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Dear Forum members,
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In my last letter to you, I discussed the contention of those who hold to common grace, that the favor and grace of God towards a person can be seen in the possession of material and physical gifts. Wealth is equated with God’s favor and health is equated with God’s love. God shows His favor towards all and His enduring love to all men by giving them material and physical abundance. This view is very commonly held throughout the church world, by cleric and layman alike.
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It ought to be obvious, however, that earthly good things, though given by a good God, cannot, in themselves, be indications of God’s favor, for God also sends poverty, starvation, cancer and death. On what grounds ought we to say, therefore, that earthly well-being is to be explained as evidences of favor, and yet deny that poverty and suffering are evidences of anger, hostility and hatred? To tie God’s favor to the possession of an abundance of material things and to interpret health as an indication of God’s love gets one into all sorts of difficulties and ultimately ties God’s favor to our own personal desires, carnal though they may be. We all would like to have more money. None of us enjoys cancer. To cater to our earthly covetousness would be for God to bless sin and to despise holiness. God’s holy saints are frequently very poor. We must not be so foolish; nor does Scripture give us any ground for interpreting life in such a fashion.
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The Bible does show us the direction we ought to go as we interpret the things of this world as things which God sends. We do well to pay close attention to this instruction from the Word of God, for we are prone to fall into the same error as those who teach common grace. How often is it not true that when some calamity befalls a child of God, his first reaction is, What have I done wrong to deserve this? Of what sin am I guilty, because God has sent this trouble upon me? Why do I have to suffer in this way? Questions like these are our natural reaction to life’s trials. We frequently come perilously close to agreeing with the basic premise of common grace. .
But there is no hope for us if we go that direction to solve the problems that adversity brings. We get caught in a muddle of questions to which there are no answers. We are lead by such thinking into dead-end paths that have no outlet. We trouble the tender consciences of God’s beleaguered saints in the midst of their woes of life. We take away the one hope and comfort they have and leave them with nothing to lighten their gloom. All they know is that material prosperity and physical well-being are indicative of God’s favor. But I am dying from cancer and have just lost my only son in an accident. What now?
* * * *
God’s works are quite different. Scripture is very clear on the whole matter.
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In this life we and all men live in the world. God gives all men without exception the things of the world. Without distinction, all men receive from God rain and sunshine, warmth and cold, money and homes, automobiles and television sets, automatic washers and clothing to wear. God disposes of all these gifts as it suits Him. To some He gives much, to others little. Some have health and strength all their life, others are sick from the date of birth. Some have cancer, others have Lou Gehrig’s Disease. God may and does give to His creatures as He pleases. No one gives Him advice on the matter. He consults with no one and seeks no one’s opinion. He pays no attention to outward appearance, rank, prestige, honor, nobility of birth or any other consideration. From the day an individual is born until the day he dies, God determines with absolute wisdom the entire pathway of a man’s life and what of the things of this earth he may have.
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This is true of all men. The wicked and the righteous receive all things in common and share all the bounties of this earth as well as all its calamities. A tornado destroys the home of an ungodly prince, but also a believing pauper. Cancer strikes without discrimination. Wealth is sometimes given to the wicked, but sometimes to God’s people. Poverty stalks pagan lands where the name of God is not mentioned, but Christian communities are not immune to starvation. My wife and I have been in Myanmar (Burma) and seen the lodging places of the people there. I have eaten with them of their paltry handful of rice. I have been in their huts and shacks. I found godliness there – perhaps beyond our own, if godliness includes contentment. I have heard pastors in Myanmar tell of holding their dying children in their arms, because medical help was beyond their means. Shall we stand in the doorway of such a shack and tell grieving parents who are ready to bury their child that God’s favor is shown in the material bounties of life as well as in health?
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To possess or to be deprived of the things we desire here in the world is no indication of God’s favor or disfavor. These things, in themselves, have nothing to do with grace and love or anger and hatred. They must not and cannot be interpreted in terms of God’s love or hatred, God’s blessing or wrath, God’s kindness or vengeance.
