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CHAPTER 4
Love and
Predestination:
It is as Stated and
Not Another Thing!
We come now
to consideration of the Biblical presentation of the love of the living God,
with special focus on its nature as biblically revealed, so that the realities
of its presentation may be seen in the perfection of the harmony of the whole,
intact, unmolested, unconfined by man.
The love of
God is inexhaustible, insurmountable, untruncatable! The devices of some to
curtail it, with whatever good intentions, are illegitimate, and so far from
solving any problems, merely distort both the issues and the text of the Bible,
so producing confusion. The word of God needs no help from man, but speaks for
itself. It is this fact that WHEN, and ONLY WHEN you treat it so, are all
problems resolved, which is one of the cardinal attestations of its source! It
is immutable not only in terms of the honour of not substituting our puny words
for His, but in the sense that if you do, it is like a child playing with the
internals of a Concorde aircraft, directing some crazy mechanic to make changes
which appeal. Obviously, the thing would not and could not then fly!
A. EXCERPT from
SMR Appendix B.
(See with this Chapter 6
below, D 1,
esp. *1
at p. 210)
In what way, if any, does will relate to
salvation ?
Dr Clark would urge that it is to
This personification is not difficult to comprehend. There
is no possible question that the next generation are in view; for here is a
strong, majestic woman tossing her dignified head in scorn at the rapacious
invader, summing up the city's courage and assurance, in so doing. The emotions
are very definitely adult in their setting and scope, and the base is
undoubtedly not sectional, but representative of
Be sure, in all this God is not addressing merely adolescent
delinquents, but His comments turn sharply to the pith of the race. Indeed, He
proceeds to tell this 'gadding about' daughter the famous prediction, "A
woman shall encompass a man" (Jeremiah 31:23). In 4:11, it is of
judgment to "this people and to
The term then can signify a correlation of quality, a
parallel of character, a descent of reality and not mere appearance. There is a
close correlation with the object of reference in "children of..."
So was it in the case where a city is named, as shown in Isaiah.
Here is a double grounding of the term: it relates on the
one hand to
No incertitude attaches to the point.
Thus the attitude of God is clearly shown in Ezekiel
33:11, Colossians 1:19ff. and I Timothy 2:3-5 for example. As John Murray has
declaimed, in the first of these, we have divine asseveration, negation,
affirmation, and we have protestation. The depth - "As I live";
the negation - "no pleasure in the death of the wicked"; the
affirmation - but that the wicked should turn and live; the exhortation - "turn
ye"; the protestation - "for why will ye die ?" This
is clear. The people concerned are "the wicked". If they do
not turn, then they will be cast out like any other wicked, and their non-elect
souls will, like those of any other non-elect, languish in exclusion from the
deity. The judicial turning of Paul to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46, cf. 1 John
2:1-2), like the sending of Jonah to Nineveh, makes clear the love of God and
the applicability of His one Gospel to any and to all.
In the Timothy passage, we are brought into generalities in
sweeping style. There are thoughts of "all men" in v.1
preceding; and for those in authority we are exhorted to make prayer. The
reason relates to the authority over all - "for this is good and
acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour".
Now let us ponder further the
categories in I Timothy 2. These are vast and total: God and man; God and
rulers. The provision side of it is startling in the majestic totality of its
compass: "There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, and
the man Jesus Christ." It would not be possible to be more total in
canvas, to establish with more certainty the dimensions of one's speech. It is
stark, it is summary, it is overall.
.
Is
this not, as John
Colossians 1:19-21 in turn makes it
clear what pleased the Father... that having made peace through the blood of
the Cross, Christ might re-concile all things - rather that He, the Father,
through Christ might reconcile all things. Which 'all' ? "Things in
earth or in heaven", comes the expansive and specifying answer.
Small wonder such knowledge is étoo
wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain to it,é Psalm 139:6. When God
tells us these relevant doctrines on will and wonder, we must be ready to see how
such things could be, without presuming to declare any
composition of doctrines beyond what they are; and so marvel at the unique CONSISTENCY
of God's word in this area of freedom, responsibility and predestination.
Indeed then we can do so without presuming to narrow them
to the scope of our own intellects, demanding in neo-scholastic fear what in
fact contradicts the clear statements of scripture, or on the other hand, to expand
them, with flamboyant Arminian contradiction. This joint approach is taken
here. Thus we may also fulfil 1 Peter 3:15.
Again, If I make my bed in hell, Thou
art there.
David is a believer ? Assuredly, but
God is not limited by our conceptions or consciousness and knows us thoroughly.
If we gained what we deserve, we would all be in hell, for there is no
imperfection in heaven, but rather the spirits of the just, made perfect
(Hebrews 12:23). Yet God is able to foreknow whom He predestinates
(Romans
Thus guilt before Christ's words and
deeds is categorical and absolute (John
We are here reminded of the weeping
of Elisha as he set about appointing the man to be king of Syria and plague to
Israel, in divine discipline (II Kings 8:12). "Now", said
Christ, "they are hidden from your eyes. If you had known,"
said the weeping Son of God... Then, ah then! So great is the love of
God, so sure is His knowledge.
Nowhere in all
philosophy has anyone ever performed
what God
so quietly, so personally or so simply declares in His word, the Bible...
the
reconciliation of freedom, and responsibility,
divine sovereignty
and human reality,
divine
love and human tempo,
the
correlation of material determinism and spiritual freedom
without
divorce and degrading of either:
a
determinism which is derivative and dependent and irruptible at will,
but which
goes on its course on divine sufferance and will.
Personality is preserved;
individuality is preserved;
accountability
is meaningful;
responsibility
is wholly real;
God is
entirely omnipotent in practice as well as in 'theory' -
He gains
just what He will just how He will,
being
Himself and securing and procuring with a display which is not doubtful,
and with
a declaration and a demonstration which is not obscure.
No mere
circumstance is permitted to exclude from God, in the ultimate,
for love
shuns mere shunning (I Corinthians 13, I Timothy 2:1-4, Colossians
and God knows
His own (Romans
from
before all time (Ephesians 1:4) and beyond all human eventuation (Romans
Let us revert to our reference a
little earlier to this: "He has done what He will; and He has done it
HOW He will; and He always does" (cf. Ps. 115:3, Ephesians 1:11).
It is of such a movement we read earlier (II Chronicles 36:15-16): "And
the Lord, the God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers rising up
early and sending; because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling
place"; but (*2)...
The "no remedy" is
not (*3) the result of a law greater than God, but is His decision (Ephesians
1:11, Isaiah 40:8,14,25). Here also ponder Matthew 23:37, Jeremiah 18:1-18,
Colossians 1:18-2:9 and allied scriptures. 'Sovereignty' does not transcend,
amend or deport the stated, the revealed and the declared will, way and nature
of God. It is a name given rather to the security with which He secures what He
claims, does what He says, and is what He declares.
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 2.
Also highly pertinent is The
Power of Christ's Resurrection and the Fellowship
of His Sufferings Ch. 1, *2, found in part in Ch. 6 below, the (shorter) original being in the
setting of Repent or Perish Ch. 1.
This will
be kept to the format a little less in size,
to prevent a sense of too much space with the sizable excerpts.
THE LIGHT IDENTIFIED
This in John 3 we
are told that THIS is the condemnation, that light has come into the world and
men loved darkness rather than light, or more literally, men loved the darkness
more than the light.
Now if anyone
sought to establish that the light referred to was not Jesus Christ, he would
have some difficulty in escaping a just charge of eisogesis. After all, the
Gospel of John has been at extreme pains to show that the light IS Jesus
Christ, sent into the world. It actually SAYS so (John 1:3,10-11). The Word is
the focus, it was the light, is the light, became flesh and dwelt among us.
This is the declaration.
