What Love Is This?

By R.C. Sproul Jr. 5/1/2004

     The simplicity of God is a doctrine that provides a rather useful fence. The perfections of God are, of course, worthy of our excitement. Their infinity is, of course, staggering. But the simplicity of God is that place where these infinite perfections show themselves to be one where the glorious colors come together in a blinding white. Whatever else we delightfully affirm about God, we must affirm that He is one.

     It is the very point of the doctrine of simplicity, however, that we don’t diminish one attribute when we remember another. We have misunderstood simplicity if, as we wax rhapsodic over the love of God, we throw a wet blanket over the party by remembering, “Well, He is also a God of wrath, after all.” The wrath of God doesn’t restrain the love of God, nor does the love of God restrain His wrath. Rather, in a profound way, they are one and the same thing.

     There are some fairly obvious ways that we see this. In Psalm 2 we see the wrath of God coming for a specific reason, because the kings of the earth will not kiss the Son. The love of the Son is what provokes the wrath of the Father. We see much the same thing on the road to Damascus, as Jesus accuses Saul, “Why dost thou persecute Me?” Christ’s loving union with the Bride brings wrath on Saul. And in turn, that wrath brings forth love as Saul becomes Paul, a part of the Bride.

     Love is universally loved. We who belong to the King rightly celebrate His love for us. But those outside the camp do not stay outside the camp because of a self-conscious rejection of love. Those who think the lost are lost because they have trouble accepting love have been accepting too many foolish bromides from pop psychologists. The very creatures that the lost create, in their rejection of the Creator, are characterized by love. One can safely finish the idolater’s sentence, when he begins, “Well, my god is a god of … .” It’s love, every time. Have you ever heard someone object, when we tell them to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus, “Well, I’m repulsed by your God that forgives the repentant. My god is a god of raging, irrational fury.” No. Everyone loves love.

     But while love is not diminished by wrath, a love that excludes wrath is not a biblical love. The love clamored for by the lost is a wrathless love. But the love they crave is just unknown. While there is, rightly understood, a universal love of God that includes even those who will be damned, this love is a simple love, one that includes all that God is. There is no wrathless love that comes from God.

     The Bible tells us that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. We find there what some theologians call “common grace.” God acts kindly to all men living. We all need to remember this. When we, or others, in trying to describe their particular anguish describe their situation as “a living hell,” they do not understand the patient love of God. Any suffering experienced on this earth, save for the passion of Christ, is a suffering mitigated by His love, a suffering that is less severe than what is due, a suffering less severe than hell. But even the most wicked among us do not live their earthly lives exclusively in agony. Some unbelieving mothers genuinely rejoice when blessed with a child. Sometimes unbelievers win the Super Bowl and are genuinely happy about it. Even the heathen in the remotest, most desolate part of the world sometimes sit down to a favorite meal and feel real joy in eating it. Common love is common, love, and real.

     Common love, or the universal love of God, however, cannot be separated from common wrath. Because God is one, a simple being, you cannot wrap your arms around His love and miss the wrath. The Lord our God, the Lord is One. For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, including the unrighteousness of ingratitude. The common love of God is connected with the common wrath of God right here, where Paul tells us of all natural men, “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him …” (Rom. 1:21a). Though the lost will receive the loving gifts of God, they will neither honor Him nor thank Him, and so they will earn His eternal wrath.

     God’s love is not only inseparable from His wrath, but it is equally bound together with His sovereignty. That is, when God sends the rain to the unjust, He does so knowing that the unjust will not honor Him. But this doesn’t frustrate God. First, He planned it that way. And second, He planned it that way because of one more connection between love and wrath — God loves His wrath. He delights to manifest the infinite perfection of His wrath just as much as His love, because they are one thing.

     This, in turn, must inform how we look at the world around us. The problem with the broader culture, that place where they love love, isn’t that they’ve embraced part of the truth, and that our job as sound Christians is to teach them the hard parts. Rather we have to understand that the love they love is no more love than the god they worship is God. They are wrong on all counts. And unless they embrace the true and living God, the God of love that is wrath, of wrath that is love, of both that are manifest sovereignly, they will perish. Biblical love requires that we tell the world that their love of their love will earn them only His wrath.

Abundant Love

By R.C. Sproul 5/1/2004

Love of Complacency

     In his monumental biography of Jonathan Edwards, George Marsden cites a passage from Edwards’ Personal Narrative: “Since I came to this town [Northampton], I have often had sweet complacency in God in views of his glorious perfections, and the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me, a glorious and lovely being chiefly on account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes” (p. 112).

     If we take note of Edwards’ language, his choice of words to describe his enraptured delight in the glory of God, we observe his accent on the sweetness, loveliness, and excellence of God. He reports of enjoying a “sweet complacency” in God. What does he mean? Is not the term complacency a word we use to describe a certain smugness, a resting on one’s laurels, a sort of lazy inertia that attends a superficial sort of satisfaction? Perhaps. But here we see a vivid example of how words sometimes change their import over time.

     What Edwards meant by a “sweet complacency” had nothing to do with a contemporary dose of smugness. Rather, it had to do with a sense of pleasure. This “pleasure” is not to be understood in a crass hedonistic, or sensual, sense but rather a delight in that which is supremely pleasing to the soul.

     The roots of this meaning of “complacency” are traced by the Oxford English Dictionary (vol. 3), where the primary meaning given is “the fact or state of being pleased with a thing or person; tranquil pleasure or satisfaction in something or some one.” References are cited for this usage from John Milton, Richard Baxter, and J. Mason. Mason is quoted, “God can take no real complacency in any but those that are like him.”

     I labor the earlier English usage of the word complacency because it is used in a crucial manner in the language of historic, orthodox theology. When speaking of God’s love, we distinguish among three types of that love — the love of benevolence, the love of beneficence, and the love of complacency. The reason for the distinctions is to note the different ways in which God loves all people, in one sense, and the special way He loves His people, the redeemed.