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All that I have said does not, however, mean that God’s disposal of all that belongs to this life in this present world is arbitrary. We must not look on this divine disposal as being done willy-nilly, without reason or design, on the basis of spur-of-the-moment opinions. Nothing God does is done without the very best of reasons and as means to accomplish ends known only to the mind of God and belonging to His unsearchable ways. Whether we know God’s purpose or do not know it, makes no difference. Most – indeed, nearly all God’s ways are beyond anything we would think or imagine. God does not take us into His counsels, nor does He explain to us why He does what He does. He is not answerable to us nor are we permitted to summon Him with a subpoena that we may put Him in the dock and force Him to give an account to us of what He does.
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God is not accountable to man for anything He does. This is the great lesson of the book of Job. Job was afflicted as few men are afflicted. His friends thought to solve the problem of Job’s sufferings by pointing to the fact that Job had sinned a great sin and was being punished by God for his sin. Job rejected that charge, for, although he knew that he was a sinner, yet he clung to the righteousness of Christ as his own (Job 19:25-27) and confessed repeatedly his trust in God’s sovereign control of his life. But Job did have one question. He wondered why all this evil had come upon him and admitted that if God would only tell him the reasons for his suffering, he would bear his anguish with patience. (Job 23:3-10). But God’s answer, when He spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, was, “Job, I am God. I do as it pleases me. No one may question my ways nor challenge my actions. No one may bring me into the witness stand and force me to give an account of what I have done. What I do is my work alone even if you do not understand it.” God’s ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts (Is. 55:8, 9).
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God’s purpose in giving all things to all men in common is to show, on the one hand, His justice in His just punishment against sin, and on the other hand, to show the riches of His grace and love to His people whom He has redeemed in Christ. Thus, though all men have all the things of this creation in common, God’s attitude towards the wicked is different from His attitude towards His elect. God is never gracious, or loving, or kind, or filled with compassion to the wicked. Because He is sovereign, He sends them all that they receive; but all is His just judgment on those who hate Him. Equally, He is sovereign in all He gives to the righteous, but all that He sends them is blessing. We must understand this and confess it; it is the teaching of Scripture. Poverty but also riches are curses on the wicked. Strokes and diabetes but also health and strength are curses on the wicked. Riches but also poverty are blessings to the righteous. Health and long life but also heart failure and genetic illnesses are blessings to God’s people.
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The key text here is Proverbs 3:33: “The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just.” The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked. That is, the curse of the Lord is with the wicked in everything that happens to them. They eat and drink the curse of the Lord. The curse accompanies them into their sitting room and bedroom and is upon all they do in these rooms. The curse of the Lord comes along with the husband when he brings his wages home. The curse of the Lord is in the work of the mother, going about taking care of the house and preparing to satisfy the needs of her husband and children. If they live in a castle or in a hut, the curse is there. If their home is turned into a hospital ward or a palace, the curse of the Lord is there. All the experiences through which the wicked pass are curses. All they possess and use in their daily lives are curses. Nothing but curse is upon them, for the curse of the Lord is in their house.
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But the opposite is true of the righteous. Always blessing is in their habitation. If they are prosperous, it is the blessing of God. If they are poor, their poverty is sent because God loves them. If the family returns sorrowing from the cemetery, their grief is the direct fruit of God’s tender care of them. If trouble and sickness come their way, God’s blessing is not only in spite of the trouble, but through and by means of the trouble. All is curse for the wicked; all is blessing for the righteous. All this is taught us in the sacred Scriptures and we must take hold of it by faith.
