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BULLETIN 44

The Circuit of Love

Freedom and Predestination

The First Eleven

Man - a man, a person is chosen by God (Ephesians 1:4, John 15:16 - "You did not choose Me, but I chose you." The negation of other choice, such as his own, is followed by the affirmation of the choice of God. the two are both distinct and contradistinct. It is even so in principle, as in John 1:12 where items are removed one by one in terms of flesh as if the boss of flesh.

So God chooses man, not vice versa in the kingdom of heaven.

Indeed, it is done in marvellous principle itself, in that this choice is done before time was, or the creation, or man's sin so much as existed in our diurnal form; and God knew who were His (as in Jeremiah 1:5) as a man knows His own hand, but yet more intimately, than this, since the God who made all things as at the first, has before Him all things manifest (Hebrews 4:13).

God Himself chose His own

1) because He wanted to do so (Ephesians 1:11, Isaiah 43:13, Psalm 115).

2) because He recognised His own and knew them.

3) because He desired and invented the Gospel, desired to save through it and in its terms,
 and applied it (Colossians 1:19ff.).

4)  because He so loved (John 3:16, Hosea 11:8, SMR Appendix B).

5) because, as in Colossians above,  He would have ALL reconciled to Himself, having made peace
through the blood of the cross, and this, whether in heaven or on earth; and therefore
was the very opposite of those on earth who are implacable, irreconcilable,
but rather recommends being willing to forgive. However some preferred darkness
differentially (cf. John 3:19, where the inordinate love of God is contrasted with the
exuberant desire to the contrary, that registers in His sight, and the underlying cause of this is  assigned).

Proverbs 1 gives an excellently simple and clear exhibition of the thrusts involved, where man is
even offered this, that God is willing to MAKE it all clear to Him; but still baulks.

6)  because freedom was a divine enduement from the first, so that man in His image was known in his reality by the God who so created him. It was attacked, but not aborted.

7) NOT because any souls were made with violation of this freedom in their very construction, as if He had altered the credentials and criteria made from the first, the ability to say NO to God differentially and personally.

None were made tilted so that it was merely a programmatic outworking, that NO was said; for that is fraud in terms of love, freedom and just a matter of creating spiritual  robots, with the appearance of freedom in love, for convenience. God did not send His Son to die so that robots might execute orders.

God is not a deceiver, and in Him is no iniquity; and if there were, He would be controlled so that for a desired gain, truth might be  masked. Made deficient by Another, this would not be God. No such confinement is in the original of all, on whom ALL depends.

Indeed, that is not love which is forced, nor freedom which is a controlled product.

8) in accord with the desire of the heart of man, and not contrary to it, His foreknowledge rendering and ensuring the fulfilment of that insight, duly recorded in predestination which as in Romans 8:29ff., is logically after foreknowledge. It braces the (fore)known with assurance.

9) NOT as an ingenious shanghaiing of the unwilling by first altering their will by power, and then speaking of it and through it; for God is a God of truth and light, and in Him, there is no darkness at all, misnomers having no home in Him before whom all is manifest and who instead of needs, being overflowing with fulness, has love; instead of need to grab, has desire to give..

10) with forthright zeal. As in the parable in Matthew 21, concerning highways and byways, He is not even limited to form, but when  apparent certainties in expectation of some coming to Him, are in fact not so disposed, re entry to His kingdom, He pursues the unlovely and the unlikely, and love is like that.  Fruit is important but not fraudulent, to be sought but not invented; and if circumvented, that is patiently borne. In this love, nothing is by any means taken  for granted, for His sincerity is not strangled by foreknowledge, but rather ensured that all searches and researches come to the same, under whatever test, and zeal does not fail to be manifested because wisdom is vast; but on the contrary, in His wisdom His love is as fresh as Spring, even in Autumn. He does not change.

Indeed, reliable is His foreknowledge, so that if any were left out in history through their ignorance of the Gospel, yet they are not left out in His Gospel books, as if the foreknowledge were vain, or the hand of God with the Gospel were stunned into short-circuit. He WORKS^*1 all things after the counsel of His own will, and what He knows from the first, eventuates in its own terms, so that at last all is prepared and appears as appointed.

Ways of so appointing the Gospel to the ignorant may be touched on in I Peter  3:18-20^*2. The first and final elements in the divine Book of Life are known from the first and read at the last, and though many may appear as if already enscrolled in its pages as their lives of apparent faith but actual fiction, unroll, so may their temporary entry^*3 disappear from the pages in the present presentation, before the finale, unchanged from the first, appears and operates under the Lord in His supreme knowledge at the last. It is of course as in I John 5:4-5:

"whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory
which has overcome the world, our faith.
Who is he who overcomes the world
but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."

A man may indeed fall, but look at David (Psalm 51). He was pardoned, disciplined (even by having such a rupture in his own family as he caused in that of another) and  yet delighted in, for the Lord knows His own, and brings them up as children, not labour camp internees. Yet what coach has athletes who continually fall over on the way to the track! He knows His own and brings them up.

He IS love, we read in I John 4, so that what would be contrary to it, in Him,  is what is not found in Him, justice and judgment being vastly reluctant in their application (as in Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 18:42ff., Jeremiah 9, 31:18ff., Hosea 11, Jonah 4). A hospital must be clean, but cleanliness if but part of its needful operation, not its ultimate purpose.

Love moreover rejoices in the truth, and where it finds place, there is rejoicing (Luke 15:7).

11)

Hence the only Saviour, only through unmitigated grace in the Gospel, saves

	whom He will (the predestinated elect) as in John 6:44,65,
	how He will (the Gospel - Galatians 1),
	in what state He will (Luke 13, that of repentance of life), and
	never contrary to the will of the heart of man (Matthew 23:37, Isaiah 48:15ff.),
	but in accord with it.

In His amplitude of sovereignty, so that He is who He is and not another, He is filled with mercy, seeking the lost, with great joy finding just one more. His is the sovereignty to end sovereignties; for His is a good sovereignty and His heart is in it, and His incarnation showed His agony for its ;oving provision  and application, so that the payment, sufficient for all, adapted to all (I John 2:1-2), is applied where it is placed,  not with force to pre-empt or delusion, to suppress the reality, but with glorious truth to expose it  past all contamination, to secure it; for He knows His own.

In the end, as at the first, no one goes to hell in terms of the love of God inadequate to cover, but only in terms of its rejection in whatever terms are true, centring for one as for each and all, on the Gospel and the divine achievements through its grace, so that no one can boast (Romans 3:23ff.), for it is His work and not their own which procures it. Were God so disposed He might boast, but He is meek and lowly in heart;  it is the saved sinner who boasts in Christ (Galatians 2:20, 6:14), the One who secured the works which secured him! And His flock is His delight. Indeed, He laid down His life for it.

NOTE

*1

See Secession from Suppositions Ch. 2, and The Marvellous Matter of Predestinative Perspectives Appendix, Bulletin 30.

*2

See for example Afterburner, Afterglow, Afterwards Ch. 3,Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will, Ch. 4, Bulletin 30.
 

*3

From those books, eternal, nothing is to be blotted out, but from the book of formalities, the appearance, many flit through its transient pages, like some monthly billing account, when some of the goods are not bought (cf. Hebrews 6 and 10), but only figured till their final decision appeared and was then sent.

The first and final result is foreknown and one.