Love of Benevolence

Love of Beneficence

Robert Charles Sproul, 2/13/1939 – 12/14/2017 was an American theologian, author, and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, an international Christian education and discipleship organization located near Orlando, Fla. He was also copastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., chancellor of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Dr. Sproul has contributed dozens of articles to national evangelical publications, has spoken at conferences, churches, and schools around the world, and has written more than one hundred books. He also served as general editor of the Reformation Study Bible.

True Love

By John MacArthur 5/1/2004

     “All you need is love.” So sang the Beatles. If they’d been singing about God’s love, the statement would have a grain of truth in it. But what usually goes by the name love in popular culture is not authentic love at all; it’s a deadly fraud. Far from being “all you need,” it’s something you desperately need to avoid.

     The apostle Paul makes that very point in Ephesians 5:1–3. He writes, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.”

     The simple command of verse 2 ( “walk in love, as Christ loved us” ) sums up the whole moral obligation of the Christian. After all, God’s love is the single, central principle that defines the Christian’s entire duty. This kind of love is really “all you need.” Romans 13:8–10 says, “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments … are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” Galatians 5:14 echoes that selfsame truth: “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus likewise taught that all the Law and the Prophets hang on two simple principles about love—the first and second great commandments (Matt. 22:38–40). In other words, “love … is the bond of perfection” (Col. 3:14 NKJV).

     When Paul commands us to walk in love, the context reveals that in positive terms, he is talking about being kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving to one another (Eph. 4:32). The model for such selfless love is Christ, who gave His life to save His people from their sins. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

     In other words, true love is always sacrificial, self-giving, merciful, compassionate, sympathetic, kind, generous, and patient. These and many other positive, benevolent qualities (see 1 Cor. 13:4–8) are what Scripture associates with divine love.

     But notice the negative side as well, also seen in the context of Ephesians 5. The person who truly loves others as Christ loves us must refuse every kind of counterfeit love. The apostle Paul names some of these satanic forgeries. They include immorality, impurity, and covetousness. The passage continues: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous ( that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not associate with them” (vv. 4–7).

     Immorality is perhaps our generation’s favorite substitute for love. Paul uses the Greek word porneia, which includes every kind of sexual sin. Popular culture desperately tries to blur the line between genuine love and immoral passion. But all such immorality is a total perversion of genuine love because it seeks self-gratification rather than the good of others.

     Impurity is another devilish perversion of love. Here Paul employs the Greek term akatharsia, which refers to every kind of filth and impurity. Specifically, Paul has in mind “filthiness,” “foolish talk,” and “crude joking,” which are the peculiar characteristics of evil companionship. That kind of camaraderie has nothing to do with true love, and the apostle plainly says it has no place in the Christian’s walk.

     Covetousness is yet another corruption of love that stems from a narcissistic desire for self-gratification. It’s the exact opposite of the example Christ set when He “gave Himself up for us” (v. 2). In verse 5, Paul equates covetousness with idolatry. Again, this has no place in the Christian walk, and according to verse 5, the person who is guilty of it “has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

     Such sins, Paul says, “must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (v. 3). Of those who practice such things, he tells us, “Do not associate with them” (v. 7).

     In other words, we are not showing authentic love unless we are intolerant of all the popular perversions of love.

     Most of the talk about love these days ignores this principle. “Love” has been redefined as a broad tolerance that overlooks sin and embraces good and evil alike. That’s not love; it’s apathy.

     God’s love is not at all like that. Remember, the supreme manifestation of God’s love is the Cross, where Christ “loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (v. 2). Thus Scripture explains the love of God in terms of sacrifice, atonement for sin, and propitiation: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). In other words Christ made Himself a sacrifice to turn away the wrath of an offended deity. Far from dismissing our sins with a benign tolerance, God gave His Son as an offering for sin, to satisfy His own wrath and justice in the salvation of sinners.

     That is the very heart of the Gospel. God manifests His love in a way that upheld His holiness, justice, and righteousness without compromise. True love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6).

     That’s the kind of love we are called to walk in. It’s a love that is first pure, then peaceable.

One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Worship

By John Sartelle 6/1/2004

     What would you think if you went to your church Sunday morning and a child’s life was sacrificed as part of the worship? What would you think if you went to church this Sunday and discovered that a religious sexual orgy was to take the place of the sermon?

     What you should think and know is that such changes would mean that your church no longer worships the same God. The worship of any people will reflect the God they worship. If the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, then it follows that her God is God and there is no other, that her God is holy, that her God has authoritatively spoken, and that her God is one. If that is who God is, and if that is what His Church is, then it must first and foremost be expressed visibly in her worship. If the worship of the local body is not declaring that there is but one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, then she is betraying her God and denying her birthright.

     It is time for the lackadaisical and man-centered churches of our culture that so easily throw about the labels “Christian” and “evangelical” to realize that their worship must conform to the character of the Trinitarian God. Any substitute is merely using the worship forms of idolatry to approach a God who will not suffer desecration.

     Let’s take a moment to walk through the different aspects of the worship of our local churches and understand how each of those features should proclaim that we are a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

     I love the call to worship. We are being called to be a holy people, a people coming apart from the world to worship. We are holy, set apart by baptism from the world for His service. The world does not sing the “Doxology,” the “Gloria Patri,” or the “Sanctus.” At the very beginning as we take part in, or respond to, the call to worship, we are declaring that we as the Church are a royal and holy priesthood. As His priests, we are offering our worship (every part of our worship) as a holy sacrifice to Him.

     We sing the great hymns of the faith, whether they are hymns of praise, prayer, repentance, thanksgiving, or avowal. As we do so, we are proclaiming God to be the one, holy God who has spoken authoritatively, and who has baptized and ordained people from every race, tongue, and nation to be His. That means the content of our hymns matters. Sincere hearts mean nothing to God when they give utterance to thoughts and words that deny or compromise His character.

