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APPENDIX ON GRACE, LIBERTY, LOVE,
RIGHTEOUSNESS, TRUTH, MEANING
AND THEIR UNIQUE CONSISTENCY
IN THE BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

THE COLLATION IS COHERENT, BUT ALSO FOUNDATIONAL

MORE THAN SYNTHESIS, IT IS ELEMENTAL

In the Epilogue above, there was this statement:

Here is truth in its consistency, life in its coherence^*1, righteousness in its foundations, meaning that covers all and beauty of holiness ...

The references in the endnote hyperlinked above, deal amply with the topic.

However, now that we are in the family of grace, as shown in detail in the Epilogue, there are some special entrants to which, in all justice, we should attend.

First, however, let us notice that in the Psalms there is a special coherence of joy, righteousness of God, mercy, truth and lovingkindness, together with peace, praise, salvation, power and faithfulness  to be found in such places as Psalm 11:7, 25:11-12, 32:11, 17:15, 40:10-16, 48:10, 71:14-24, 89:14-17, 84:11, 85:10-13, 119:45, 45:2.

Let us consider this a little further in detail. Colour is added.

The last, for example, has this:

                     And shall make His footsteps our pathway."

                           My tongue also shall talk of Your righteousness all the day long ..."

In Psalm 89:14-17, you have: 

                          For You are the glory of their strength ..."

In Psalm 84:11 are to be found these words of praise:

"For the LORD God is a sun and shield:

the LORD will give grace and glory:

no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.

O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusts in You."

 

In Psalm 45:2 are to be found these words of praise:

"You art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into Your lips: therefore God has blessed You for ever."

 

Throughout the Bible there is this composite character, this unitary thread, this more than massive, this massif of shining complementary realities. 

With this is the impress of liberty: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," says II Corinthians 3:17, while Christ declares this:

  "If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed."

Again, Psalm 119:45 has this:

                             "And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts..."

Psalm 25:11-12 speaks in this way:

                           Him shall He teach in the way He chooses."

GRACE, LOVE AND LIBERTY in their SETTING

In all these things, there is in the Bible, a unique correlation of clarity and consistency.

Grace is a partner to liberty, since it neither enforces nor dictates. Desire in directive, appeal, kindness, pardon, freely dispensed and amply donated: these are some of the marks. Without freedom, these would have no meaning; only to freedom can they be applicable.

How would you graciously use brute force on human personality, to control it! how would you appeal to people who had no means of response ? Only command could bear meaning to the merely impactible.

You could have freedom without grace, but not grace without freedom.

Grace and freedom are correlatives, and grace requires freedom for its operation.

The biblical emphasis, on a huge array of members in the grace family, acts on freedom, flows through it; and this is a derivative of being in the image of God, whom nothing determines, and who can determine what He will, including liberty in the parameters of His choice for what He creates, such as man as unfallen at the first. This array of the GRACE FAMILY, then, we have seen in some detail, in the Epilogue, above.

What then do we find ? It is this. What omits liberty cannot have grace or internalised meaning; for then, it is  simple exercise in  progammatics^*2, requiring only the programmer, an exercise in the distribution of commands. Guilt is then a misnomer, justice confusion and blame an egregious waste of time.

Knowing it becomes impossible on the part of the construction in view, as mere programs are sustained by another person, error becoming impossible, though universal in human experience in general. Here in fact, as distinct from the constraints of foolish imaginations of a reductionist character,  it is found that not merely does error  happen, but ways of preventing it are searched out, that are integral to thought and action. In a determinate world, ONLY what is constrained CAN happen; and the only place for error is NOT in what is made, but in the maker! We however do not act in this way, but find both error contrary to purpose, and purpose contrary to wisdom, and correction means in great arrays of inculcation and resistance, in multiple courses of liberty.

Since liberty exists - though much marred and limited - grace can co-exist. This too meets human purpose, motivation, activation, captivation and exercise. It covers the case empirically.

The Bible alone gives ground amongst religion and philosophy, for both grace and liberty. You cannot be free if you are contained in what controls you; nor if your construction captures you. Only when your Creator has provided in you the means of assessment, survey and operational choices is there freedom. Then the reference point being Himself, with whatever originality and oversight you may be enhanced, one in the image of God can choose whether to avert, divert or convert it in this way or that, relative to God. Any 'god' who simply commands, or to which appeal cannot be made, from whom interchange cannot be effected, whose pardon is simply despotic at mere will, where love does not make liberty actual,  is irrelevant here.

The true and biblical God has what is logically required, and this is so because He is the one who made us to see it! He DOES command what He wants, but He wants also to be loving, and so pleads, appeals, elicits, has friendship, and becomes the meaning of freedom, the Lord of liberty (cf. Ch. 2  and Ch. 3 above, with Great Execrations ... Chs.  7 and   9).

Choice to avert, divert from the command of God ? Eve did this post haste. Adam did not fail in haste to follow. Man in haste has ever since made hay, though it is frequently mouldy, of the facility.

Without Him, and without His desire to make you so, it could not be so.

With Him, it not only could be so, but manifestly is (cf. Predestination and Freewill, SMR pp. 348ff., It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5 and indexes).

Without it, thought would have no meaning relative to truth, for there would be no truth; for without the absolute, also communicative and willing to be so to us, there is no absolute truth for man, so knowing it is a superfluous fraud in such a system as seeks to deny Him.

With God, there is for man a capacity for truth, for liberty, and hence for grace towards one another, depending on whether God chooses to make truth available, and whether in man, this aspect has appeal. If of grace, God had none, there could be none, since He is all embracive of truth.

Thus from a Free Being, absolute, there is ground for both grace and liberty; and their presence for man is merely an occurrence, because of  what is adequate for them, a created universe from the Creator of kinds, including what is in His own image, to which He chooses to communicate, so overcoming the limits and obstacles in mere research from polluted and delimited  instruments.

To be sure, man is not autonomous, since GOD is there, but free, since He is not forced nor compelled, or merely impelled. Many make a muddle because God certainly fulfils His own counsel, but HOW that is obtained is almost consistently forgotten in such cases; and He Himself makes it clear (cf. SMR Appendix B and Chs.  7 and   9), that it pleases Him to SEEK for man, and would have all to be won, but not by force.

Such a Free Being, uncontrolled can readily provide an enabled variety based on Himself, though without the infinity and the autonomy. Limitation is not negation. Such is man.

Delimited creations such as man can then themselves become derivative creators, through the operation of whose freedom guilt readily comes, as well as blame, and the capacity to act toward eliminating error equally. With what effect ? this is another matter, and it will depend on the provisions for which man is enabled, in selection.

It is ONLY with an absolute Creator that these things can be, including logical grounds, rather than ephemeral postulations based on nought, as likewise,  coherent and consistent knowledge of this AS truth.

It is ONLY with a gracious, absolute Creator that love can cover justice without obliterating life; for where infraction means guilt and guilt against life, there is no other scope for it. Life is what it is; and when it is departed from by liberty, while its form remains, then it is something else, and its continuation can only be by mercy, since war on God is not effective. We have elsewhere dwelt on the implications of this (cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy). Here it is the fact itself on which one dwells.

Since God neither lacks nor needs anything, and is complete in Himself, having no constraint imposed or limitation enforced upon Him (cf. Sparkling Life Ch. 4, SMR Ch. 1), it is an entirely free matter for Him, whether truth and justice expose sin to judgment and death, in every dimension of life in which it occurs, or whether they are met by mercy in cancelling guilt on due grounds. From HIS life sin disjoins, and in it, it cannot live. It has to be covered and conquered, or the entirety must face this: Begone!

What then ? The only ground for continuation, in His image which is the production pith, the only way where justice unaborted, truth may pardon, is that where the sinless Supreme Being Himself covers the case from His unique Being, so making peace at cost to Himself. There is nothing with which the sinner can pay, being intrinsically now befouled. Life is changed by sin, which is far from being a mere instance, but a matter of will, heart, resolve, image, result, spirit and allegiance. It is war on God and it is cost.

God has resolved to act (Titus 2-3). So justice is met, mercy is applied and truth is satisfied. This is a coherent correlation, an adequate bank and a sufficient ground, without competition from all the criteria involved, found in the God of the Bible. It fits and suffices, being grand in design, adequate in nature and prodigious in nobility.

 His revelation duly testable, and tested (cf.  Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host) thus declares the resolution as proclamation (cf. Isaiah 52-53, Acts 17). Judgment is provided for, is coming in any case, and what so uses liberty as to avoid the proclaimed pardon, remains where it began, inconceivable as partner with God, and so parted from Him.

Yet how can truth be satisfied with the meddling of mercy, as it might be conceived ? It may be, but only where love supplies repayment to justice, the reality of which is met. Since for human life,  that, marred life, is precisely the fault, the very life itself, that means sinless life in exchange covers the case. God loves justice as we see above; and it is inalienable from truth.

But what then is the form of the repayment and how is it to be done ?

It has to be human life provided, and it has to be sinless to avoid provocation and through initial defilement, exclusion from such relevant service. The conditions of performance are such as no mere man can meet.