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It can be said without exaggeration that Proverbs 3:33 sums up the entire Scriptural teaching on this matter of our pathway in life. All Scripture testifies of the same truth. Read, for example, Psalm 1; and as you read the sharp antithesis between the wicked and the righteous, read it aware of the fact that Psalm 1 is the first Psalm in the Hebrew Psalter, because it defines the one theme that runs like a thread through all the songs. One does well to read meditatively this ancient Psalter of the church, The one constant refrain is the sharp contrast between the rich blessings bestowed on God’s people and the dreadful judgments God in His anger pours out on the wicked. My wife and I just finished reading the Psalms (our favorite book of the Bible) once again. We were struck by this repeated contrast. We tried to find a passage where Zion’s songs speak of God’s love towards His people and the wicked. We could not find one. I recommend to anyone to whom a common love of God towards all men seems a viable doctrinal option to read these delightful songs and try to find just one place where the church happily sings of a universal love or mercy or grace of God. One may start with Psalm 3:7, 8, go on to Psalm 5:4-7, pause for a moment at Psalm 9:5-9 and move carefully through the Psalter until he comes to the end in which concluding songs the Psalmist calls upon the entire creation to join with the church in praises to God who alone is worthy of all praise. But even then, with heart full of praise, the Psalmist reminds us that part of God’s great works for which He alone is to be praised, is God’s two-edged sword, “to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute upon them the judgment written; this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 149:6-9). It is our honor to praise God for His judgments upon the wicked? Indeed it is. Then what is it to the defenders of common grace to speak of love towards the wicked and grace towards them that hate God? It can only be their condemnation.
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There is more that must be said on this point, but I will wait with that until my next letter.
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With warmest regards,
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Prof Hanko
Friday, June 12, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Is God Gracious in Giving Good Gifts to All Men? (16)
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Dear Forum members,
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In my last installment I called attention to the fact that some defenders of common grace define common grace as God’s attitude of favor towards His creation. No Reformed man would ever disagree with this assertion. God made this world; He upholds it and governs it by His power. God has determined to save His creation through the atonement of Christ. God loves His world, looks on it with favor, and sends out His Spirit into the creation to renew it. There is, of course, the matter of terminology; that is, whether God’s love for His creation can rightly be called grace. But apart from that, the controversy does not lie here.
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The defenders of common grace speak of the fact that God also has a certain attitude of favor towards men – not some men, but all men. He is kind and benevolent towards men in general; He shows His desire that they be saved and does what He can to convince men of His desire to save them. That is, common grace, according to its proponents, is God’s love, mercy, kindness, etc. towards every man in the world that has ever lived, lives now and will live in the future before the Lord returns. It is an attitude of favor in whatever form it takes; that is, God shows His favor or grace to men in different ways, the chief of which is the well-meant gospel offer. But He shows His love for men in general in ways different from the well-meant and gracious gospel offer as well.
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I have postponed a treatment of the gospel offer for the time being, It is now my purpose to discuss that element in the doctrine of common grace that claims that God shows His favor to all men through giving them the good things in life. While a great deal has been said and much ink spilled over the question of the so-called offer of the gospel, proponents of common grace point also to rain and sunshine and the good things of this life as grace upon all men and His love towards mankind in general.
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It is this matter of rain and sunshine (as well as other good gifts) upon the unregenerate that concerns us at present. The first point of common grace, adopted by the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in 1924, specifically speaks of this kind of common grace. The point reads: "Relative to the first point which concerns the favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect, synod declare it to be established according to Scripture and the Confessions that, apart from the saving grace of God shown only to those that are elect unto eternal life, there is also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general. This is evident from the scriptural passages quoted and from the Canons of Dordrecht, II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9, which deal with the general offer of the gospel, while it also appears from the citations made from Reformed writers of the most flourishing period of Reformed theology that our Reformed writers from the past favored this view. (Quoted from Hoeksema and Hanko, Ready to Give an Answer [Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1997] 63. The emphasis is mine.).
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I note in the last letter that the wording of this first point of common grace is extremely unclear. It speaks of a favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect. According to the defenders of common grace, not the creation is meant, but men are the objects of this general grace of God – even though the wording does not sound like that.
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But the confusion does not end here. When it comes to the point of telling us what that favorable attitude of God towards humanity is, the first point speaks only of a general offer of the gospel. One would think, upon reading the point, that this gospel offer is all that is meant. Even when one looks at the "proof" given for this assertion of God’s favorable attitude towards humanity, one discovers that there is no confessional proof offered for any favorable attitude of God towards the wicked except that favor supposedly revealed in the offer of the gospel. Canons II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9 both speak of the gospel.