John the Baptist,
we read in John 1, came for a witness. HE was not the light, we are told. That
true light was in the world made by Him (as noted in John 1:3), came to His
own, was not received by them, but was received by certain ones, who became His
people, born not of the will of man but of God. Accordingly, Jesus declares in
John 9:5, As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world; and again,
in John 12:36ff.: "Yet a
little while is the light with you . Walk while you have the light, lest
darkness come on you": "While you have the light, believe in
the light, that you may be the children of light". In John 8:12, He announces: "I am the light of the world: he
who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of
life."
The definable
event however adequately and actively emphasised is this: that
1) THIS word
was always there, that THIS light was always there, this ultra-universal light
in one sense accompanying every man in the world from birth; and that
2) THIS light,
being God with God (there is only one God, the Creator - Isaiah 45:6-12,18,
46:9,44:6-8, 42:5-8, who stretches forth the heavens ALONE - as Moses
indicated), did such an amazing thing.
It was so
condescending as to become flesh, duly impactive as expressed in His being full
of grace and truth: and further, the glory He showed reached the acme of
wonder: for it was such as to attest in its effulgence, God's only begotten
Son. It was divinity in human form with human face, whose goings were from
everlasting.
Having noted all
this in detail, however, we simply revert to the fact that:
the Word who
became flesh, who was with God and was God, is the One of whom it is stated:
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men."
Who came to His
own ? "The true
Light"...
What became of
those who received Him ?
They became the children of God. Then
in John 1:15, we learn that John bore witness of Him saying, He who comes after
me is preferred before me" -1:15.
PURPOSES: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
Important consequences follow, we learn in John 3: the project has a decisive and distinct purpose, and something equally distinctly not purposed.
Verse 16 tells us of the signal salvatory act of God in sending this, His only begotten Son.
1) It tells us what the purpose was not: to secure judgment against the world. The non-condemnation of the woman taken in adultery (through lack of accusers when Christ asked those without sin to cast the first stone).
2) He tells us what the purpose was : to secure salvation for believers. This is amplified in the statement earlier that as many as received Him, to these He gave power to become children of God.
There is the positive and the negative, therefore. The NEGATIVE is this: purpose not to condemn. The POSITIVE is this: purpose that the world through Him might be saved, even all who believe.
He tells us moreover of residual and implied judgment so secure that it is able to be announced categorically: the non-believer in the face of this exposed word of God-in-the-flesh is already condemned. The purpose is discarded, the opportunity despised, even when the ultimate step, personal from the Creator is taken, even when He becomes flesh and accepts condemnation that those worthy of it might be pardoned. At this level, as it were, of the examination, pass or fail is final, determinate and failure is irremediable. The analogy of course has failure as correlative to non-reception of Christ.
Here then,
further judgment is unnecessary for the destined end: THIS is the key and
password for judgment. JESUS is the password, the scriptural Christ, and on
that all depends. The NAME of the ONLY BEGOTTEN SON is the key. THIS name is
exposed and this reality is made manifest: THENCE non-believing in HIM in
final, fatal, inexcusable. There are no extenuating circumstances when God
presents His face and it is slapped, derided, or ignored. His is the ambulance:
destroy the ambulance and rejoice in the discard, or merely turn from it, and
there is no other way to the operating theatre required for restoration.
The purpose of the surgeon is not to condemn to death those who refuse the operation; yet that is the equivalent result in terms of eventuation. The weeping of Jesus Christ noted in Luke 19:42 is eloquent testimony. Yet the result?
Here is the brink of love and the parameter of salvation in expressed form. Here it is reality facing reality: it is response facing divinity. It is, let us repeat it, the NAME of the SON which is the criterion (John 3:19). God's speech here walks and confronts you face to face.
Immediately we are told (John 3:19) that THIS is the judgment: that the Light has come and the faith has not! To seek to force a view that John here is ignoring all the paraphernalia of the advent, in its expressive and particularised form, its masterful impact and its finality and favour, expressing to men the word of God categorically and sacrificially, with the filial imprimatur never absent: this would not merely be to ignore but virtually even to ridicule the whole thrust of the GOSPEL as being announced.
THAT is not merely theistic and monotheistic, and annunciatory of good, and definitive of it in the context of salvation. It has a specificity about the very being of God registered, recorded and revealed for what it is: to the depths of it, nothing less.
Such ignoring therefore would be tantamount to a magnificently bold but unwisely daring bypass operation relative to the fact that John has just STATED right here what he means. God loved and sent His only Son in whom to believe is life; and He SO loved as to do THIS; and in this SON, contradistinct from all other conceptions and beyond all inferior connotations, not to believe is death. It rejects the source and origin of creation, the tide and thrust of love, the depth and horror of the remedy for the Creator, the wonder and grace of the offer from Him and the face He presents in Person.
Nothing more monumental, definitive and decisive is conceivable. It is true that predestinative security will ensure that no 'mistake' is made. But as to the principle and nature of the thing before us: the personal infinitude with beauty and wonder, God Himself, meets sinful derivatives, creations called man, and the flow is where it is. There is no more. All is said, and all is done.
Accordingly,
John states that the CONDEMNATION IS TO BE PRONOUNCED IN THESE VERY TERMS, that
the light that lights every man has come to earth, and it has been rejected in
terms of preference concerning it. That is the PRINCIPLE. It is FOR THIS
REASON, that the one who does not believe is CONDEMNED ALREADY (John
INTRACTABLE
PRINCIPLES
It is now necessary to face the teaching in these fields; and for this purpose, let us rehearse, recapitulate somewhat; but extend and apply our premises.
Not only then is
there this principle, the condemnation in terms of the rejection of the remedy.
We must consider the sequence of thought as we move from John
In verse 18, we find that it is a matter of believing or otherwise in the One just expressly announced as having come in manifest and marvellous, explicit expression of Deity, as the Son, SO THAT the negative case, the non-believer in the light of this, is ALREADY condemned - condemned in the fact of such exception to the exposure of the Deity. That in the PRACTICE. This is a happening.
We are dealing with a magnificent and specialised event, just hot off the press (1:1-14,3:15; I John 1:1-6); with the purpose of it, negatively and positively (v.17); with the response to it (v. 18) - indeed to HIM as Son come, as name exposed; and we learn of condign judgment served to the wrong receptors, resistant and rejecting. THEN PRACTICE PAST, response reviewed, we proceed.
Now we have elaboration, analysis if you will and definition of this event just past and just announced: the condemnation in view IS a matter of rejecting THIS ONE SO SENT and so loving and so sacrificial and with such a name, background and status, such a situation in salvation - namely, the SON.
The PRINCIPLE of John 3:19 has been reviewed, not so that we might reject it, any more than we should reject the ONE whose written word this is. Christ has adequately associated words and love in John 14:21-23.
Now this is ONE thing. To reject a non-SON or a NOT THUS REVEALED God, that however, is ANOTHER thing. John 15:21-23 makes this super-emphatically clear. But it is here. No exposure, we read in this place, to the One who had not done the works no other had done, or spoken such words, and theirs was not the (relevant and fatal) sin (all men but Christ, being sinners). This merely confirms, and applies particularly, John 3:19 which is a principle in itself as well. Even if WE, in the light of glory, can see implications or think we do: yet there is a need to make APPLICATIONS of the revealed PRINCIPLE FIRST. Let us build on what God says, and confirms again: not on dim surmising, or worse, assured dim surmising.
In fact, some might reject various devilishly misinterpreted syncretised mis-versions of God and so on, without the true light of the Son. They may be, but need not be, philosophers; and they may, but need not, be PHYSICALLY dwelling in lands of super-abundant pagan darkness (for which competition these days may be strong from diverse quarters, civilised and uncivilised!).