The life to meet the case in payment for man's life, it is one which  has to be vast in power and significance. It must meet and be sufficient to cover countless cases, since man is not only made, but made able to procreate, having become now billions, while in the past there are more gone on before!

It has also to be sufficient for all these things in purity, power and coverage, comprehensiveness and knowledgeability, which is one reason why we care able to find this: "By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many, for He will bear their iniquities," in Isaiah 53.

The incarnation of God as man supplies all these features, and lacking nothing in depth, can cover any extremity, in scope, can meet all adequately, being an example of love in liberality, peace in prodigality, but of sufficiency nonetheless! It is like a father giving his own life to rescue a son, with whom he could then no longer be; but with God, there is the resurrection, for nothing can contain Him, though He choose to abase Himself in service (cf. Acts 2:23-24).

Here, love is love indeed, neither lust, nor a manipulator of the desired subject for the objective of self-gratification, rather than a mutuality of regard and delight productive of intimate fellowship and joy. By no means, now is it a concoction of selfish desire for gratification as if some X-factor^*3 were the criterion of selection from the mysteries of a hidden will^*4.

God is express both that His mode of choice is entirely as the pardoning, purifying God for His elect, and that what He does elect, being love, is this, that He would have all to come, all to come to a knowledge of the truth, all to be reconciled to Himself (Luke 19:45ff., Isaiah 55, Jeremiah 1-14 cf. Ch. 2 above, I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:11, Colossians 1:19ff., I John 2:1ff., Hosea 7:1, 8:4ff., Jeremiah 51:9ff.); and that what in His sovereign will, excludes from salvation is NOT His unwillingness, repeatedly excluded in the temper of His love. Rather is it that of man, repeatedly affirmed in His protestations against their ways DESPITE His continual, repeated protestations, entreaties, marks of love, appeals, desires and offers in multiplied exhibitions of a steadfast love (cf. Hosea 12:10, II Chronicles 36).

This divine procedure is no fulfilment of a mysterious divine desire, except in its sheer prodigality towards man (Titus 2-3);  nor is the exclusion a rump for such a restive limitation as so many assume to be in the divine heart in its outreach of desire. Rather is this exclusion the very judgment which follows the rejection so reprobate (John 3:16-19,36), of an exhibit so profound, so mature, so manifest, so prolonged as the love of God. Not only so, it is a rejection even when this love is to be seen in the practical dress of salvation, and the experimental verification on the Cross. Thus and then, do its unique divine heights in purity and intensity, show  from very altitude by contrast all the more, the depths of what ignores its reality and so proceeds to doom.

The responsibility accordingly lies in man for the exclusion of what is excluded, of what is ultimately immune to selection (Jeremiah 6:26 - 7:16, Romans 1:28, II Thessalonians 2:10-11), of Ezekiel's marshes (Ezekiel 47).

With the image of Jeremiah, it is this.  The bellows to purge blow fiercely, the fire burns lustrously, its flames are consuming: yet reprobate silver persists.

The willingness of God seeks in its grace (Ezekiel 18), but the result comes in the end, because they did not receive the love of the truth despite all this (as also in II Thess. 2:10).

Love does not lasso. Its ways are its own, and force is far from them, just as sin is far beyond man's will, and only God can PERFORM the resolution He knows, which is this: that the new birth be not of the will of man or of flesh, but of the will of God (John 1:12). That is the executive phase of the divine knowledge, where predestination, wholly immune to historical works, has its resultant impact.

Man so readily wants to blame God, but the predestinative counsel of God is so deep that this is mere addition of slander to rebellion: certainly He predestines, but it is according to knowledge and that is according to the ways of love, which would have all to be reconciled to Himself.

Indeed, much follows. Only in a love of God which is pure, and purity itself, unbounded and unfoundering alike, in its essay, oversight and spreading, one not selfishly confined, is freedom for man wrought in integrity. The principle is the necessity in the blinding by sin that rules in the spiritual domain, in the heart of man (Ephesians 2, 4, I Corinthians 2:14), of God's own unilateral ACTION in application of predestination. Hence God proceeds in time as in John 6:65, Romans 9:16. It is His Gospel of His own mercy in His own formulation, His own formula and His own will that is limitless, and expresses the same quality in His love. What preceded such a resultant, a step before, a priori to history: it is the foreknowing (Romans 8:30).

What then do we find ? It is this. WITH this divine action to save alone, in its essence and reality, are ANY to be saved. It is granted to those thus and in this way FOREKNOWN, by whatever way God wishes to deal with time. In Predestination and Freewill Section 3, one shows an apologetics construction which is harmonious to reason, as nothing else is; for the word of God gives the data which are thus susceptible to reason, because He is reasonable, and His love is so far above restriction that like His peace, it passes knowledge (Ephesians 3).

Yet this harmony as there given  is not the ultimate: it is the love itself which is the ultimate, and it proceeds according as God in His wisdom desires, but ALWAYS according to the STATED SCRIPTURAL PRINCIPLES, as noted here and in *3 below. These alone PERMIT such resolution, invite it and demand it.

Sovereignly executed, salvation is neither  installed by the will of man (Luke 19:42ff., John 3:19), nor irrelevant to it (John 6). It has for its judicial BUTT the will of man in the face of the proffered divine light and love; and for its executive application, the will of God according to the divine principles which He has seen fit repeatedly to depict in the clearest possible terms. This He does, just as He illustrates continually this very same thing, with grief announcing now here, now there, after recounting the pities and the entreaties again and again, which preceded, the judgment which He so bewails, with such truly divine solicitude (as in Jeremiah 1-17, II Chronicles 36).

The ultimate divine deliverance for His creation man, it is sought for all, entreated for all, pursued for all, in the heart and the mind of God. Then He authenticated it, and so instals it in the necessity of His omniscience, because of the pathology of man. That His desire is for all is the spring of His heart, despite the results of reprobacy in man. GOD IS LOVE (I John 4) - not love alone, but pervasively love, so that in nothing could the contrary be affirmed of any action, attitude or resolution which He makes. You cannot deny what you ARE: He cannot deny Himself, for this is what HE IS! (cf. II Timothy 2:13). This is not an imposition from outside, but a resultant of what He is, internal, inside!

Moving into other domains, inventing gods is a summary offence, and waste of time, without wisdom.

THIS then is what GOD statedly is; precisely what He declares!

Hence with ABSOLUTE truth is ABSOLUTE love, ABSOLUTE grace and ABSOLUTE sovereignty, so that freedom in man, despite his condition, has absolute reality, so giving to him meaning, and to liberty the responsibility that is the necessary consequence of its presence in a purposive and divinely entreated vessel of relevant freedom.

Without this, neither does freedom have ultimate reality since the Fall, nor responsibility actual force, nor will accountability, nor individual fulfilment rectitude. 

Without this, the universe becomes a playground for the predilections of the divine will. That is no criticism, express or implied of God, since HE STATES what precludes it!

With this, however, on the contrary, and most blessedly since it is the truth, it becomes a testing ground where illimitable divine love, through irrepressible divine grace, leaves man as accountable as if he had refused to be created! Now, it is in fact  the refusal to be re-created which becomes relevant. This is not against some action  by divine whim, a strange thing in the presence of what is in His own image, and naturally not the case; but rather is it in the face of divine grace that would restore to him what is lost, efface what defaces, reject what defiles, and put man back in the image of Him who created Him, in the most felicitous of fulfilments, the most perfect testimonies of integrity (Colossians 3:10).

Thus, God is revealed in the Bible to be as relentless in love; and to be irrepressible in judgment when not some X-factor in man, but  human rejection is seen  and foreknown by Himself, and seen in its ineffaceable ultimacy to be ruling in man.

Is God limited ? Of course not: love already DELIMITS what integrity has in its nature, and so proceeds according to what it is, to what God is; He does not violate His own nature.

The consequences however do not rule, but the knowledge of God, who - seeking all - knows who are His, and acts accordingly. It is this confusion of consequence and incidence which seems to have confused some; and it is time to set it to rest. The "therefore"^*5A conjunctions and injunctions in the Bible, preludes to judgment, are close at times to being a recipe, after protestations and entreaties of tenderness, scope or appeal over time.

Giant in dimension is the responsibility of man; for none condemned in this way can escape the double guilt of sin and insistence on autonomy in the face of divine offers and offering. Grasping, man remains - just as if Israel had elected to remain in Egypt (which it nearly did) - wilfully and not pitifully any more, to be counted amidst its slaves. Thus is the divine portrayal;  for indeed Christ did not come to condemn the world, but that through Him it might be saved! Hence, this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world (John 3:19),  but men in the very face of this, far greater than the D-day armies landing in Europe to enable deliverance to the prisoners in concentration abattoirs, have in masses other ideas. They prefer darkness.

The principle of exclusion is applicable to as many as do, and this is the declarative, definitive decision of God. It is not other. This is it, defined and written as on a scroll for all time, for man to behold. Philosophy loves to twirl its mustachios; but God has declared His message.

