Monday, August 31, 2009

Election and Reprobation Denied (19d)

Dear Forum members,
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In the past letters I have sent, I have been at some pains to demonstrate from Scripture that the common grace of a universal benevolence and love of God is contrary to the Word of God and the teaching of the Reformed and Presbyterian Confessions. Over against this position, I have also attempted to present a positive Biblical and confessional statement concerning the truth of sovereign and particular grace.
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In doing this latter, I have, more than once, mentioned that the Biblical teaching is that God’s sovereign and particular grace is rooted in the truth of sovereign and eternal predestination, both election and reprobation . This teaching is found in Scripture and in our Confessions.
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Without any doubt, this same doctrine of sovereign and eternal predestination, both election and reprobation, was taught by the Reformers, including both Martin Luther and John Calvin. Those who hold to double predestination today stand firmly in the tradition of the Reformation and of the Reformed and Presbyterians Confessions.
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To maintain double predestination is to close the door to any form of common grace, particularly to the idea that God’s love, kindness and benevolence are shown to all men. But it works the other way around as well. If one is committed to common grace, in whatever form it takes, sovereign and double predestination falls by the wayside.
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This was evident in a recent reprint of Arthur Pink’s influential book, The Sovereignty of God. In this book, Arthur Pink defended the Biblical doctrines of both election and reprobation. Yet, the Banner of Truth, in republishing the book, deleted all references to reprobation, without any notice in the book of having omitted these sections, without a credible apology for doing so, and without permission from the author, dead at the time the reprint was made.
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I recently received a letter from one who read my forum articles in which the correspondent claimed to believe in election, (because it was, after all, found in Scripture) but who insisted that we could know nothing about it and that it ought not to be a part of the preaching. As far as we know, he said, God loves all men and presumably, Christ died for all men. To ignore this basic doctrine of Scripture is to deny it.
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A correspondent and member of the Forum called my attention to the fact that a recent article in The Banner, the official periodical of the Christian Reformed Church, repudiated both reprobation and election. The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) is the mother Church of the Protestant Reformed Churches, and the two denominations have existed separately since the CRC expelled three ministers for repudiating the doctrine of common grace.
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Where has an adoption of common grace led the CRC? It has led the CRC down the road of increasing apostasy although our interest in this article is in what it says about predestination.
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The article to which I refer (Alvin Hoksbergen, The New Calvinism: Calvinism is on the Rise – but Other Faith Traditions are Getting all the Credit [The Banner, August, 2009], pp. 38, 39. The article can be read on www.thebanner.org.) is discussing a feature article that originally appeared in Time magazine entitled “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” published in the March 22, 2009 issue of Time magazine. Among these “10 Ideas” Neo-Calvinism was included.
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The article was, in its description of Calvinism, a caricature of it, understandably if Time was speaking, not of Calvinism, but of Neo-Calvinism. Time’s description of this Neo-Calvinism bore no resemblance to Calvin’s teachings; this kind of Calvinism was indeed “Neo,” and could rightly be called “No-Calvinism.”
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One would think that a minister in a denomination that professes to be Calvinistic would come to the defense of Calvinism as it has been taught in the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. But such is not the case. Rather, the author is puzzled that neither the Reformed Church of America (RCA) nor the CRC was included in the lists of churches who are promoting the new Calvinism. The author points out various areas in which the CRC has been active and should have received proper credit: The CRC is active in social work and the CRC properly recognizes the authority of God’s Word in creation (presumably a reference to the CRC’s approval of evolutionism). These certainly, the author opines, are credentials that admit the denomination into the ranks of Neo-Calvinists. But these credentials were obviously ignored by Time.
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Finally, the author presumably finds the real reason why the CRC has been overlooked. It has an albatross hanging about its neck, which has been hanging there for some time: “I wonder why the RCA and the CRC traditions aren’t mentioned. Whatever the reason, now might be the time for us to take another look at who we are and how we might be included among other Calvinists who make a noted difference in today’s world” (38). He then suggests that the reason for the exclusion of the CRC from Time’s list is: “Our problem with election. An area that we in the CRC tradition must address if we are to be part of the ‘new Calvinism’ is the perception that there is an albatross that hangs around our neck. I am referring to the perception that we believe God predestinates some people to everlasting hell, while others are granted eternal life in glory” (39).
