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CHAPTER 10
THE WILL OF MAN IN THE GRANDEUR OF GOD
cf. Progress, Regress, Emphasis and Perfection Ch.4
THE PLACE OF THE WILL AND ITS PLACEMENT
The will of man is not a consideration when it comes to the application of God's will that he be saved, not just in hope, but with certainty (John 1:12). That is a simple grant of God (John 6:65, Ephesians 2:1-12). It is a work of God, when man believes Him as He is, and in what He has done (John 6:29).
The will of man, however, is highly RELEVANT when it comes to the registration of the will of God in that divine foreknowledge that exhibits the godly principles applicable to man made in the image of God (neither puppet nor fragment). These principles include, as shown in John 9:41 and 15:22-25, certain matters of moment both inescapable and directly from the deity.
Thus we find this. IF those confronting Jesus Christ had had not themselves heard what they had, concerning His words, "they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin, " bold added. Indeed the rejection of Him in view of what He had DONE, is likened to hating both Him and His Father. Two things made them inescapably guilty, instead of amazingly still not finally condemned to a negative destiny. One was observation of what Christ had said; the other, the watching of what He had done. If after these premium provisions, they still declined, then declination it was, and with it no mercy for their various sins, the ONLY path being by themselves foreclosed.
Cut out the sights and sounds to their eyes and ears, to their personal perception, and what then ? The case is still then beckoning.
NOTICE: THEY WOULD HAVE NO SIN,
on the one hand, if these things had not been heard, and
THEY HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR THEIR SIN,
on the other, if they have.
Consider. What comes in between to make absolute difference to their final estate (short of repentance and faith in Christ Himself) is HEARING. Again, if they had not seen the works, they would have no sin, but now their rejection is deemed by Christ equivalent to hatred, a dismissal not only of the divine reality and actuality, but of the mercy prodigiously shown graciously and made available through Him, at such cost. If you anti-desire to that extent it comes to hatred, since you would rather doom than mercy by that way, the way of Christ. Known to God before all time, are the events in time, and He knows past all rationalisations, and applies with utter truth what the reality is.
A negative destiny is not confirmed without the equivalent of being exposed to the gamut of grace and the marvel of works showing the Saviour as indeed, predicted for some 1000 years in no small detail.
Let us take the two biblical sections, that in John 9 and that in John 15.
In the former, Christ having restored to sight a blind man, who was persecuted by the religious authorities for refusing to dub Christ a 'sinner' in view of what He had just done (John 9:25-34), Himself assessed those who acted as judges of the former blind man. He, for his part, appreciated the singular and amazing, gracious works when he saw wrought, not being blinded by prejudice. So they judged the formerly blind man. As to his judges, however, Christ judged them, depicting both the general and the particular issues, that concerned them.
"For judgment.", He declared, "I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see,
and that those who see might be made blind."
The point was clear. The blind man now DID see and his judges still equipped with physical sight, lost claim to spiritual sight, blinded by ecclesiastical obstinacy into condemning both him and his Healer.
Hence, accordingly, some of those Pharisees asked Christ, "Are we blind also ?"
In response, Christ applied the point most directly
"If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say "we see!',
your sin remains."
What left people STILL blind in spirit was this: to deny, to ignore or misjudge the ways and works of Jesus the Christ, despite being exposed to them, and hence in the very presence of forgiving grace in all its purity, to reject it.
The point is made both dramatically and categorically. that it is an absolute of the love, grace and mercy of God that to reach condemnation, hell, to break through the barriers of grace and reach this destiny, unqualified condemnation in other words, for that sin is not enough, in its episodic adventures. Desert, what without mercy you would get, that is one thing; final condemnation, however, in the very face of mercy, is quite another. You gain that by rejecting the mercy which being that of God, is given as He will, and as He would, so He did in becoming man, man being made in His image, and then dying in the form of man for man*1, as many as received Him the recipients, all the objects of the thrust of the offer. Man does not save himself; God does that. God knows who are His and they are not swamped by sin because He bears it, prepares them, and consummates the salvation in them.
To avoid this divine prodigy of mercy ? For that, the Lord insists (as in John 3:16-9), you need to be exposed to this alternative of divine salvation (or its equivalent in principle and reality, in spirit and in truth) and STILL reject it, and even then, prefer otherwise.