That is what God says, fitting the principles consecutively together to open the truth, as man might seek to open some safe with the appropriate combination. This however, it is not a combination of mechanical or electronic components, but of personal authority and truth, concerning God, from God, who proclaims peace in this way and in no other.

In grace, He made man, in love He seeks man (Titus 2-3). He will find any who does not, in His divine foreknowledge, reject His salvation; and what does, He judges with the gift to it and for it, of the domain of the darkness it craves (John 3:36). He leaves to man, to those of the race, who in ultimate obloquy, refuse to surrender, and insist in persisting before the light of His countenance in the eye of His eternity, what is left. As desired, so it is: the having and possessing of darkness, as the soul perishes in the deeps of judgment

Man, hence, is not merely responsible

	for his Fall; but
	for his subsequent failure, the cyclotron of developing events that embraces this world system like a giant octopus hugging the keel of a small boat;
	for the ruin of hated where love alone fits, the slander of God;
	for the diminution of His beauty, as in imagining He direly in decretum horrible ignores His own mercy, where it might be found, and directs away love, where it might be received, as
	for the closing horizon of irreparable guilt.

Love of this divinely defined dimension alone, makes the will of man individually accountable, the life of man meaningful in freedom and hence responsibility, together with a judgment which is  objective on persons as such. HE is the God of truth and of justice indeed (Psalm 9, 36, 85, 97, 11:7, 24), of pity and tenderness, of solicitude:  it is He who cares for all and seeks all as so transcendentally and beatifically illustrated even towards people under a hideous regime in a foreign nation, that of Assyria:   in the last chapter of Jonah, the power zealot, who had to learn compassion.

Knowing all things, despite and in contrast to man's spiritual anaesthesia (Ephesians 4, I Cor. 2:14), and wholly aware in the domain of sin from which no mere man gains exemption to make of himself an exception, for all have sinned, often the most 'sinless' being the proudest and most benumbed in spirit: God Himself sovereignly selects. Unchanging, Christ is there, His principles are there, and His compassion and desire (Hebrews 13:8), even He who is, was and ever will be, immutable, "full of grace" as well as truth (John 1:14), and that ? it is "as of the only begotten of the Father", fully expressive of His nature. Being full of grace, as being 'love' ( I John 4), when it comes to God, is not something limitable: what it is, this can have no harassment, and what it is, this is both what is, has been and will be.

There in the beginning, as in predestination to the end,  God acts in love. It is on that understanding that He acts. So He came to man who is to be found in the very the face of this, His love (John 3:16-17), as one might face a constructive and not destructive tornado, subject to, involved in and the target of this love! As some might seek shelter from destruction, many and indeed most seek shelter from the reconstruction! It is in the teeth of the gale that they do so, afraid of truth and its grant.

Christ came, He tells us, not with the motivation for condemnation, but with the tang of truth, not in selfish preference, the criterion being the love of life, to restore it as He first created it; for He was as He is, full of grace, and loves not as those too beautiful to neglect, or noble, but those who are YET SINNERS. The disinvolvement could not be more plainly put, nor the motivation of sacrificial, creator-for-creature love.

As to the scope, it is as in what is full of grace and deity, "the world" as in John 3 and in II Corinthians 5:19. It is the world that then was, that perished, the whole extent of the occupancy of man; it is the world which God made, for there is one God and one Mediator, who desires all men to be saved; for just as His target is the world, so its populace is all men, and it is for the salvation of these that He has desire.

To be sure, the desire is not decision, and the love is not incontinent, though it pay all needed with grace for any who may come; and that is precisely why He appeals, entreats, appalled in horror at the cost of His rejection, who is the Creator of all, aspiring for the redemption of some from the vile villainies of that devastatingly destructive dynamic, called sin (Isaiah 48:17ff., Hosea 7:1ff., Luke 19:42ff., Hosea 12:10). As the one is race-wide, so is the other world-wide as well as race wide; and if the world that then was, in the day of the flood (II Peter 3), indeed perished in the very face of the construction so manifestly of the vast ark by Noah, so is it to perish in the very face of the vast construction of the ark of salvation (I Peter 3:21), by the incarnation brought to bear, because it will not enter.

God was, in Christ, world reconciling to Himself - this is the literal Greek order. There is the emphasis of WHO is doing it, HOW He is doing it, WHAT is the target, and to WHOM it is to bring results.

The scope was the world, in terms of the reconciliation, as in John 3, in the scope of the love, as in I John 2, in terms of the purvey for propitiation and the availability of the barrister, the advocate, so that He 'tasted death for every one' (Hebrews 2:9), a propitiatory emblem of the spread of the touch, the taste, the glimpse for glory, precisely as in the propitiatory sacrifice of the Passover, spread out specially for all, but applicable in no way, manner or degree except where there is faith (cf. Deuteronomy 29:13-20). And how otherwise!  for it is this which is the substantiation of things invisible (Hebrews 11:1), just as the door was the substantiation, in the Exodus, VIA blood being PLACED on it, of the cover, otherwise WHOLLY IRRELEVANT! It was the sight of the blood applied, not thought about or assumed, which was decisive in delivering from death in the Exodus event! (Exodus 12).

Thus again,  in the II Corinthians 5:14-15 area, there is indeed, as John Murray rightly pointed out, a normal Pauline correlation of being dead in Christ and living for Christ, the spread here being those who by faith DO die in faith to become crucified with Christ as in Galatians 2, so that those who are Christ's HAVE crucified the flesh, as in Galatians 5. This is as usual, PART of the whole, the redeemed part, and precious is this consummation of the divine love in redemption.

However there is more in this chapter to this point in view. First, we must add that the part just noted, 5:14-15. it is in precise parallel to Isaiah 53:4-6, where those, the 'we' who are 'healed', are the 'all' who are the 'us'. The terms of co-extensive as being indicated by the quite clear first person plural pronoun are indisputable. This is the redemption envelope; so too in II Corinthians 5:14-16 is this the case.

Yet later in this same chapter, there arises the depiction of what might be seen as the net, into which some indeed come; but it is cast out for all ( I John 2:1ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., John 3:16-17), both in spread and in loving intention, by Him who tasted death for all.

What then ? "God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself ...". The object in view is the world, the One exercising initiative is God, the site of this initiative as well as its instrument and expression, is Christ. The task which was brought into holy process by these means and in this way a purpose in its manifestation ? It was reconciliation of this world to Himself. He was doing it; He did not do it, for the world is of another mind. The scope of His outreach, the thrust of the proposal of His love, it was the world;  in Christ was this process unveiled, the payment for its end product thus made. In this was the love demonstrated (Romans 5:1-11), even for such undesirables in KIND as sinner; and with its reception is the security, for it was life with life for which He paid.

The issuance is FROM love, and it is FOR mercy, while its procedure is IN GRACE, of which Christ is FULL, just as the love of God is past knowledge like the peace of Philippians 4, not subject to defilement, delimitation or disregard, crimping, cramping, pinching or reconstruction. The result is as broad as is the integrity of this love, inciting but not forcing, constraining but not imprisoning, reaching but not hustling; and through predestinative certainty, signalising and irresistible to those in whom its place is found, so that none gains the result of its flow and initiative, its spreading gift, but those to whom it is granted in divine omniscience. So does freedom have its outcome, in the ultra-pathological power of the wisdom of God, correlative to love having its income, in the spread of the net.

How beautiful is this integrity of love, how manifest is this profundity of grace, that not even man in his sins can abort the reality of the case, extend the application or minimise it. Christ is full of GRACE AND TRUTH, always was pre-incarnate, and pre-time, always will be, post world and its chronological compressions!

What then do we learn from II Corinthians 5:19-21 ?

What God in Christ was doing, Paul in Christ is applying, imploring reconciliation for ANY, since this was the scope of the action towards ALL. That 'towards' is interesting, since it is just this which is found in Romans 5:18. Just as the offence of Adam led to judgment becoming fit in writ for all, so by Christ's righteousness, justification is toward all. SOME may escape the former because of the latter, that is avoid the judgment because of the righteousness of Christ, and so be relieved of the applicability of the former because of the actual application to faith of the latter. Yet judgment has just ground against ALL to whom it rightly reaches; just as justification has extension toward all, to whom it moves in the reconciling advent of Christ. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.

What an entreaty follows, therefore, from the love of God in Paul as the Spirit of God gives him utterance, in II Cor. 5:20-21; and how decisive is the gift, in this, that Christ was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, the transfer being in the spread of the net scope, towards all; the transference being actualised for faith.

God so loved the world; God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

It was not some other world; it was not some other God; it was not some other burden, purpose or objective which was held in view. Nor for that matter, was it by some other method than by faith (II Corinthians 5:7, Romans 1:16 ... 'to everyone who believes'). It is revealed "from faith to faith", Paul proceeds in Romans, for it comes to the faith of the heart of the prophet into which it is instilled, its words resolved into clarity and its substance conveyed with precision (I Corinthians 2:9-13), and it operates effectively in the heart of the hearer to whom faith comes.