     As we carefully attend to His Word, we are standing on the same foundation as the prophets and apostles. We are not apostles. We are not of a biological line descending from the apostles. We are the spiritual descendants of the apostles as we stand on their authority, the infallible and inerrant Word of the living God. As we stand and say the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, we follow in their footsteps. As we confess, we need to ask God to arouse our emotions. We are saying the very words that were on the lips of martyrs as they died, not ashamed of the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The proclamation of His Word and the creedal declarations are the plumb lines which separate His Church from the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Unitarians.

     It is wonderful when we have diversity in race and culture worshiping in the same room. However, we must remember that diversity in the same sanctuary is not the truest expression of our catholicity. The catholicity of the Church is expressed not mainly in our relationships with each other, but it is expressed in our gathering to worship the Trinitarian God who is one. All of His Church worships the same God and Father, and all are indwelt by the same Spirit, who bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, brothers of Christ, and brothers with each other. Imagine the picture that is seen from heaven each Lord’s Day when people from every race, language, and nation gather before this one God to worship. The sentence I have just written brings to our minds one passage over all others: “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth (Rev. 5:9–10).’” That is the song of heaven. Our worship is a prelude and preview to that hymn sung and seen around the globe every Lord’s Day.

     Dear reader, do you understand that every aspect of our worship — our worship in our local church this Sunday — should proclaim that we are a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. This is our calling, our duty, and our joy. It is not easy; it cannot be approached casually as if it did not matter. It requires study and thought, not only by those who plan the specifics of the worship, but also by the worshipers themselves. It requires teaching so that this precious heritage continues in the next generation. It requires constant attention that we might grow in our understanding of worship. Most importantly, it requires a heart filled and energized by the Holy Spirit so that we will not fall into the empty grave of dead orthodoxy.

     By our worship, we are known to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. He is author of What Christian Parents Should Know About Infant Baptism.

One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church

By R.C. Sproul 6/1/2004

     “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty ….” We say it. We argue about it (especially the “under God” part). But is it true? In reality, how united is the United States? The “more perfect union” sought by Lincoln is hardly perfect in terms of harmony. We are a nation — morally, philosophically, and religiously — deeply divided. Yet there remains the outward shell of formal and organizational unity. We have union without unity.

     As it is with the “United” States, so it is with the unity of the Christian church. The “oneness” of the church is one of the classic four descriptive terms to define the church. According to the council at Nicaea (325 AD), the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

     Few church bodies today give much regard to being apostolic. Fewer still seem concerned with the dimension of the holy. When these two qualities become irrelevant to the minds of church people, it is a mere chimera to speak of catholicity and unity.

     The church, organizationally, is hopelessly fragmented. Since the birth of the “Ecumenical Movement,” the church has seen more splits than mergers. The crisis of disunity is on the front pages following the Episcopal Church’s decision to consecrate a practicing, impenitent homosexual to the role of bishop.

     Is unity a false hope? Is it, in its historic expressions, merely an illusion?

     To answer these questions we must consider the nature of the unity of the church.

     In the first instance, the deepest and most significant unity of the Church is its spiritual unity. Though we can never separate the formal from the material with respect to the Church’s unity, we can and must distinguish them.

     It was Augustine who taught most deeply about the distinction between the visible church and the invisible Church. With this classic distinction Augustine did not envision two separate ecclesiastical bodies, one apparent to the naked eye and another beyond the scope of visual perception. Now, did he envision one church that is “underground” and another one above ground, in full view?

     No, he was describing a church within a church. Augustine took his cue from our Lord’s teaching that until He purifies His Church in glory, it will continue in this world as a body that will include “tares” along with the “wheat.” The tares are weeds that grow along with the flowers in Christ’s garden.

     Because of the presence of wheat and tares simultaneously in the church, we know that believers co-exist with unbelievers, the regenerate alongside the unregenerate. It was this situation that prompted Augustine to describe the church as a “mixed body” (corpus permixtum). The invisible Church is the Church made up of true believers. It is the Church comprised of the regenerate, or as Augustine observed, the “elect.”

     Jesus made it clear that there are some, indeed many who profess faith but do not possess it. His piercing warning is the climax of the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” ( Matt. 7:21–23 NKJV).

     Elsewhere Jesus noted that people honored Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him. The claim on the lips of the tares is that they labored for Christ. Yet Jesus will dismiss them. He will ask them (nay, command them) to leave. He will declare that they were never at any time part of His true Church. “I never knew you.” These are not onetime sheep who became goats. They are the sons and daughters of Judas who were unbelievers from the beginning.

     We notice also that Jesus said that the number of such self-proclaiming believers, who are not really regenerate, is declared to be “many.” This should elicit caution in our assumptions of the success of our methods and techniques of evangelism. We tend to be quite sanguine with our “evangelistic statistics” when we assume the conversion of all who answer an altar call, make a “decision for Christ,” or recite the “sinner’s prayer.” These tools can help measure outward professions, but they do not give us a glimpse into the heart. All we can ever see of a person’s profession is his fruit. And even the fruit can be deceptive. God, and God alone, can read the human heart. Our gaze cannot penetrate beyond the outward appearance.

     Augustine also maintained that the invisible Church exists substantially within the visible church. There may be rare instances when a true believer never connects with a visible church if providentially hindered. The thief on the cross never had the opportunity to attend new member classes in a local church.

     However, for the most part, the true members of Christ’s invisible Church are found within the visible church. Though the visible church a truly regenerate person may belong to differs from the church another regenerate person belongs to, the two believers are, in reality, already united in the one true, invisible Church.

     The union of believers is grounded in the mystical union of Christ and His Church. The Bible speaks of a twoway transaction that occurs when a person is regenerated. Every converted person becomes “in Christ” at the same time Christ enters into the believer. If I am in Christ and you are in Christ, and if He is in us, then we experience a profound unity in Christ.

     The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John 17 in behalf of the unity of His followers was not a failure or unfulfilled plea. God has been pleased to ensure a unity among believers that, though invisible, is nevertheless real. It is a common bond grounded in one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

Robert Charles Sproul, 2/13/1939 – 12/14/2017 was an American theologian, author, and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, an international Christian education and discipleship organization located near Orlando, Fla. He was also copastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., chancellor of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Dr. Sproul has contributed dozens of articles to national evangelical publications, has spoken at conferences, churches, and schools around the world, and has written more than one hundred books. He also served as general editor of the Reformation Study Bible.