So far gone is man (it is not only his physical genome which is now found to be heavily damaged and to be proceeding to further damage, but his spiritual state and status also), that he cannot as if some mere observer, choose salvation, this in and out of his own will (John 1:12). He is too marred and mulled for that, as we saw. But as is often forgotten, God makes a difference. You might expect this of an infinite Being. He can bring to light things physically and spiritually, so that what is cardinally impossible without Him (cf. Hebrews 6:6-8), nevertheless gives place to the secured results of His own will, in whatever way He chooses.
How then are the principles of divine mercy as depicted by Christ in these cases, and repeatedly, both in principle and in application, applied in the word of God, the Bible ? (cf. SMR Appendix B, for example) ?
It is not for us to weigh, if you will, the technical aspects of God's working (as in foreknowledge and His ultimate knowledge of each soul - cf. Ephesians 1:41, Romans 8:29ff., in this respect); BUT it is possible to show for the sake of Christian Apologetics, how it might be logically considered (cf. Predestination and Freewill).
Past that, in view of the word of Christ, it is necessarily the case that in the pre-fall, pre-history phase relating to divine foreknowledge, relative to the personal mercy of God toward man (cf. Titus 2-3), it is as valid then - Christ being the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews13:8,Malachi 3:6, Isaiah 43:8-10) - as when He was on earth. Time does not alter God; it is He who alters time in that it must begin at His word (as in Romans 8:38-39, Genesis 1), and as so made, end. The essential situation and disposition of deity does not change. Foreknowing or finding, God acts with eternal discernment.
God is not a chameleon but a champion, and the truth is all His, indeed He IS it (John 14:6), and so spoke - John 8:37-40.
Hence the will of man, his preference for darkness or light in terms of personal ambience and desire, and this as DIVINELY discerned before time began, IS relevant to salvation. Of man, when he comes as now into this fallen world in his own fallen estate, it is not relevant as determining the case, because of its retardation and pollution through sin. Before this, however, and the arrival of creation, before God Almighty before creation even came to be soiled and in much spoiled, man's will, wish, desire, inclination, preference IS known and it is there that it remains crucially relevant.
It is not hard to understand. What is found by God and foreknown is the truth. It represents the actuality for each one, beyond the vagaries of pollution and confusion. When therefore a given person comes to the time of response to the Gospel, for example, then it is the TRUTH which will be striving within, and it is this which will established as the Lord acts, saves, seals and confirms; or repudiates. Not dissimilar is that fact that repudiation of God in His actual reality, this also, will be in accord with the truth. Individuals may in this world at this time, in our time, since the fall, indeed experience something of the truth concerning these things, some being more undiscerning, some more acutely aware, in their conversion, rather like people under anaesthetic, some more awake than others.
THE WILL AND THE TRUTH
But the issue, whatever the awareness - and sometimes it is keen - is resolved according to truth, not something added on as if a burden or a boost. What the truth is, is solemnly and surely exhibited. Thus Christ could say - in terms of the foreknown role of Judas Iscariot, long before the betrayal, 'one of you is a devil,' John 6:70. It was just a fact. That is the way the preference went, and this being so, predestination enabled the reality to be certain. Christ did not prevent the truth of that matter from having its horror realised; He did not evacuate. He came for a saving purpose, and what was part of it was allowed to stand, being part of the plan (cf. I Corinthians 2:6-8, Luke 9:56). The purpose of His coming AS man, in that format, to take what was coming to those so made, was NOT to destroy. It was entirely different. There was no automatic mandate for that; that was a derivative, a result of their rejection, but not the motivation of the coming. For HIS part, He did not come to destroy the world but to save it; but what remained, remained in vain, by its own ultimate will, in response to His only way back.
In all these ways, God keeps His word, both in mercy and in judgment, doing exactly what He said; and man is responsible, just as he is treated by the Lord, and as we see in John 9 and 15, for example.
Concerning the will of man, then, where is it directly relevant ? The other place, outside foreknowledge as the topic, where it is crucially operative, relative to the affairs of salvation, and its total perspective, is found in an immense area. It is in the field of SANCTIFICATION. Here Paul tells Timothy in the very midst of the certainties of salvation (II Timothy 1:12), that he is to emulate athletes, who strive for the crown according to the rules (II Timothy 2:5). His mind must be sound, his valour acute, his watchfulness clear, some things voided, avoided, some fashioned, some repelled. He must be active, watchful, vigorous, realistic.
There is nowhere outside the Bible, where the initial problems of predestination (which follows and confirms foreknowledge, which for its part, is logically before it) and freewill are jointly met to the uttermost; nor in principle is it even possible.
