CHRIST DID NOT COME IN VAIN
Christ did not come as the WORD of God from eternity (Micah 5:1-3) in order to tell Philip that having seen Him he has seen the Father, that He spoke the words commanded (John 14, and 12:48-50), in order that those who believe in Him might divorce either Him or His words from the truth, which incidentally He stated Himself to be, in correlation with the infinitely important fact that the knowledge of God is from Him, and it is in nothing short of it! (cf. John 17:1-3, 14:6,9, 16:12-15, Matthew 11:27, Revelation 22:3-4, Hebrews 13:8). There is then more to come when we see face to face; but nothing less! The picture presented is moreover from a PERSON, and God being personal, we have seen His nature and character, for God was manifest, and not hidden in the flesh.
Further, the Holy Spirit from which the revelation, as above, has come, is the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17), and as to God, the word of God having defined iniquity, we find that He is without iniquity (Deuteronomy 32:4). Morally indeed, and yet beyond all of this, we learn in Jeremiah 9:23-26, this -
" 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord,
exercising lovingkindness, judgment,
and righteousness
in the earth.
For in these I delight,' says the Lord.
" 'Behold, the days are coming,' says the Lord, 'that I will punish all who are circumcised with the uncircumcised— Egypt, Judah, Edom, the people of Ammon, Moab, and all who are in the farthest corners, who dwell in the wilderness.
"For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.' "
These qualities, then are what He delights in, and that is why He exercises them on the earth.
Again, Exodus 34:6 tells us of the Lord, this: that He is merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth. This is that truth which Christ is and was, and as which He was manifested, and it is this truth which by the Father He was commanded to speak.
Covenantally it is His law and His word which He writes on their hearts as in Jeremiah 31:33-34:
"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
"No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
Thus with His words so written in man's heart, does man know God, for the word is His personal depiction of the truth which He is. So does He express Himself, for whom it is impossible that He should lie (Titus 1). His word to man so far then from being disparate from His being, from His principles, from that in which He delights, enshrines all of these things.
We do not need to hypothesise concerning it, for without lies one's words depict one's thoughts; and when the Almighty is concerned, there are no mistakes either!
He is not a divorcee from His thoughts; and even if in some things what He does in the covenant and what we do is different in that one is the Author and the other the agent, yet what the Author approves is approved because it is His thought. He is not at war with His own thoughts, as if there were elements beyond His own control or desire, for that implies a creaturely scenario, where we speak of the Absolute Creator of all.
For ever and ever, THY WORD IS TRUTH. It is not true today and false tomorrow. The grass withers but the word of God is FOR EVER. It is not some incumbent, lying relaxed, an actual stranger to His principles, but it ENSHRINES what He is. In just the same way, Christ is not some strange object related in some unknown way to God, but HE WHO HAS SEEN HAS SEEN THE FATHER. Not, mind you, WILL see Him! It is current.
Thus the word of God is expressive of the truth, and Christ IS the truth. Word written and spoken, power presented and work wrought by word on earth by Christ, it is all one. The truth does not err.
Hence we find that Professor Clark divorces God from His own thoughts in this, that He makes things to be acceptable in an a postiori sense, as if God were all right despite His stipulations and imputed, continual breach of these in the way the world acts. This is wholly inadequate and institutes a divorce of what God has bound together, yes, more than bound, make in a seamless robe of His will, word and being.
In fact, God has REVEALED what He is like, what He likes, what is right and what is wrong, and judges on the basis of this revelation of what He is. Thus there is no escape for Gordon Clark from the point of what this world is like IF YOU REMOVE FREEDOM FROM IT in some strange eccentricity of arbitrariness, or indeed in any other way (cf. Little Things Ch. 5, SMR pp. 348ff., It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, News 122, Flashing Falls of Freedom). There is no way that God can have ascribed to Him a world like this without freedom, since then He is ultimately responsible for all, and hence is contrary to His own word, law and way, which makes it clear that preference is man's will, not the Lord's, when for man evil is its object. Calvin as you see in Appendix B of SMR got himself into a christological problem*1 in defiance of the word of God in Matthew 23:37, in the same diminution of liberty, but in a different aspect of it. To be sure, it appears he was somehow oblivious of this!
When therefore He declaims,
"O that you had listened to My commandments",
we are not to imagine that actually He is gratified at what occurred, since on such a delusive theory this would be precisely what He ordered into existence by His own will, nothing to the contrary.
When He continues,
"then you peace would have been like a river"
we should not construe it that this is the last thing He had programmed, since He had other ideas in force;
or that their
"righteousness would have been like the waves of the sea",
that He detested such righteousness in this case, and preferred an opposition to assail His stated love of it, as if His word and His actuality were in some kind of divorce, after the nature of created things, which try in the face of their own natures, by their own will, and suffer defeat when evil lures and passion controls.
Just as it is joy to the just to do judgment, so the righteous Lord loves justice (Proverbs 21:15, Psalm 37:28).