Sophisticated Lady

By R.C. Sproul Jr. 6/1/2004

     We’ve all heard the horror stories. First there was the church that offered visitors a free oil change during the “service” if you would come. Then we heard of simple cash rewards. More recently a church raffled off a new Harley Davidson motorcycle. You couldn’t buy raffle tickets; you could only earn them either by visiting or bringing visitors in. Tetzel is spinning in his grave, but only because he is appalled that he never got this sophisticated.

     We have our standard ways of measuring the worldliness of the church. We can note that the divorce rate within the evangelical church is roughly equal to the rate among the lost. In one mammoth evangelical denomination, the rate is actually higher. We can look at it ideologically and note that over half those polled who consider themselves evangelical also affirm that there is no such thing as objective truth. Or, we can see the fruit of that affirmation.

     In a time of philosophical crisis in ancient Greece, when two competing schools of thought found themselves in a Mexican standoff, a new school arose. The Sophists did not take a side in the titanic struggle between Heraclitus and Parmenides, between the many and the one. Instead they argued that arguing was a waste of time. This school was interested in persuasion, not proof. In fact, like modern relativists, they believed that proof was impossible.

     In the modern, or perhaps postmodern West, we are sophists once again. We have added this Western twist — pragmatism. Now persuasion is no longer in the pursuit of rhetorical laurels, but is in the service of selling things. Indeed we live in such a sophisticated age that we are told that the key to success is selling even ourselves. And once again the church has fallen prey to the wisdom of the world. We think that our pathway to success lies in selling ourselves, in presenting ourselves not just as a product, but as a superior product. What was once the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church has become now Oakmont Family Worship Center. The trouble is that there are no oaks, no mountains, few families (that is, the families all split and go their separate ways as soon as they enter), no worship, and precious little center.

     What Oakmont Family Worship Center offers instead is a series of bulletpoint benefits that fit the demographics of the area. They have a gym, a wide array of twelve-step programs, youth groups, women’s groups, men’s groups, singles groups, and, of course, their own coffee bar right in the narthex, I mean, the “greeting center.” Which in turn means that not only are there no oaks, mountains, families, worship or center, but neither is it one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

     It is not one because, unlike the true church, its being isn’t centered on the work of Christ. It spits on the liturgy, on the music, even on the convictions of our fathers. It is the first church of what’s happening now, and thus is untethered from the church in history.

     Neither, of course, is the church holy. It not only is not set apart, but labors diligently to mimic the world. It is unholy on purpose, because its reason for being is pleasing the lost, rather than the One who finds the lost. It moves from embracing the wisdom of this world in embracing a sophist agenda, which, in turn, leads it into embracing the wisdom of the world, because that’s what attracts the world. The church begins with the assumption that it can be whatever it wishes and concludes by wishing to be just like the world.

     The prototypical Oakmont is not catholic either. Not only does it begin with a marketing strategy, but that marketing strategy is to reach a particular niche (virtually always yuppies, not coincidentally). “Oakmont” is focused on bringing in upwardly mobile professionals. Its vision of the church extends only as broadly as the demographic it is seeking. When we affirm the catholicity of the church we are not only affirming that the church encompasses every tongue and tribe, but that it unites every tongue and tribe. And, as noted above, it transcends time, uniting this century and the last, and the one before that, all the way back to the Garden.

     Worst of all, Oakmont is not apostolic. It rejects not only the faith once delivered unto the saints, but likewise it rejects the messengers who delivered that faith. It takes its cues from modern-day church growth gurus, who, in turn, take their cues from the madmen of Madison Avenue. Oakmont isn’t concerned with what the apostles said because they make their decisions based on what the market says. And one thing the market cannot bear is sound, old, demanding doctrine. When demographics divide, that’s good marketing. But when doctrine divides, that’s bad marketing.

     Sophistry in the church, then, not only guts the church of her defining marks but gives her a new identity. Now she is no longer the bride of Christ, but a painted lady. When the church hustles the world, it becomes a worldly hustler. In short, like Israel before her, when the church cavorts with the world, she finds her lamp stand removed, she finds herself divorced and alone. The world is a cruel lover, but more important, God is a jealous God. When the church plays to consumers, she will find herself consumed by the One who is a consuming fire. Praise God, however, that the church itself, the true church, will never fall. For her Groom has promised, despite her wandering eye, to remove every blot and blemish. And all His promises are yea and amen.

The Coming Prince

By Sir Robert Anderson 1841-1918

Chapter 14 The Patmos Visions

If therefore "the day of the Lord" follows immediately upon the close of the seventieth week, it seems that Judah's complete deliverance is not to take place until after that final period has begun. And this is expressly confirmed by Zechariah 14. It is a prophecy than which none is more definite, and the difficulties which beset the interpretation of it are in no degree overcome by refusing to read it literally. It seems to teach that at that time Jerusalem is to be taken by the allied armies of the nations, and that at the moment when a host of prisoners are being led away, God will intervene in some miraculous way, as when He destroyed the army of Pharaoh at the Exodus [11]

[11] Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall "the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:29-30).

     Comparison with the prophecy of Matthew 24 is the surest and strictest test which can be applied to these conclusions. After fixing the epoch and describing the character of the great persecution of the last days, the Lord thus enumerates the events which are to follow at its close:— First the great natural phenomena predicted; then the appearance of the sign of the Son of man in heaven; then the mourning of the tribes of the land; [12] and finally the glorious advent.

[12] kopsontai pasai ai phulai tas gas. Comp. Zechariah 12:12 (LXX), kopsetai ha ga kata phulas phulas.