It is ONLY when the Saviour from sin, the One who decides eternal issues for man, is NOT seeking, when it is not in Him to seek for His own will in competition with or in indifference to that of man, and is intent on giving without personal advantage as a criterion in judgment, and this whether consciously or unconsciously, latently or blatantly, that man can in principle by divine means be given the objective, unimanipulable freedom. It is only then that it can be and is outside the dimensions of his ignorant, defiled and defective self, in theme or episode. Only then is the freedom made true and operative. Then is man not only free to will what he will, but to be in whatever way to which his being relates, WHAT He will, unenslaved by his own limits. If you were anaesthetised, how would you choose ? if your willing was subverted, how would you gain it ? But here it is both enabled and discerned, as it truly is, before
1) time began 2) creation was actualised 3) sin polluted and 4) false ambitions systematically subverted.
As in the thesis, Predestination and Freewill, non-God approaches to the voluntaristic and the deterministic, the know-it-all dismissal (which means nothing if it is merely determined, so that this view is self-contradictory, both manifested and mauled by its own model), and the angelic liberties of autonomy (though even angels turning callowly autonomous can be far from good, aspiring lustily), do not achieve explanation or verification of the realities concerned. Relativities reel in the realities, till there is only impact and impression, liberty in chains.
These godless approaches have no way of dealing with an actual and fully responsible freedom, such as man imagines himself to have in loud declamations theoretic or practical with bustling frequency, feeling guilt very often at its use, and weighing most carefully, responsibly or irresponsibly, what he wills. He devises, he considers the canons, the principles, the values, the preferabilities as he considers which way to go in myriad issues. He is deeply involved in his dealings, dispensing or endorsing vision as he will. However polluted, yet he breathes this air, and finds these considerations.
His ineradicable guilt is not subject to removal, whether in the spot of Lady Macbeth, or the sot of downgraded folly. Efforts may be made, but truth, like the smell of slaughter, remains. It may be a human rationalises, but with a certain hollowness, restlessness and turbulence; and even if all liberty were quite dead in cultivated immorality, yet its corpse quivers, as reality in the disposition of the will as an issue before the event, brings the mind back to reality. Not only, then, the guilt, but the deliberative preludes of mode in decisions, these do not bow to convenience, often being blind to anything but convenience, themselves. Rationality, temporality and results remain, however subjected to wilful blindness. There is no place for the knowledge of actuality when truth is not there, only happening; and hence there is no meaning to freedom.
THE SITE FOR ONE TO MINE
The godless solutions do not exist. Hence the thesis Predestination and Freewill, having dealt with that issue at the first, concentrated on what COULD work, to show that only ONE DOES work, even when divine matters are in view, so solving the problem from the text of the Bible. This is the one which contains the matter. Ignoring texts of one kind or another may produce controversy; but keeping to all that is written in the book of the Lord, concerning this theme, provides an harmonious understanding. It is one prompted by ALL that is written on the topic in the word of God, and it is from this that one finds this unique wonder.
Thus, when deity is considered in this totality, then the meaning both of the liberty and of the responsibility, the notion of freedom in conjunction with the deliberations and what they analyse and investigate, and the way in which this is done, is readily seen. God is the ultimate and available base and basis both of the desire, the internal attestation, the systematic review of the way and the reasons for which one acted, and it is toward Him that all this occurs in the acuity of objectively available assessment. It is He who not only is there as the actual truth, but applies it as the actual impact so exhibited as enabling, the place to man's will in the foreknowledge of His own profundity and wisdom, discernment and inexorable penetration. It is love that drives it, that all might be saved (I Timothy 2, John 3); and it is knowledge that finds it, that none be merely harpooned, forced or taken in confusion. Love is like that.
In man, the result tends to be felt, experienced, often repressed, often expressed, to create turbulence, desire for revenge or self-elevation; but it is not annulled by man. His stature is not removed by his fallen status, nor is his image deleted by its misuse.
Because in the presence of God there is SCOPE and GROUND and REASON and REALITY for freedom, absolute and entire, not to BE God, but to be man before Him, therefore in the case where the god concerned lives, the God who is love (I John 4:7-10), who does not pursue self-interest competitively or unconsciously, much less intentionally, there is freedom indeed, where the realities are generically available, even beyond the polluted personalities inhibited powers to operate with knowledge and without confusion.
