Knowing that confidence (and I hope you do!) how can we look at Peter’s comment here, and suppose that he is saying these stumblers were appointed to belief and salvation? Barnes concludes that we cannot, and I have to agree. Where God appoints, there can be no question but that His appointment stands. Judas could not have come to any other end than the one towards which he ran headlong. But, understand that he would not have done so either. He did exactly as he willed to do. By the same token, Peter could not have come to any other end than the one to which he came, even though he ran so hard in the wrong direction for a time. He had an appointment to keep, and God would keep it. We don’t know what became of Peter’s wife. We don’t know what became of Mary in later years. We don’t know, really, much at all about any of those who were relatives of the main figures of Christianity. But, then, Christianity is not about more than one main figure, and that is Christ Jesus Himself. About Him, we know a great deal.
This serves to move me to my next point on this matter. As much as we don’t know about the outcome for these historical figures, we really don’t know a great deal about those who serve to lead and direct the Church in our own day. We pray that we have godly pastors and elders, but we cannot really claim to know them. We can barely claim to know our own spouses, and we live with them day in and day out! Will we claim to know the true and certain measure of the pastor we see perhaps a few hours a week? Will we claim to know the spiritual condition of the family in the next pew? For all that, elder, would you claim to know the spiritual health of those you shepherd? We can, perhaps, make a reasonable surmise, but to know? It is beyond our capacity. We can only assess as best we may on the evidence available to us.
But, in doing so, we have to remain aware that we will find in the end that many whom we thought to be dignified and honorable are in fact rejecters of Christ for all they may profess otherwise. There are the obvious cases, as we measure things, where we would not give credence to their profession of faith for a moment, given the lives they lead. But, there are plenty of other wolves out there who still walk undetected. “This evil has almost ever prevailed in the world, and at this day it prevails much.” That was Calvin’s assessment some 500 years ago. If he looked over the landscape today, I don’t think he would conclude any differently.
Here, I feel the need to interject a warning. We have a habit, I think, of looking around our own church and just accepting that everybody there, at least the adults, must be saved. Why else would they be there, after all? Whatever entertainment value one might derive out of a Sunday service must surely wear away after a few weeks, and one certainly can come up with better things to do with a sunny Sunday morning. But, Scripture is again clear that this is not the case. There are tares in with the wheat. Indeed, there is the constant message of a remnant. It is not the whole that is true, but the part, and not even the greater part. The greater part of the whole is not the remnant. The remnant is that little scrap that’s left when the greater part is taken away.
Think about it. For Elijah, the message was that 7000 remained in Israel who were true to the Lord (1Ki 19:18). Out of all Israel, 7000. And we are upset that it seems only 20% of the church gets involved in the work of the church! What really ought to cross our minds, I suspect, is that it is quite likely less than half of that 20% who are the true church of Christ, the Church Invisible. As we preach, teach and pray, we must be ever mindful that this little church in which we serve is the first great mission field for us. If we have forgotten this, then we are falling far short in our duties. There are, in our pews, many who yet need to hear once again the offer of God’s mercy and to be urged in every way at our disposal to accept that offer. It is a thing we must do, if I might borrow Paul’s phrase, in fear and trembling.
I wonder if we recognize this, that offering the Gospel is indeed a matter for fear and trembling. It is at once the power of God unto salvation for those who are granted to hear it with ears of faith. It is also the pronouncement of final judgment upon those whose ears are blocked, who cannot and will not accept the grace of God given them. The Wycliffe Commentary has this to say. “Mercy rejected becomes condemnation.” That is the two-edged sword of the Gospel: On the one hand, life; but on the other, death.