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The author then goes on to give a caricature of the doctrine, even though, in his opinion, the church no longer believes or, at least, never talks about it: “While most seem to have moved away from the concept of double predestination (God is glorified by those assigned to hell as well as by those accepted into heaven), the biblically based concept of election remains a major factor in our theological structure” (39).
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He then goes on to say, “[Election] is not a topic that plays well from the pulpit. It is an arrogant position that may consign good acquaintances to hell while granting heaven to only a select few” (39).
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The author then goes on to define what he thinks election really is. “When God called (elected) Abraham, God mentioned nothing about Abraham’s being translated to heaven after death. Instead, the promise was wrapped up with what Abraham and his descendants were to do in their daily lives” (39). This is a time-worn definition, repeatedly refuted, that election means nothing more than God’s choice of a nation or individual for a specific task in the world; in this article that task is said to be social action.
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All the Reformed theologians throughout the ages, including Bavinck, Kuyper, Turretin and many others in the Reformed tradition, and Rutherford, Gillespie and others in the Presbyterian tradition, not to mention the outstanding theologians at Dordt and Westminster, and the Reformers themselves, are brushed aside with a careless wave of the hand and dismissed as responsible for an albatross hanging about the neck of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches. Speaking of arrogance, brushing aside in a cavalier fashion outstanding theologians to me is a towering arrogance that cannot be excused. Such dismissal of the traditions of the church of Christ is, of course, done in the interests of a “new Calvinism,” a “neo-Calvinism”, which is no Calvinism at all, but which is, after all, a categorical dismissal of Scripture itself, in which all these doctrines are to be found. And so it becomes a towering arrogance in its own right that lifts man’s vain speculations to a position higher than the Scriptures.
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Such ecclesiastical disaster comes upon defenders of common grace. It may take years, but it comes, with astonishing certainty. We do well to take heed.
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With warm regards,
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Prof. Hanko

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Christ: His human nature and His love--for whom? (19c)

Dear Forum Members,
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In the last letter I addressed the question whether any possibility of kindness towards the reprobate exists in order that God may be delivered from the charge of being unkind and tyrannical. I answered this with an emphatic “No.” Neither Scripture, the Reformed Confessions, nor the Westminster Confession of Faith speaks of this general kindness of God. I stressed rather, that God is a holy God, that any sin against Him is terrible, and that God is also a God of perfect justice. In His holiness and justice He cannot overlook sin and be kind or gracious to the sinner – apart from Christ.
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Nor can God be charged with tyranny. He is good in all He does, even in His just judgment of the wicked. It is not tyrannical for God to punish the wicked with a punishment commensurate with their monstrous sin against His great holiness.
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Nevertheless, behind God’s just punishment of the wicked is God’s eternal decree of reprobation. According to this decree, God’s purpose eternally is to manifest His justice in the way of the punishment of the sinner.
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These considerations are closely related to other questions to which we now turn.
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One question that was raised by correspondence was the question whether Jesus, from the view point of His humanity, loved all men. The argument goes like this. When our Lord Jesus Christ came into our flesh, He came under the law (Gal. 4:4). The law demands of everyone under it that he love God and his neighbor as himself. A man’s neighbor includes all those without distinction with whom he comes into contact. No man under the law knows who is elect and who is reprobate, except our Lord Jesus Christ, who did know who were His people and who were not. And so, because Christ also was under the law, even though He knew His own and knew also who were not among His sheep, He had to love the reprobate as well as the elect if He was to keep the law – although this was only in His human nature.
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I recall that there was a controversy over this very point in a Presbyterian Church a number of years ago. The controversy centered in the gracious gospel offer, but involved the same line of argumentation as is used in this question we now consider. The defender of this view talked personally with me to explain his position. In order to explain his position on the discrepancy between Christ’s love for all revealed in the gospel offer and Christ’s sovereign love for His people only, he appealed to the distinction between the divine nature and the human nature of Christ. He claimed that Christ in His divine nature loved only the elect, but in His human nature, He loved all men.