This is exactly as in the propitiatory sacrifice of the atonement for Israel, where the priest would act for ALL of Israel, though with no help to any without faith, and where the goat would be sent, with the sin burden by spiritual consignment, upon it, into the wilderness, on behalf of all, but by no means of those whose hearts did not yield there sin, just as the sin was put in the individual case upon the head of the lamb, but by no means by the one who did not so act! (Leviticus 4, 16-17).

WHAT IS AND WHAT IS NOT, AND WHY

Let us return to the maritime, such as Galilee, where Christ spent so much of His time.

Confusion on the one hand of the spread of the net and those included in its take, and on the other, of the love of God with the latter only is as fundamental to the useless and unserviceable controversy, with or without acrimony, in this arena as is the dabbling contrary to the word of God, in fiddling with His love. Indeed, the disjunction of the scope in terms of salvation of the love of God, in concept, like a variable illumination light switch, from its spread towards all, to delimit it in terms of the called, is as biblically erroneous as is the extension of the cover of the catch to what never entered it.

As to the Gospel enshrining this love, its misuse means death! in its restoration is life. God seeks the restoration. Where this is not to be found, then man is like reprobate silver (Jeremiah 6:17ff.), subject to heat, but in fact, on top as froth and scum.

Not by generic failure from construction is this so, nor even by the sin which universally parades itself in the lairs of man. Its ground lies deeper. It is  despite generic love from One only, in the face of the outreach of that divine Creator whose redeeming love is as broad as His creation (Col. 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, II Cor. 5:19), in earth and indeed, even in worlds above. God as Creator has the same outreach scope towards mankind and image bearing ones relevant to salvation, as in redemption. If some remain fallen, yet was the good Samaritan Saviour more than willing to bring them back, for love is like that, and God is love.

Before such ultimate realities and in the light of such categories, with truth the criterion, there comes as a consummation, salvation, foreknown and implemented sovereignly; or else in face of the divine dynamic, there yet comes misery for the deep defiles of miscreancy.

If they stumble as ordained (I Peter 2:8, cf. Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 11), it is because they are predestined to it, that is, to ignore divine grace as they continue in their chosen sins; but if predestined, then it is as foreknown in the light of the love of God, to be such,  a love in which the pre-incarnate Christ participated in heaven in counsel, as on earth in the Cross.

Love is the medium, predestination is the implement, grace prevailing is the consummation of the love, and rejection is the man-preferred opacity of some, known to God with that integrity which love has, and which it does not violate.

If salvation occur, it is the result of that love which is  both a ground of His expedition to earth and the impetus to pay for redemption on the Cross. If rejection is the outcome,  then it is a breach in the divine love, and a result of its rejection.

Thus, where redemption does not occur, where payment is not received,

	there sin leaves its indelible marking,
	scouring the soul,
	soiling the spirit,
	relentless in insistence,
	remorseless in ruin,
	inviolate in its violations,
	secreted in substance, inveterate in vice,
	grasping as it is clasped in the vice of its own doom.

Here is the love of God, leaving man divorced from nominality and superficiality. Reality is unrescinded. Sovereignty is interpreted by love, free of shove, unlimited in desire, explicit in design, its program the Gospel, light in darkness, delighting in the deliverance of man (cf. Proverbs 8:31).

Here then is the solution impervious to inconsistency, inadequacy and systematic compromise, and as well, free from the usual renegacy of reductionism used to make man into something manipulable, always with the exception of the creator of the philosophies, who somehow is always to be excluded from his own constructions.

In such a totality, there comes also both the reason

	for human universal emphasis on kindness, grace and sensitivity, even  though warped souls abuse mankind by vitiating its conditions of life, and
	for the revulsion when justice is not met (even in sport),  or pity does not operate.

These estimable qualities are not only matters of truth, to be met with action apt and appropriate, but have their ground in God, the image Maker for man. Moreover, when man REQUIRES pity and mercy, not to SHOW it is a contradiction so vulgar that death is its dispensation for abuse of life. This is featured and focussed in the parable found in Matthew 18:22ff., where one forgiven much refused to forgive little.

These are mere abortions, aberrations, but the truth is not so. Grace is normal for such a being as man, if not in practice, yet in principle; and the payment for the difference involved Calvary, while the power of God provided what, equally necessary, makes of man a reconstituted creation, where kindness and pity with grace are once more integumental, an alien choice now aborted through the grace of regeneration upon faith in Him who pays and provides.  Morever, He re-instals a free spirit (II Corinthians 5:17ff., Titus 3:4ff., John 3, II Corinthians 3:17), instead of a chained operating system, befouled, befuddled and occupied with alien activities, contrary to design, but permissible through liberty, while met by law! (cf. Romans 2-3).

Thus not nothing, but EVERYTHING has meaning^*5, and it has it because ALL is explained, NOTHING is left over and revelation is its own testimony, being testable both by validity considerations and verificatory ones (cf. *1 in the Epilogue, and TMR Ch. 5). Not only meaning, but purpose and plan are exposed, with the same integral efficiency and consistency as appear in the construction of the human body. It was not made in oblivion of its purpose; nor is its meaning to be found in obfuscation of the point of that purpose.

Moreover, as in the Bible references given at the outset, you see that the JUSTICE of God is exalted in as foundational; that His PRAISE is in terms of His KINDNESS  and TRUTH, EQUITY and POWER, inherent, while His RIGHTEOUSNESS is positively gloried in;  that His truth is sheer JOY and delight, a manifestation infinite in value, constituting man, when found and restored, indeed in the image of God. That is his proper and purposed field, and small wonder than when he finds it at last, in the Redeemer, he delight in it!

Reborn (John 3),  undistorted now and undefiled by dreams of dull aberration, as if glasses not for sight, but for distortion had been fitted, and flitted  in ... man not merely has access to truth, but to the grace needed to comprehend it, and the regeneration needed to relate wisely to it. Freedom for man, the sinner, through man, God as man, the sinless (I Peter 2, Isaiah 53),is now is found (John 8:30ff.) despite his defilements of conscience and conduct; for they are not merely atoned for, but rescued from, in those who have fled for refuge to the power of God protective God of salvation (Hebrews 6:19ff., 2:1ff.).

Thus the source and significance of grace, truth and justice, pity and kindness, alike appears, having no need  to conform to antithetical reductionist theories, enslaving thought to imagination. In such cases, force may be imagined supreme, giving no ground for grace, kindness or pity, as well as no source for truth by which such theorists could become rationally articulable themselves.

Thus grace is abundantly treated, exposed, focussed, used, displayed, illustrated in the Bible, its source shown, its necessity stressed, its value illuminated in truth! Accordingly,  you read in that central work of Romans, these words (colour added):

"For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,
so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.

"Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound.

"But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more,
so that as sin reigned in death,
even so grace might reign through righteousness
to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Instead, then, of being magnificent orphans, crying for causality (cf. Causes), begging for ground, mankind become image-bearing organs in the conspectus of a divinely instituted society, yes even children in a domain in which liberty is part of the law, and kindness part of the solution to its breach. Man is then to be seen as part of the loving purpose of God, not meaningless, like demented rubble, but meant to be found in God, and having foundered, given grace to be recast, reformulated (Colossians 3:10), as at the first. To this, by grace abounding, is given  the added benefit of being given everlasting redemption.

There is a complication: a smash-up always has this, and man is a smashed spirit, the main problem being blindness to the fact.

Thus you read on John 9:39-41:

"And Jesus said,

'For judgment I have come into this world,
that those who do not see may see,
and that those who see may be made blind.'

"Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him,

'Are we blind also?'

"Jesus said to them,

'If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you say,
‘We see.’
Therefore your sin remains.' "

This however is overcome by the POWER of God, who having foreknown all things (Isaiah 46, Ephesians 1), including who are His in all the integrity of a love which does not force, and has its own integrity, can remove the perilous film of spiritual opacity, the cataracts of occlusion, Himself!

If it is sad than many prefer autonomy to liberty with the Father, through the Redeemer, yet it is not so sad as it would be if they were lost because of a lack of love, or a deficiency of wisdom, or an absence of truth. Compared with that, the self-indulgence of rejecting the Gospel is small; for it is one thing to earn your own devastation, it is quite another to be author of your own destruction, kicking at deliverance as you defer deliverance, or defame the grace of God.

On the other side: what gratitude is sufficient or co-ordinate with the wonders of the Lord's provision for mankind; for assuredly "the grace of God which brings salvation has spread to all men" from Him who "gave Himself that He might redeem us" and this not only "from every lawless deed", which is magnificent, but to "purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works".

Thus "when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared", it was "not by works of righteousness that we have done," as if we were on approbation following such a kindness, but for those who are believers, who have been "justified by His grace", so becoming "heirs", then "according to His mercy He saved us," and this not in mere word. It was by "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (as we read in Titus 2-3). Such is the word of Paul in the epistle to Titus, concerning the people of God, saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2).