Now, for those of us who are certain we are not to be counted amongst the reprobate, here is a test, courtesy of the JFB: Those disobedient in practice are disobedient to faith. That ought to give the best of us pause! Indeed, I feel I should have that statement posted in plain sight as I go through my days. Let me just say, this should give us pause but not cause us to falter. It is a call to self-check. It is the voice of the Spirit saying, judge yourself lest you be judged. I cannot seem to find my reference for that. Perhaps I am conflating texts. But, the point stands. I could turn to Paul’s instructions to Timothy. “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you” (1Ti 4:16). It goes right back to the words spoken to Aaron. Those who come near Me must be holy. And, we are now a priesthood of this perfectly holy God. More, we are His very temple. We are always near Him! How, then, must we live? We must be ever diligent, looking to our practice and doing our utmost to ensure that practice reflects obedient faith rather than disobedient rebellion.
We will surely find manifold evidence of disobedience yet, if we but look. What to do? Repent and be saved. Of course, we are saved, so that parts done. But, that is not the end of repentance for us, not by a long shot! We no longer sin, but when we do, we must repent and seek out the forgiveness of our Lord. We do so knowing He is faithful to forgive (1Jn 1:9). I count on it. But, I must also recognize that this is a conditional statement. If we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive and to cleanse. And note well that John adds a second aspect of God’s character in this. He is both faithful and righteous to forgive. God cannot forgive the unrepentant sinner in righteousness. That one is still in his rebellion, still opposed to Him. God must first bring that one to repentance (which is already the gift of God) and then can come the forgiveness. It was true at our redemption. It continues to be true throughout our earthly exile. If we confess, He can forgive. If we confess, He will forgive. The warning implies is that if we do not confess, He cannot and will not forgive.
For the lost, the JFB proposes, all the blame accrues to their own perversity, whereas for the redeemed, all merit accrues to God for His electing grace. True enough. If we take the overarching trend of one’s life as indicated by these two descriptors, the lost and the redeemed, then surely the point holds. But, if we zoom in a bit on the individual who is redeemed, I think it continues to hold on that scale. For sin, all blame accrues to our own perversity. For repentance and subsequent forgiveness, all merit accrues to God. Indeed, every good in us accrues to His account and every evil in us remains our own.
This seems to be the great distinction that is drawn as concerns double predestination, or at least one major distinction. Those appointed for destruction go hence of their own accord and on account of their own willing and willful actions. Those appointed for salvation go hence, as it were, in spite of their actions, by the grace of God’s interference. So, then: For the reprobate all cause for their destruction is found in themselves – nature. For the redeemed, all cause for their not being destroyed is found in God. Shall I attribute that interference the descriptor of nurture? No. It is still nature, but nature remade and remodeled, nature restored to its original, pristine state. Does nurture enter in at all? Yes, I suppose it does: In the form of temptation. The world would love to nurture us and thereby undo the rebirth God has wrought. But, the world does not suffice to the task. The very gates of hell cannot prevail! What God has knit together (in this case the son with the Father), let no man set asunder. No, nor could he! “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro 8:38-39). That confidence cannot be had apart from God’s appointed end determining the outcome. But, that same confidence must recognize, as Paul proceeds to do in Romans 9, that the same can be said for the reprobate, for God says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Ro 9:15). The corollary is that where He wills not, He will not.
Double Predestination (08/03/14-08/04/14)
Looking at the notes I have for myself in this part, I think I have already touched on most of what I would say. However, the subject is sufficiently challenging as to justify further consideration. I am also as yet unclear why it is that God has set this topic before me quite so firmly. Perhaps in review I shall find He answers.
The verses that Peter uses to support his point would seem to clearly paint the picture for us. There is one stone, the Cornerstone. This one Cornerstone has two impacts. He is either the firm foundation upon which the redeemed builds his life or He is the crushing stone of offense which grinds the unrepentant to dust. He is both salvation and ruin. That is a theme we hear elsewhere. The commentaries have noted a number of cases, including the prophecy spoken over Jesus at His birth. “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many” (Lk 2:34). The fragrance of Christ is, “to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life” (2Co 2:16). “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn 3:18). I can’t help but not the proximity of that last to the marvelous news of John 3:16. God so loved the world … that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. Great good news is given us, but it’s only good news if we believe. And I’ll add we only believe if He regenerates us.