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The same is true in part of the Biblical proof for this universal favorable attitude of God towards all men. The last four proof texts, I Timothy 4:10 , Romans 2:4 , Ezekiel 33:11 , Ezekiel 18:23 , are obviously intended to give Biblical proof for the gospel offer.
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But then, strangely enough, other passages are referred to, which, though few, speak of something other than the gracious and general gospel offer. There are four such Scriptural passages. These four are Psalm 145:9 , Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6 : 35, 36 , Acts 14:16 , 17. When we consider that I dealt with Psalm 145:9 and insisted that the text teaches that God surely does show favor to His creation, we are left with Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6: 35, 36 and Acts 14:16. 17. Matthew 5:44, 45 speaks of sunshine and rain and is interpreted to mean that sunshine and rain are evidences of God’s grace. Because the sun shines on everyone and because rain falls everywhere, God’s grace is also upon everyone. Luke 6 speaks only of God’s kindness towards the unthankful and evil. The interpretation of this, then, is that kindness is like rain and sunshine and is evidence of grace to all, all men being the unthankful and evil. Acts 14:17 speaks of the fact that God did not leave Himself without witness, but testified that He is God by doing good, giving rain from heaven along with fruitful season, and filling men’s hearts with food and gladness. This witness of God is interpreted to refer to God’s grace and favor that He shows to all men.
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Let us consider the matter. Before we enter into the meaning of the few texts quoted, three other points have to be made.
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The first is that no one disputes the fact that God gives good gifts to men. This is irrefutably taught in Scripture and no one wants to deny it. James 1:17 settles the matter: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." God is good! He is good in His own being. And as He reveals Himself in all the things He has made, He reveals that He is good. He is good in all He does; He is good in all the gifts He sends to man; He is the overflowing fountain of all good. Indeed, in whatever He does, He is good. It would be terribly wrong to say that there are certain things God does that are not good. The implication would have to be that sin can be found in God; or imperfection; or lack of understanding; or some deficiency in what He does. All this would be blasphemy of the worst sort.
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But this in turn means that God is not only good when He sends His rain and sunshine from heaven and causes an abundance of food to grow; He is also good when he sends drought and famine, pestilence and grasshoppers, which eat everything in sight. He is good, not only when He sends health and strength, but also when He sends sickness and pain. He is good in times of prosperity, but He is also good in times of adversity. That ought to be clear to anyone that holds to the truth of God’s sovereignty and infinite goodness. If God is good when He sends what we want, why is he not good when He sends things we do not want and fear? Is He good when rain and sunshine come? But bad when floods and drought destroy crops? Is He good when He gives us strength to work, but bad when He sends sickness? That is the insoluble problem of common grace.
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Who would dare charge God with badness? Not even those foolish people who deny that God sends sickness and trouble dare to claim badness on God’s part. They simply move all trouble and affliction outside God’s control and into the hands of the devil – and thus deny God’s sovereignty.
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From the viewpoint of our own subjective experience as children of God, we ought to see how crucial this is for our faith. If only the good things in life are grace, what about the bad things? We would be forced to conclude that the bad things are evidences of God’s anger and hatred. What else can they be? But what would that do for our faith? Every affliction and trouble in this life would be reason for fear and despair. Why is God angry with us? Why does He send these terrible troubles? It can only be that God is angry with me and loves me no longer. Such is the inevitable experience of trying to equate God’s favor with mere outward prosperity.
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The problem is, obviously, that we equate God’s favor towards men with the bestowal of pleasant earthly things. Rain and sunshine are favor, so it is claimed. So is health and strength. So is prosperity and affluence. The more things of this world I possess, the greater is the favor of God. But then the less of the things of this world I possess, the less I have of the favor of God. That follows.