No, far from such imposition is God, nor does His divine nature in word or reason, have such collisions. He both speaks and acts as He is, since there is nothing to withstand Him, to contribute to Him, and all things He ordains reflect Him, whether in mercy, love, or judgment. (Cf. Sparkling Life... Ch. 4.)
In the Bible as in fact, GOD Himself makes some beings, and all mankind, to be free initially, so that Adam could heed or not, the injunction concerning the tree of life; and he chose not to do so. He assuredly did not make IN HIS OWN IMAGE a being who COULD NOT BUT sin! That would be the ultimate distortion! The conception is contradiction of the word of God, from the outset to the outcome.
The first man suffered divine judgment and wrath, not for doing what he was made to do, but for NOT doing what he was TOLD to do (cf. Romans 5). Wrath did not arise at His own product acting as caused to do; but at His own product acting as it was warned NOT to do. Wrath at the necessities of your own invention, no wilfulness intervening, declares an unstable mind, a divided will and detestation of what One has just done.
Now if anyone detests what he does, then in acting to make it, either he was ignorant, or else wilful, seeking to indulge some aspect of his being in order to execute wrath for some kind of satisfaction, or similar parallels of distortion of truth and wisdom. God is none of these, and has nothing to indulge, no place from which to gain, since there is nothing without power, since only system imposed could make it so, which is not true of the Creator, since the creator of THAT system would in fact be God, and this a mere derivative, being irrelevantly discussed.
Certainly, there was nothing wrong in principle, in an eternal and unchangeable sense, which God instituted. Far is this from reality, possibility or conception. Author of all, donor of all, comprehending all, truth His word reflected in His works, knowing the end from the first, to be 'wrong' would be to be against Himself, contrary to His own works in their created form, formula and formulation, violating their integrity with the integrity with which He chose to make them reflective of His will, as if He would seek to squeeze from His own works, some bizarre satisfaction, being a malcontent in Himself.
And HOW a malcontent ? Either by being UNABLE to become what He desired, which is impossible since it negates what the Creator is by nature and virtue of His place, or UNWILLING to be satisfied with what He HAS, which is impossible, since it entails as before, a failure in terms of constitutive inadequacy, hence a given constitution, so that a being other than God would be in view, irrelevant to the point at issue.
Wrong ? From God! It is here that Clark is right: it is a ludicrous irrationality, and indeed, without Him there could be no moral wrong, and by Him alone is there any (cf. News 19). This of course, contrary to Clark's presentation, in no way removes His declared principles from relevance, His stated motives, intentions, ways and morals from approach. He STATES these, so that any use of this ultimate sovereignty to remove them is like removing someone's big toe in order to make a shoe fit.
It is as now almost tiresomely the same, irrelevant; and in the case of God, a ghastly excision of His word which declares, as we have seen and will see, all these things. In becoming man, He showed that as man there is no violation in any way with His divine ultimates, the format being humble, but the situation expressive of His own reality, suitable for direct involvement as Himself. Nothing forced His sublime beauty once it took on the form of man, to sin. It was not that sort of a nature; for otherwise it would neither have been in His image, nor brought the problems of self-determination (limited, but not absent in man), nor been available for His incarnation!
There was then only righteousness in all He did, and so it is since He does not change. What then ? There was simply a structure which abounding in wonder, abounded in disaster if wilfully misused.
It is this which is the disjunction, and not any metaphysical malingering, or irrelevant revelation, as if He should declare what is righteous, His love for it, its issuance from Himself, in His word to all generations, its depth in His being, for any generation, and its ultimate and invariable truth for one as for all, and yet in some way not love to act in just the way He declared!
Thus the three elements combine and cohere most sweetly in their annihilation of any evil-made man: the utter integrity of God, the utter love and mercy of God, and the distortion both of logic and His word to make it appear that there is something 'other' which motivates Him, or actuates His willing and dealing, as if 'evil' in our world needed such an extraneous advent for divine content.
None of these things is either rational or revealed, either the denial of what Clark (with Elihu in Job) rightly stresses, or what he wrongly seeks to remove. Sovereignty and relevant liberty mix like twins, each unable to be forgotten, unless one should choose to dream. One may, but not here. One might, but only if words, meanings, affirmations and the nature of personality coherence be all put in a boat, and sent over Niagara Falls.
It should be realised that the stress is on the 'wilfulness' of man, for there was from the first, specific instruction to the contrary of his chosen action, just as there is to the present with all His ways. Whether not to act autonomously relative to the experimental Edenic tree, or towards a rejected Gospel, the case is simple, similar and in principle entirely parallel. Whether for the potential venture into sin, at Eden, or the potential default before the Gospel, in this warring world now, it is one.