For the rest? Their Protector becomes their doom. This was the case for Israel, certainly. Lurking in the shadows of Peter’s letter is the fall of Jerusalem, that most terrible period of her history. I am almost willing to say it was worse than the Holocaust, if only because the violence done during that siege was largely brother upon brother, and not even by way of civil war, merely pursuit of power. But, we should be mindful that the God we love and Who loves us does not change. He has not exhausted His wrath in the events of His Son’s death. Yes, towards those He has adopted that act was sufficient in every way to assuage His Righteous indignation. But, towards the reprobate? That same act has only added to the measure of their crimes against heaven.
For the redeemed, I would maintain we still do well to bear His unchanging nature in mind. We are terribly capable of presuming upon His graciousness towards us, of becoming complacent in our besetting sins. Why bother with them? God has saved and who shall separate? In spite of Paul’s vehement rejection of just such a mindset we find it still creeps up on us. Surely, my sins don’t rise to such a height as to cause concern. Surely I’m allowed my little peccadillos without feeling any compunction. But, I remind of the text I already brought forth from 1John. He is faithful and just to forgive if. If we confess then there can be forgiveness. If we seek to hide away our sins and clutch them to us as more precious than our God, then we really have no cause to suppose ourselves among the redeemed.
I’m not talking about the occasional lapse, nor is John. He is blunt on that point. “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us” (1Jn 1:10). He’s not talking about an unwillingness to come to Christ in the first place. He’s talking about our ongoing development. We will stumble and fall – regularly. But, if we confess our sins, He forgives. He is given the righteous path towards doing so. Understand that God cannot forgive if forgiveness requires Him to set aside His essential Goodness or Justice. God cannot cease being God for so much as a moment. He cannot wink at sin. He cannot give us a pass. He can only forgive in Righteousness, else not at all.
At the same time, we have this marvelous assurance as to our final arrival at His gates, if we are indeed among the elect. And, I have to say, it cannot be spoken of as assurance if we are constantly in doubt about its applicability. It is true that amongst the reprobate there are any number who have been deceived into thinking themselves redeemed. The pews are full of just such folk. We have entire denominations that could be characterized by this, whole churches (if only in name) destined for destruction even as they sing their songs of praise to a god who isn’t God. They can use His name, but if it isn’t Him they honor, it is just a compounding of their guilt.
It remains the case, as Calvin notes, that they who will not accept Christ as their foundation must stumble over Him. That’s exactly it. Either salvation or ruin: The Cornerstone will be one or the other. Barnes makes the point for me. There is no neutral response to the Gospel. Do we consider this as we preach, as we evangelize (assuming we do these things)? Do we give a moment’s consideration to the fact that the Truth we have been granted to tell may well be the aroma of death to death for those who hear us? This is not, I dare say, cause to fall silent. It is God’s work and God’s choice, and we shall not think the less of Him for choosing Justice than for choosing Mercy. Not, I say, if we are wise in the things of God. Like Aaron, we are silent before His Justice, knowing it is Just. But, surely this consideration must give us a greater sense of the solemnity of the situation when we speak God’s Word. Oh! How we pray our words will be life unto life! Yet, one cannot make it through the text of Scripture without recognizing that for the majority, it will be quite the opposite.
But, the urgency is in the fact that there is no neutral response. The seemingly benign attitude of, “I’ll put it off ‘til later” is not benign at all. It is the potentiality of a death sentence self-imposed. It is a rejection of God, a refusal to believe, an unwillingness to be persuaded. That is nothing but unbelief prettied up. “He who does not believe is already condemned.” It should make us shiver to contemplate this. It should grieve us to the marrow to see so much as one person walk away from life with so glib an attitude. But, we are polite to a fault and leave that one to his ruin. In truth, if this be God’s will for him, there is aught else we could do. But, the heart must break.
Understand what Jesus must have felt as He went through the course of His days here. He, too, was a man of broken heart, seeing so many who rejected life in favor of their death. He, too, was moved to anger by those who twisted His Father’s Truth, who held to a form of religion devoid of God’s character. He, too, held both attitudes simultaneously; deepest sorrow for the inescapable outcome for those benighted souls, and deepest indignation for their effrontery towards the holiness and goodness of God. I don’t think we need be surprised at the conflicting emotions we feel in such circumstances. Indeed, if all we feel is the sorrow it just might be that we don’t hold God high enough in our esteem. I don’t know that I’d wish to make this a point of doctrine, but it bears consideration.