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We do grave injustice to our fellow saints in third-world countries such as Myanmar when we make such absurd statements. How can we claim to have more of the favor of God here in an affluent Western country when our fellow saints in Myanmar have all they can manage to keep body and soul together? It is a cruel slander of them.
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And yet it is a mistake we are all inclined to make. Asaph made that mistake when he told us in Psalm 73 that in noticing the prosperity of the wicked and his own suffering, he almost lost his faith. The wicked owned an abundance of the things of this world and seemed to live tranquil and trouble-free lives, while he endured chastening each morning at the hand of God. The problem was so serious to him that, unless he found the answer, he found it impossible to believe God’s goodness towards His people.
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Common grace, which identifies favor with material things, is a threat to one’s faith.
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The same error is made into the central truth of preaching by the so-called "Prosperity Gospelers." Their main theme in all they preach is that to serve the Lord will result in material prosperity, health, and an easy life in the world. Thousands follow their teaching; it is the easy way to attain what their covetous souls desire. Common grace, insofar as it teaches that material possessions are indicative of the favor God, feeds this abominable teaching. It is a teaching, when consistently applied to life, believed and accepted, leads to hell. And yet I hear voices claiming to be Reformed who make the same dreadful mistake.
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It is sometimes argued that surely in the old dispensation material prosperity was indicative of God’s blessing. Countless texts can be quoted in support of this, especially in the book of Deuteronomy. One example of such a text, outside of Deuteronomy, is Malachi 3:10 : "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now here with, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
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But we must not forget that all this was in the old dispensation in which all God’s dealings with His church were in pictures and not in reality, in types and shadows and not directly in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result was that material prosperity was, for the church, prosperity in the land of Canaan. And the land of Canaan was a picture of heaven: it was a land flowing with milk and honey as a picture of the rich spiritual blessedness of heaven. In keeping, therefore, with the nature of the old dispensation, all these blessings in the land of Canaan were dependent on Israel’s keeping of the law of God (See especially Deuteronomy 28 ). And the fact of the matter was that Israel could not and did not keep God’s law, with the result that the land of Canaan became a barren wasteland and Israel was brought into captivity ( II Chron. 36:21 ).
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The believers in Canaan never made the mistake of confusing Canaan and earthly prosperity with the blessing of God in Jesus Christ. They looked at the picture and realized it was only a picture. When Christ would come, He would fulfill the law for them and do on their behalf what they could never do. And the reward would be, not that land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, but heaven itself. Their hope and faith were fixed on Christ and on His perfect work, which would give them the fullness of the spiritual blessings of salvation ( Heb. 11:10, 13-16 ).
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I shall return to this subject in my next installment.
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With warmest regards,
Prof Hanko
Dear Forum members,
.
In my last installment I called attention to the fact that some defenders of common grace define common grace as God’s attitude of favor towards His creation. No Reformed man would ever disagree with this assertion. God made this world; He upholds it and governs it by His power. God has determined to save His creation through the atonement of Christ. God loves His world, looks on it with favor, and sends out His Spirit into the creation to renew it. There is, of course, the matter of terminology; that is, whether God’s love for His creation can rightly be called grace. But apart from that, the controversy does not lie here.
.
The defenders of common grace speak of the fact that God also has a certain attitude of favor towards men – not some men, but all men. He is kind and benevolent towards men in general; He shows His desire that they be saved and does what He can to convince men of His desire to save them. That is, common grace, according to its proponents, is God’s love, mercy, kindness, etc. towards every man in the world that has ever lived, lives now and will live in the future before the Lord returns. It is an attitude of favor in whatever form it takes; that is, God shows His favor or grace to men in different ways, the chief of which is the well-meant gospel offer. But He shows His love for men in general in ways different from the well-meant and gracious gospel offer as well.
.
I have postponed a treatment of the gospel offer for the time being, It is now my purpose to discuss that element in the doctrine of common grace that claims that God shows His favor to all men through giving them the good things in life. While a great deal has been said and much ink spilled over the question of the so-called offer of the gospel, proponents of common grace point also to rain and sunshine and the good things of this life as grace upon all men and His love towards mankind in general.