Now of course they are responsible for not being perfect, for being confused, for not being sufficiently discerning to throw over such served up syncretism; and without any doubt at all, they deserve condemnation. They are without excuse. Unless love and light were gratuitously operative, darkness only would be their lot. This however is not the present question.
IS John declaring the condemnation as a PRINCIPLE in terms of an exposed and revealed, and declared Jesus Christ- or is he not! If he is not, then context is meaningless, thrust is irrelevant, words are a mere mirage and need not be consulted; theology is a substitute for expression, even for the word of God, even as pagan philosophies effect substitution more obviously. Yes, it then becomes just as it was in the days of the Pharisees, of whom Jesus declared, they made vain the word of God by their traditions, muzzled it, defiled it, bypassed it and made their doctrine their own. Be assured, to neither of these views does this writer subscribe: such action is unwise.
If
however John IS declaring THIS
PRINCIPLE just noted as such, then
we have categorically exposed for assessment of all thought, what IS the FINAL
criterion for a DESTINY IN HELL. And that, that principle, that application of
John
With this, place
John 15:21-23 and we gain a result. It is this. Though all are predestinated
without their sin-smitten wills being the operative sovereignty or autonomous
or synergistic determinant or component (Romans
pleasure , we gain depiction characterising the
outcome and this crucial feature and principle. As for Him, the
damnation-determinant is not sin. SIN is the desert-determinant. As to the
damnation-determinant, it is this: rejection of the revealed Jesus Christ.
This is a double
barrier or threshold which is passed on the way to condemnation at the level of
damnation. First is the sin which all men other than Christ have; second is the
sin against the mercy which was shown when "God was in Christ reconciling
the world to Himself" (II Corinthians
God, we read in John 4, IS love; and in
love that is how His loving action accrues. Justice is not lost; love is not
thwarted but with the infinitude of purity, fulfils itself with the sacrificial
splendour that is completed in the power that provides. The distorted
pullulations which would disfigure His love by diminishing its power or its
presence, even before all time, must be banished from scriptural discourse,
except as an example of error. Philosophy loves to lose its head to
unscriptural extremes, but Biblical scholarship and fidelity will not follow
its writhings (cf. Repent or
Perish 1, End-Note 1, esp. p. 26, and SMR Appendix
B, esp. pp. 1128-1130).
IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS,
NOR IS IT BLESSED:
SO WHERE
DOES IT STAND?
How then would this affect the destiny of the ignorant non-hearers of the gospel? Here we must avoid mere traditionalism and consider what the word of God actually says. Thus, I Timothy 2 in the clearest possible fashion spells out the attitude the Almighty has to this matter of salvation. He would have all to be saved. Few will be; but that is not the point. His attitude is that all men might come to a knowledge of the truth. Numerous other aspects of this point from the Bible are shown in SMR Appendix B, and in Predestination and Freewill, Section 3.
SINCE He would
have all to be saved, and SINCE we read in Matthew 11:21 that the people of
Tyre and Sidon would have repented long ago if the mighty works done in
Chorazin had been done there!... WOULD HAVE!
what then? This implies that they did not. Since
the Almighty is under no constraint to invent any system or structure
whatsoever which in any way denies, contradicts or thwarts His will or wishes,
attitudes or desires, then this one must not do so. Hence prima facie there may
be some in Tyre and Sidon who, through lack of the John 15:21-23 type of
impact, did not repent, but who would have done so if Christ had been among
them, and "done the works which no other man did" - that is, works
definitive of and declarative of deity, acting with the profound expedition He
took in sending His only begotten Son.
In such areas, prudence is essential. We must allow that there may be certain features implicit in this Christ-painted picture of which we are not adequately aware. This is true. Nevertheless, there is a strong prima facie case for this point: that it is entirely possible that some who have not had the impact of the light of which John 1 speaks, and which is the criterion of condemnation in John 3 for its rejection, may nevertheless figure among the elect. If God has chosen ANYONE, HE will have that person. Chosen before the foundation of the world, such persons are not subject to chance or change. The unseverable sovereignty of God will ensure that they, being so chosen, are found.
NO CHANCE OF CHANCE
Does this imply that some may have a 'chance' after death ? No, of course not. The very thought of chance is just as contrary to all scripture and its predestinative and sovereign implications and indeed statements as the ignoring of John 3:19's statement would be to short-circuit the amplitude of the love of God. If THIS is the condemnation in terms of such rejected light, and in the light of the stated salvatory purpose, then such it is. If chance is ruled out, then so that is. Must we be like children who turn from ice cream to icy poles in delighted dilemma, instead of maturely considering ALL that is before us in seeking an understanding of the correct course. The WHOLE COUNSEL of God does not exclude inconvenient scriptures.
We must at last avoid this hideous theological proclivity, common as the common cold, it may be, to get into corners and 'patriotically' to some "Apollos" or other, slug it out.
There are NO chances, there is never a chance and never an operable option, since the fall, so that men may come as princes to a Prince and relate or not with a chance to come or go from His covenanted presence.
GOD determines
these things in Himself (Ephesians
The principle in view here, then, in various scriptures, and which seem to be implied in others is just this. GOD DAMNS - as distinct from condemns - on the basis of informed preference or its entire equivalent, against Jesus Christ. THIS is the STATED HIGHWAY that leads to HELL. THIS is that gate at the end of the row.
HOW does He execute such a principle in the case of the ignorant - who have not heard His Gospel, RELATIVE TO THE REVELATION EXPLICITY IN VIEW ? I DO NOT KNOW, FOR ONE. We can for apologetic purposes propose working hypotheses for examination in order to give a reason for the hope within us to those who ask, as is required of us (I Peter 3:15). There is no sin in obedience as such. Yet we cannot KNOW in this instance, more than this: that He will fulfil every principle which He enunciates, and this not partially, but fully. Strong is He who executes His word, and is faithful ( Joel 2:11, Isaiah 11:5, Matthew 5:17-18, 24:35, Psalm 119:89-90,138) .
To act assuredly on contrary hypothesis however, as if God forgot to the gracious because philosophers failed to perceive the unity of the depths of the ocean of the truth of the word of God: this does not appear wise, or to keep the path of His commandments.
HAPPY HARMONISABILITY
Let us revert to His predestinative power in its overall nature. It is infinite, and it may be that He executes the option which is HIS, in some way which implicitly but totally covers the principle of knowing His own, in what you could almost call symbolic form. This is outlined in Section 3 of my Predestination and Freewill, and is used to DEMONSTRATE the entire and UNIQUE harmonisability of all the data with the Biblical picture, and hence to demonstrate the superiority of the Biblical coverage of man to anything else proposed or propounded. It works, it is not reductionist and it is perfectly internally harmonious. We are at some care to show that this proposed harmony is not the same as a declaration of doctrine.
It is a procedure for DEMONSTRATING the harmony of Biblical principles, nothing more, and hence an apologetic vindication of the majesty superiority of the word of God. Like scaffolding, its task complete, it has done what it should, and the building, the word of God itself, stands as always, firm and abiding, ALL of it important, NONE of it minimised, EACH word on EACH topic to be valued beyond minimisation or mutiny.
The
varied and magnificent PRINCIPLES themselves in the word of God, therefore,
these are not proposed; they are propounded in the Bible by God Himself. Our point here is that if we are willing to
follow the Bible, we must follow all of them, for all people over all time; and
give lip service to something less important, if that is our inclination. It is
not, for my part, mine to do lip service to anything. Let tradition with
In what way, then, God executes the principles of John 3, I John 4:7 and I Timothy 3, of Hosea 7:1, Jeremiah 51:9 and Ezekiel 33, for example, we do not know; but executed they will be. They present not the slightest problem to understand, as to compatibility; on the contrary, they embrace like lovers. It is simply that the chosen divine procedure or mode of operation to perform His words - as performed they assuredly will be - each one, and all in holy integrity: we do not know.