	Nor was this Holy Spirit grace minimal, but He "poured out on us abundantly". Even as to that, it was not in an atmospheric uncertainty, but "through Jesus Christ."
	Nor was this same Jesus Christ merely some example, He who has redeemed us who believe in Him as the salvation of God, other than whom there IS no Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11), which we had to follow to find; but He came near, through the blood of the Cross, and in cross-cancellation of all sin, presented not some emissary, substitute or agent, regent or ruler, but Himself, God manifest in the flesh, the word of God incarnate, as LORD.
	Not in the vagueness of hope, but in the vaults of heaven is to be found our King and Lord (Acts 3:19ff.); and
	not He is to be found, not in remote recessiveness, but as presented by the Holy Spirit, and this
	not in some meagre way, but liberally, and not without a word has He gone, but the Book of the Lord He has left; and
	not alone are we left, as if orphans, but He Himself, alive physically from the dead, practical and apt for every human circumstance has by His own presence given us all things necessary for godliness (II Peter 1), whether guidance (cf. Acts 18:9-10), or strength (Ephesians 3:16), or illumination to understand (Ephesians 1:17), or assurance of our place each one, as a child of God (Romans 8:16), or peace in the doing of His will (Philippians 4:1-6).

How grand in conception, how loving to perfection, how close in communion, how practical in performance, whether in Exodus or Calvary, is the Lord of creation towards us, mere men in His image, and vitiated at that, by sin; and how intimate are His words, which exhaust every problem, answer every question concerning man, his origin, destiny and the provisions and meaning for him. How glorious are the words of God in the Book of the Lord, resonant throughout, consistent, clear and challenging, tender and comforting, repudiating sin and folly - themselves grief and sorrow creators - and relishing truth, yes and constituting it in written form as the Lord, our Saviour has it consist in Himself!

Appealing, entreating, knowing, precluding error in His foreknowledge, ensuring grace in love in the illimitable amplitudes of His kindness, He cries to man, the whole race (Proverbs 8):

“Listen, for I will speak of excellent things,
And from the opening of My lips will come right things,
For My mouth will speak truth …

“Hear My instruction and be wise, do not disdain it,
Blessed is the man who listens to Me, watching daily at My gates,
For whoever finds Me, finds life, and obtains favour from the Lord,

“But he who sins against Me wrongs his own soul
All those who hate Me love death.”

 

More available than air, for this may be polluted or evacuated, kinder than the radiant sun, for this may burn, sweeter than the purest water, for this may be tepid, God in His glory calls to the children of mankind. He calls freely (Isaiah 55), He cries pardoning for those who come, and that, it is abundant like the rain in Spring, clear like the echoes resounding in the mountains, personal as a face, profound as the oceans, and more so, for they have limits, but He ? None.

Who would not be consumed, if it were possible, not with envy as some are, but with gratitude, as if every cell in the body cried,

Thank you, Lord, and every cranial nerve echoed,

Amen, O Lord, and every thought witnessed,

How great is the grace of the Lord, who has brought a salvation in which as children, we are now inhabited by His Holy Spirit, cherished at the table of His grace, and will then delight ourselves in the God of our Creation and the Lord of our redemption, in heaven, freer than any bird, more elevated in understanding (I Corinthians 13) than any pedant, closer than any water to the rocks over which it flows, to our God!

NOTES

 *1

That is, Epilogue, *1. See also SMR Chs. 5, 10.

*2

See:

Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  9, incl. End-note 1 (esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk),

 Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch.   7,  including *1;

News  80;  44,  SMR 4.

*3

Excursion:

DECRETUM HORRIBILE FAREWELL,

DATUM OF DELIGHT, WELCOME!

This aspect is covered in Predestination and Freewill, as in To Know God ... Ch. 7, from which latter site the extract below is taken.

Is it then left to the psychological situations of man to kept it intact ?

 

Not at all. Man is no more able to cut it than is the baby in the womb. Faith is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), and saving faith is one of the donations of deity (Matthew 16:17, John 6:65), and once given, with Christ its object, salvation its platform and the cross of Christ its focus, His resurrection its lead, it can no more be vanquished, quenched or smothered than the sun by a butterfly (John 10:27-28, I Thess. 5:9-10). YOU come, HE keeps; and indeed, it is only by His grace that you CAN come; and it is only by His predestination that you DO come; but that predestination, yes you have guessed it, it is IN LOVE, for God IS love, and mere time no more distorts that time that does a leaf distort stainless steel struts.

 

The knowledge that surpasses time no more obliterates the reality of what occurs in time than it does the words spoken in time: as HE IS, so God has chosen, and as WE ARE, so He knows us, and as to Him, He does not change whether in the character of Christ on earth or before all time; nor does He elect quiddities, but people; and this neither for their merits in any regard, nor for their superiorities with X-factors of God-suitability, a nascent superiority (cf. Chapter 1,  *2), but in the way love acts, when it is the love of God, neither subverting nor submitting, but penetrating in truth with the mercy, where it is fitting to be placed, with love where it is received. It is He who knows all, and as He is, so He acts.

 From Section II in Predestination and Freewill, we have this on the same topic:

There is no mystery in the love of God in this, that to all is His love first directed, and where received, it is never lost; for it is not a passing mode or mood, when God begets a spiritual child through the redemption in Christ, but an unsurpassable gift, unsearchable in depth, illimitable in time and beyond our time, the work of a Father who has added to His family, and though men may rob children of earthly families, those who can rob the family of God do not exist. Their ‘seed’ remains in them, as physiologically in the parallel, it also does in a family, as I John 3:9 teaches.

In conclusion, we must stress anew, that this system currently under review does not as it stands avoid the merit problem. Men differ; and as Augustine pointed out, must be known in order to be predestined. Does some X factor of superior God-suitability in man^88* (in part or by aspect) so to speak flash its superior pre-tempered but still availing smile, to One selectively inspecting? However conceived, X is the desired differential determinant before the Changeless One. In this, also, then we must modify such a view as here considered of sovereignty: and predict that we shall lose this part of its form at the Cross when we come to that final consideration of supernal predestination.

*88

God­suitability would be an exquisite and ultimate form of suitability, as an attribute for any man.

 

The thesis cited above proceeds to show in the Section III, the answer. The will of man as a function of image-of-God reality as conferred by the creative power of the living and loving God, while paralysed in operational facility through sin as the scripture teaches, is not nullified as to relevance, as the scripture teaches (cf. John 3:19, Luke 19:42ff.), nor does the love of God as taught, recede because of operational problems, readily overcome with foreknowing man before time and past all limitations, in His own omniscience. It is not even difficult.

In liberty as designed by God, there is nothing defunct, because it is ruined as a facility; its point and purpose remain. Hence in dealing with the will of man past man, God knowing man, elects those of mankind without any implication of merit, as in "God-suitability".

In fact, it is not the selection of what is nice for Him, but  indeed on the contrary, as far as possible from it (cf. Romans 5!, Deuteronomy 7:7-8); but what love finds with wisdom in its archetypal knowledge and pre-time understanding, is its own, rescuing with precisely the restraint observable in Jeremiah (cf. Ch. 2 above), as shown amid the passion and compassion pervasively in the appeals and demonstrations, spiritual reveilles and remonstrations, tender solicitudes, laments which from the heart come from the living God, as indited in the prophets, in Christ.

Romans 5 has this:

^"For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

^"For scarcely for a righteous man will one die;
yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

^"But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood,
we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

^"For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

What reconciliation ? that of which God declares in Colossians 1, that parallel passage:
 

"For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
having made peace through the blood of His cross."

Deuteronomy 7 reminds of the depth and perseverance, singularity and authenticity of the love of God, in that God IS love, and while marshy places remain so in their involvements, it is not qua marsh but qua preference, however indirectly interpreted,  that they stated end comes (John 3:19):

"For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7"The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers ..."

Love is the operative mode, which passes knowledge because it is that of the infinite God from no function or phase, way or mode of His missing, despite the fact that its exclusion is fatal to His creation, seek it though He does.

With the depth of God, the archetype which is man, is individualised: in itself in this regard paralysed, it yet is not being nullified, for God knows the man, the person whom He will restore to the image of Him who created him (Colossians 3:10), and each such one is rescued as in the reality beyond sick response and feeble framework in recess, indeed, but not beyond God. It is not beyond but by the power of the God who honours the reality which HE has made, and seeks for one as for all (I Timothy 2, John 3:16ff.), predestining the elect as a result in sequence as in Romans 8:30ff..

We can have nothing to do with any X-factor implied where the human will is unscripturally removed from relevance, as if to make a welter of the thing, as if man being not satisfied with the word of God has to remove the very form and formula, format and function which makes man to be man, simply because it is as it were, in an inoperable cancer situation as far as man himself is concerned. Not so is it before God, for whom nothing shall be called impossible, a lesson as deep as is the incarnation of the infinite God in Christ Jesus.

The X-factor, the preferability to God for some feature, function or differential,  this is the determinant when the love of God is not pervasive, inculcatory and profound, in scope as in quality, as it is continually depicted to be in the Bible. Such wry byproducts of distortion receive their due systematic sinking!