In neither case, Eden or the Gospel is there any danger from a failure to comprehend because of complexity, as in some hard mathematical problem. The case was so from the first, and it is not different today: the Gospel is not hard, and its refusal is simple wilfulness, as Christ put it directly to that generation of Jerusalem's citizens: "I would ... you would not" (cf. SMR Appendix B).
Eyes that are shut lest they should see, this is the divine word of absolute truth (as in Matthew 13), and the whole apparatus of thought is perspicuous. Eyes CAN see; eyes ARE able to be opened. It is mere mysticism to pretend that the figure of eyes not being opened implies inability to open them. The lash of Christ's tongue, poignant in tender grief at their intractability, yet is dire in uttering judgment because of their pertinacious arbitrariness and misuse of the will that could open those eyes, and yet WILL not.
That is how He speaks as the Bible sometimes does to the relevant and current generation of Jerusalem, that in His day, comprised for it, "your children" . To these, the children of Jerusalem, He assigns that very thing, stark unwillingness despite His frequent calls, as is attributed by the prophets of old, to the people of the land, as in Jeremiah and Hosea repeatedly.
HIS definition ? I would, you would not! (Matthew 23:37). The very idea of trying to make this biblical and historical usage an excuse for omitting the relevance of will is the more absurd, there is no better word for it, in that should you do such a thing, you would have Christ judging unrighteously, by His own word. It was PROHIBITED to visit the sins of fathers on children (Jeremiah 31:29), but on this distortion, you would be having the children being drawn and warned, but the fathers unwilling, so that the whole would be subjected to an anguish unspeakable, a grief remorseless and entire. Such a thing is to put God at variance with Himself, instead of aligning oneself with the clear context of guilt through obduracy of the will, which fits both the situation and the principles previously revealed.
And was it indeed the case that OFTEN the Lord lovingly sought the children, in terms of young age, little ones, only to find that they were obdurate ? There is a limit to imagination when you are examining someone else's words, and this passes it to infinity. Against adults He frequently declaimed, and as to the little ones He would be willing and keen to receive them. Such is the record. Such was the norm of the historical record from first to last.
As to the anti-scriptural invention, contrary to usage, to divine principles, to context: There is a limit to imagination when you are examining someone else's words, and this passes it to infinity.
But what of the 'children' ? Look at Jeremiah, which also was a case verging on destruction, and here we cite from SMR Appendix B.
In 4:11, it is of judgment to "this people and to Jerusalem", Thus again, in Romans 1:18, the wrath of God is statedly against those who, despite the ready availability of the knowledge of God, the Lord speaks, specifying later in the immediate context the affliction for "the daughter of my people". In 4:31 we see the "daughter of Jerusalem' crying: "Woe is me now, for my soul is weary because of murderers". God proceeds to tell "Jerusalem" to "wash thine heart from wickedness that you may be saved" - Jeremiah 4:14.
"This is your wickedness," He says, "because it is bitter, because it reaches to your heart" - Jeremiah 4:18.
Again, "How shall I pardon you for this ? Your children have forsaken me, and sworn by those who are not gods. When I had fed them to the full, then they committed adultery and assembled themselves by harlots' houses. They were like well-fed lusty stallions; every one neighed after his neighbour's wife"- Jeremiah 5:7. In all this there is a certain... adult quality!
Thus again, in Romans 1:18, the wrath of God is statedly again those who despite the ready availability of the knowledge of God, SUPPRESS the truth, which of course GOD IS. Thus this application and outreach of His truth in creation is suppressed. Yet to have something of God suppressed is contrary to what is God expressed, that is His written and living Word, so that it is war on God, which is not a dictum of His plan, since His way is His will and attack on it is not! You see this obvious fact clearly in Micah 3:5, where those false prophets to whom He did NOT give words, they "even prepare war against Him" - which is in context, an apostrophe of horror at their presumption and rage. Since He is always what He would be, what would seek to make Him other is contrary to Him, and such imaginations as if from Him, merely confuse contrariety with piety.
Thus there was freedom which man misused, making sin, that temporal defiance, the issue; and distortion was the result. It grew to attacks on His prophets (cf. Mark 12), pretences of speaking for Him when He did not sent (Jeremiah 23), attacks on His Son and finally attacks on His word and Gospel, enduring both Gospel and attacks, to this day, since the heart of sinful man cannot TOLERATE truth in God, but must slay it lest it take him where he has no desire to go. Does man wish to charge God in contradiction of His word amounting to virtual defiance, with MAKING the hearts obdurate, the minds obstinate, the wills pertinacious, so that they would not because they could not hear, heed ? doing this by creation's own conduit of power ? so that this is the GOOD that He made!
Is the sinful mind of autonomous man to answer to Jeremiah when he rebukes, saying of the false prophets, in the Lord's name,
¨
"if they had stood in My counsel and had caused My people to
hear My words, then they would have turned them from their evil way..."
(Jeremiah 23:22),
the Lord Himself divinely declaring
¨ "Return O You backsliding children and I will heal your backslidings" (3:22),
then to speak in retort ?