Reticence in the face of such majesty (I Timothy 6:16, Psalm 131) is right; just as failure to show its wonders as revealed and its unique capabilities would, equally, be remiss (I Peter 3:15, II Corinthians 10:5, Psalm 145:6-13). We do well not only to believe, but to do what we are told. In the domain of the truth, obedience is beautiful, effectual.
There are, then,
things in the form of the Lord who dwells in light inaccessible (I Timothy
Another index which prima facie holds the suggestion that some who have been ignorant of Christ may be found, by sovereign and predestinate determination, after life as they were foreknown before it, is found in I Peter 3:17-19. Here we read in a sequence of historical steps, of Christ visiting the spirits in prison. In prison, as servants of sin, sinners are without the Lordship of Christ exercised on them. "Spirits in prison" however is a phrase not found, to my knowledge, in the Bible anywhere, OR SUGGESTED. As to the statement that Christ went by the Spirit, to preach to the spirits in prison, it is worth noting this: the Bible is indeed entirely devoid of Platonic philosophy. This sort of statement would not appear to be in the perspective portrayed Biblically, if it means He went to people living on earth. This point too is pregnantly suggestive, just as the alien nature of such terminology must be so.
The 'spirit' may be in prison, but it is the person who is the servant of sin. We are not disembodied, and although certain forms of speech are conceivable, they are not found. Spirits in chains awaiting judgment we find in Jude; but these are not on this earth. They are angels who left their first estate. Jude is talking of spirits as spirits.
From a verbal point of view, this language is that of the after-life in the Bible. Releasing the captives in Isaiah 61, is people on earth, not spirits in prison. There are times and places of being captive, and the Biblical mode of referring to the one and to the other is distinctive and apt. From the point of view of sequence, naturalness of progress in I Peter 3:17-19, we move from Christ suffering for sins, to bring us to God, being put to death, quickened by the Spirit: and from there we launch into the excursion noted in vv. 19-20.
Do we then move back a few thousand years in time in a sort of time jump? Or are we pursuing the point to the environs of judgment to which He wished to relate? Are we finding the other vast judgment which covered the earth so that almost all people were physically extinguished one earth; and here seeing Christ visit in a giant illustration and indication of the Colossians 1:19-23 scope and grandeur of His magnificent love and outreach and desire to "reconcile all things to Himself? The match is a marvel*1B.
And with what
power and force does Paul speak of this reconciling passion on the part of the
Almighty? This: "and
having made peace by the blood of the Cross, by Him to reconcile all things to
Himself: by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven", in just collaboration with I Timothy 2 and John
MERCY IMMENSE AND INTENSE
Must we learn the lesson of Jonah again! God is intensely merciful, and does not concede to some 'system' the souls of men, but would have them all to be saved, and so does whatever seems good to that end. CERTAIN it is that no one will be lost for some technical hitch, problem or omission, who MIGHT have been saved. This is NOT to consider the will of man, as operative in salvation to determine or even to sway it: it IS to notice that man being in the image of God is treated accordingly, but BY God, who alone knows His own.
Peter, having in terms of sequence seemingly gone from Calvary to the condemned in the same sort of scope as Colossians indicates, he follows the work of Christ, then applies it back to us again, relating the ark of those times which led to such mass extinction to baptism now - but not the sacrament, rather the salvation which it connotes (I Peter 3:21).
The intense
meaning and depth of the passage is thus preserved, rather than what at least
would appear a somewhat jolting movement about, here and there, without a clear
time line, aborting the thrust of his words. The thrust of this principle and
the contextual study of the thrust and sequence of the Biblical passage before
us is illustrative then of an option which, not to secure but to express
predestination, God may employ at His pleasure. (Cf. The Kingdom of
Heaven Ch. 2, pp. 30ff.,
at Being 'Natural' or in the
It must be necessarily implied by scripture if it is to believed, or actually stated: and in this, again, the Westminster Confession speaks justly. Mere traditions may be comforting (or discomforting); but can be traps, and must never be relied on, nor have competition with the glorious certainties of the word of God. The penalty of Mark 7:7 is ever near to the adventurous.
To adopt traditions based on name and fame in mere history is to aggravate the assault on the word of God. The Apollos syndrome is scripturally condemned. Be thankful for your Apollos-gifted expositors; but leave the word of God to its own environs, lest a 0.1% pollution from the imperfect saint become blinkers on the wilful, and judgment on the disobedient... lest further, it develop into a carnal 'ism-itis', the inflammatory caricature of truth in the formula of the -ism, such as too frequently defiles the earth.
Such scriptures as earlier noted, then, in principle and practice, taken in concert make it impossible Biblically to refuse, except in autonomous sovereignty over the word of God, the possibility that some who were not found in this life, have been preserved to times to come, for their before-all-time appointment to the God of their Creation, to become effective.
How instructive therefore is the appearance of inextricable damnation, undeterrable damnation in the Scripture, in precisely such a Christ-related sort of way as John 1-3 has outlined. How informative amidst covenantal reasoning both deep and poignant, is the context of Hebrews 10:26-31, 6:4-8! How complete and superlative is the scripture for all just purposes! Indeed the ground of damnation is explicit, analytical, principial in the first three and the fifteenth chapters of John for example; and any theory which ignores it, stops short of a scriptural mandate for its provisions.
God
does not speak in order to be ignored. When the Pharisees of old acted as if
this were the case, their correction was amongst the most irresistibly severe
imaginable. Whatever else is done, each word of Godmust be kept like a diamond
on a ring, being the gift in its splendour.
One passage of
interest in this regard is found in II Corinthians 5. ALL, including the apostle,
we learn, face the reception of judgment for WHAT WAS DONE IN THE BODY. Yet
because "GOD WAS, IN CHRIST, RECONCILING THE WORLD TO HIMSELF, NOT
IMPUTING THEIR TRESPASSES TO THEM," and has committed to Paul and his
colleagues the 'word of reconciliation'. Therefore and by this, this TERROR of
the Lord (
ALL men must so "appear before the judgment seat of Christ". This includes Paul. Yet we know that the saint's sins are buried in the depths of the sea, and will be remembered no more (Micah 7:18-29, Hebrews 8:10-12). Thus a divine INTERVENTION in terms of the gospel mercies and pardon, swallows up this fearful apparition of just judgment. With regard to the terror, but constrained by love, Paul warns them. God will intervene only in terms of His Gospel, and if this be rejected then judgment is sure already.
In sum: confronted
as for judgment, with the list and litany of wrong doing, the data of his
faults, Paul is delivered by the supervention of the marvel of judicial mercy
made manifest then, as Christ as made manifest Himself on earth earlier; and
this predestinate mercy was made manifest in his heart (II Timothy 1:9,12). God
being no respecter of persons, and this 'word' of reconciliation being
preached: then others may look similarly by faith for such supervention in this
sense ( I John
The Westminster Confession speaks in Chapter III, of 'elect infants, dying in infancy' and 'all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word' as 'being regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth'. This emphasis is just. GOD appoints the gospel, the time, the manner of its dispersal, and sovereignly secures by its criterion, those who are His, who without works, He has before the world known.
We do not, may not and cannot rightly prescribe; to His patience or to His knowledge, by the wisdom of our little wits; but will leave to His divine knowledge the securing of His own WITH the love He protests He has (and I believe Him!), declares He is and executes without prejudice (I Timothy 2:1-6, Colossians 1:19ff.).
Against potentially damning, indeed justly damning evidence, then, comes the divine supervention in METHOD (pardon and regeneration), PRINCIPLE (the procurement as by the Gospel) and TIMING (when He will), that all chosen, repenting and believing may be, and indeed assuredly will be saved. Let us take then care not to distort or contort, to squeeze or to qualify outside the Bible that magnificent love of God. HE does NOT go through the souls of men as a philanthropist might go through an orphanage, and select now this one now that, condemning by non-selection those left.