This is what results when you rule out the scripturally DEFINED as relevant, human will, defunct for its own manipulation though it mercifully be; for here in this scripturally DEFINED love of God as operative, in the midst of infinite wisdom and knowledge is eternal security; and here the love of God, overflowing all barriers, finds its own with what it has made with the realities granted, despite the barbarities which brought ruin to fallen man.

It is not nothing, but man that God knows, in advance. It is not the contemporary format, we know, which is in view in divine prevision' for it is a foreknowledge APART FROM WORKS as Romans 9 makes so clear.

	If it is man that God knows, so that in God's love to mankind, there is seen in man the negative determinant -
	even in a form in which God does the actual sovereign selection, but with the realities of the case in view before His own pervasive love, as the scripture repeatedly affirms it to be in scope, before any "therefore" sets in, at the subsidiary and logically subsequent level of predestination as in Romans 8:30ff.:
	then the exclusion rests in its force in man.

This is the divine indictment and it follows from the divine revelation of the nature of God and of man, with the advent of his Fall. In the light of divine knowledge, the case is declared.

It is statedly the will of man. He is not willing. He would not.

If it were otherwise, then it is God in an internal and mysterious will, with limit in love, which is the source of the abortion of love, the limitation of love, its withholding at the relevant level. Mysterious indeed is a love which says it is one thing and is envisaged as another; but this is part of the mystery of sin, not of the limitations to God, humanly envisaged but divinely denied! Let God be God, not the theologian's mimicry, however unintentional. 

Man may wish to impose a limit in the actuating love of the God who is love.

The stated will of God however, what statedly "pleased the Father" is that all be reconciled. The emphasis as in Colossians and I Timothy 2 is categorical, statuesque, universal in conception and word, a matter of what lies between God as God and man as man.

The stated ground of exclusion, in view of that, is the will of man. The stated means is sovereign, in that man is incompetent for the case, though the case be such. Hence in sovereign selection God deals with the will, in whatever form it pleases Him, so that the resultant is not some hypothetically imagined X-factor, or mysterious factor in God having its will or way in the exclusion from the subject, man, but the will of man being assigned as the ground by God in spite of His love.

This is pervasive in the Bible (cf. Ch. 2 above, SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven ... Ch. 4); and it is presumption to put into God's will what He denies, and into man's destiny what God does not affirm. Not mystery but aborted love is the ground of exclusion; and not man's petty efforts to deal with eternity, but God's well-grounded knowledge which is the basis, in terms of that very love which He affirms. What is mystery indeed is that God should SO love (cf. Ephesians 3, John 3!), that He should SO sacrifice for SUCH as we are!

If it were some other criterion in  God than love aborted, then His love is assailed contrary to scripture, as if it did not quite stretch so far as that: this He denies. This is not only precarious, perilous but a punitive parallel to an expedition into the celestial to 'correct' it from shat it says, to what is desired. But why desired!

Thus you run into a double barrier for the endeavour to limit the initial outthrust of the love of God to mankind (as in John 3:16, Titus 2-3, Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, I Peter 3:9), made in the most categorical and pervasive possible formats, now in this and now in that way. First it contradicts the Bible, what HE has to say. It is never wise to contradict God; it is fatal to do so when He is describing HIS OWN HEART! It is a discriminatory, prejudicial cocktail of poison, or as Spurgeon put it, the endeavour to do a grace-in-reverse act; and to characterise God in terms of what He does NOT show to those who do NOT come (grace and love to the relevant degree), it does, as that preacher rightly depicts it, represent a hideous caricature of the love of God (see: Jacob and Esau in Treasury of the New Testament).

It is not actually however a mere logical reconstruction which is in view (see Spurgeon in Predestination and Freewill Section 2, and 3), but a failure to find what God actually says Himself, about His love and election. Sovereign ? of course, how else ? did He consult some physician (naturally not! as in Isaiah 40).

That having been said, Of what kind is this sovereignty ? It is one of the God who IS LOVE, we find in I John 4. Hence He sovereignly ensures what in love He sovereignly finds, the love being of the dimension He notes. The human will being defunct from selection of God in itself because of pathology (I Cor. 2:14), He does it Himself, but with the love assigned omnipotently, and effected in accord with its own integrity. In this way, both Calvin and Wesley err, but in opposite directions, so that their (unscripturally named - I Cor. 3), exponents inveterately assail each other, like tweedle-dum an tweedle-dee, relishing the combat, and licking the wounds alike.

Where however the human will is, as in the Bible, make the basis of the exclusion from the salvatory results of the love of God as defined by God, then it is there that the matter must rest, even if  in the sovereign wisdom and foreknowledge of God, the matter has already, before time,  been put into the predestinative category, which is the executive arm of the foreknowledge as in Romans 8:30ff., and so in that domain, fulfilled irresistibly. That function is not a denial of liberty but its interpretation in the pathological state, relative to God, in which it is to be found in the human race.

Man remains in whole responsible; his charms, disarming features and other attributes which may be conferred upon him, these are not relevant, as in Deuteronomy 7, 9. Love is its own reason. God is love. Freedom is no farce; reductionism has no ground left under its fallen feet; responsibility is utter for man; equity is vindicated, vice is exposed, conscience is founded, and it is philosophy alone which founders, along with those self-made foundlings who embrace its devious and deceitful confusions.

Man in the face of the defined love of God becomes answerable as to WILL in the defined judgment of God (John 3:16, 3:19), and in terms of the defined purpose of God (coming not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved - John 3:17), and this in the defined state of the fallen human will. Moreover, this is the approach, the divine attitude sovereignly chosen and quintessentially His own, not only in this world but in things in heaven as well (Colossians 1:19ff.). What it "pleased the Father" to do (Colossian 1:19), must be released from the ghettos to which so many seem to wish to confine it. It is precisely as stated by God of God.

Hence man is accountable to the uttermost, his will is citable in complete realms: there is no mystery about the scope of God's love, for it is self-declared, nor is there a riddle about the grounds of ultimate divorce from God; for these are stated and defined by God likewise (John 3:19), in terms of the coming of the light which is defined to be the incarnate Jesus Christ, the Messiah. If you wanted something systematic, this is it. It is personally systematic about persons, and it is presented by the original and Maker of persons.

The exclusion found in the exclusion zone: this lies not in a divine reluctance or mystery here, a crimping, cramping or drained disposition of love, but in the direly and repeatedly assigned ground, the will of man. That is how the sovereign will and word of God wants and declares it to be.

Of course, envisaged without the practical and functional criterion of sin as a necessary operational limit, man is readily assessable without any relevance to the superiority-inferiority situation of character: what results only from sin, in that what is inferior in spiritual quality is MARRED, is not then relevant, for the purpose. Thus the will is citable without any rational difficulty. Our present point however is simple: it IS cited. Mystery contrary to divine divulgement is, regrettably, mere equivocation. God has spoken. What more is to be said!

This is the datum delightul, not the decretum horribile. The Gospel is not about horrible mysteries but divine effulgence, liberality and love; not about cutting divine corners, but condemning human rejection, not about satisfying internal and secret divine mysteries, but about exhibiting the divine declaration of the utterness to the uttermost of the love of God; and that being love, it assigns the ground of rejection in view of its stated scope and quality, quite freely. It is the will of man assessed by, through, in and before time began, BY GOD. The result is applied by God sovereignly, but that is technique. The essence logically as in Romans 8:30, PRECEDES.

This, then,  we note also for completeness, but our current topic is the datum itself, the criterion for selection, not the mode of application of the selective result..

Thus the exclusion zone is not mysteriously erected as men marvel; it is divinely announced as to any 'mystery' of its erection, that this lies in the rebellious heart of man. That man should reject a love so vast that the book of the Lord declares that God IS love (not that He is nothing else, but there is no place, part  or perspective in Him where His love is confined, restrained from due operation, intimidated or for reasons of state, fate or anything else, given a ticket of leave): this may seem mysterious. Rather however is it wonderful, a thing of profundity for contemplation with every faculty, delight and delectation (cf. Beyond the Curse.)

Quite beyond man are the horrible interstices of sin (Jeremiah says so - 17:9-10). Those who want to become experts in pathology are welcome to become so; and ONLY GOD can plumb the hideous depths of sin in the human heart which is "deceitful above all things". As to the love of God, however, this intensifies the mysterious because distorted depths of man's folly, because it is so noble, generous, free and while discriminating as to the nature of reality, to discern it aright, yet non-discriminatory in the nature of its kindness. Thus, it is the same, whether in repeated divine principle in the word of God, or in the practical, historical realities of its offer. Such is the case, on the one hand, as in I John 2, Colossians 1 and on the other,  throughout Jeremiah intensively and continually, as new plan or proposal, one upon another, is presented to the rebellious people, if by any means, even now, or a little later, they might heed - such IS love!

The sin of man is if you like, mysteriously horrible, but correlative to man being in the image of God, so that what is defiled, like the smash of some super-sized supersonic jet, is an amazing tangle of seeming witless complexity - though actually closely related to the nature of the crash! The love of God is delightful direct, self-defined, and needs no human drugs of philosophy and false reasonings to be inserted, as so common in this field, as if to 'save' it from this and that.

