The Apostle Paul, at the conclusion of his extensive treatment of the doctrine of divine election and predestination in the letter to the Church at Rome (Romans chapters 9-11), makes this declaration; “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out” (Romans 11:33). He had clearly set forth the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners, using Jacob and Esau as an example of His discriminating love. Paul goes on to chide the foolishness of men who question the wisdom of God in the matter. The Arminian opposition calls the justice of God to the bar of reason. Paul foreseeing this retorts in Romans 9:20, “But indeed O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me thus?’” From there Paul goes on to employ the classic illustration of the active potter and the passive clay. As Christopher Ness so ably states in his classic An Antidote to Arminianism, “They (Arminians) confidently wade in the deep ocean of divine mysteries and in stating the decrees of God; where Blessed Paul could find no bottom, but cried, “O the depth.” They undertake to fetch the Apostle from his nonplus, saying, “God foresaw that Jacob would believe, and that Esau would not believe, therefore the one was loved and the other hated.” Thus (Ness continues) “the Arminius school teaches deeper than Paul learned in the third heaven.” Very much of current Arminianism is ignorant of Gospel doctrine. If people would study their Bible and take the Word of God as they find it, they must, if believers, rise up and rejoice in the doctrine of sovereign grace. In Hosea 14:4, we find these words, “I will love them freely.” This is the only way in which God can love sinners, who neither deserve it, purchased it, nor seek after it. Freely means that which is given without money and without price, opposed to all ideas of bargaining. God accepts no works; God will receive no love as a recompense for His love; God will love them, unworthy and sinful though they are. Love for His chosen people existed before there was any man. He loved them before any one of them had been created, before the world had been made. He set his heart upon His beloved and ordained them unto eternal life. An old timer wrote, “The love of God existed before there was any good thing in man. If you say that God loved man because of the foresight of some good thing in him, I reply that the same thing cannot be both cause and effect. Now it is quite certain that any virtue that there may be in any man is the result of God’s grace. If it be the result of grace it cannot be the cause of grace. It is impossible that an effect should have existed before a cause; but God’s love existed before man’s goodness, therefore that goodness’ cannot be a cause. When the children were not yet born, neither having done good or evil, the purpose of election still stood; while we were yet like clay in the mass of creatorship and God had power to make of the same lump a vessel to honor or a vessel to dishonor, He chose to make His people vessels unto honor.”
Older
Top