.
It is this matter of rain and sunshine (as well as other good gifts) upon the unregenerate that concerns us at present. The first point of common grace, adopted by the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in 1924, specifically speaks of this kind of common grace. The point reads: "Relative to the first point which concerns the favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect, synod declare it to be established according to Scripture and the Confessions that, apart from the saving grace of God shown only to those that are elect unto eternal life, there is also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general. This is evident from the scriptural passages quoted and from the Canons of Dordrecht, II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9, which deal with the general offer of the gospel, while it also appears from the citations made from Reformed writers of the most flourishing period of Reformed theology that our Reformed writers from the past favored this view. (Quoted from Hoeksema and Hanko, Ready to Give an Answer [Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1997] 63. The emphasis is mine.).
.
I note in the last letter that the wording of this first point of common grace is extremely unclear. It speaks of a favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect. According to the defenders of common grace, not the creation is meant, but men are the objects of this general grace of God – even though the wording does not sound like that.
.
But the confusion does not end here. When it comes to the point of telling us what that favorable attitude of God towards humanity is, the first point speaks only of a general offer of the gospel. One would think, upon reading the point, that this gospel offer is all that is meant. Even when one looks at the "proof" given for this assertion of God’s favorable attitude towards humanity, one discovers that there is no confessional proof offered for any favorable attitude of God towards the wicked except that favor supposedly revealed in the offer of the gospel. Canons II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9 both speak of the gospel.
.
The same is true in part of the Biblical proof for this universal favorable attitude of God towards all men. The last four proof texts, I Timothy 4:10 , Romans 2:4 , Ezekiel 33:11 , Ezekiel 18:23 , are obviously intended to give Biblical proof for the gospel offer.
.
But then, strangely enough, other passages are referred to, which, though few, speak of something other than the gracious and general gospel offer. There are four such Scriptural passages. These four are Psalm 145:9 , Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6 : 35, 36 , Acts 14:16 , 17. When we consider that I dealt with Psalm 145:9 and insisted that the text teaches that God surely does show favor to His creation, we are left with Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6: 35, 36 and Acts 14:16. 17. Matthew 5:44, 45 speaks of sunshine and rain and is interpreted to mean that sunshine and rain are evidences of God’s grace. Because the sun shines on everyone and because rain falls everywhere, God’s grace is also upon everyone. Luke 6 speaks only of God’s kindness towards the unthankful and evil. The interpretation of this, then, is that kindness is like rain and sunshine and is evidence of grace to all, all men being the unthankful and evil. Acts 14:17 speaks of the fact that God did not leave Himself without witness, but testified that He is God by doing good, giving rain from heaven along with fruitful season, and filling men’s hearts with food and gladness. This witness of God is interpreted to refer to God’s grace and favor that He shows to all men.
.
Let us consider the matter. Before we enter into the meaning of the few texts quoted, three other points have to be made.
.
The first is that no one disputes the fact that God gives good gifts to men. This is irrefutably taught in Scripture and no one wants to deny it. James 1:17 settles the matter: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." God is good! He is good in His own being. And as He reveals Himself in all the things He has made, He reveals that He is good. He is good in all He does; He is good in all the gifts He sends to man; He is the overflowing fountain of all good. Indeed, in whatever He does, He is good. It would be terribly wrong to say that there are certain things God does that are not good. The implication would have to be that sin can be found in God; or imperfection; or lack of understanding; or some deficiency in what He does. All this would be blasphemy of the worst sort.
.
But this in turn means that God is not only good when He sends His rain and sunshine from heaven and causes an abundance of food to grow; He is also good when he sends drought and famine, pestilence and grasshoppers, which eat everything in sight. He is good, not only when He sends health and strength, but also when He sends sickness and pain. He is good in times of prosperity, but He is also good in times of adversity. That ought to be clear to anyone that holds to the truth of God’s sovereignty and infinite goodness. If God is good when He sends what we want, why is he not good when He sends things we do not want and fear? Is He good when rain and sunshine come? But bad when floods and drought destroy crops? Is He good when He gives us strength to work, but bad when He sends sickness? That is the insoluble problem of common grace.
