Vos:

There is, however, still a third sense, in which Jesus leads us to ascribe universality to the divine love. This is done not so much in explicit form as by the implications of His attitude toward sinful men in general. We must never forget that our Lord was the divine love incarnate, and that consequently what He did, no less than what He taught, is a true revelation adapted to shed light on our problem. If the Son of God was filled with tender compassion for every lost human soul, and grieved even over those whose confirmed unbelief precluded all further hope of salvation, it is plain that there must be in God something corresponding to this. In the parable of the prodigal son the father is represented as continuing to cherish a true affection for his child during the period of the latter’s estrangement. It would be hardly in accord with our Lord’s intention to press the point that the prodigal was destined to come to repentance, and that, therefore, the father’s attitude toward him portrays the attitude of God toward the elect only, and not toward every sinner as such. We certainly have a right to say that the love which God originally bears toward man as created in His image survives in the form of compassion under the reign of sin. This being so, when the sinner comes in contact with the gospel of grace, it is natural for God to desire that he should accept its offer and be saved. We must even assume that over against the sin of rejection of the gospel this love continues to assert itself, in that it evokes from the divine heart sincere sorrow over man’s unbelief. But this universal love should be always so conceived as to leave room for the fact that God, for sovereign reasons, has not chosen to bestow upon its objects that higher love which not merely desires, but purposes and works out the salvation of some. It may be difficult to realize from any analogy in our own consciousness how the former can exist without giving rise to the latter; yet we are clearly led to believe that such is the case in God. A logical impossibility certainly is not involved, and our utter ignorance regarding the motives which determine the election of grace should restrain us from forming the rash judgment that, psychologically speaking, the existence of such a love in God for the sinner and the decree of preterition with reference to that same sinner are mutually exclusive. For, let it be remembered, we are confronted with the undeniable fact that this universal love of God, however defined, does not induce Him to send the gospel of salvation to all who are its objects. If the withholding of the gospel is consistent with its truthfulness, then a fortiori the withholding of efficacious grace must be. That there are good reasons for the former is true: but undoubtedly God has also His wise and holy reasons for the latter. The Scriptures do not assert that election and preterition are arbitrary decrees to the mind of God. All they insist upon is that the motives underlying them are inscrutable to us, and have nothing whatever to do with the worthiness or unworthiness of man.

Neither this indiscriminate goodness in the sphere of nature, however, nor the collective love which embraces the world as an organism, nor the love of compassion which God retains for every lost sinner, should be confounded with that fourth and highest form of the divine affection which the Savior everywhere appropriates to the disciples. This is represented under the figure of fatherhood. Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary by a host of modern writers, an impartial examination of the facts discloses the principle that the fatherhood of God in its specific sense is realized in the kingdom, so that His fatherhood and kingship appear coextensive.

Geerhardus Vos, “The Scriptural Doctrine of the Love of God,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Richard B. Gaffin (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1980; 2001), 443–444. The article originally appeared in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902): 1–37. Iain H. Murray cites it in “The Cross: The Pulpit of God’s Love Part 2″ Banner of Truth 495 (December 2004), 14. The entire article by Vos is available online here.

Thanks to Tony for the find.

Shultz:

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

Second Corinthians 5:18-21 enlarges upon and completes the truths expressed in 5:14-15. Second Corinthians 5:16-17 describes two consequences of Christ’s death for those who believe (cf. 5:15). First, for believers there is now a completely different way of viewing reality (v. 16).⁸⁷ Second, anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, and a part of Christ’s new order for the universe (v. 17).⁸⁸ All of these benefits of being in Christ are from God (v. 18a),⁸⁹ as God is the one “who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18b-19). These verses state that God reconciled the world to himself through Christ, and the results of this reconciliation are the forgiveness of sins and the preaching of the cross.⁹⁰

Reconciliation is a distinctly Pauline idea,⁹¹ and most broadly it refers to God’s work in which, out of his love, he acts to bring about harmonious relations between himself and his creation.⁹² God reconciles through Jesus Christ, on the basis of the work of Christ, the atonement.⁹³ Reconciliation is primarily an objective act; it is something that God has done for humanity in the cross of Christ.⁹⁴ It is also a subjective act, however, because human beings must themselves subjectively experience the reconciliation that God has wrought in order to have fellowship with him.⁹⁵ Both the objective and the subjective senses of reconciliation are present in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.