As shown so often in the hexad 

ON PREDESTINATION and FOREKNOWLEDGE,
LIBERTY and NECESSITY,
RESPONSIBILITY, DUTY and CREATIVITY,

 this love of God, as it is as scripturally given, in the setting of foreknowledge, predestination, liberty and necessity, responsibility, duty and creativity, yes and judgment no less: it is in this total context in the human life, that there is that unique and total harmony of all components in salvation met nowhere else.

{Cf. Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch.   6, *2, (will and meritless operation; Ch.   2 (selections); 
The Pride of Life ... Ch. 3,    *1,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.  11, esp. pp.172ff.; 
Great Execrations, Great Enervations,  Greater Grace Ch.   9;
His Wounds Opened Eternity ...Ch.   4 (also contrasted with Islamic deficiencies); Sparkling Life Ch.  7, Earth Spasm ... Ch.  6;
Scaling the Heights Ch.   5.}

Intemperately throwing away this or that component merely leaves God defamed and Christian Apologetics assaulted in-house! So to discard, as the snake discards its skin, it may seem liberating, but when you are dealing with what God has dealt to us, His eternal nature, principles and practical desire, such discard, qualification or distortion is a process most unwise; but above all, wholly contrary to the word of God. In mathematics a small alteration in the most minute particle of a proof can confound all irrepressibly. How much more does this tampering for philosophic penchants, or aid to God, or other needless or even feckless reason, merely infect! In some it can reach the point of defection!

It is in the biblically defined data, as always, that total harmony, superlative perspective and all but stunning clarity is to be found. Yet man loves to have parties and partisans, and to propose this or that, beyond or contrary to the word of God. Alas, on top of this, not seldom is to be found the  overweening pride in the departure, as if someone were boasting of departing in a P & O liner on a cruise, with only one error, that he missed the boat. The boat in this case, it is what is written; it is here necessary to get on board and to stay there, in order to expound the word of God, of the infinitely wise Father. 

Errors of this partisan and prejudicial kind may be understandable as theologians wrestle in this or that match; but after the match is over, the ball is past, then it is time to stop dancing and come back to the intensively clear fact. God loves. Man rejects. God judges. God did not come to judge, but to save.

The condemnation following this, is simple: Light rejected in the face of this Messianic coming, as focussed in brilliant lights by John 1-2,  and in the face of its knowledge and presence, and power and wisdom. This is its own condemnation. Light-rejecting because of darkness-preference, before the exposed face of God: this is the asserted finale, ground, criterion and result. HOW it comes about is also stated, and it has been biblically explored above; but in any case, this has NOTHING to do with the fact that this is the stated criterion in the face of the stated purpose of God. This is the program for purpose and power on the part of the Almighty, and what He resolves must be done, is done. That is the positive fact. In the light of this, negativity finds here its reference point, divinely defined.

What then do we find ? It is this.

In Deuteronomy 29:29 in context, we find the account of what God has proposed, propounded and done. It is the basis of a covenant. Then in this verse we learn that the secret things belong to God. In the nature of the covenantal case, for the Old Testament, here in Deuteronomy in such terms affirmed, what are these secret things ?

They are precisely as Paul so greatly stresses in Colossians 1:25ff., Ephesians 3:4ff., and indeed in Ephesians 1:9-10,

	the fulness of the elements of the Gospel,
	fulfilled, effulgent and consummated in Christ for ever,
	for Jew and Gentile in equality of intensity;
	Christ in you the hope of glory.

They are those not then made manifest, in the Old Testament at Moses' day, as now in the Gospel, as Calvary, Golgotha, and the details of the incarnation, the way of the will of God in reaching the Gentiles, the exquisite manner of it as in Romans 11, where in vv. 33ff., it becomes a subject of a paean of delight in the sublime, pervasive counsel of God, over time, in conducting many children to eternity.

Thus, in the scope of it lies the full manner of the atonement, its inflexible fidelity to one and to all from whatever source, in whatever domain so reached, through the impulsion of the glory of the love of God (Colossians 1:19ff., John 3:15ff.). Magnified in the crucifixion, verified in the resurrection and the ascension, it is to be applied in the second coming of Christ to reign, amid the intimate fellowship of Jew and Gentile for whom is reserved an inheritance undefiled, incorruptible, which never fades away (I Peter 1:1-5). Just as now,  it is Christ in you, the hope of glory, and His coming reign on this earth,  then the morning star arises in the hearts: they see God face to face, in His infinite perfection.

In full or in part, such things were not then as they are now, made known, but they are, each in its time, brought to the full light of the day of Christian life ,as the Lord moves from the first dawnings of their beauty to the full noon of His revelation. Not fully known then, later they would be when their secret quality or element would be released from the glory of the wisdom of God to the full parity of revelation with all else (cf. John 16:12 – “I still have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now.”)  In each phase, one is given the criterion in its current format and degree, until the consummation in and of Christ in His gore, glory, rule, reign and power should arrive!

It is best, when dealing with God, to be DEALT WITH; for HE is the teacher. It is best not to deal with what these secret and allied things are, when discovering the divine doctrine; but to discover them from His lips, What He denies, deny; what HE affirms, affirm; what He leaves out, leave out. In Apologetics, one can, to be sure, construct matters from time to time to MANIFEST the nature of a case and rebut and expose negative approaches, and to SHOW the correctness of the divine word that God's eternal nature and power are obvious, as in Romans 1:17ff.; but this is logical exercise to establish truth, and not in itself teaching.

The confusion of these things concerning the love of God, the sovereignty of God, the responsibility of man and the will of man,  has been a considerable, wholly extraneous and unnecessary blight in the effectiveness of the Christian Church, leading to unacceptable degrees of schism. It is way beyond time (I Corinthians 3, esp. vv. 21-23) that such blights ceased;  for the follies of partisan, name-following bobby-soxing phases of folly is in the end a limitation on the sufficiency of the word of God, on God (cf. Psalm 78:41). If Israel often enough limited Him, it is no road for contentious Gentiles to follow! Indeed, such practices are potentially a traditional-esque trading of truth for convenience or human passion. Worse, as noted above, it is EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN. If PAUL could not so be named, as in I Cor. 3, how much less another outside the apostles,  other than the Lord. Yet PAUL would not have himself so treated!

It is high time we returned en bloc from those  'names', such as Luther, Calvin and Wesley, being thankful indeed and greatly for the wonders of some of their ministrations, as for their courage. It is however no part of good tennis to revere the racket. The scope and spirit of the thing is beyond that. How much more is the word of God beyond these partisan premisses and their use for division, an explicit rebelliousness outside and contrary to the word of God. If this is so in principle, even before the details are considered, how much more when all is under review!
 

Thus the names-passion must give way, Christians letting them give way to the only name which matters, so that as in Colossians 1:18, immediately before the verse disclosing the divine facts of the love of God, "in all things He may have the pre-eminence."

Who is this "He" ? Is it some convicted, converted sinner ? It is not so stated. It is not even Christ plus (whether a name or any other form of tradition cf. Mark 7:7).In context, the "He" here in Colossians, it is the One who is the "first-born over all creation" and that is CHRIST! Let us get back there, and the air is full of peace, in the blessed love of God.

The word of God written needs no help, any more than does Christ in the performance of salvation, need man's help.

What helps TO it, is not to be put beside it, whether in notion, or schism, or 'name'. As the Westminster Confession makes so delightfully clear, possibly its best of many good features: synods and the like can and do err, and nothing outside the word of God is to be used as a standard. Formulations of men may be a help! They cannot be directive. The word of God itself must always rule, not in principle merely, but in actual practice. The self-congratulatory traditionalism of the Pharisees showed us enough to bring down the most exquisite wrath of Christ, as in Matthew 23: we do not need as in Mark 7, to make the word of God of no effect by making this or that formula its guide, as if on a guided tour.

Let us be all means profit from what many have done; but let us rest on the word itself, knowing WHY we hold this or that FROM it, and exercising ourselves in its study, not with the distorting zeal for the mere sustaining of something which can come very close to a sect! In Christ Himself, and in the word of God Himself, must man abide, and keep the rules of the faith, just as Christ abides in His people. Then is health and strength and joy and the power of God for the purposes of God.

*4 This concept is in fact covered in *3 above, as part of its excursion.

*5A

A categorical case is found in Jeremiah 12:6-8, where the "dearly beloved" nation, indeed "the dearly beloved of My soul" now "cries out against Me" like a lion in the forest.

In the very next verse we find the consequence of this vile violation and vilification of God: "Therefore I have hated it." Tender love turns in this transmutation of initial responsiveness to categorical hatred of God, to a hatred for the reprobate relic of humanity, like a dwarf star, burnt out, a cinder, once wood.