DESPITE
His love for all, He rejects some, but on the PRINCIPLES stated which fully
delineate His love, and NOT in some way which denies them. NONE deserves to be
selected, let alone through some mysterious X-factor of God-acceptability which
is viewed as in some way endemic. (Cf. Predestination
and Freewill pp. 82 and 97 - note 88. "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good
thing," says Paul in Romans 7:18 -
cf. Psalm 16:1-5, Isaiah 45:23-24, 64:6, Romans 3:20-27). Perception of
spiritual beauty differentially in the flesh is not the ground of salvation, or
its criterion, but "the
grace of God that brings salvation, which has appeared to all men" - Titus
ALL deserve to be rejected. But GOD deserves to be taken at His word which He states that He would have all men to be saved and declares in the most categorical imaginable terms the barrier against salvation not in His love lack towards some, but in the response in the very face of His STATED intention (John 3:17) and His direct ADVENT, of those whom He rejects.
Those known before all time indeed are lost, but not through lack of love towards any as the basis and underlying cause, in His attitude. To state, makes parables or imagine to the contrary is to have an imagination at war with the word of God. Of all places in which to wage war, this is the last.
Let us then, as is well in such considerations of the divine mercy, recall to mind two vital principles. The first is that of grounded condemnation, and the double threshold, from John 3:19; and the second?
It is this:
Micah's depiction of it, given in just and true inspiration of God (Micah
“Who is a God like You,
who pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgression
of the remnant of His heritage ?
He does not retain His anger for ever,
because He delights in mercy.
“He will turn again,
He will have compassion upon us;
He will subdue our iniquities, and
You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”
Ezekiel 33:11 is similar and of incomparable breadth, while Luke 19:42 shows a concern in parallel, and Jonah 3 in action. God loves mercy and God cites condemnation in terms of ultimate sin against the ultimate light. So much has been said by so many on the sovereignty of God, and by so many others on the freedom of the human will even in sin, that the justice of the first and the error of the second tend to be stalemated in terms of the bypass of the love of God often found in the second: something which had Wesley*1 in almost apoplectic seeming passion against Whitefield to the point.
It is of course the simple case that God is UTTERLY sovereign and UTTERLY merciful, and the way these things are at work together is as stated in the Bible, portions of which both sides have tended to ignore, suppress or treat too lightly. If only one could remember at all times that God means exactly what He says ON ALL SUBJECTS.
SIN is remorseless an agent to do what it can to undo; MERCY is NO LESS SO as the agent for deliverance. GOD in His wisdom moves wholly, truly and justly: in all His stated principles, magnificently true, truly magnificent. What He states to the Jew in terms of His love, He states to the Gentile, to the world! It is all written, whether by apostle or prophet to the Jew or to the Gentile...
Does however II Corinthians 5 limit the application of this mercy? IF Paul warns people of their facing judgment on the score of 'receiving' sins done in the body (5:10), does this NECESSARILY entail that the supervention of mercy will not occur unless believing is done in the flesh (in which case, farewell those not able to receive the ministry of the word, as cited from the Westminster Confession earlier).
However, Jesus
said that believing itself is THE WORK OF GOD. (John
Since many scriptures indicate that saving faith is not a work of ours, something evincible as meritorious or citable as attained; since merit is out, not indeed attributable to us as agents in salvation any more than such would be citable to a baby being born; since it is clear that this categorical and unrescindable (Romans 8:28) gift is given so that GOD DOES IT, and it is WROUGHT in us: then this becomes one more case, like that in Romans 1-3.
The universal condemnation or susceptibility for it or both is spelled out first; and then the supervening mercies in the gospel are spelled in. CATEGORICALLY and ANALYTICALLY and even PRINCIPIALLY, we ALL face and deserve hell; but divine supervention BY the Gospel WHEN God pleases chases away the law, and institutes redemption.
For each Christian, therefore, for each called at this or that time, this principle is equally in force. Into this arena of judgment, ALL must have the intervention of God; and the question is this - when does He do it?
Believing becomes the operation interceptive, the anti-missile missile carrier which brings deliverance. It intercepts what it will when God wills. For whom then does it make this interception? For all to whom this occurs, for them there is the deliverance from this judicial scourge, impending but disrupted by the gift of eternal life in which it is God who justifies, as Paul puts it in Romans 8.
"Who
shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who
is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who is risen again...
Who shall separate us from the love of God!..." (see Romans 8:33-34,38-39).
We are in this context therefore faced with this: it simply means that all face the sourness of hell justly by deserts of their deeds, but in His inimitable style, God has sent Christ His Son, and will send sentences to those secured to Him, to the depths of the sea; whenever this has the assured correlative to predestination: in which the whole thing is determined at and indeed, before the outset of the world. That correlate is saving faith, the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).
Paul, out of love, not out of terror (II Corinthians 5:14), but with terror in mind, then tells whom he may, so that they may be saved, and none will be, without preaching (Romans 10); for without this Christ none will be saved, and that involves revelation and preaching, or its just divinely functioning equivalent in reality, known to God. It is indeed well to leave the secret things to God (Deuteronomy 29:30), and to employ and deploy the revelation HE has given to us, while leaving HIM to consummate its principle in His illimitable wisdom and freedom. What then God may do in terms of His freely declared PRINCIPLES and HOW He will do it , is HIS PREROGATIVE. He does not contradict Himself (Proverbs 8:8). He will act just as he says.
We, first of all,
do not know the whole outworking of predestination in history; and secondly, do
know that the judge of all the earth will do right and will execute His word,
including those magnificent principles of John 1-3. We do our part and preach,
teach, live for Christ; God does ALL He wishes as He wishes. His word is not
mocked or locked; HE will perform it. It is neither necessary nor wise to
exercise ourselves in things too high for us. Christ always and only is for
answer; and how He performs it in terms of His only and everlasting Gospel is
His affair. I for
As for whoever in
this present world will be damned: such will not be so without the total
application of the principles of John 1-3,
There are, to be sure, highly suggestive intimations; and who would deny to anyone the privilege of constructing apologetics for the assistance of the saints and the reaching of the lost who desire it, with due reserve*2, keeping scriptures which have bearing, in mind, without addition or subtraction : while interpreting the system as it is, and exhibiting the thrust of its demonstrable harmonies with the liberty which the need imposes, and the care God imposes (I Peter 3:15, II Corinthians 10:5, I Corinthians 9:19-23, II Timothy 2:15)...
Such work is
prima facie, however: structural concept for the sake of Apologetics, not
adding to doctrine or subtracting from thought. NOTHING will in any case
bankrupt the love of God, yes even at any point: any more than it will disperse
His sovereignty or less human responsibility. The neat, all-embracing and
elegant way in which the Bible weaves these together, this and this alone in
all literature, allows such entirely harmonious combinations of these
principles, and for this we praise the might, the marvel and the communication
of God.
Enduring and simple realities remain clear and certain: as we have seen from John and Paul, a is also displayed in Hosea, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, as displayed in Predestination and Freewill and Appendix B, SMR: hell is for the second degree of rejection (Colossians 1:19-23, John 1-3,15, I Timothy 2:1-6), extending to the abyss of severance, awesomely excluded by reinforced guilt, away from the love of God. HOW to get there 'safely' is to reject mercy's commission, Jesus Christ! And this in the face of the divine willingness amply declared, and this in truth and in reality! God does not ask us to worship Him with greater simplicity and reality than He Himself has displayed in His own true testimonies and commandments.