The non-god model fails in kind; that of a god is open to possibility, depending on the case for its resolving power; and only the religious model which has what the Bible offers, meets the case. This acts without invasion of freedom to mutilate it beyond its name, or elevation of it to impractical and merely visionary lusts, as if it were autonomous and had made itself. Yet man has exalted liberties. He may will to become a marvel to equate with God, an outcome which the devil sought to make man envisage, from the first. The fact that is dependent on the wisdom of God for its creation, cannot excel that wisdom, since it is derivatively and by permission, all he has, does not intimidate many. They WILL it, though it is even logically not available: God did not begin.
Given the wonder of liberty, however, it can defile the wisdom of God, reject it, seek to overthrow it and lust for the glory. Even so, it will never get it, since it is not glorious to mimic and pretend and thieve and be ungrateful and lust beyond your means, taking your eyes off what you are and can be, as you swerve to one side, into merely callow substitutes for reality.
BLESSING FOR BLIGHT FREELY
Where then does freedom come, now ?
When man fails, God does not fail, seeking all at the uttermost cost (John 3:16ff., Colossians 1:19ff.), and here lies - no rather, here lives the ground of truth for man, and hence of liberty, responsibility and destiny. It is this God with this character of Being, who not only has the necessary features to grant freedom to man, and this not only to do what your own self and will prefers, but to be what you will, free within the scope of your very being, a format and not a dictator in itself. In this case, the possible paths multiply. Man can as foreknown, with much to exhibit later, will to contend with God, to contest with God, to differ from God, to be jealous of God, to seek to be equal with God (before death sullenly sets in); or to find that elixir, that draft, that wonder of being comradely with God, while truthfully seeing His glory, and basking in His blessings. Such is freedom within the whole scope of your being, foreshadowed from the first after the fall of man (Genesis 3), enabled in the sending of the Messiah to cover the cost of restitution and cancellation of guilt, so that man might not only have scope for liberty, but in love have its actuality - and the award itself, this also freely (Romans 5:17).
You can will to invent yourself (though lacking what is needed), to subvert yourself or to seek to try that with God; and you may love the Lord and relish His compassion and the passion which made it able to be implemented, not in some political talk, but by practical act, not in some pitying morsel, but in the entire re-creation of man through the stamp of sin on Himself, and the grant of life ex gratia. You thus have ultimately liberty to be in a relationship of bane or blessing, spiritual paranoia, or poverty in spirit, to seek elevation even to the place of God, despite your beginning making this impossible and so on in a myriad of avenues: you are gifted with the scope to try such things, whatever is or may seem to be in the scope of the gifts you have.
Many are the pitfalls; and that is precisely what makes predestination so delightful: for the truth being foreknown, this brings it to pass. It remains true that if with all your heart you truly seek Him, you will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13); and if you are ignorant, God has the case covered with HIS knowledge, His foreknowledge and that includes any who might try to have it both ways, and deceive even the Lord. As Acts 5 shows, this is not worth the effort, and shameless as well as a shambles.
Glory to God then for His multiplied testimonies and attestations, and for this one, that from His word which under all tests attests its validity by its incomparable competence and control to the least point (cf. SMR, TMR, Light Dwells ...), there come the grounds for liberty, explaining it, depicting its creation and the reason for this both expansively and adroitly, pithily and pointedly, successively and progressively, graciously and lovingly with appeal to the heart. This, He does not invade, whatever man did to Poland, to Austria, to Czechoslovakia (multiplied insurgencies, famine deaths, labour starvation duets, since 1940) and may threaten to do to an already grossly abused Ukraine. These are illustrations internationally, but they come from individuals, some agreeing, some disagreeing, who exhibit on the map scale, the thoughts of their hearts.
NOTE
In Hebrews 2, we see the fittingness that the captain of salvation in leading many to it, should become in one aspect, one of those whom He would lead, bearing in that format, what was needed for their release into love and liberty. He did not come as what is impersonal, because God IS personal, nor did He come as an object, for that could be idolised per se, and does not EXHIBIT God. He took a material form (one originally formed from the materials made in the earth itself, as in the original man), through incarnation, and has no ticket to pass on to the impersonal, or the material, by which He may be known.
ONCE as man God came. Matter is not His milieu; but He may assume its format where the result is configured to exhibit the personal, and this through incarnation, not participation in what is merely natural.
The supernatural in Christ, eternal word of God, took through natural format, through incarnation, the form of man, that the information of God might be conformed observably to his ears and eyes, and the precise impact of his sin might be taken, in the precision of the very nature of the case. Small wonder that we read this, "Now once in the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him, He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation," a matter further explained in Romans 8:21-24.