The impelling force is clear relative to Israel: atrocity has come in replacement of awe, enmity in the place of friendship, corrosion of truth in the place of holding forth a banner for it, guilt instead of godliness, chronic calumnies in life and word, where tender mercies should be sought from the Lord, false gods paraded, as men masqueraded as religious, but sank into unclean religiosity, like professors of mathematics not only feeling, but teaching and insisting with violence, that 2 plus 2 equals negative infinity.

The retarding desire in the Lord, against judgment, this is no less clear. It is the "dearly beloved of My soul" who though "My heritage" is divorced as in Hosea, from the divine faithfulness in hypocritical mouthings (cf. Isaiah 29:13), turgidity for truth, bellicosity instead of beauty; and the love which was intense, becomes a hatred. While one may not quench the smoking flax (Isaiah 42 shows this divine grace), and while a blazing fire that crackles and burns with green wood most moodily is in need of vast attentions fast, if smoke and coldness is not to infest the house, yet where the fire threatens to burn down the house with petrol poured on it by desire, it becomes a loathsome thing, incendiary not acclimatising, an enemy, and not a comfortable friend. One may try to set it in order; but in the end, one is what one shows. Where mere mouthings replace actualities, confusion and cruelty alike result, so that the action must be taken.

It is, as more generally in trend, in Romans 1:178:25:

^"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
because what may be known of God is manifest in them,
for God has shown it to them.

^"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead,
so that they are without excuse,
because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful,
but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

^"Professing to be wise, they became fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

^"Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts,
to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
who exchanged the truth of God for the lie,
and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,
who is blessed forever. Amen.  For this reason God gave them up to vile passions."

THEREFORE God gave them up... FOR THIS REASON God gave them up ... Thus we read.

Though God was OBVIOUS yet they fought against Him. "Professing to be wise, they became fools."

It was in this irremediable renegacy in them which was the criterion (as in John 3:19), so that they were found like a cancer, strange flesh, disordered, distorting, crushing, infecting.  Not what they were generically called to be, they were now far even from what they were categorically enabled in evidence to see. THEREFORE divine action was taken to match the disease in view of its ultimacy, before Him, who nevertheless presents the Gospel (as in Romans 1:16) which is the power of God to salvation. Those tasting and trifling with this have no remedy (Hebrews 6, and 10). And assuredly what SIGHTINGS of the power of God man has had, in the teeth of which, he turns to trifles and poses as philosopher, more vain than a rather dull school child, incapable of sight because his eyes he has closed (Matthew13:14-15 cf. Highway of Holiness, Path of Peace, Way of Truth Ch. 5).

Yet in the case of Israel as just noted in Jeremiah 12, the Lord later proceeds (as in the parallel Hosea 1-3), since this is a covenantal matter, to note that they WILL after being practically dissolved, who dissolved the relationship with the Lord over generations of folly, have their penalty resolved. God will act and disentangle them from their captors, tormentors and torrid times, and show mercy (as in Romans 11:25 likewise).

THEN they will see with open eye, and THEN the consequences of sin will be born and borne away by Christ, than whom there is no other Saviour, with whom there is life unique and eternal, from whom comes judgment as well as rejoicing (cf. John 9:39-41). And why judgment ? In that very passage in John 9 (bold added), Christ TELLS them. "If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say, 'We se,' THEREFORE your sin remains."

But HOW would  they have no sin ? It is BECAUSE men preferred darkness to LIGHT, when the light defined here as the incarnate Christ HAS COME, that they are condemned (John 3:19), in the very face of the divine provision for Him who DID NOT COME to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17). It is time the word of God was faced, not defaced. It is as in John 15:20-25:

"Remember the word that I said to you,

    ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’

"If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.
If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.

"But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake,
because they do not know Him who sent Me.

"If I had not come and spoken to them,
they would have no sin,
but now they have no excuse for their sin.

"He who hates Me hates My Father also.

"If I had not done among them the works which no one else did,
they would have no sin;
but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father.

"But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law,
‘They hated Me without a cause.’ "

What divides is NOT the sin in the first instance in the least; it is no lack of love and concern on the part of the God of all comfort, of the One WHO IS LOVE: it is statedly other. It is that despite the availability of a sin-chomping and guilt swallowing largesse from the God of salvation, they starve their souls in the presence of largesse, die of thirst in the presence of pure snow waters, melted in the mountains of grace and sent in exuberance, and close the mouth, except to libel the Lord and distance themselves from His proffered pity and pardon, closing their eyes in case they should see.

It is precisely as in Jeremiah 18:11-17 (bold added), where

despite the divine desire, investing man with love and grace in profundity and abundance
with every desire for good, there is the response 'no hope',
so that it is a 'very horrible thing' , which Israel does,
despite the divine incandescence of desire, and pitiful mercy, zealous concern:
one which other peoples should regard with understandable stunning and staggering astonishment.

"Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the LORD.

"Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you:
return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.

"And they said,

'There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.'

"Therefore thus says the LORD:

" Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things:
the virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.

"Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon which comes from the rock of the field?
or will the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken?

"Because my people have forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity,
and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths,
to walk in paths, in a way not cast up,
to make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing:

every one that passes by will be astonished, and wag his head.

"I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy;
I will show them the back, and not the face, in the day of their calamity."

Indeed, it is as in Jeremiah 3:2-5:

"Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see:

Where have you not lain with men?

By the road you have sat for them

Like an Arabian in the wilderness;

And you have polluted the land

With your harlotries and your wickedness.

"Therefore the showers have been withheld,

And there has been no latter rain.

You have had a harlot’s forehead;

You refuse to be ashamed.

"Will you not from this time cry to Me,

 

‘My father, You are the guide of my youth?

Will He remain angry forever?

Will He keep it to the end?’

 

"Behold, you have spoken and done evil things,

                                  As you were able."

 

To represent the supplier of waters as making it impossible to receive them is a distortion horrible, a chimera grotesque, an additive which negates, a cancellation of the divine character of love in this vital aspect, and a mischievous mistake, because reachable only by closing the eyes to the One who WOULD HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED,  and having made peace by the blood of the Cross, would have ALL TO BE RECONCILED in heaven or on earth! (Colossians 1, I Timothy 2), who in the New as in the Old Testament, for Israel as for mankind, makes clear His mind and stipulating, states it, exhibiting it in divine terms, displays it, manifesting it in incarnate mouth, declares it.

 As with Israel, despite their sin, abundance is continually offered and the ground of the negative result is placed squarely in the THEREFORE in the face of divine love and desire, so is it for "God so loved the world" that He gave, and it is too small a thing that He come for those to be saved in Israel, but it must be as a light to the Gentiles, that they too, except with shut eyes to the light in the face of divine entreaty and tears, follow the path to a damnation whereas it was not to condemn came He, but to save.

Where God on the one hand, and this world on the other are in view, and the connective tissue is love, and the injective gift is salvation, and the divine desire is NOT to condemn, fanciful footwork to distort the dance of grace into a kind of heartless differentiation that leaves what is findable and ignores what is in anguish is not merely wrong. It is ruinous.

On the other hand, actually to read what God says about His love, it is not merely delightful, it is on the very path to redemption.

It is the same case as in Luke 19:42ff., where Christ actually WEPT because Jerusalem refused to realise the obviousness of His messianic place, and THEREFORE did not come to Him (as in John 5:39-40). He did not weep because for mysterious reasons He did not really want them anyway, not to be saved; He wept because His often remonstrated love was grieved to lose "His heritage" by covenant, who for generations must suffer for their shame.

In that same John 5, we find that they "searched the scriptures" thinking in writing without faith and life, to find truth, but "you are not willing to come to Me". Here, as in Matthew 11:27, the fact of WILL is not made clear in the Authorised Version where simply "will not" is put. Christ brings whom HE WILL, we find in Matthew, and the people they are "NOT WILLING" to come to Him.

It is not simply that they will not come. They will not to come. HOW OFTEN (Matthew 23:37 cf. SMR Appendix B), He called (as in II Chronicles 36), but because they did not respond THEREFORE (II Chronicles 36:15-17), He acted, despite His invitations, entreaties, compassionate intimations and kindly resolves.

"And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers,
rising up early and sending them,
because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place.

"But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words,
and scoffed at His prophets,
until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people,
till there was no remedy.

"Therefore He brought against them the king of the Chaldeans,
who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary,
and had no compassion on young man or virgin, on the aged or the weak;
He gave them all into his hand."

*5

Cf. SMR Ch. 3.Sparkling Life ... Ch.  4 (certainty of biblical truth from the undivided divine ruling, and Israel's place an implication),

Red Alert Ch.   13 (liberty's loss can be entramelling on more sides than one),

Christ the Wisdom ... Ch.   6,

Wake Up World Ch.   5,  

Of the Earth, Earthy Ch.   4;

Dastardly Dynamics Ch.  10 (and unity);

Anguish, Ecstasy ... Ch.   2  (and living); 

Calibrating Myths, Machining Dreams and Keeping Faith  Preface,   3;

The Defining Drama Ch.   2 (and principles of enquiry);

History, Review and Overview Ch.    1 (man as a messy mensuration unit for the musing on the  meaningless).