We who love the
Lord*3 have no call to presumption to prescribe times and seasons to the
Almighty; but rather to proclaim the everlasting Gospel (Revelation 14:6,
Genesis
Not then for one
moment does love shrug, in indifference to life; as if that were an acceptable
vogue. It is contrary to the mind of the Creator and unacceptable for the
people of God, whose salvation is at the hand of Him who IS life. Indifferent
then? Love would rather ACT and speed the action for all or any who face the
mangling jaws of life without Christ ( Ephesians
It is God who is God; and all who make
some submissions in theology in His name, must recall this constantly lest
there should be a carrying away with systems of human thought, however godly
may be the intention.
(the entire Chapter
from that volume is available
as Supplement for multiple reference in this work, or may be reached by the
above hyperlink)
One recalls an
instance in the years of pastorates, in which some were speaking with one who
could not seem to realise clearly and distinctly the fact of SALVATION
being now and real as offered (John 4:14, 10:9,27-28): or else that one does
not believe. It was a matter of receiving by faith, Christ Jesus the
Lord, as the door, and walking through Him into the life everlasting: what He
offers. However, if you do not believe what He offers, how then do you believe
HIM! Sometimes people are tested (I Peter 1:6), and there are needs (as in II
Corinthians 13:5) which may arise when flagrant immorality may require radical
assessment and self-investigation.
Nevertheless,
though some areas of testing may thus arise, that concern faith, this is
not the norm, any more than is pneumonia. Thus it is in the very same place
that the apostle Peter (1:6-9) says just this: "In this, you greatly rejoice, though if need be for
a little while, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness
of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is
tested by fire, may be found to praise, honour, and glory at the revelation of
Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see Him,
yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving
the end of your faith - the salvation of your souls."
The
test expresses the fact, the faith, and the faith is in normal operation is
buoyantly believing, joyously receiving. It is so in Romans
It
is necessary to have the simplicity of children and not the professional
sophistication of philosophers in dealing with such things, though they alone
stand above all philosophies in validity and comprehensiveness, answering all
questions and meeting all challenge.
That
is one of the beauties of not dancing or lagging either, but waiting on the
Lord. In profundity, He has no equal; in depth of counsel, He is non-pareil;
in simplicity to the penitent, He is absolute, in directness for the seeking,
He is incomparable, and in bounty of offer, He is liberal past all measure. You
enter the door which is Christ, receiving Him as He is, and His work as done
and completed (Hebrews 8-10), or you do not. If you do, then it is by faith or
not; if by faith, eternal life is yours, and your faith requires it, since it
IS faith. Hence it is perceived as received. If you do not, then your lack of
faith denies it. It is this which may be examined and examined well!
The human mind
can readily invent thousands of ways of making the clear unclear, the certain
uncertain and the contradistinct, indistinct - to itself. The objective reality
however does not vary for that, any more than a lamp-post varies because
someone who is for some reason of obscured vision, sees it 'differently'. It IS
where it is. Nothing changes that. It is the fact that matters. God is where He
is, to be found, in repentance of the sin which is the world's inheritance and
love, including the individual's own error and folly; and in reception of the
Saviour provided IN this world FOR the people of this world, WITHOUT WHOM,
there is no peace for this world.
Meanwhile,
it is quite a good plan,
in observing the gluttony of passion to wreck this world, the relative
indifference to preventing this phenomenon and the tremendous advances in its
devastation, because progress is SO important, and a negative sign is but
small: it is indeed a very sound plan not to join it.
As proverbs 1921
puts it:
"There
are many plans in a man's heart,
Nevertheless the LORD's counsel -
that will stand."
That is simply a
fact.
Meanwhile,
the door lies open (John 10:9). You can quiver on the threshold, put through a
dangling foot, play hide and seek about the lintel, try to project through
mental projectiles as if in play, ponder the possibilities if you went through,
like a dreaming sheep; but until you enter by faith, you are on the outside,
and no amount of philosophy or psychology will alter it. If on the other hand,
you pass through by faith, no amount of devil's counsel can alter it. The thing
is done. Eternal life is the gift. It is then experienced in God's own way,
leading to the certainty of KNOWING Him (John 17:3), which is so prodigious an
event that you might as well say: I went past something or other, I don't
know, it might have been
If
you so reacted, you would be aesthetically dead (forget the commercial aspect
for the moment!).
If
on the other hand, you specify the minimum requirements for you to recognise
the passion of the falls, you might be so pre-occupied with
yourself that you might indeed have only such a glimpse that you had no clear
notion.
FAITH
is not works, whether those of merit or aesthetics. It is only when FAITH is
there, that the RESULTS CAN come. Thus those who want a better spiritual world
for themselves, and testing, trying, wondering, experimenting in their psyches,
do not achieve what they want, are not believing. They are being dependent on
their own internal works. This produces the heavy irony: you do not get what
you want, because your want is your god, guide and criterion. That is the peril
by all means to be avoided. It is only when you BELIEVE IN HIM, that He
manifests Himself. Faith tolerates NO works. It is a reception of the gift of
eternal life which is required, by faith through grace, not by estimation and
consideration. Leave that to the mathematicians.
That
then is the WORLD which is first needed, the world of your own psyche, the
microcosm of your very life as an individual. It is only then that any other
world can come for you, in its way and day. In 2000 years, the world itself has
been experimenting and tasting, inventing hideous idols in the name of Christ
and false options, now surging into some spiritual splendour, now cashing in on
it, now trying something, now compromising it, using the name of Christ not a
little for its follies; and it too is coming to the end of itself. It will end
(II Peter 310ff.), and this Age itself will first end (Matthew 24:12); but the
end of the whole matter is Christ (Ephesians 1:10), not to surmise concerning
His word, but to believe it, for it is HIS, and He is the Word of God eternal,
incarnate, and the final, solemn sacrificial word from God to man (Hebrews 1).
The
world is going, but to help it to do so is unwise. Judgment is coming, and to
fail to be covered is folly. God is loving and to caricature His love, as if
'sovereignty' were in some way a requisition for a limitation on His love, is
mere philosophy, as illogical as it is contrary to Biblical revelation.
Colossians 1:19ff. makes it for ever clear, that God is pleased to reconcile
all things, yes whether in heaven or on earth to Himself.
That
is what it says, without qualification. To qualify the word of another is to
become co-author. It is in categories, if you will, God and man. It is in terms
of desire, that of God. It is to cover all dimensions of creation, heavenly and
earthly. It is in this vein that He speaks, in those dimensions. It is to be
believed or not believed; if not believed, then you are a philosopher on your
own. For our part, we are considering the testimony of the word of God as
defined and demonstrated to be His. What does it say ? THIS then is what it
says. It says it to one, to all. All includes, of course, you.
If
you believe the Bible, you have no option not to believe that amplitude of the
desire of God. In that case, Colossians 1, as in John 1-3, it is ONLY when man
in the face of God so loving the world, and in the face of the LIGHT which has
come into the world, from the heart and mind of God, His fellow, Christ the
Lord (Zech. 12:10, 13:7, John 8:58, 5:19ff.), that man can find hell. HE, we
read did not come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be
saved.
These
things being so, the Bible then offers comfort and condemnation. The former is
in the ready provision for each little world, each cosmos of the psyche, every
man, woman and child, of salvation, pardon and peace in the presence of the
living God, presenting to the faith which accepts it from His hand, a
non-perishing, and an adoption as children of God (John
That
is the comfort. What then of the residual condemnation, when PLAN A is not met
?
The
latter - it is not just condemnation for sinning - Christ has come to remedy
that. It is a specialised kind of sin and a special kind of condemnation which
is the other arm of the river of life. THIS, says the Lord, is their
condemnation that light has come into the world, and men have preferred
darkness. That is summary, definitive and unarguable. Hence we come to the
concept that the chief thing missing for this world is the microcosm, the
psychic microcosm, the life of man, and it is missing where it ought to be, in
the friendship and salvation of God. Its absenteeism is chronic, often devious
and always in the end, disastrous. There are many such on this earth, and it is
littered with their litter.