Now, let me turn to some points by Mr. Clarke (whose name I just realized the other day I have been mistyping of late.) Mr. Clarke is decidedly Arminian in his perspective. He attempts to assert that view in declaring that there can be no doubt as to Christ’s efficacy and sufficiency to save. That is absolutely true, and I don’t think there’s a Calvinist in all the world would disagree. No Christian of any stripe could possibly doubt either His efficacy or His sufficiency. The question is applicability. But, even Clarke accedes, based on that statement, that, “God can never be mistaken in His choice. Therefore, he that chooses Christ for his portion shall never be confounded.”
But, here, it seems to me he has introduced a verbal sleight of hand. God can never be mistaken in His choice. True. Again, no argument to be had, merely a statement of fact that all must surely be agreed upon. The All-knowing, All-wise God cannot possibly produce a plan or a choice that is made in error. But, then Mr. Clarke switches the perspective to, “he that chooses Christ”. Here, he is asserting, I think, the particularly Arminian view that even though God is sovereign, and can’t be wrong, yet it is our will that remains the determinant. Somehow, it eludes him that for God’s decisions to be infallible they must be the determinant. If man’s will remains the controlling factor, then man is god and is ultimately responsible for his own salvation. He has gone right back to the covenant of works and not even noticed. Here is where we begin to have a problem.
Even with the doctrine of concurrence in place, it must remain the case that there is but one determinant, but one who has final and ultimate say. It also remains the case that for God to be infallible He must be that one. If He decides, then on the most critical level we do not. We decide, yes. We choose Him and we must. But, we choose Him also because we must. God has enabled it such that we can. God has decreed it such that we will. We will – and it is indeed our will that willingly does the willing – yet we could not will otherwise.
And, once again, we must set down where Mr. Clarke is unwilling to go. He proceeds from this point of seeing God’s choice is infallible to saying that we mustn’t believe the fallen are appointed or decreed to be disobedient. He will not go so far, feeling he must leave it to the man to be at fault. The man is at fault. But, that does not alter God’s choice lying at root. Clarke insists that it is through their own obstinate unbelief that they fall. He then reads Peter as saying that their unbelief has appointed them to the penalty: Being broken as a work of God’s judgment.
I don’t know. I cannot help but see a bit of cognitive dissonance in this. On the one hand, God can’t be wrong. On the other, man is fully in control of his path. On the one hand, God has chosen infallibly. On the other hand, man chooses. Well, if both choose, then surely at some point those choices will come into conflict. Who wins? If God, being infallible wins, then man was not so free in his choosing as was suggested, is he? If man wins, then God is apparently infallible, or perhaps he was only kidding about what He said He chose. I just cannot see how this position holds together, even though I once accepted it as obvious truth. It can only remain obvious until one thinks it through, rather than pointing to a few key Scriptures without reference to the rest of the material.
We have seen the rest of the material in some part already. Matthew Henry brings some of that to bear when he says that Jesus Christ is the author of salvation to some and the instrument of destruction to others. That is nothing but an echo of Paul’s statement, which I have already considered here. But, having made this point, there is a very necessary distinction to be made, and Mr. Henry proceeds to make it. God does not author sin. Let that be settled in your heart and mind. Here the fault lies with man (and let us even set Satan aside so far as this point goes). Man makes God the occasion for sin. How? By disobedience. God, for His part, appoints eternal destruction to the reprobate. Here, I think we are back at a point upon which all are agreed. That destruction accrues to the reprobate is undeniable. The whole course of Scripture demands that understanding, and frankly, were it not so, we would have no particular concern regarding salvation. What would be the point if there were nothing ahead that we needed to avoid?
