Shedd:

THE TRUE PROPORTION IN A CREED BETWEEN THE UNIVERSAL AND THE SPECIAL LOVE OF GOD

IT is objected that insufficient emphasis is laid in the Westminster Confession upon the universal offer of mercy, and the common call to faith and repentance, and some even contend that these are not contained in it. Advocates of revision [of the Westminster Confession] demand that them doctrines shall be more particularly enunciated than they now are, and complain that more is said concerning electing love of God in the effectual call than his upon his indiscriminate love in the outward call. In reply to this, mention the these following reasons why the Westminster Confession, in common with all the Reformed creeds, is more full and emphatic regarding the special love of God toward his church than regarding his general love toward the world.

1. The Scriptures themselves are more full and emphatic in the first reference than in the last. A careful examination of the Old and New Testaments will slow that while the universal compassion of God toward sinful men is plainly and frequently taught, yet it is the relation of God as the Savior of his people that constitutes the larger proportion of the teachings of the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. These parts of Scripture are full of God’s dealings with his covenant people, instructing them, expostulating with them, rebuking them, comforting them, helping them–expressing in these and other ways his special love and affection for them, as those whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world. Throughout the Bible men universally are both invited and commanded to believe and repent. No one disputes this. This is God’s universal love. But, whenever the love of God is particularly enlarged upon, carefully delineated, and repeatedly emphasized, in the great majority of instances it is his electing love. The Savior’s last discourses with his disciples, and his last prayer, have for their principal theme the “love of his own which were in the world,” whom “he loved unto the end.” For these he specially supplicates. “I pray for them: I pray not [now] for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine.” The Epistles of Paul also are like the Redeemer’s discourses. So full are they of expanded and glowing descriptions of the electing love of God that the charge of a narrow Jewish conception of the Divine compassion is frequently made against them. The Confession therefore follows the Scriptures in regard to the proportion of doctrine, where it puts the mercy of God toward his people in the foreground. And to object to this proportion is to object to Divine Revelation.

2. The electing love of God and his special grace naturally has the foremost place in the Confession as in Scripture, because it is the only love and glace that is successful with the sinner. The universal love of God in his outward call and common grace is a failure, because it is inadequate to overcome the enmity and resistance with which man meets it. While therefore the sacred writers represent the common call as prompted by the compassion of God toward the sinner, and expressive of his sincere desire that he would hear it, and as aggravating his persistence in the sin of which a free pardon is offered, yet inasmuch as it yields no saving and blessed results, they we see no reason for making it the principal and prominent part of the Divine oracles. But that electing love in the effectual call and irresistible grace, which overcomes the aversion of the sinner and powerfully inclines his hostile will, inasmuch as it is tile principal work of God in the human heart, becomes the principal subject of discourse for ” the holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” They dwell rather on the special grace that triumphs over human depravity, than on the common grace that is defeated by it.

William G.T. Shedd, Calvinism Pure and Mixed (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 107-109. [Underlining mine.]

Chamblin:

REDEMPTION

Both before and during Paul’s time, both within and beyond the Bible, to redeem typically meant to secure a release from some bondage or penalty by the payment of a ransom-price.⁴⁵ In accord with what was just said about righteousness, Paul declares that redemption occurs in Christ (Col. 1:14) and that Christ is the very embodiment of redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

As with other aspects of salvation considered thus far, it is preeminently in the cross that Christ does his redeeming work.⁴⁶ His death is the ransom-price that secures the liberation of others. Here “the man Christ Jesus . . . gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6; cf. Titus 2:14).⁴⁷ Christians “were bought at a price” (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23)–Christ’s sacrificial death (1:18-31; 5:7; 11:23-26; 15:3). Sinners are “justified freely by [God’s] grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement . . . in his blood (Rom. 3:24-25 NIV). The shedding of blood signals not just the gift of life but the loss of life.⁴⁸ By the language of redemption, Paul does not imply that the ransom-price was paid to someone, whether to God or to the devil; his focus is on redemption’s costliness, both to God and to Christ. A principal reason for its costliness to Christ is that he “became sin” so that sinners might be justified (Rom. 3:24-26; 2 Cor. 5:21). “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins . . .” (Eph. 1:7; cf. Col. 1:14).⁴⁹ As in any instance of genuine forgiveness, the offended part absorbs the wrong and thus prevents it from spreading and multiplying.⁵⁰

In his death Christ the Redeemer liberates his people from bondage to Sin and its agencies, together with all the consequences of such bondage. God, “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sin offering, condemned Sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3)–in the very “body of [Jesus’l flesh through death” (Col. 1:22). “God did not redeem flesh by an act of incarnation; he destroyed flesh by an act of condemnation.”⁵¹ Moreover, by nailing sinners’ certificate of indebtedness to the cross, Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities [and] made a public spectacle” of them (Col. 2:13-15).⁵²

^{Read the rest of this entry »}

Tossanus:

A consideration upon the said text.

