September 16, 2012

THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVERSAL LOVE
By John Kennedy

If the doctrine of "God loves everyone the same" is designed with the view of removing hard thoughts of God and causing sinners to more willingly come to God, it fails and only creates insurmountable problems.

1. IT OFFERS ENCOURAGEMENT TO KEEP AWAY FROM GOD, rather than an inducement to draw near to Him. "You do not need to fear God, for God loves you," the unbeliever is told. This administers salve to a soul that should be anxious to be delivered from the danger of judgment and God's wrath.

2. IT TENDS TO SUPERSEDE THE CROSS OF CHRIST. If we believe in God's love to us, irrespective of an interest in the blood of Christ, and we are encouraged to hope for salvation because of that love, we may as well dispense with the atonement.

3. IT BRINGS THE NAME OF GOD INTO DISRESPECT in the heart of anyone who accepts such a doctrine. If God can love us while we are yet in our sins, iniquity, and unbelief, can this be holy love? consistent with His righteousness? consistent with His name--holy and reverend? And again, if God Almighty loves all people and yet leaves multitudes to perish, of what use is His love to us? If our God is not able to save, deliver, and keep THOSE WHOM HE LOVES, what a terrible view of God!

By B.B. Warfield (1851- 1921)

Calvinism is the casting of the soul wholly on the free grace of God alone, to whom alone belongs salvation. The Calvinist is the man who has seen God, and who, having seen God in glory, is filled on the one hand with a sense of his own unworthiness to stand in God’s sight as a creature and much more as a sinner, and, on the other hand, with adoring wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners. He who believes in God without reserve and is determined that God shall be God to him (in all thinking, feeling, willing) in the entire compass of his life activities (intellectual, moral, spiritual) throughout all his individual, social, and religious relations is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist. Its type is found in the publican who smote his breast and cried,” God be merciful to me a sinner! “No question there is of saving himself, or of helping God to save him, or of opening the way to God to save him. No question of anything but, "I am a sinner, and all my hope is in God my Saviour!” This is Calvinism, not just something like Calvinism or an approach to Calvinism, but Calvinism in its vital manifestation. Wherever this attitude of heart is found and is given expression in direct and unambiguous terms, there is Calvinism. Wherever this attitude of mind and heart is fallen away from, in however small a measure, there Calvinism has become impossible. Prepare me, gracious God, To stand before Thy face; Thy Spirit must the work perform, For it is all of grace. In Christ's obedience clothe me and wash me in His blood; So shall I live with joy among the sons of God. Do Thou my sins subdue; Thy sovereign love make known, The spirit of my mind renew, And save me in Thy Son, Let me attest power; Let me Thy goodness prove, Till my fill soul can hold no more Of everlasting love.

Call To Worship

God, in the riches of his grace,

Did from eternity ordain
A seed elect of Adam's race,
Eternal glory should obtain.

God, in the riches of his grace,
Hath Christ exalted over all;
His goings forth, of old, we trace
The sinner’s Surety in the fall.

God, in the riches of his grace,
Hath Abra’m’s seed exalted high
While his redeemed shall see his face,
And reign with him above the sky.

God, in the riches of his grace,
Hath to the charge of Jesus laid
The sin of all that chosen race,
Whose debt of suff’ring Jesus paid.

God, in the riches of his grace,
Hath, in the gospel, Christ displayed,
Whose blood hath sealed the sinner’s peace,
And bruised the venomed serpent’s head.

God, in the riches of his grace,
We’ll to eternity adore;
And wonders still on wonders trace,
But ne’er his depth of love explore.