Are they to answer, saying:
'Oh but you really have it all psychologically enforced so that it cannot be so,
as you now request, so this is just an autocratic pleasantry of yours,
for yours is the will and this is the flow-on.'Let us hear now the next 'act', for nothing is real here.'
This construction of the imagination concerning freedom of will, its obliteration in metaphysical disorder (cf. SMR pp. 348ff., It Bubbles ...Ch. 9, Little Things ... Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill Part I), is nothing less than an assault on the sincerity and integrity of God who professing intense desire for their deliverance, the keenest of desires to heal as in the event of Christ was put into vast practice (e.g. Luke 6:19, even to multitudes), is to be deemed to desire no such thing (since they do not so respond).
They were not in the case of Jeremiah 'healed', so on the one hand, God is imagined to have set this plan so that it would be so, by mere sovereignty in the ABSENCE OF FREEWILL in man, either directly or indirectly! Meanwhile He shows grief, anger and the deepest concern and willing for the contrary to happen. This is to construct something not God, just as they did in Moses' day (cf. Deuteronomy 32:15-17). It is not intentional, no doubt, but its error is a matter of grief, that any should have made it.
Biblically, their wills may indeed be locked in the step of sin; but this is a guilt of the race, and of the individual, and the remedy is sure, effectual, on the part of God who is the "saviour of all men, especially of those who believe" (I Timothy 4:10), and who gave His Son as a propitiation
"not for our sins only, but also for the whole world"
(on behalf of, not in the place of in the Greek stress - I John 2:1-2).
In such ways, God is emphasising the scope of His concern, to the point of salvation relevance, both in practice here, and in principle, as in Colossians 1 and passim in the appeals of the Old Testament, such as Ezekiel 33:11.
Thus too do we find the sublime parallel in Romans 5:18, concerning the divine disposition to deliver all, despite the fact that in contention, many prefer darkness in the very face of His coming in love for the whole world, if by any means any might receive Him (John 1-3, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4). Let us regard this:
"Therefore, as through one man’s offence judgment came to all
men,
resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act
the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life."
The Greek preposition means 'towards', and does not of course imply that they all received it; but it does show that to them all was it propelled!
It is in short, one thing to make an Adam NOT, emphatically not in the image of God, in some odious odyssey, a hand-made mental cripple and volitional defective who COULD not have done otherwise, who then duly rebels, though it is a misuse of language so to have it, one who was condemned for God's plan for him therefore, so that God for such an intrusive model would not keeping HIS OWN DECLARED STANDARDS. That is matter for Alice on her next journey.
It is however quite another to have a defective model made into such by his own will, from needless sin at the first, and needless continuance in it at the last, when Christ came, lamenting for their wilful closing of their eyes. It is futile to bring a verbal shimmer into a clear situation by imagining that He forced what HE calls both sinful and abhorrent upon them without sinning Himself, on the ground that this is ontologically impossible for Him to sin. That is of the order of an invincible force meeting an immovable object, a construction of opposites that only imagination, and not logic, can conceive. It is a flat contradiction in terms.
That fact, that we grieve Him by rebellion, which HE calls it, breach His command by spoilage of His image in us, not by fulfilling it (cf. Colossians 3:10), in no way would make of Him a liar, which the bible declares an impossibility. Moreover, the perspective of the lie it is which John in I John makes the unique pre-rogative of what is not Christ, but antichrist! Does not Psalm 5:5 tell us that God hates the workers of iniquity (in that their sin adopts, embraces and identifies with them and they with it), and was not Adam one who qualified for just this ? Is the one called God then to be made into a celestial schizophrenic before wisdom returns to exegesis, and contradiction stills its erratic voice!
IF He hates such a thing, it is certain that He does not desire it, is contrary to it; and hence to imagine that He directly creates such a thing is a flat contradiction of Holy Writ, Holy Nature and holiness.
What however if someone asks this,
But does not His invention of creaturely liberty - where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty - II Corinthians 3:17, open the possibility of sin, and in God's own certain foreknowledge of the end of all things, does it not open the certainty in this present world setting from the first, of just such a thing! Admittedly, in this case it comes as a development, yet for all that, does it not amount to much the same thing ? It is indirect, the questioner might proceed, but for all that, its end is the same: rebellion, sin, evil and iniquity. Would God therefore open the door to such things that He statedly hates, for the sake of some plan ? And if He did, then how could it be said that this is essentially any different from the direct case, for Eden!
The answer to such a disingenuous query is not hard to find, for the Lord it is who makes all things clear in His word, if you read it as it is, and not as you squeeze it, in conformity to your will.
In fact, the case is this:
¨
Not only
that His love for the achievement of more who love is paramount,
that they might be blessed,
¨ but that He does not institute by creation,
¨ direct by dictation,
¨ ensure by construction,
¨
secure by
fabrication
¨ ANY SIN AT ALL in such a situation, the actual biblical one.