Mr. Henry concludes with the statement that God knows from eternity who the reprobate are. That is assuredly true, just as it is true that God knows from eternity who the elect are. The question that might arise is why He knows. Is it that foreknowledge has empowered Him to correctly predict our every decision such that we continue to act entirely in our own free will and He has simply remained a step ahead of us? Or, is it that His foreknowledge consists in His decrees, that He has not only foreknown, but foreordained the outcome? This is the first great debate of predestination. The second is that which we consider now, whether or not God predestines not only the elect but the reprobate. My immediate reaction to this is that the one rather necessarily presupposes the other, but I confess that in spite of it being the focus of this study, I have not really pursued it with the depth I would in pursuing a matter I hold in some doubt. I.e. I have not taken the time to go look at the best arguments for each position. Perhaps I shall find that needful at some point, but that point is not now.
Calvin, for his part, is perfectly straightforward in his conclusion: All the reprobate are destined to that end; which is to say the reprobate could not be otherwise than reprobate. As I have noted a few times now, Table Talk has been, in recent weeks, on that very point as they have been considering Romans 9. The argument Paul makes in that text (which arguments I was far more inclined to probe and question at the time I was studying Romans) leave little room to conclude otherwise than Calvin has concluded. It’s been long enough now that I don’t particularly recall how Clarke and others attempted to wiggle through with their dominant free will intact, but I could not wiggle with them, and found my own free will concepts shed like an old skin by the time I was done.
Over and over in that chapter, Paul drives home the point of God’s choice. He is primarily concerned with demonstrating grace as the determinant rather than works. But, in the course of making his point, he also establishes by numerous example that it is God who sets the course, God who determines the outcome. Who else, after all, could determine the birth order of Jacob and Esau? And, if the outcome for these two was determined when the twins ‘were not yet born’ (Ro 9:11), in what way did their will influence His determinations? Indeed, Paul concludes, “God’s purpose according to His choice [stands] not because of works, but because of Him who calls.” I.e. His purpose stands because He wills. If this is the case, it is not because we will. Where we will it is our works, and salvation is not according to works.
Paul proceeds to the case of Pharaoh, noting God’s clear declaration: “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power” (Ro 9:17). Paul even notes the Arminian reaction. Well, if God willed it and he had no choice, how can God find fault with him? It’s not like Pharaoh could resist God’s will (Ro 9:19). Paul does not exactly answer the question, which is somewhat unusual. The nearest he comes is to point out God’s right to do as He pleases with His creation. But, note what he does not do: He does not take the power of choosing from God’s hands, and he does not allow even the suggestion that man’s choices are capable of causing God to recalculate His route.
Paul forces the conclusion that Wycliffe’s Commentary arrives at. The same divine purpose and foreknowledge of God which chose Peter’s readers as His children has also ordained the disobedient ‘to their only alternative’. Either direction you look, it remains God’s purpose that is in play. However uncomfortable this may make us, yet it holds. Even the JFB has difficulty with this point, so we need not feel bad about our own questions. They refuse to take the step Calvin takes, insisting that the ordaining does not apply to the crime but to the punishment. This is pretty near Clarke’s position, really. They move on, suggesting that the appointing is not, in this case, fore-ordaining. They conclude that Peter is referencing His justice rather than His eternal counsel. For my part, I think that too much of a quibble, and a needless attempt to defend God against the calumnies of man. They further declare that God does not ordain sin. Agreed. He gives many up to the fruits of their own choices. Agreed. This is by His eternal counsel. Agreed. So, then, in what wise is the whole matter not fully in reference to His eternal counsel? Again, the attempt to ameliorate the severity of the statement would seem to require a complete disconnect with everything else that is said.
I’ll leave it to Barnes to clear the air a bit. It can indeed be said that the reprobate were appointed to stumble and fall. I would argue it must be said, for it has been said. This was foreseen as part of the general arrangement required to save any. Let me jump back to that previous comment by Barnes as concerns the plan of redemption and the nature of creation. The whole point of creation was to allow this plan to unfold. The plan of redemption was so grand, so glorious, as to justify creation as we see it. The marvel of salvation was such a beautiful thing as to recommend the only plan that would bring it about, even though that plan required so many to be appointed to stumble and fall. I return to the current comments. “It may be added that as in the facts in the case, nothing wrong has been done by God, and no one has been deprived of any rights, or punished more than he deserves, it was not wrong in Him to make the arrangement.”