.
Who would dare charge God with badness? Not even those foolish people who deny that God sends sickness and trouble dare to claim badness on God’s part. They simply move all trouble and affliction outside God’s control and into the hands of the devil – and thus deny God’s sovereignty.
.
From the viewpoint of our own subjective experience as children of God, we ought to see how crucial this is for our faith. If only the good things in life are grace, what about the bad things? We would be forced to conclude that the bad things are evidences of God’s anger and hatred. What else can they be? But what would that do for our faith? Every affliction and trouble in this life would be reason for fear and despair. Why is God angry with us? Why does He send these terrible troubles? It can only be that God is angry with me and loves me no longer. Such is the inevitable experience of trying to equate God’s favor with mere outward prosperity.
.
The problem is, obviously, that we equate God’s favor towards men with the bestowal of pleasant earthly things. Rain and sunshine are favor, so it is claimed. So is health and strength. So is prosperity and affluence. The more things of this world I possess, the greater is the favor of God. But then the less of the things of this world I possess, the less I have of the favor of God. That follows.
.
We do grave injustice to our fellow saints in third-world countries such as Myanmar when we make such absurd statements. How can we claim to have more of the favor of God here in an affluent Western country when our fellow saints in Myanmar have all they can manage to keep body and soul together? It is a cruel slander of them.
.
And yet it is a mistake we are all inclined to make. Asaph made that mistake when he told us in Psalm 73 that in noticing the prosperity of the wicked and his own suffering, he almost lost his faith. The wicked owned an abundance of the things of this world and seemed to live tranquil and trouble-free lives, while he endured chastening each morning at the hand of God. The problem was so serious to him that, unless he found the answer, he found it impossible to believe God’s goodness towards His people.
.
Common grace, which identifies favor with material things, is a threat to one’s faith.
.
The same error is made into the central truth of preaching by the so-called "Prosperity Gospelers." Their main theme in all they preach is that to serve the Lord will result in material prosperity, health, and an easy life in the world. Thousands follow their teaching; it is the easy way to attain what their covetous souls desire. Common grace, insofar as it teaches that material possessions are indicative of the favor God, feeds this abominable teaching. It is a teaching, when consistently applied to life, believed and accepted, leads to hell. And yet I hear voices claiming to be Reformed who make the same dreadful mistake.
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It is sometimes argued that surely in the old dispensation material prosperity was indicative of God’s blessing. Countless texts can be quoted in support of this, especially in the book of Deuteronomy. One example of such a text, outside of Deuteronomy, is Malachi 3:10 : "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now here with, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
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But we must not forget that all this was in the old dispensation in which all God’s dealings with His church were in pictures and not in reality, in types and shadows and not directly in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result was that material prosperity was, for the church, prosperity in the land of Canaan. And the land of Canaan was a picture of heaven: it was a land flowing with milk and honey as a picture of the rich spiritual blessedness of heaven. In keeping, therefore, with the nature of the old dispensation, all these blessings in the land of Canaan were dependent on Israel’s keeping of the law of God (See especially Deuteronomy 28 ). And the fact of the matter was that Israel could not and did not keep God’s law, with the result that the land of Canaan became a barren wasteland and Israel was brought into captivity ( II Chron. 36:21 ).
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The believers in Canaan never made the mistake of confusing Canaan and earthly prosperity with the blessing of God in Jesus Christ. They looked at the picture and realized it was only a picture. When Christ would come, He would fulfill the law for them and do on their behalf what they could never do. And the reward would be, not that land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, but heaven itself. Their hope and faith were fixed on Christ and on His perfect work, which would give them the fullness of the spiritual blessings of salvation ( Heb. 11:10, 13-16 ).
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I shall return to this subject in my next installment.
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With warmest regards,
Prof Hanko
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God's favor,
grace for all?
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