He enables a totally and wholly good thing, the liberty to follow Him or not, since without this liberty, neither personality nor love nor meaning is possible for the creation at length. In so doing, He enables, but does not secure, procure, induce or incite, far less ensure, any sin at all. This is the simple difference between MAKING it happen and not preventing the possibility. If freedom is loved, love is loved, personality is loved, then sin being hated, God has acted to enable the first and overcome the second, in perfect consistency; so this endeavour to turn the matter around fails in dizziness like a merry-go-round that has no stopping place, and is all awhirl, without getting anywhere.
The WORDS are used of human will, the PRINCIPLES are shown of divine will, the IMAGE of GOD status is affixed, the HATRED of evil is consistent, persistent and comes to judgment when MERCY is avoided by man, while the PASSION of God for righteousness first and last, is shown by enabling it at Eden, providing for it at Eden, for the positive response, so that it was not merely in principle but in practice that it had its construction. Accordingly with this passion is God shown by His own word to be sending His prophets to interpret and offer mercy, sending His Son to obtain and secure it, this without deletion of the image of God in man, but rather presentation for its repletion and completion as it should have been, and could have been (Colossians 3:10). Such a construction is thus WITHOUT any breach of God's stated character, principles, emotions and hatreds, His loves and His determination. It simply follows His own words.
Is God then to be "very angry" as in II Kings 17:18, because Israel rebelled AGAINST HIM, NOT merely for their own chosen sins, but because of an imaginary innate and ultimate construction past all finding out and inherent from the start of the race, when He acted, revolted ?
The Lord describes the case. He had sent His prophets, saying:
"Turn from your evil ways, and keep My commandments and My statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets."
The response was this:
"Nevertheless they would not hear, but stiffened their necks, like the necks of their fathers, who did not believe in the LORD their God."
Is He to mock and derogate their stiffened necks, and subject their determinate necessity of action to obliterative and divine disdain and even horror, when HE AND HE ALONE IS WRONGLY IMAGINED TO HAVE MADE IT HAPPEN, by certain control from the first! He is JUST, and says so. He is SLOW TO ANGER, and says so. Is it just, by His own declared standards, to force sin on someone whom you then denounce for it ? Is some Iraqi to be 'forced' to engage in some sexual evil and then be condemned for it ? Maybe, but not justly. It is the child of the mind of the tormentor, who alone is guilty.
To attribute FROM THE OUTSET such a complex of disorderly emotions to the divine being, such an inability to follow His own prescriptions, or to exhibit the nature which He states to be His, and which should morally be ours, is not to describe One who is depicted as "a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He" (Deuteronomy 32:4).
Again, are we to understand that "righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne, mercy and truth go before Your face", to be part of a divine totality in which unrighteousness is created into being without the invention of freedom of will to select it, so that this very creation is both an exhibition of righteousness, and 'good' (Genesis 1-2);
and that the condemnation ensuing the result of this construction, the sure and undifferentiated result, is part of justice; or even this, that mercy is shown in this condign judgment, or that truth is to be found in the attribution of rebellion to what in fact on this distorted model, did not rebel, but effected in perfect conformity to direct construction, the will of the One who made it! If so, words have no more meaning, and contradiction is the mode of exegesis, defilement the path of truth, unrighteousness the exhibit of righteousness.
Is it not a wonder of the divine grace and mercy, indeed righteousness and equity that no such thing is ever indicated in the Bible, but only the divine energy which condemns the sin which is wilfully committed, in what was created, statedly good! It helps us in this, that we realise with fresh delight the utter transparency of divine beauty, without residue of dregs, bitterness or obfuscation. To be sure, there is wonder to come when the people of God see Him face to face (Revelation 22); but truth is by nature, His everlasting word is by nature, immutable. It is only the adventitious imperfections of man which may find error; God is without error. His word controls all, and it is HIS! Where freedom is created, then rebellion is enabled; but not in conformity to construction, quite the contrary, in defilement of it that leads directly to death.
WILL NOT WILL O’ THE WISP
This wilful witlessness is dramatically illustrated in Jeremiah 44, where the nation having been decimated, Jerusalem ruined, a few only left with Jeremiah, they are not yet humbled. They ASK him for the word of God, for their guidance; and when he tells them, they reject it, declaring this (44:17):
"We will certainly do whatever comes out of our own mouth."
Every evil way, God hates, and this He has defined as evil in Jeremiah 23. He does not implement His will by what He hates, since He has no limit, no need, no constraint to perform, nothing to attenuate His decisions or create effectual opposition. From beginning to end, creating or not, He has it all as He will, even including the freedom He loves, and the results He secures.
Further, as we see in Lord of Life Ch. 6 and esp. in Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Ch. 7, with Ch. 9, there were various discernible things that MIGHT have been done, in the absolute and primary sense; but what the good Lord chose to do was so in accord with His infinite mercy, brilliance and grace, that it stands before us, with head bowed, its admirers as we worship the One who has wrought it, brought it to pass.