Against
this futile failure, is the majestic truth.
GOD
SO loved that He gave His only begotten so that whoever believes might not
perish. God DID NOT come to condemn, but to save, yes the world. It is not
selective in the actuating love, in the issuance of offer, in the sincerity and
the passion of the provision (cf. I John 2:2). It is however most selective
as to destiny. IF you do NOT receive this light so offered, then you are
THEREFORE condemned. Therefore ? Yes, it is BECAUSE they preferred otherwise,
and without God there is spiritual darkness of course, since HE is the light of
meaning, the basis of matter, the significance of spirit, the ground of
judgment and the source of wisdom.
Does
God then ensure that you cannot come so that He may condemn you anyway ? This
is one of the greatest of the follies of theology, when it is pathologically
wedded to philosophy. That is virtually to call God a liar. HE is saying
relative to the world, which He so loved, that it is NOT to condemn that He
came, and that if YOU do not come to Him in this salvation offer, then you are
condemned BECAUSE you rejected IT. On the contrary, the philosophic perversion
of the gospel says, He did not really want you anyway, did not so love you, and
your condemnation is a contradiction of the principle that He did not come to
condemn the world, and that He so loved the world, and that He would have all
to be reconciled to Himself. In all this, this philosophic folly masquerading
as Christian proceeds (and if it does not, the implication is not other), He
lies. It is really just outward appearance. In fact, He precludes your coming
to Him!
What
a shocking lampoon, this is, what a gross and grace caricature it is of the
love of God, and however unconsciously, of the lament of Christ over Jerusalem,
and His pledge, How often I would have gathered you, but you would not!
(Matthew
Moreover,
to call or imply, or to so speak as to imply that God a liar, is not truth (cf.
Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7 and Repent
or Perish Ch. 2 with SMR pp. 25ff.). HIS is the truth and He has
made all things as He will and not otherwise, for His purposes, and not
contrarily. To be sure, some get confused, and do not intend to call God a liar
by any means, but the defilement of their contradiction is still present. The
reason that the declared love of God to the world, which is visited with a
negative, as far as condemnation is concerned, results in condemnation anyway
is that in the very face of it, the ache of unbelief rejects it, the anguish of
non-acceptance. THEN comes consequential condemnation, because the pardon being
parlayed, the grace despised, the end is now certain.
Are
they then condemned "because
their deeds were evil"
(John
Did
it say that God so loved some of the world ? Did it say that He would like to
reconcile some things to Himself, or ALL things ? Does it say in I Timothy 2,
that He would have all men to come to a knowledge of the truth, or some ? Is it
in the presence of absence of the light that their condemnation is stated in
principle to become determinate ? Is the light stated to be one intent on
condemnation or salvation of the world ? Is the loved stated to be SUCH (so)
that the pre-loved might come, the special elect, or is the field the world ?
It is of course true that GOD KNOWS who are His; it is equally true that He
seeks the lost. It is true that God never changes and that Christ is definitive
of God as His word (express in Hebrews 1), so that in whatever, however,
wherever, whenever, God is the same, and the longing yearning love of Christ is
the same, and there is nothing true of God that contradicts it (despite
Calvin's error on this - see Tender Times for Timely Truths -TTT - Ch. 2).
Be
you as predestinative as you like (and predestination is a glorious scriptural
fact), it makes not a whit of difference. The God who predestines is the God
who yearned, pled (as He pled in the Old Testament, Ezekiel 33:11), lamented
(as He lamented in the Old Testament, even over non-Israel (cf. Jeremiah
48:30-35, Isaiah 30:15, 48:18ff., Jeremiah 9, Lamentations 3:33, Luke
19:42ff.). If any difference is made, the predestination is the guarantee that
the love of God in NOTHING will miss its mark, nothing can overtake it,
minimise, no circumstance control or qualify it. Knowing in advance is NOT
knowing differently!
Hence
reference to predestination as if it in some way curtailed the adequacy,
accuracy or precision of the statements of the word of God, or that of the
manifestation of Christ, is sheer waywardness. It is, on the contrary,
the ensuring that the principles of God work perfectly, and one of these is
this, that He would have all men to be saved, to come to a knowledge of the
truth, to be reconciled to God, and that He WEPT over Jerusalem, pondering
mournfully with a combination truly His own, of tender passion, judicial
realism and reflection on the morbid refusals of His people (Luke 19:42ff.,
Matthew 23:37ff., cf. SMR Appendix B), on their now assured fate, DESPITE His
immense, intense efforts to arouse, to awaken, that they might know the day of
their visitation, as He declared.
The
intention of God in love is clear; the desire to deliver is clear; the
profundity of the sorrow of rejection, for those doing it, is clear; the sure
knowledge of the outcomes is clear, and of the souls who are His before all
time and with no reference to any merit, since none has any before the pure and
incandescent standards of God (Ephesians 1;4, Romans 9, Psalm 71:16, 51:1ff.,
Ephesians 2). Indeed, it is only by condescension that He considers any, and
only through the funnel of faith in His prior redemption that on this earth,
they come.
Love
is not rambunctious and God acts as He will, in His love, and uses power only
as befits love. How many stumble over these patently obvious realities of love,
of which God is the author, source and definition!
In
the face of this, the rejection of Christ is deadly. The absence of faith in
His offer, when made, is fatal if continued. The tremulous horror of it is
this, that since He has such love, such PRACTICAL and necessarily sacrificial
love, that any do not accept it, or act as if it were in some way in doubt,
hence not according trust to Him, hence to His word, hence to His promises and
hence finding the peace of realisation in Christ, of who He is, and so KNOWING
GOD, an unforgettable marvel to the Christian!
Having
the keys of death and hell (Revelation
Thus
neither with the dancing feet of ignoring His limits for man, nor with the
slack feet of hoping for the best while doing the worst, yes, and assuredly not
in a missing microcosm, his own heart in the love of God, is man to find peace.
He is first to find God, then only will He find the priorities, the
perspectives and the power to live in this world.
Certainly,
He will not do it as a race. Certainly the final bell will show the disaster in
the last quarter all too clearly (cf. SMR Ch. 8*1). SO be it. This
in no way alters the love, the offer or the necessity now and here, in all
things and in all ways, to live by, with and for God, through the only
appointed way to Him, His way to us, the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not find
God, it is not because He lacks love, but you do not enter the door of love
provided. As to His willingness, it is stated repeatedly. As to yours, forget
the stench of philosophy, ignorant in its many wisdoms, and simply realise the
love is there and stated, that He is on record, and it is time you put yourself
there. It is by grace ? Of course. Only ? That is express.
IF
it depended at all on you, you COULD not do anything. It does not depend on
you, however. In knowledge past your knowledge, He knows all. If HE were not
able, or willing, it would be different. He is statedly both, demonstrably
both. Then come or be damned, because you love the dark.
It
is not a lark, this love of God. It is adequate in all things. It is not, on
the other hand, a licence provision for unlimited folly. If you do not want, so
be it; if you do, drink the water, enter the door and be thankful, that God who
is verbally omnipotent has spoken saying,
"Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden: and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" -
Matthew 11:29-30.
He is not enticing you for a
comedy, or a perversity, for all things are His, including His will, works and
powers, and nothing wanders with Him. He is calling you to come. Refuse at your
peril, come to your comfort.
To
be sure, the microcosm which is your soul, your psyche, will no more be
(pretendedly and pretentiously) autonomous. What would you ? Is it a lie which
you wish to live ? But then, the liberty in the Creator is the designed one:
you are not going to be able to fly like a bird, but you WILL be able to have
the kind of independence, mixed with underlying dependence for which you are
designed*2. For my own part, to be dependent on God is far better
than being dependent on man, who is unpredictable (for us), unreliable (in
multiplied instances, often astonishing in quality and extent), or on oneself
(a man in kind after all).