     That there will be no interval between the persecution and the "great signs from heaven" (Luke 21:11) which are to follow it, is expressly stated; they are to occur "immediately after the tribulation." That an interval shall separate the other events of the series is equally clear. From the defilement of the Holy Place, to the day when the tribulation shall end, and the "fearful sights" and "great signs" from heaven shall strike terror into men's hearts, shall be a definite period of 1,260 days; [13] and yet when He goes on to speak of the Advent, the Lord declares that that day is known to the Father only: it should be His people's part to watch and wait. He had already warned them against being deceived by expecting His Advent before the fulfillment of all that must come to pass (Matthew 24:4-28). Now He warns them against apostasy after the accomplishment of all things, because of the delay which even then shall still mark His coming. [14]

[13] Therefore if the Advent synchronized with these events, any one then living would be able to fix the date of it, once the epoch of the tribulation were known; whereas the chapter clearly shows that an interval will follow after all has been fulfilled, long enough to weed out mere professors, who, tired of waiting, will apostatize (Matthew 24:48), and to lull, even true disciples to a sleep from which their Lord's return will rouse them (Ibid. 25:5).

[14] Matthew 24:42-51, and 25:10-13: "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins." tote, "at the period spoken of at the end of the last chapter, viz., the coming of the Lord to His personal reign" (Alford, Gr. Test., in loco.)] Though applicable to every age in which there is a waiting people on earth, the parable will have its full and special application in the last days to those who shall be looking back on the complete page of prophecy fulfilled. The entire passage from chap. 24:31, to chap. 25:30, is parenthetical, relating especially to that time.

     The words of Christ are unequivocally true, and He never enjoins upon His people to live in expectation of His coming, save at a time when nothing intervenes to bar the fulfillment of the hope. Fatalism is as popular among Christians as with the worshippers of Mahomet; and it is forgotten that though the dispensation has run its course these eighteen centuries, it might have been brought to a close at any moment. Hence the Christian is taught to live, "looking for that blessed hope." (Titus 2:12-13) It will be otherwise in days to come, when the present dispensation shall have closed with the first stage of the Advent. Then the word will be, not "Watch, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come," (Matthew 24:42) — that belongs to the time when all shall have been fulfilled, — but "Take heed that no man deceive you, all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." (Matthew 4:6)

The Coming Prince

Read The Psalms In "1" Year

Psalm 38

5 My wounds stink and fester
because of my foolishness,
6 I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;
all the day I go about mourning.
7 For my sides are filled with burning,
and there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 I am feeble and crushed;
I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

9 O Lord, all my longing is before you;
my sighing is not hidden from you.
10 My heart throbs; my strength fails me,
and the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.
11 My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague,
and my nearest kin stand far off.

By Gleason Archer Jr.

Ruth

     This book bears as its title the name of the principal character whose biography is related within its pages. The etymology of this name (רות) is uncertain; some have suggested a Moabite modification of the Hebrew re˓ût, “friendship, association.” The purpose of the book is to relate an episode in the ancestry of king David which accounted for the introduction of non-Israelite blood into his family line.  It also teaches the far-reaching scope of the grace of God who is ready to welcome even Gentile converts to the fellowship of His redeemed people.  Perhaps most important of all, this brief narrative is designed to exhibit the function of the gōʾēl, or kinsman-redeemer.

     Outline of Ruth I. Migration and sojourn in Moab,  1:1–5
II. Ruth’s choice to return with Naomi to Judah,  1:6–18
III. The mournful homecoming to Bethlehem,  1:19–22
IV. Boaz, a friend in need,  2:1–23
V. Redemption law invoked,  3:1–18
VI. Boaz’ acceptance of his responsibility as gōʾēl,  4:1–16
VII. Promise and posterity,  4:17–22

Ruth: Date of Composition

     The historical setting of this little book is laid in the time of the Judges ( Ruth 1:1 ), and it seems to have been composed at about the same time as the larger work. It could hardly have been written earlier than the time of King David, since he is mentioned in it by name ( 4:22 ). Had it been written as late as the time of Solomon, it is quite likely that David’s famous son also would have been listed in the notice of Ruth’s descendants.

     Critics of the Liberal school insist on a date later than the reign of Josiah, inasmuch as Ruth seems to betray a knowledge of  Deut. 25, and  Deuteronomy was ( according to them ) composed just before Josiah’s reform. Most critics date it about 550 B.C. during the time of the Exile, but others have looked to a period some one hundred years later, feeling that it was intended as a counterblast to  Nehemiah’s strict enforcement of the laws against marrying foreign wives. It is interesting to note that W. E Albright expresses a preference for an earlier date than Josiah’s time, regardless of its possible dependence upon  Deuteronomy. In the Alleman-Flack Old Testament Commentary, he refers to the demonstration by Millar Burrows that the legal usage described in connection with the marriage of Boaz and Ruth represents a stage much earlier than the Pentateuchal laws respecting levirate marriage. On this questionable basis, therefore, Albright says, “We cannot date the bulk of  Ruth after the seventh century, and a date as early as the ninth century for the underlying poem is quite possible.”

Kinsman - Redeemer As A Messianic Type
Requirement     Fulfillment In Christ

Be a blood relative          Christ born of a woman
Be able to purchase forfeited inheritance          Christ had the merit to pay the price for sinners
Be willing to buy back the forfeited inheritance          Christ willingly laid down His life
Be willing to marry the wife of the deceased kinsman          The Church, as the Bride of Christ

     In the interests of the later date, some critics have pointed to alleged Aramaisms such as lāhēn in  1:13 and mārāʾ in  1:20. It is true that lāhēn exists in Aramaic as a word for “therefore,” but as a Hebrew term it may be rendered “to them” in the sense of “for those (things).” While it is true that mārāʾ, “bitter,” is spelled in an Aramaic way, its Hebrew equivalent for an identical sound is only slightly varied in spelling. Moreover, since inscriptions have been found as early as the ninth century B.C. containing both Canaanite and Aramaic spellings in the same text, these two questionable words furnish very tenuous grounds for a late dating of the book.