Moreover, as to the results for His kingdom, He actually bought them, paying in anguish for deliverance, not for Himself, but for us who believe. SO FAR is He from deviating in the least degree from the standards of utter purity, utter blamelessness, entire cordiality and love, that love is WHY He sent, grace is WHAT He gave and GIFT is what is to be received!
What God did at the outset was institute the liberty without which love is impossible (and God is love), in man. Clockwork does not love, nor does any other conspectus where liberty is ruled out. What lacks freedom is merely programmatically responsive, or constitutively controlled, an attestation to the power of the programmer or the controller. That is why it is to be realised as essential that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, THERE is liberty" as Paul declares in II Cor. 3.
He is not to be taken to be declaring that where the Lord is there is NOT liberty; for this is no interpretation, but simple rejection. He was assuredly in Eden, and it is now declared that
"God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are as ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us; we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God."
Does God implore the world in which He was reconciling it to Himself, to be what He precludes ? Is there no freedom to be implored ? Does He address through Paul what IN PRINCIPLE is irrelevant, and not merely through the sin which God knows how to deal with ? The question is the answer, and merely intensifies what we have already seen.
With what are we then left ? We find this.
The word of God endures for ever, and is not mutable, but beautiful. The liberty of man is created and donated as to God's image, and is misused. God brings in consequences as He stated from the first, and makes these cumulative in His own way where the disobedience is sequential and insistent (cf. II Chronicles 36) ..."till there was no remedy", exhorting, remonstrating, appealing, offering in the meantime, and weeping in the person of Christ when the point is past (cf. Isaiah 57:15): where there is no longer any way back for man.
How zealous was He, "rising up early and sending" His prophets, "because He had compassion"; but they were not heeded. Did He have then compassion on what was not made in the first place that it could receive and respond ? What sort of compassion is it which pities the unpitiable ?
How He tested this liberty which He gave to man, though it had been defiled in no small way, by using His own knowledge and sovereignty! How He answered it by using His own love, as it is written, GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT ... HOW MUCH ? that He gave His only begotten Son, the ONLY ONE born to woman because it is the ONLY ONE who as the eternal word of God, would suffice. Flagrant contradiction times without number is not supportable if you are going to interpret!
As He declares through the prophet Jeremaih in the midst of judgment, in Lamentations, He does not willingly afflict the children of men. This really sums up the whole matter, since no one and nothing can impel the will of God, which is His own, and as to the God who IS love, and "He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men" (Lamentations 3:33, I John 4:7ff.).
If liberty and love bring grief through the wilfulness of man, in wanton disregard first of whose we are, then of what we are, and even after that, of what He has done to remedy it, then this is the cost of discipleship. Yet it is not a placement by disregard: rather is it one by regard for the nature of man, infinitely removed from being a manipulee for some plan, and wholly constructed in integrity, for integrity, to walk in the light and know the love which passes all understanding in that life which God is and has, and is willing to confer freely.
God does not weep because He ruthlessly carries out a plan to make things do what they are made to do. He is not sad and indeed grief-stricken because with all eternity, and without haste, He has done what He knew would end the way it did, thus on such a misconstruction of divine beauty, weeping at His own incompetence. Hardly is such a conception of fantasy to be considered as worthy of regard at all, like a bye in cricket (except that it may cost): for He weeps because of their obstinate heart which ruins them, despite His contrary appeal, and He says so (cf. Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff.). Rebellion, the divinely repeated charge, is not even possible for what cannot freely will by nature (cf. I Samuel 15:22-23).
"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
As in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed than the fat of rams.
"For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
He also has rejected you from being king."
God chose freedom for good reason; condemns its misuse for no lesser reason; and paid its remedy for misuse with good love; and His sufferings are for good cause.
These last, they are the final criterion of His motivation, compassion and control; for they are effective in redemption without exception, for all who become His by faith, and there is not one whom He forgets, since with all power His desire that all might be reconciled is certain to be fulfilled in His own way, in the Redeemer (Colossians 1:19ff.). Sin is a detestable thing, not only with suffering for man, and profound grief, and in the person of the eternal Word of God made flesh, but also with acute agony for Christ; but God has its measure, has measured it and disposed of it, dispossessed it of its flaunting glories, and with the gory made grace prevail. Love takes whom it may, and sovereignty would have it so, for GOD IS LOVE!
Thus, not only are these cases quintessentially clear, the divine pangs and pity, and the human pain that was consistently gained by insistent failure at the uttermost height of the matter, and its most profound depths, but the generic is manifest as in Colossians 1 and I Timothy 2 (cf. Great Execrations ...Chs. 7 and 9), as in the very nature of the incarnation, where for any and for all, He is made available, taking far more than any, that none be uncovered by mere omission, or lack of largesse.