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He was correctly charged by his church with Nestorianism, an ancient heresy, which separated the two natures of our Lord so completely that Christ possessed, according to this view, two persons. Nestorianism was condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD and by the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
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All that our Savior did while on earth and all that He now does is His work as the divine-human Mediator. It is wrong to say that Christ did one thing in His divine nature apart from His human nature, or to say that Christ does something according to His human nature without the involvement of the divine nature. It is yet more wrong to say that Christ in His human nature could do something completely at odds with His divine nature, so that the two natures did not agree with each other. Hence, in answer to the question: Did not Christ, who came under the law, fulfill the law by loving all his neighbors, whether elect or reprobate? we insist again that the Biblical answer is, No; Christ who knew His own that were given Him of the Father loved His neighbor, but only His elect neighbor. This truth is, in fact, clearly stated in John 13:1: “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”
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I really do not understand very well the force of this argument. Neither for Christ, nor for us, is our neighbor every man who lives in the world. My neighbor is the one with whom I come into contact, with whom I must live, who is on my pathway, who requires my attention, who places me under certain obligations towards him. My neighbor is my wife, my child, my fellow saint – as well as the man along side of me in the shop. And I am called to love him in such a way that I, caring for whatever need he may have, seek his salvation. Love always seeks the good of the object of that love; and no greater good can we show to someone we love that to seek his salvation. I do this because I do not know who are elect and who are reprobate, and it may please God, should he be an elect, to use my love for him to bring him to salvation (Matt. 5:16).
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But the Lord loved His neighbor too. He sought the salvation of His neighbor and in fact accomplished it. But His neighbor was the one for whom He was sent into the world to die, the elect in this world whom the Father had given Him from all eternity. That neighbor was by no means kind towards Christ. That neighbor opposed him, rejected His gospel of the kingdom and finally crucified Him. But the power of the love of Christ on the cross, brought and still brings that neighbor to faith and salvation.
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This truth is clearly taught by the Lord Himself. At the time the Lord received a delegation from the imprisoned John the Baptist to inquire whether He was the Messiah or whether another was still to come, the Lord addressed the people by extolling the important place John had occupied in the working out of God’s salvation in Christ (Matt. 11:7-15). At the conclusion of this sermon, the Lord pronounced dreadful woes on the cities of Judah and spoke of the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah as well as Tyre and Sidon would not be punished as severely as Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin (Matt. 11:20-24).
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Immediately after this solemn and divine pronouncement of judgment on apostate Judah, it seems the Lord paused to pray – although He must have prayed audibly: “I thank thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt. 11:25, 26). This prayer was not, however, a conclusion to which the Lord was driven by what he observed as He witnessed the unbelief of the leading cities of Palestine; He not only acknowledged that such hiding and revealing belong to the sovereign work of His Father (“Thou hast hid these things . . . and revealed them . . .”), but He also emphatically states that He is on the earth to carry out this divine purpose of His Father: (“All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (27).
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I see no problem here.
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We can consider two additional questions in this letter. They are related to each other. One question asks about the possibility of hating a man’s sin, but loving the man himself. The figure of a judge is used. A judge may be utterly repelled by a man’s sin, but nevertheless have a sense of pity and compassion for the man. It is not necessarily true, so the questioner argues, that love and hatred are totally incompatible.
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The second question, related to the first, refers to Galatians 5:22, 23, where the fruit of the Spirit is defined as principally love. Did not Christ, so the question goes, have the Spirit? And did He not, therefore, love all those with whom He came into contact? The same can be said of us in our calling. We have the Spirit and if we show the fruit of the Spirit, we show love for our fellow man. Parenthetically, I observe that the question is reminiscent of our modern judicial system in which more pity is shown to the criminal than to the one against whom a crime has been committed. And, again, I remind you that sin is against “the most high majesty of God” (Heidelberg Catechism, 4/10).
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Now it seems to me that we ought to be clear on what is meant by love and hatred. And the questioner himself recognizes that an understanding of these two terms is essential to the problem.
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Love is a not a sentimental and romantic feeling. While love certainly has to do with the emotions, the emotions are, quite naturally, a part of the mind and will. Love is far more than a feeling. Scripture gives us what is almost a formal definition of love in Colossians 3:14: “And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” The word translated “charity” in many places by our AV is, of course, the word for “love.” Now the text says two things about “love”. It is first of all a bond, and second, it is a bond of perfection. This definition holds whether we are talking about the love of God for Himself or for us, or the love we have for God or for our neighbor. Love is therefore, a bond of friendship and fellowship. But it is a bond that is characterized by perfection.