This is fundamental. This is where JFB was pointing but then they wandered off. He gives them up to the fruits of their own choices. Here, again, we need look little farther than Romans to hear the same point made in Scripture. “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (Ro 1:24). All that God can be accused of is leaving men to their own devices. And, isn’t that exactly what the Arminian view insists upon? It is not, though, that God is somehow unjust in letting men run headlong to their own destruction by their own choices. It is that He is merciful enough to stop some of us, to rescue us from our own idiocy.
Here is the part we need to hold firm and fast: All things are contained in God’s eternal plans. There is no such thing as coincidence, as much as we are struck by the myriad odd coincidences of life. Things don’t happen by chance. That concept is devoid of meaning. Chance has no power and therefore cannot possibly cause anything to occur. Yet, we have those who would lay the whole of creation to chance. Really? So, all that we are, all that we know, all that we experience came about because of what? Nothing? If it came of nothing, it is nothing, and we don’t exist. And, that is quite plainly not the case. But, dig: If nothing occurs by chance, nothing was unforeseen.
That includes the reprobate. That includes the wayward child. That includes everything. The government against which you rail? Included. The coworker you have deemed beyond hope of redemption? Included. His redemption, much to your surprise? Included. That brother whose faith was so certain in your eyes right up to the day he ran off with some other woman? Included. That pastor who fell and took his entire church with him? Included. That pastor who repented and went on to do great things for Christ? Included. NOTHING is unforeseen. There is nothing wrong in the plan. What is happening is, by very definition, what is supposed to be happening.
For the redeemed, this message ought to bring greatest comfort and confidence. But, for the reprobate who would seek his excuse here? It is not to be found. You rejected Christ entirely of your own volition. Nobody forced you to reject Him. God will have no cause to fear blame for your choice. None at all. But, know that the consequences necessarily follow the choice. And that was surely foreseen. You could have foreseen it yourself had you but given it some thought.
Here, if I may, is what cannot be foreseen. I cannot know your final outcome. In fairness, you cannot know. This holds for both the one who thinks himself redeemed and the one who thinks himself beyond redemption. You don’t know. God knows. For the redeemed, I do believe we are given every cause for confidence. There is assurance because God gives us assurance. But, I say that in full recognition that there are many indeed who go about utterly convinced of their status as being in that number who are just as utterly wrong. I also know from my own experience that the one who considers himself absolutely committed to his opposition to the very concept of God can yet discover himself called by the very God he discounted. It is His will that determines. We choose, yes, and we choose gladly. But, what a shock when we discover our choices have suddenly changed.
Why this should shock us so, I don’t know. On any number of lesser matters we see these course reversals and really think very little about it. We are liberals in youth and conservatives in maturity, and in retrospect at least it seems perfectly natural that it should be so. We like one form of music this year. Next year we discover a certain disdain for that same form, having taken after another. Tastes in food shift like the tides, and the change elicits little more than a, “hmm.” Why, then, are we so amazed to discover that the God we hated yesterday has become the object of our love today? The change of heart ought not surprise us. The welcome we receive, having changed, is unbelievable. And yet, it is true. God has welcomed us with open arms who once bore arms against Him. How is this? Don’t you see, it’s because He chose this outcome. And, as Peter has told us, He made that choice before the first day of creation. That Lamb’s Book of Life? It was written back then. All is unfolding exactly as it should.
For you who may still be walking in unbelief, I pray you are granted to believe. For my child, who at this stage of her life is being slowly torn apart as she tries to oppose what she knows to be true, I pray that you lose your battle and find the loving arms of your Father awaiting. I shall not stop praying. But, neither shall I hold you more valuable than God. My child, you are no idol. But, you are my deep and abiding concern. May you come to know and cherish the love of your Father in time.