Second Corinthians 5:18-19 are parallel statements, in that verse 19 repeats and amplifies the thoughts of verse 18.⁹⁶ The objective work of reconciliation appears at the beginning of each verse, in that God has reconciled “us” (v. 18) or “the world” (v.19) to himself. The need for a subjective receiving of God’s reconciliation is highlighted at the end of each verse, as Paul speaks of the ministry and the message of reconciliation.⁹⁷ This ministry and message of reconciliation is clarified in verse 20, which states “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” In light of God’s reconciling act and consequent entrustment of the message of reconciliation to Paul, Paul describes himself (and others who follow after him)⁹⁸ as Christ’s ambassador. God makes his appeal through his ambassadors, and people need to believe this appeal in order to be reconciled to God; they need to subjectively experience the objective reality of God’s reconciliation in order to have a relationship with God.⁹⁹ Second Corinthians 5:21 returns to the objective idea of reconciliation and describes how God accomplished reconciliation in Christ.¹⁰⁰ The verse states, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Chambers:

Is saying that faith is a gift of grace equivalent to a belief in the purchase of faith?

In Owen is view this is clearly the case. It is his contention at the beginning of the work that

the death and blood-shedding of Jesus Christ hath wrought, and doth effectually procure, for all those that are concerned in it, eternal redemption, consisting in grace here and glory hereafter,⁶⁴

and, as we saw, his first premise in relation to the purchase of faith states that

whatever is freely bestowed upon us, in and through Christ, that is all wholly the procurement and merit of the death of Christ.⁶⁵

Not only does he expand the category of faith in his discussion of means to include grace, as we have seen, but he insists that access to and experience of the covenant of grace is only by purchase.⁶⁶ Grace itself is merited for us by Christ.⁶⁷

Is this then just a quarreling over words, when we suggest that the acknowledgment that faith is a gift of grace is no support for the notion of the purchase of faith?⁶⁸ To this we must respond with three observations.

Firstly, the acceptance of the distinction within grace is itself moot, and it is not a feature of modern studies of grace, which tend to emphasise the underlying unity of its varied uses in the New Testament, especially in the Pauline use, which is the major and determinative New Testament use.⁶⁹ Even were it accepted it could be well argued that where grace is related to faith it is referring to God’s electing, sovereign grace [especially Eph. 2:8-9, Phil. 1:29, 2 Pet. 1:1, Acts 11:48, 14:23, 18:27], grace which cannot be thought of as ‘purchased‘, unless it is to be the cause of itself. Secondly, the words are different in that they set the participants in salvation in different relationships in respect to one another. In Owen’s understanding, purchase is from God, for the elect, by Christ. By contrast, the gift of faith is given by God, to the elect, through Christ. While Christ is the mediating agent in both, the initiating agent has changed from Christ to God, and thus the nature of the role of Christ in relation to people’s coming to faith also changes. Thus faith seen as the gift of God’s grace, a phraseology more consistent with the New Testament terminology, does not allow Owen to draw the causal links he desires and needs between the death of Christ and subjective faith, especially where the context suggests Paul is referring primarily to the Father, as in Eph. 2: 8-9 and Phil. 1: 28-9.⁷⁰ Thirdly, Owen’s making these terms equivalent in effect further highlights his dependence on the construct of the covenant of redemption. They can only be equivalent if one accepts his initial premise.

In fact, Owen’s talk of ‘purchase’ could well be seen as having a distorting effect on the biblical idea of faith, by reifying it, making it a thing or object or commodity, instead of a relational response. The phrase ‘purchase of faith’ is a category confusion, for trust, like love, can only be given by the subject, not bought, and arises in the subject. While, of course, it is bought for us, and not from us, even that suggests a passivity that is not a feature of the New Testament is portrayal. While the trusting attitude itself can be conceptualised as passive and receptive in relation to the reception of righteousness, we are not passive but active in that trusting, we are those who believe.⁷¹ It is this active responsibility that talk of the purchase of faith has the potential to undermine, and which the New Testament’s portrayal of faith in relation to the temporal realities of the preaching of the gospel and renewal by the Spirit do not. Nor does seeing faith as a gift of grace suggest passivity to the same extent, for the realisation of that gift again focuses on God is gracious work in history, on the preaching of Christ, whereas purchase emphasises determined causality. Gift continues to be the language of grace, but purchase moves into the language of rights.⁷²

We have spent some time examining the concept of the purchase or procurement of faith and associated ideas. Why the labour? To stress that the ‘purchase of faith,’ is not a self evident biblical idea that can be read off the text of scripture. Rather it is a theoretical causal construct dependent on the covenant of redemption. Owen could argue that he would in no way seek to undermine anything that the scripture has said about faith and its relation to the cross. It is just that he, with his talk of the purchase of faith by the cross, is revealing the relation of the cross to believing as seen from the perspective of eternity. But Owen would have to say more. It is revealing it as seen from eternity where the viewpoint of eternity is the relation of the Father and the Son in the one work of redemption as conceptualised in the covenant of redemption. The whole legitimacy of Owen’s insistence on the purchase of faith is dependent on the legitimacy of that covenant, and it is that covenant which we shall explore after we have examined its temporal foundation, Owen’s understanding of ‘redemption’ in scripture.