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Hatred, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. Hatred is repulsion, abhorrence and total refusal to have fellowship with someone. God loves Himself as the holy and perfect One and has fellowship with Himself. That fellowship is a bond between the three persons of the holy trinity that is characterized by life, love and happiness.
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God loves His people, even while they are yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). Impossible, you say? Yes, indeed! But it is possible because God loves them in Christ and they are without sin, holy as God is, in Christ. He establishes with them a bond of fellowship that is characterized by life, love and happiness. And so great is the love of God that it reaches down to us through Christ and transforms us into a holy church in which God’s holiness itself is revealed.
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God’s hatred of the wicked is His revulsion of them because of their sins. (Psalm 5:5: "Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity;” Not: “Thou hatest iniquity,” but “Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity.”) God does not give them even for a moment any sense of His fellowship with them. He drives them away from His presence and causes them to experience His curse. When they die, He puts them into hell where they are made to suffer the just judgment of their sins. And hell is as far from God as one can be. God hated Esau, not only Esau’s sins (Malachi 1:3).
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We are called to love God; that is, to enter into fellowship with Him, live in the consciousness of that fellowship and give praise to Him as the infinitely holy One. We love Him because He first loved us and shedding abroad His love within our hearts, He makes us love Him (Rom. 5:5, I John 4:10). The work of making us as holy as He is includes the work of causing us to love Him, for holiness that comes from God draws us to Him and into His fellowship.
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Yet, as we have previously observed, God’s decree of reprobation stands behind man’s sin and punishment. Once again, this is true, not in such a way that God is the author of man’s sin, but in such a way that God’s sovereignty is revealed in the way of man’s sin and God’s just punishment for sin.
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We may not like this truth; we may protest against it; but let it be known that our puny and worthless objections do not (thank God!) change the truth and will not ever change the fact that God is absolutely sovereign in all He does. We add to our sin when we persist in our questioning. It is our calling to bow in worship and adoration. “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with must longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction” (Rom. 920-22)?
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The difficult part comes in our calling to love our neighbor when our neighbor is wicked. When our neighbor is holy as we are, that is, also a saved sinner, that love is (at least, theologically; in fact very difficult) no problem. We love our wives, our children and our fellow saints because we love God as they love God. We have fellowship with them and live in the bond of life, love and joy.
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But some of our neighbors are wicked. How are we to love them? This is how we must do it. The answer seems so obvious. Because love is the bond of holiness, our love for them is an earnest desire to have them saved. We do not know who are God’s people and who are not. We hope and pray they may be elect, loved by God, and so we seek their salvation. This does not mean that we neglect their needs; God placed them on our pathway because they need us. But we supply their needs in order to seek their salvation. We bring them food when they are hungry, but in order that we may display the love God has for us who are undeserving sinners; we, therefore, tell them that such love as God has for us, poor sinners, can and also will be theirs, if they repent of their sins and turn to Christ in faith.
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Obviously such love is a “one-way street,” for we refuse to have fellowship with them in their sin. In that sense of the word, we love them, but hate their sin. We, in our love for them, condemn their sin and seek their repentance. We refuse to have fellowship with them in their sin, just because we love them and seek their salvation. God acts towards us in the same way, though in an infinitely higher way. He shows His hatred of sin and His love for us in giving us Jesus Christ – while we were yet sinners. And in Jesus Christ we are sanctified and have the true fellowship of love with Him.
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How that all works out in our lives is obvious. Our love for our neighbors has the same two-fold effect as the preaching of the gospel, for that kind of witness is empowered by the gospel. Our love for our neighbor will either save or harden. It will save our wives, our children, our fellow saints and God’s elect among the unbelievers. But the love we show to our neighbor will also harden the reprobate in their sin. God does good in all the gifts He gives them and they are hardened in their hatred against God. So with our gifts to them. Try it once. Go to them in God’s name and in the name of Christ. The more we bring to them our earnest entreaties for them to repent and believe in Christ, the angrier they become, for they do not want to be told that they are sinners who will perish if they do not repent.