Let us leave then the Moslems to their own mandates in their own imaginary universe, and let them face the consequences of evil where no redemption is provided sought by the Lord for all, and no hope is to be found but from what is available in the works of man, who must make his own way to meet an unknown standard, with an unknown cut-off, with resources of unknown relevance, and what it implies in the sovereign whom they imagined and constructed in their own minds, without evidence to verify, to run the show (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4). Small wonder violence is so common both in the Koran and in history in such a desperate situation! (cf. Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6). Our God is not like that, and has remedy, not performance requirement, as essence of the way on, up and out.
Not in circumstances but in Christ is the criterion. The world is not left to its debacles as the last word, for Christ has the last word, just as He is the first word, and the eternal word, and His compassion is the guarantee that nothing will be lost, which in integrity of love, He would gain (I Timothy 2, Colossians 1).
Our Bible is infinitely disparate on this point. Our Christ is infinitely disparate on this point. There is nothing that man MUST do, to SATISFY God, for GOD has done it (Romans 3:25ff.). The rest follows in faith. HE has the grief at our woeful ways, HE bore the sin or our departures, for every one who comes to Him, and HIS is the focus where sin, where on the part of every believer it is said, "On Him is laid the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53). Neither will nor blood nor race can frustrate His glorious seeking; and neither divine dictate plus or minus, nor human inability is bar sufficient. For God SO loves the world that He gave, and THIS, this is His dictate, that He loves and that we should do the same.
So far, then, from simply overseeing a whirling world of sin, and demanding righteousness, in Him the intervention is explicit, His power operative, not ours, to secure deliverance. To be sure, we are saved without works, but not without faith, and faith works; but the faith is in HIM who having done the works to secure His people, grants them the grace to continue, the divine operative, unwilling to let man climb about in his world, as if he could master it or himself, but realistically providing the way IN HIMSELF, and coming to show it and to do it (John 10:9,27-28, Romans 3, Galatians 3).
Let us underline this point.
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"Oh,"
says the Lord (Isaiah 48:18),
"that you had heeded My commandments! |
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He
is not apostrophising Israel concerning its failed opportunities |
Thus it would indeed be wrong for all this sin and evil to be in the world by simple direction. It would contradict the word of God multiply. Further and consequential evils result.
Thus the word of God in that case would level guilt at Himself; but HE levels
it at man, and further, makes it superabundantly clear that He has done ALL,
for man, in correlation with His revealed longing, commands and sorrows for
man, even to the point of becoming a man and dying for the difference between
what man because of sin has done, and what he ought to have done (cf. Hebrews
2, 9, II Corinthians 5:17-21).
There is nothing further from Him than devising evil that good may come, which as Paul shows, is a principle of an horrendous and confused distortion of the very meaning of righteousness (Romans 3:8). Now this condemned pragmatic principle is far from being a 'merely human' consideration, since the word of God in this place STARTS with the divine application, showing it both as a caricature and a thing of revulsion, and then applies it to the human case. It is with respect to God that it starts, to man that it ends.
Thus, it is NOT, repeat NOT, says Paul (Romans 3:3ff.) a matter of a sinner being used as a sort of pawn to demonstrate just how very right God is; for this would be tantamount to saying an utter evil, to making "God unjust who inflicts wrath". Rather, says the faithful apostle, "Let God be true but every man a lie". In other words, such a conception is a gross enormity of autonomous imagination, and before HIS integrity all such vain attributions must fail at once.
If failure in man demonstrates that God is correct in His actions, this no more implicates God who then overcomes the evil and validates His word, than does the absence of light impute evil to it. MAN does the evil, God rules the world, in justice, righteousness, integrity and according to the principles He enunciates. That is the teaching in Romans 3. The contrary is impeached!
It is by cognisance of the relationship between sin and evil, or wrong and retribution and remedy, and all that is bound up in that, on which topic He often speaks, that God judges man. Man might imagine that God would have His own standards, and ignoring all protest, institute His own will, contrary to what He put out for man. Yet God is infinitely higher than man, and His ways are not as those of debased human beings, despised for their ways even by their fellows!
This alien and manipulative concept in only one aspect has it correct, that God does indeed have unbreachable sovereignty; but it is wholly wrong in another aspect, namely His unimpeachable integrity. This is manifest on all sides, by reason and revelation, for not only is it true that "He does not willingly afflict the children of men", but that He has declared "the thoughts of His heart to all generations" (Psalm 33:11). What He is, He says, and in terms of it, speaks and requires, and gives, and grants salvation or with grief, judgment.