Blessed are those says David, in the 119 Psalm that are upright in their way, and walk in the law of the Lord. But what? Where is the man that walks uprightly? For they are all gone out of the way, taking damnable paths: as it is said in the 14^th Psalm: and in such sort through infidelity and disobedience are men turned away from the Lord, and walk after vanity: they are turned again into their course, says Jeremy in the 8^th chapter, as the horse that rushes into battle.

Now see the Son of God, who so graciously does call you again, and bid you to come again unto him. For so is there none other mean to find salvation & life: or whither shall we go elsewhere? He has the words of everlasting life, as S. Peter says in the 6^th chap., of S. John. But it is not with the feet of the body that we go to him: it is the soul that ought to march forwards, and to draw near to him by faith, who does approach so near unto him, that it joins and binds us with him: yea, it does graft us in him even as the branches are grafted in a vine stock, that in him we might have good consciences, & bring forth fruits agreeable or pleasing unto God [John 15: 2,15.].. So we might then well say:

O Lord, thou which does call us, draw us if it please thee, unto thee: draw & turn our spirits & wills unto thee. Be thou thyself that Adamant, which draws our hearts, more harder than iron [Rom. 9:16]. For alas, it is not in him that wills, nor in him that runs, but in thee O God, that shows mercy. And because thou pities not the proud & high-minded that feel not that charge of their sins, which are the more heavy than a great lump of lead; but shows mercy to the broken, and beholds all those that do groan under the burden of their sorrowful sins: give us grace to humble ourselves, that we may be exalted, and to feel our death, that thou may quicken and make us alive, & that O Lord, we do not despise or refuse thy yoke, seeing that it is an easy yoke, when as by thy Spirit thou will guide us, and by the word govern us, giving us a daughterly spirit, which is the spirit of adoption, seeing also that to serve thee, is to reign; to obey thee, is to rule and so to triumph over the devil & sin. This is not the fearful yoke of the law, that threatens condemnation to all those which did not fulfill it. This is not the damnable yoke, wherewithal the sinners are wrapped in: whereof is spoken in the 1^th chap., of Jeremiah’s Lament. The yoke of my transgressions is bound upon upon my hand: they are wrapped and come up upon my neck: But Lord, who would refuse thy yoke, which is so easy, seeing it gives rest unto the soul [Matt. 11:30], seeing it unbinds and rids us out of the devil’s yoke, and from the oppression, as it is said in thy Prophet Isaiah, 9^th chap.  Therefore receive again unto thee thy poor creatures, and bring us O Lord, and gather us together, as the poor straying sheep, unto that great shepherd Jesus Christ [1 Pet. 2:25].

Daniell Tossain The Exercise of the faithful soule (Imprinted at London by Henrie Middleton for Henrie Denham, 1583), 44-47. [Some spelling modernized, underlining mine.]

Tossanus:

I believe the life everlasting.

A Prayer

O Lord my God, if thou has advertized the king of Hezekiah by the Prophet Isaiah, to dispose of his affairs when he should die [Isaiah 38:1.]: much more thy will is, that we going to death, should have regard to the disposition of our souls: to present ourselves before thee.  For alas, death is certain, but his hour is uncertain: and there is nothing more dangerous than to leave the soul in this sight doubtful and uncertain. O Lord what a Porter has thou given us, at our passage from this world, which will not suffer us to carry away anything with us? [The sentence of S. Bernard.]. But as we come naked into this world, even so death causes us to pass out of the same state. Wherefore should we then torment ourselves so much in worldly things? O Lord, what is it, that i should dispose of myself? It is in thee, to dispose of us: it is in thee to command, and in us to obey. Bear up our weakness through thy mercy. For how is it, that we should not be afraid of death, sins the horror thereof has made thy Son Jesus to sweat water and blood? [Mar. 14; Isaiah 53:4.] But seeing that it is even he, who has also born our sorrows, and that was wounded for our iniquities, what gain or advantage should death have over us, since that thy Son Jesus has saved us? And if thou be for us who is he that can  be against us? Yea man born of woman is thralled to many miseries and vanishes away as a shadow, or flower of the field. But yet O God, we do know how thou desires not the death of us sinners: thou rather would that we should turn and live [Ezek. 18:23, 27, and 32]. We do shed here many tears, but thou will at once make dry all my tears by calling me unto thee. Now O Lord strike  here below, so long as thou will, hurt wound, seeing that thou are merciful and favorable unto us in the everlasting & life to come. What sorrow or affliction should we fear, since that all things turn thy children for their good? Alas who would take much pleasure in life, since that man living it cannot see, and that all this is in it is but transitory, and miserable? Grant me therefore grace, patiently to await thy will, that I may be found a watching faithful servant. And as the prince of this world, coming towards thy Son Jesus what to bite upon him [John 14:30.]: so also the same enemy may not have any thing against me, seeing that I do belong to thy Son Jesus. By faith O Lord, have our fathers overcome kingdoms, and closed the mouth of Lions. Therefore O Lord grant me grace, that I may also overcome by faith all temptations, until that this faith being ended I may enter into thy everlasting rest.

Daniell Tossain The Exercise of the faithful soule (Imprinted at London by Henrie Middleton for Henrie Denham, 1583), 301-303. [Some spelling modernized, underlining mine.]