     As for the historicity of the narrative,  Ruth appears to give an accurate account of the customs during the early period. It was perfectly natural at that era (before the Moabites had become embittered by Israelite overlordship) for a Jewish family to take refuge in Moab during a time of drought and famine. Under those conditions it would be natural also for young people to fall in love and get married with the inhabitants of the land. The fact that David was descended from a Moabitess would furnish a ready explanation for his seeking refuge with the king of Moab during the time he was being pursued by Saul. As Young remarks, “The very fact that  Ruth, the ancestress of David, was a Moabitess, is in itself an argument for the historicity of the book.”

Ruth: Basic Teachings of This Book

     The basic teachings of Ruth may be summed up under three headings.

     1. It affords a foreshadowing of the enlarged blessing to come: Gentiles are capable of being joined to the commonwealth of Israel upon condition of repentance and of faith in Jehovah.

     2. God’s marvelous and unexpected providence is exhibited also by the inclusion of a Gentile in the royal lineage of the Messiah (cf.  Matt. 1:5 ).

     3. The kinsman-redeemer serves as a Messianic type, the gōʾēl who fulfills the following qualifications and functions of his kinsmen: (a) he must be a blood relative (even as Christ became a blood relative of man by the Virgin Birth); (b) he must have the money to purchase the forfeited inheritance ( 4:10 — even as Christ alone had the merit to pay the price for sinners); (c) he must be willing to buy back that forfeited inheritance ( 4:9 — even as Christ laid down His life on His own volition); (d) he must be willing to marry the wife of a deceased kinsman ( 4:10 — typical of the bride and groom relationship between Christ and His Church). From this standpoint, therefore, the little book of  Ruth is one of the most instructive in the Old Testament concerning the mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus.

A Survey of Old Testament Introduction

The Day of Atonement

     16:1–34 The Day of Atonement, when annual atonement was made for the sins of the nation, was the holiest day in the Old Testament calendar. It fell in the Hebrew seventh month (October) and involved the offering of various sacrifices, the entry of the high priest into the Most Holy Place (in this chapter referred to simply as the “Holy Place” or “Holy Sanctuary”), and the dispatch of a goat into the wilderness carrying the people’s sins. ( click here for article by Sinclair Ferguson ) The Day of Atonement proceeded according to the following steps: (a) The high priest washed and dressed (v. 4); (b) he sacrificed a bull as a sin offering for himself (v. 6; cf. v. 11); (c) he entered the Most Holy Place and sprinkled the ark with blood (vv. 12–14); (d) he took two goats and by lot chose one to be the scapegoat, the other to be a sin offering (vv. 7–8); (e) he sacrificed one goat as a sin offering (vv. 9, 15); (f) he entered the Most Holy Place and sprinkled the ark with blood (v. 15); (g) he went out to the outer part of the tabernacle of meeting and sprinkled the blood (v. 16); (h) he went out into the courtyard of the tabernacle and sprinkled the main altar with blood (vv. 18–19); (i) he confessed the sins of the Israelites as he laid his hands on the scapegoat’s head (v. 21); (j) he sent the scapegoat into the desert (vv. 21–22); (k) the scapegoat gone, the high priest changed into his regular garments and washed (vv. 23–24); and (l) finally, he offered burnt offerings for himself and for the people (vv. 24–25).

     For the high priest, the most important aspects of the ceremony were his entry into the Most Holy Place with the blood of the sin offerings and the dispatch of the scapegoat into the desert. These actions atoned for the sins of repentant Israelites (vv. 16, 19, 21–22). All sin offerings served to cleanse both the earthly sanctuary and the worshipers, but on other occasions the high priest did not enter the (inner) Most Holy Place, but only the anteroom before the separating veil (usually called the “holy place”), the chamber containing the altar of incense, the gold lampstand, and the table of showbread. Because the ark of the covenant, the focal point of God’s presence in the tabernacle was housed in the Most Holy Place, entry to the Most Holy Place was rare and dangerous (v. 2). That the high priest entered the inner chamber only on this one day of the year indicated the depth of atonement being made.

     The scapegoat ceremony was also unique to this day. By placing his hands on the goat’s head and confessing the nation’s sins, the high priest transferred those sins to the goat. The goat then symbolically carried the people’s sins away into the desert. Christians have long regarded the scapegoat as a type of Christ. The New Testament makes many comparisons between the Day of Atonement and the death of Christ (Heb. 9:6–28; 13:11–13). That Christ was delivered to the Gentiles and killed outside the walls of Jerusalem indicated that He was sent “outside the camp” like the scapegoat of old.

The Continual Burnt Offering

By H.A. Ironside - 1941

April 12

Ecclesiastes 2:1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure;
enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.   ESV

To walk with God, O fellowship divine!
Man’s highest state on earth — Lord be it mine!
With Thee, may I a close communion hold;
To Thee, the deep recesses of my heart unfold:
Yes, tell Thee all — each weary care and grief
Into Thy bosom pour — till there I find relief.
O let me walk with Thee, Thou Mighty One;
Lean on Thine arm, and trust Thy love alone;
With Thee hold converse sweet where’er I go;
Thy smile of love my highest bliss below!
--- J. J. P.

By James Orr 1907

NOTE C.—P. 413 | Alleged “Midrash” Character Of Genesis 14"

WELLHAUSEN holds this chapter to be one of the very latest (post-exilian) insertions into the Book of  Genesis, and absolutely without historical worth. He refuses even to acknowledge, with Nöldeke, the excellence in style of the narration (Compos. d. Hex. pp. 311–3).

Kuenen thinks that in this chapter the redactor “has given us a fragment of a post-exilian version of Abram’s life, a Midrash, such as the Chronicler had among his sources” (Hex. p. 324). He allows, however, that “the story is in its proper place, for it presupposes Lot’s separation from Abram, and his settlement in Sodom” (p. 143).

Kautzsch says of this “remarkable” chapter “that it seems to have been taken from a Midrash of the patriarchal history,” and regards it as an addition of the last redactor (Lit. of O.T., p. 119).