As Delitzsch expounds this cited phrase in the Psalm, it means "the ideas, which form the utmost part, the ultimate motives of everything that takes place." That, that is the 'thoughts of His heart". Heart MEANS NOT the superficial, but the ultimate, not the passing but the profound, as in I Corinthians 2:9-13 where the DEEP THINGS of God are shown to be revealed. If we are to WALK IN THE LIGHT, then HE IS THE LIGHT. This we see in John 12:35-36 and 8:12 where in the latter Christ declares that He is the light of the world, while in the former He states this (Contemporary English Version):
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Jesus answered,
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"The light will be with you for only a little longer. |
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"Walk in the
light while you can. "Then you won’t be caught walking blindly in the dark. Have faith in the light while it is with you, and you will be children of the light." (This is here left in red rather than the usual blue, as it is an extreme caution.) |
Believe in the light,
and do not imagine things concerning it,
as if it were contrary to itself, or held inscrutable darkness.
Even we who believe are to be FILLED with light, having no part dark (Luke
11:33-35),
and as to God, He dwells in light unsearchable (I Timothy 6:16), radiant in
glory,
not deviant into darkness contrary to its own expression of itself!
Let us see this declaration of Christ in Luke:
"No man, when he hath lighted
a candle, puts it in a secret place,
neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see
the light.
"The light of the body is the eye: therefore when your eye is single,
your whole body also is full of light; but when your eye is evil,
your body also is full of darkness.
"Take heed therefore that the light which is in you be not darkness.
If your whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark,
the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle gives
you light. "
Eye brings light, light insurgent overcomes the darkness within; let it wholly in and you will be wholly enlightened. By what then ?
By HIS light who IS the light of the world, and WHO IS LIGHT,
so that there is no darkness in Him at all (I John 1).
Indeed, in I John 1:5ff., we read this, that -
"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with him,
and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
But if we walk in the light,
as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin."
Thus by walking in the light we have fellowship with the Light; anything contrary to this light, to its intrinsic self, brings not conjunction but what is nearer to disjunction, because of this. Moreover, since we are all made relative to this light, one resultant is this, that so walking in it brings fellowship with each other. Where it is failed in, so that darkness sends in some spearhead, then the blood of Christ, the measure of the zeal of God for righteousness, of the love of God to bring man to his proper inheritance and fellowship with Himself, cleanses from this disjunctive force.
It is what GOD IS, which is the criterion, LIGHT, and in this we must walk.
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In complete parallel and consistent harmony, John 1:9-10 shows moreover,
that HE who is the LIGHT, is the true light who gives light to every man
coming into the world, |
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In other words, we are made in His
image, His light being what is our basis and illuminative source, so that
when He came, it was that true light, God Himself in human form. |
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Accordingly, only by divine
interposition, |
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There is one morality, one
eternity, one source of mind, God Himself, one righteousness |
What then ? He DOES have His own standards, CANNOT be judged by what is a mere derivative; this is true. Yet He being who He is, I AM THAT I AM, has chosen to present in perfect righteousness and divine light to man in His image, the very thoughts of His heart, so that He does not merely 'measure up' to them, but as Author and original, delights in these very things, and of course is in nothing contrary to them. Defining light by Himself, He imparts it in creation, and restores it in redemption.
Indeed, He has gone so far in performing these very thoughts of His heart, that He send His Son to be the Saviour of the world (I John 4:4:14) by a means horrifying to the heart, wonderful to the sinner and triumphant for His compassion.
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His integrity required it,
His light willed it, |
SORROWS HAVE
MANY GROUNDS
BUT JOY HAS ONE BASE
Further, it is so far from being a foolish thing to impute to God that He made the world as He did for good purposes, in the definitions of good that HE GIVES IN HIS WORD, for not only does He declare the criteria of justice, compassion, love, mercy and truth, but there are in fact many reasons why He injects judgment (called 'evil' in a catastrophic but not moral sense). First of all, it is as in the first, a decreed result of breach of His law, His desire impressed into words.
In particular, divine discipline is not bad, according to His written word (Hebrews 12); divine exposure of folly is not bad, in the same setting. Divine plans to test, as in Job, and show the result, are not bad in His word.
What is the problem then ? This world is a scene of disrupted innocence, declaimed remedy and divine discipline, in which sorrows come partly because of sin, partly because of tests and trials, partly because of divine educative exhibits for all time, partly because of judgment, and for as many GOOD reasons as the Lord desires. There is no slightest difficulty about His word and His world.
(You may wish to see more on this in the file: pain,suffering,evil. There is much to be found on Job's particular case in terms of suffering*2 and pain and that particular illustration of their genesis, in Importunity, Opportunity and Purity of Heart Chs. 1, 2, 3.)
It is therefore far removed from truth is the concept that it is only because God CAN do no evil, that this world can be shown to fulfil divine principles as stated to man. In fact, He does not need to tell us all, but all that He tells is true, and this includes the whole TYPE of case in view (as in Amos 3-4), such as progressive penalties for cumulative alienation and divine restraint from obliterative judgment summarily (II Peter 3:9), though truth will out at last (II Peter 3:10ff.). Vast is the confusion, the pretension, the pride, the arrogance, the intractability in man, to truth; vast is the payment God has made to secure redemption; and vast is the wonder of His love.
Man is apt to complain that