Read the rest of this entry »

Morris:¹

16 God loved “the world” (see Additional Note B, pp.126ff.). The Jew was ready enough to think of God as loving Israel, but no passage appears to be cited in which any Jewish writer maintains that God loved the world. It is a distinctively Christian idea that God’s love is wide enough to embrace all mankind. His love is not confined to any national group or any spiritual elite. It is a love which proceeds from the fact that He is love (I John 4:8, 16). It is His nature to love. He loves men because He is the kind of God He is. John tells us that His love is shown in the gift of His Son. Of this gift Odeberg finely says, “the Son is God’s gift to the world, and, moreover, it is the gift. There are no Divine gifts apart from or outside the one-born (sic) Son“.In typical Johannine fashion “gave” is used in two senses. God gave the Son by sending Him into the world, but God also gave the Son on the cross. Notice that the cross is not said to show us the love of the Son (as in Gal. 2:20), but that of the Father. The atonement proceeds from the loving heart of God. It is not something wrung from Him. The Greek construction puts some stress on the actuality of the gift: it is not “God loved so as to give”, but “God loved so that He gave”. His love is not a vaguely sentimental feeling, but a love that costs. God gave what was most dear to Him. For “only begotten” see on 1:14, and for “believeth on” see on 1:12 (also Additional Note E, pp. 335ff.). The death of the Son is viewed first of all in its revelatory aspect. It shows us the love of the Father. Then its purpose is brought out, both positively and negatively.

Those who believe on Him do not “perish”. Neither here nor anywhere else in the New Testament is the dreadful reality behind this word “perish” brought out. But in all its parts there is the recognition that there is such a reality awaiting the finally impenitent. Believers are rescued from this only by the death of the Son. Because of this they have “eternal life” (see on v.15). John sets perishing and life starkly over against one another. He knows no other final state.

17 Now John uses the thought of judgment to bring out God’s loving purpose, and once again he employs the device of following a negative statement with the corresponding positive. God did not send the Son into the world, he tells us, in order to judge it. Elsewhere, however, he tells us that Jesus did come into the world “for judgment” (9:39). The resolution of the paradox demands that we see salvation as necessarily implying judgment. These are the two sides to the one coin. The very fact of salvation for all who believe implies judgment on all who do not. This is a solemn reality and John does not want us to escape it. Judgment is a recognized theme in contemporary Jewish thought, but it is the judgment of God, and it is thought of as taking place at the last day. John modifies both these thoughts. He does, it is true, speak of judging sometimes in much the normal Jewish way (8:50). But it is quite another matter when he says that God has committed all judgment to Christ (5:22, 27). He goes on to speak of Christ as judging (5:30; 8:16, 26) or not judging (8:15 [but if. 16]; 12:47), and of His word as judging men (12:48). His judgment is just (5 : 30) and it is true (8:16). How men fare in the judgment depends on their relation to Him (5 24; 3:19). As the cross looms large Jesus can even speak of the world as judged (12:31) and of Satan likewise as judged (12:31; 16:11) . Clearly John sees the whole traditional doctrine of judgment as radically modified in the light of the Incarnation. The life, and especially the death of Jesus have their effects on the judgment. So far we have referred to future judgment, the judgment of the last day. But this is not all of John’s teaching. He sees judgment also as a present reality (v. 18). What men are doing now determines what will happen when they stand before Christ on judgment day. All this has obvious Christological implications. Clearly John has a high view of Jesus’ Person. His teaching on judgment is yet another way in which he brings out the messiahship of Jesus, his great central aim.

In this verse “judge” has a meaning much like “condemn” (AV), as the contrast with “be saved” shows. Some men will, in fact, be condemned, and that as the result of Christ’s coming into the world (v. 19). But the purpose of His coming was not this. It was on the contrary “that the world should be saved“. So John brings out his positive corresponding to the negative at the beginning of the verse. Salvation was central to the mission of Jesus, a truth which is brought out also in the Synoptists (Matt. 27:42; Mark 8:35; Luke 19:10, etc.). We should not overlook the “through him” at the end of the verse, for this attributes the salvation in question ultimately to the Father. It is also worth noticing that in this verse we have another example of John’s habit of giving emphasis to certain words by the simple device of repetition. He uses “world” three times in this verse.

Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, MI.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971), 229-232.

Read the rest of this entry »