Cheyne declares his agreement with Wellhausen, Stade, Meyer, Kautzsch, in the view that it is “a post-exilian Midrash” (Oxf. Hex. i. p. 168). E. Meyer, quoted by him, thought that the Jew who inserted it “had obtained in Babylon minute information as to the early history of the land” (Gesch. des Alterthums, i. p. 166).

Addis asks: “To what does this proof amount? Simply to this, that the writer had acquired some slight knowledge of Babylonian history, as, doubtless, many a Jew in exile did” (Docs. of Hex. ii. p. 212).

H. P. Smith speaks of the “desperate attempts” which “have been made of late years to rescue the historicity of this chapter, on the ground of Babylonian literature” (O.T. Hist. p. 37).

Yet the “Midrash” thus confidently assumed is nothing but a fiction evolved from the critical imagination. Is it likely that a Jew in Babylon would he found devoting himself to the deciphering of Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions? And where is the proof of his “slight” knowledge?

NOTE D.—P. 418 | The Resurrection Of Myths

THE effect of discovery has been a wonderful resuscitation of the credit of stories and traditions long regarded as myths. We refer in the text to the discoveries affecting Menes and the early Egyptian dynasties. It has been the same elsewhere. “The spade of Dr. Schliemann and his followers have again brought to light the buried empire of Agamemnon. Our knowledge of the culture and power of the princes of Mycenæ and Tiryns in the heroic age of Greece is no longer dependent on the questionable memory of tradition” (Sayce, Higher Crit. p. 18). “I well remember,” says Professor Kittel, “in my student days how the scorn of the whole body of the learned, and the ridicule even of the comic papers, was poured on him (Dr. Schliemann) when he came forward to announce his discovery of Priam’s city, his palace, and his treasures. For in these days it was an article of belief with scholars that our knowledge of the history of ancient Greece practically began with Herodotus and the time of the Persian wars” (Babyl. Excavs. p. 74).

The remarks of the same author on the Cretan excavations are full of interest in this connection. He tells of “a learned friend who was on his way back to Crete, and who had seen there the excavations undertaken by Evans, and was able to boast that he had sat upon the throne and in the palace of King Minos, a monarch well remembered by us all at school, and universally regarded by us as the mere product of a myth” (p. 15). In a note, he adds: “Minos has frequently been regarded as a Cretan god, also a personification of Zeus, or again of the Phœnician domination, and of Baal-Melkart or of Moon-worship, or even as a Sun-god,” etc.

Again: “Much that we previously held, and seemed justified in holding, as mythical, is now coming into the light of history; and, side by side with the already mentioned Minos, we have now, through the latest discovered Assyrian inscriptions, come to accept the historical existence of King Midas of Phrygia, of whom we previously knew nothing but the story of his ass’s ears, but who is now recognised as an actual and worthy ruler of the eighth century before Christ” (p. 16). He shows how Midas “continues at the present time to be described as an ancient divinity of the Northern Greeks and Phrygians, more exactly as a ‘blessing-scattering nature-god’ … in the form of an animal.… To this ancient demon of vegetable life,” etc.

NOTE E.—P. 419 | The Identification Of Rameses and Pithom

THE problems about the city Raamses (Rameses) in  Ex. 1:11, are not yet satisfactorily solved. There would seem, in fact, to have been two cities of this name — one, of which we have Egyptian accounts, the city of Zoan or Tanis, of the Hyksos, in the Delta, which Rameses II. rebuilt, and called by his name; the other in the neighbourhood of Pithom, in Goshen (cf. Driver, Authority and Archœology, p. 55). Sayce at first (with Brugsch, etc.) identified Rameses with Tanis (Fresh Light, p. 65), then distinguished two cities (Higher Criticism, p. 239), now again appears to identify the Biblical Raamses with the Egyptian Pi-Ramessu, but disconnects the latter from Tanis (“Raamses” in Dict. of Bible, iv. pp. 188–9; Monument Facts, p. 90); so Pinches (O.T. in Light of Hist. Records, p. 305). Brugsch, also, after the discovery of Pithom, gave up his earlier view of the site of Rameses. It still seems to us more probable that the “store city” is to be distinguished from the gay and splendid Pi-Ramessu. On the possible greater antiquity of the name, see the valuable note in Canon Cook, Speaker’s Com., “ Exodus, ” p. 486.

The situation of Pithom is settled by M. Naville’s discovery, and inscriptions of Rameses II. show the connection of that Pharaoh with it. M. Naville, at the same time, “never had the good fortune to find the king’s name stamped on any of the bricks” (Report, July 1883). The evidence, however, is very abundant that Rameses II. habitually erased the names of his predecessors, and substituted his own (cf. Cook, as above, p. 465). Pollard, in his Land of the Monuments, gives a striking instance from this very district. “A large sphinx in black marble is also very interesting, as the name of the king in whose reign it was carved, and whose portrait it most probably bears, has been erased. It belonged, unquestionably, to the period of the Hyksos, or the Shepherd kings.… The only name found on it at present is that of Rameses the Great, who reigned about 1400 B.C. (?). It was — most unfortunately for the records of Egyptian history — the practice of this monarch to cut his name on almost every object that presented itself. This would have been pardonable enough had he allowed all previous names and titles to remain; but he seems to have desired to obliterate all records but those of his own ancestors” (p. 18). In certain inscriptions, however, he effaces even the name of his father (Seti I.), and substitutes his own.

The Problem of the Old Testament

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Translated by Henry Beveridge

     CHAPTER 18.

THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF WORKS IMPROPERLY INFERRED FROM REWARDS.

There are three divisions in this chapter,--I. A solution of two general objections which are urged in support of justification by works. First, That God will render to every one according to his works, sec. 1. Second, That the reward of works is called eternal, sec. 2-6. II. Answer to other special objections derived from the former, and a perversion of passages of Scripture, sec. 6-9. III. Refutation of the sophism that faith itself is called a work, and, therefore, justification by it is by works, sec. 10.

Sections.