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God works His salvation through us, for He always uses His church to accomplish His purpose in the world. As the wicked increase in their hardening we find it increasingly difficult to have anything to do with them. They want nothing to do with us. They despise the gospel we bring to them and despise us for continuing to bring it. They demonstrate that they hate God and hate those who represent the cause of God in the world. And so the time comes when the child of God cannot even have that limited one-way-street-love any more. He can no longer seek their salvation, for they slam the door in his face. Every child of God has experienced this. And the believer’s response is: “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee” (Psalm 139:21)?
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For myself as well as for others who sincerely desire to know the truth of these matters, it is essential that we begin with God and not with ourselves or our conceptions of what God ought to be like. As I said before, we cannot climb the ladder of our own thinking to reach the dwelling place of God who makes the heavens His throne and the earth His footstool. We will always end up fashioning our conception of God according to the pattern of what we think He ought to be.
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God must reveal Himself; that is, He must tell us who He is and what He does. Scripture is very, very clear on how great God is. I sometimes think it would be well for us simply to sit down and read Job 38-41, for, if we truly hear God speak, we will say with Job, “I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak; I will demand of thee, and declare unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1-6).
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Or perhaps we ought to read Paul’s cry at the conclusion of Romans 9-11: “”O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (11:33-36).
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That is a summons to lay our hands on our mouths and bow in the earth in worship!
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With warmest regards,
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Prof Hanko

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Sovereignty of God -- and sin (19b)

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Greetings to our forum members,
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In my last installment I was answering some questions that had been raised in connection with my assertion that God’s kindness, mercy, grace, etc. are shown by God only to His elect, and that the reprobate wicked are never in any sense of the word the objects of these delightful attributes of God. The questions inquired into the possibility of kindness and grace to the reprobate wicked, which would make God less tyrannical, hateful and even cruel towards men.
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A few more things have to be said about this matter before we can move on; and, indeed, other questions included in the letter have to be answered. I am glad that I can address these problems and questions that arise in the minds of our readers, not only because they are necessary questions, but also because they are asked, not in the spirit of confrontation, but expressing a desire to learn of these things more completely. The questions give such an opportunity and it is my prayer that the answers will help as well. We shall pursue this matter a bit further.
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It is difficult for us, mere men and sinners as well, to take sin seriously. We are seemingly so accustomed to sin, also in our own lives, that we are frequently unaware of it, or if we are aware of it, we tend to brush it aside lightly. The world has constructed a false doctrine about the non-existence of sin; and the apostatizing church has bought into worldly philosophy in its efforts to minimize sin. Divorce and remarriage are no sins; Sabbath desecration is no sin; wrong doctrine is to be tolerated; “minor” lapses in conduct are to be overlooked; “white lies” are a necessary part of life; and such evils as materialism, worldliness, feminism, not to mention such horrible sins as immorality and homosexuality, are opening practiced and generally accepted as a normal part of life. Our tendency is, as we are also affected by the world, to become insensitive to sin and thus come to a position where sin is tolerated.
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Such a cavalier attitude towards sin influences our thinking, and the result is that sin is no longer the horrible monster that Scripture makes it. Scripture points out in blistering language that not only sin as sinful words, deeds, thoughts and desires is abhorrent to God, but also that we are, apart from grace, sinful people, with depraved natures who can only be described in terms of being clothed with filthy rags (Is. 64:6, literally, menstrual rags), covered with pus-dripping sores (Is. 1:6), leprous from top to bottom, and such other graphic illustrations. We have sinful natures that are totally depraved and for which there is no cure – outside the balm of Gilead. These sinful natures, the source of a river of sewage, are also our responsibility before God. We have winked cheerfully at our reflection in the mirror as we contemplate our own favorable features, but God sees, apart from Christ, repulsive people whom His soul abhors.
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The measure of the seriousness of our sins in the eyes of God is to be found in the impenetrable depths of the suffering of the Son of God. God gave His Son to an awful cross! Why? God takes sin seriously, for He is a holy God. God will give His beloved Son to hell’s degradation and agony to satisfy His fury against sin. One who bows in shame at the foot of the cross realizes how dreadful sin is. My wife and I were reading in our devotions that sad book of Lamentations 4. If God deals so harshly as there described by the prophet, with His people, how must He deal with the wicked? (I Peter 4:17, 18 asks the same rhetorical question.)