This
other way, the way of God: It is thrilling, inspiring and RIGHT! THEN and then
only can the sort of independence which is filial and not foul, become
functional. Then one can work with one's Father (by adoption - Ephesians 1), in
a way which makes new delight roses in fragrance and multiplicity, whatever be
the suffering which truth requires and love desires.
By
this time, one has love oneself, the very love of God, not seeking acclaim,
arrogance, or puerile pretences of humility for social gain, but seeking good
because God is good, and His will because HE knows HOW! Moreover, by then, one
has Christ as a brother (Hebrews 2), and there is NO sense of strangeness and
alien things. He after all, became man, that He might bring us to God. When the
new heavens and earth come (making these things is no great thing to God! and
though it may seem so to some, so does it seem to a child, impossible to make a
... house!), then there is to be a righteousness like God, as standard issue.
That, that will be a glorious and holy combination of just humility, true
holiness and liberty of the most amazing kind, for it is sin which limits, its
potential which calls for guards, and its action which defiles.
A macrocosm for non-missing microcosms! Heavenly indeed.
Meanwhile on this earth, neither haven nor heaven, responsibility is called
for, in the will of God, for each of His people. This pilgrimage is no less
than that; its terminus is glorious when the God of glory is your own Father;
but even its passage is sublime in this, that you can serve this God of
glory, NOW. That, it is a privilege indeed!
D. EXCERPT from
Great Execrations,
Great Enervations, Greater Grace Ch. 7
Since this is a short excerpt, it is left in its original font.
To Know God … Ch. 1, however great much of his
work is sound) have to be exposed as unscriptural. Quite simply Colossians
1, as the author has shown consistently since 1956 when it was, by consent,
presented to the class of John Murray at Westminster Seminary, without reply,
teaches the love of God in the most expansive possible manner.
It is not a matter of economy. “HAVING MADE PEACE THROUGH THE BLOOD OF HIS CROSS” – sufficient was this for any or all, as the
Bible Presbyterian Church of the 1930s rightly affirmed in its Constitution, in
the
It is not a merely bureaucratic style of venture, for
“it PLEASED THE FATHER”. Nor is it impractical,
for it led to action, in this that “it pleased the
Father than in Him should all the fullness dwell”. This means
that there was no truncation, shortening, partial presentation in the Christ
who became man, sent from His eternity in heaven (John 1:1 – God knows only ONE
GOD! Psalm 82, Exodus 20, and that is why Thomas addressed Him as My Lord and My God!
Using in the Greek, the GOD OF ME, phrasing, when ‘answering Him’ who spoke to him).
It is not a reserved matter. God did not spare
Himself, reserving select regions of His nature from attack. ALL FULNESS went
into the incarnation, and that is one of the many reasons why there can never
be another.
God is ONE
BEING and it is impossible that He should come as two different beings, as if
the image of God in man were not a definitive matter, or God’s use of it were
not an expression of eternity, not subject to any duality. Moreover, ONE death
is what men suffer, so ONE death is what Christ vicariously suffered, and ONE life
is what is given to man, and ONE life is what Christ assumed in
presenting Himself a sacrifice for ANY man, and for ALL who come to Him (Romans
8:32 makes it quite clear that those for whom He is actually sacrificially
offered up are possessors of heaven). So is the reality preserved with that
astounding accuracy which is one of the prerogatives, without any exception at
all, of God.
Thus it is not a PARTIAL MATTER, since in Christ to
be crucified, dwelt all the fullness. Nor was it a merely selective matter in
some sense of mere preference, for the Father WOULD HAVE ALL reconciled by this
means. Statements to the contrary, on the basis of what is written, do
injustice to the love of God, and simply, idly contradict the book of the Lord
(cf. SMR Appendix B,
The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4).
It is not a CIRCUMSCRIBED MATTER, for God is seeking
nothing less than RECONCILATION TO HIMSELF. It is not a mere forbearance, not a
simple toleration, as with David towards Absolam on his first return when he
had fled, nor a putative matter, as if things were under review for eternity or
some lesser time, on probation. The result of the blood and repentance with
faith receiving the living God in the name of His bodily resurrected Son,
is one thing: reconciliation to God. There is no mere lazy waiver, no slack
wave of the hand, nor is there any mixture: God loves, provides, forgives,
receives as CHILDREN of His own, adopted into His own family in the name of His
own Son (Ephesians 1:5). In Him they are ACCEPTED (Ephesians 1:6).
It is not temporary, for God is not double-minded in
love, but loves absolutely. Hence of the children of God, we read this, that
they “have obtained an inheritance” (Ephesians
It is not unclear, for what does it say ? That if you
believe in your heart that God has raised Christ from the dead, and confess Him
with your lips, you will be saved. The Greek is not GO ON CONFESSING,
incidentally, the present tense, but the aorist of past action. Faith is such
and being such, reaches God by the power of His Spirit and the promise of His
word, and when He is found, YOU are never lost.
If this is
rejected, it is simple failure to believe. Indeed, whoever enters HIM AS DOOR,
HE WILL KEEP, most explicitly in John 10:9,27-28, and NOTHING whatsoever can
snatch out of His hand, nor will the life concerned ever PERISH.
It is not dependent on performance, for it is NOT OF
WORKS, lest any man should boast (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:1-10), and it is
not indifferent to performance, for when HE makes a tree good, it bears good
fruit, not as a condition but as a consequence. Roots are not fruits, and every
tree which He plants is His, and what is NOT planted by Him, does not last
(Matthew 15:13, 7:18ff.).
It is not dependent on man, for when HE saves a
person, he is KEPT BY THE POWER OF GOD (I Peter 1).
It is not indifferent to growth, for it prescribes
growth areas, like a good gardener (II Peter 1).
It does not leave people in a mist of test as if they did
not personally matter FOR THE PRESENT, for He sends His Holy Spirit (as in
John 14:18ff.), so that His comforting strength and virtue and victory might
inhere by His presence in His people (cf. I John 5:4, Romans 8:5ff.).
It is not merely abstract for it is wrought “in the body of His flesh through death” – Colossians
It is not impersonal, for churches which use His name
without truth or faith, may indeed be severed, the personnel changing over time
(Colossians 1:23, Revelation 2-3), while HIS sheep shall never perish, even
those ever so simply, who ENTER HIM AS THE DOOR OF GOD, TO GOD and PRESENTED BY
GOD. It is in this, God Himself placed for entrance, that they gain access and
acceptance (Ephesians 1:5-6) into His own Kingdom.
It is not without price, since the ultimate sacrifice
was made of God’s only begotten Son, in whom ALL His fullness dwelt, first in
enduring entry to littleness of life as a babe, then to smallness of human
resources, not in the houses of the rich, then to temptation (Matthew 4), the devil
an advocate of evil in His very hearing, making offers, then to contradiction
of sinners (Luke 11:47ff.), thence to condemnation (Mark 14:47ff.,62ff.), both
in word and in all the awful folly of torture, which came relentlessly to the
accompaniment of death in the very mocking presence of His enemies.
It is not without a blessed combination of
PURITY of MOTIVATION, PERFECT PERSEVERANCE (for what love
deserves the name, that stops towards those who receive it!), TENDER SOLICITUDE
and CAREFUL TEMPERING OF TEST (I Corinthians
Not totalitarian, God is nevertheless TOTAL IN
GRACE, and in knowledge as well, for He knows who are His (II Timothy
Reconciled BY the work of LOVE, His people are reconciled TO
the life of LOVE, and kept IN LOVE, for God is love!
More recently, see in this field -
The Christian Pilgrimage, By His Grace Triumphant to His Face Divine
Ch. 3.