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All this judgment of God against sin is in no way eased by an appeal to the sovereignty of God. God is sovereign. His sovereignty does not mean that we are not responsible for our sin. We are! Every sinner knows it – deep down, where he will not even permit himself to venture in his own thoughts. In the judgment day when all stand before the white throne of Christ, not one sinner will open his mouth in protestation. Hell is the anguish that it is, because it is the endless memory of our sins for which we are to blame and for which we now suffer.
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The decree of reprobation is also sovereign. Reprobation does not imply that God’s eternal, all-wise, sovereignly good and holy decree is the cause of sin. Reformed people have turned away in horror at such a thought. But it does mean that God sovereignly accomplishes His purpose in damning the wicked in the way of man’s sin, so that God remains sovereign over sin, but also everlastingly free from sin’s blot or guilt. Even reprobation underscores the seriousness of sin.
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Is your response: “I cannot understand these things”? I did not keep track of how many times I was asked about these things during the years of my ministry, but I think I am correct when I say that in my catechetical instruction over the years, no single question has been more frequently asked by catechumens in doctrine classes than the question: How does one harmonize God’s sovereignty, which includes sovereignty over sin, with man’s responsibility?
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It is not my intention to go into this question in this letter. I only want to emphasize one point: Both God’s sovereignty (also over sin) and man’s responsibility are so clearly taught in Scripture, and so frequently in the same breath, (See Acts 2:23 and 4:26, 27 as only two examples), that they cannot be denied. Nor can we dismiss these two ideas with the off-handed remark that they are mutually exclusive, and contradictory; they are not. They fit together without contradiction. – even if we cannot understand fully how this is possible. God is absolutely sovereign – even over sin; I am a wretched, hell-bound sinner; I receive what I deserve when judgment comes. I need Christ. I shall cling to Him.
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I stress these things, because, in the final analysis we must be God-centered in our thinking, not man-centered. We can have such feelings of sympathy in our hearts for mankind and such horror at the thought of everlasting hell that we turn away with the shivering comment: “Such things cannot possibly be true of God. He would not take a baby out of this life. He would not put a man in hell where there is anguish and pain forever. He would not send tornados and tsunamis that kill thousands.” Such language ought never to cross the lips of one who fears God.
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God is God! He is the Holy One who inhabits eternity. He is infinitely above us. We cannot climb the ladder of our own thinking and reasoning to find God and describe Him. He dwells in an unsearchable light. He is beyond finding out. If we would collect the knowledge of all God’s faithful servants, what the church of all ages has collectively said of God and His works, into one whole, it is less than a thimble full of water in comparison with all the oceans of the earth. He made them all! He set their bounds! He controls their movements! He is God.
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“O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” (Rom. 9:20). And this comes after, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (9:13). “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (vs. 13). “So it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (vs. 16). “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (vs. 18).
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Before such a great God we can do nothing but fall on our faces and worship.
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It is no wonder that men from the church, men who ought to be spending their time defending the great name of God, are ashamed to confess God’s absolute sovereignty. And, almost inevitably, when these churchmen launch their attacks against a God-centered theology in some vain hope of rescuing man from his shame and degradation, their attacks are against the doctrine of sovereign reprobation. They apparently consider this doctrine the Achilles’ heel of true Reformed theology. They do this, it would seem, to appeal to the sympathies of men without regard for the transcendent greatness of the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth.
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Calvin’s theology was centered in God’s glory. His enemies called him a “God-intoxicated man”. He was, they said, “drunk with God.” They meant it as a slur. It is the highest of all compliments. Would God we had more God-intoxicated men today.
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There are no other options available to us: either we are “God-intoxicated” or we are man-intoxicated. The latter will lead to forming our own images of God in our own minds, but images nonetheless; images as awful as Baal, Moloch or Ashtaroth.
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Who by searching can find out God? We may be puzzled by problems that arise in our own minds concerning truths Scripture sets down, but what of all the works of God can you and I understand? Do you understand how God forms a baby in its mother’s womb? Do you understand that God creates wine by causing vines to produce grapes? Do you understand how a blade of grass grows, nourished by the dirt? I do not. Nor does anyone. I am not disturbed by my inability to understand the ways of a sovereign God. To try by refusing to believe Scripture’s teachings is to be kinder, more beneficent, more gracious than God Himself is. But God will not allow Himself to be squeezed into molds of our devising.
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Let us then join the company of saints in all ages and say with them, “Oh God, how great thou art!”
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With warmest regards,
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Prof Hanko