1. Two general objections. The former solved and explained. What meant by the term working.

2. Solution of the second general objection. 1. Works not the cause of salvation. This shown from the name and nature of inheritance. 2. A striking example that the Lord rewards the works of believers with blessings which he had promised before the works were thought of.

3. First reason why eternal life said to be the reward of works. This confirmed by passages of Scripture. The concurrence of Ambrose. A rule to be observed. Declarations of Christ and an Apostle.

4. Other four reasons. Holiness the way to the kingdom, not the cause of obtaining it. Proposition of the Sophists.

5. Objection that God crowns the works of his people. Three answers from Augustine. A fourth from Scripture.

6. First special objection--viz. that we are ordered to lay up treasure in heaven. Answer, showing in what way this can be done.

7. Second objection--viz. that the righteous enduring affliction are said to be worthy of the kingdom of heaven. Answer. What meant by righteousness.

8. A third objection founded on three passages of Paul. Answer.

9. Fourth objection founded on our Savior's words, "If ye would enter into life, keep the commandments." Answer, giving an exposition of the passage.

10. Last objection--viz. that faith itself is called a work. Answer--it is not as a work that faith justifies.

1. Let us now proceed to those passages which affirm that God will render to every one according to his deeds. Of this description are the following: "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad;" "Who will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honor, and immortality, eternal life;" but "tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that does evil;" "They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation;" "Come, ye blessed of my Father;" "For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink," &c. To these we may add the passages which describe eternal life as the reward of works, such as the following: "The recompense of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him;" "He that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded;" "Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven;" "Every man shall receive his own rewards according to his own labour." [451] The passages in which it is said that God will reward every man according to his works are easily disposed of. For that mode of expression indicates not the cause but the order of sequence. Now, it is beyond a doubt that the steps by which the Lord in his mercy consummates our salvation are these, "Whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom. 8:30). But though it is by mercy alone that God admits his people to life, yet as he leads them into possession of it by the course of good works, that he may complete his work in them in the order which he has destined, it is not strange that they are said to be crowned according to their works, since by these doubtless they are prepared for receiving the crown of immortality. Nay, for this reason they are aptly said to work out their own salvation (Phil. 2:12), while by exerting themselves in good works they aspire to eternal life, just as they are elsewhere told to labour for the meat which perisheth not (John 6:27), while they acquire life for themselves by believing in Christ; and yet it is immediately added, that this meat "the Son of man shall give unto you." Hence it appears, that working is not at all opposed to grace, but refers to pursuit, [452] and, therefore, it follows not that believers are the authors of their own salvation, or that it is the result of their works. What then? The moment they are admitted to fellowship with Christ, by the knowledge of the gospel, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, their eternal life is begun, and then He which has begun a good work in them "will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ," (Phil. 1:6). And it is performed when in righteousness and holiness they bear a resemblance to their heavenly Father, and prove that they are not degenerate sons.

2. There is nothing in the term reward to justify the inference that our works are the cause of salvation. First, let it be a fixed principle in our hearts, that the kingdom of heaven is not the hire of servants, but the inheritance of sons (Eph. 1:18); an inheritance obtained by those only whom the Lord has adopted as sons, and obtained for no other cause than this adoption, "The son of the bond-women shall not be heir with the son of the free-woman," (Gal. 4:30). And hence in those very passages in which the Holy Spirit promises eternal glory as the reward of works, by expressly calling it an inheritance, he demonstrates that it comes to us from some other quarter. Thus Christ enumerates the works for which he bestows heaven as a recompense, while he is calling his elect to the possession of it, but he at the same time adds, that it is to be possessed by right of inheritance (Mt. 25:34). Paul, too, encourages servants, while faithfully doing their duty, to hope for reward from the Lord, but adds, "of the inheritance," (Col. 3:24). You see how, as it were, in formal terms they carefully caution us to attribute eternal blessedness not to works, but to the adoption of God. Why, then, do they at the same time make mention of works? This question will be elucidated by an example from Scripture (Gen. 15:5; 17:1). Before the birth of Isaac, Abraham had received promise of a seed in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed; the propagation of a seed that for number should equal the stars of heaven, and the sand of the sea, &c. Many years after he prepares, in obedience to a divine message, to sacrifice his son. Having done this act of obedience, he receives the promise, "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son; that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice," (Gen. 22:16-18). What is it we hear? Did Abraham by his obedience merit the blessing which had been promised him before the precept was given? Here assuredly we see without ambiguity that God rewards the works of believers with blessings which he had given them before the works were thought of, there still being no cause for the blessings which he bestows but his own mercy.

3. And yet the Lord does not act in vain, or delude us when he says, that he renders to works what he had freely given previous to works. As he would have us to be exercised in good works, while aspiring to the manifestation, or, if I may so speak, the fruition of the things which he has promised, and by means of them to hasten on to the blessed hope set before us in heaven, the fruit of the promises is justly ascribed to those things by which it is brought to maturity. Both things were elegantly expressed by the Apostle, when he told the Colossians to study the offices of charity, "for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel," (Col. 1:5). For when he says that the gospel informed them of the hope which was treasured up for them in heaven, he declares that it depends on Christ alone, and not at all upon works. With this accords the saying of Peter, that believers "are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time," (1 Pet. 1:5). When he says that they strive on account of it, he intimates that believers must continue running during the whole course of their lives in order that they may attain it. But to prevent us from supposing that the reward which is promised becomes a kind of merit, our Lord introduced a parable, in which he represented himself as a householder, who sent all the laborers whom he met to work in his vineyard, some at the first hour of the day, others at the second, others at the third, some even at the eleventh; at evening he paid them all alike. The interpretation of this parable is briefly and truly given by that ancient writer (whoever he was) who wrote the book De Vocatione Gentium, which goes under the name of Ambrose. I will give it in his words rather than my own: [453] "By means of this comparison, our Lord represented the many various modes of calling as pertaining to grace alone, where those who were introduced into the vineyard at the eleventh hour and made equal to those who had toiled the whole day, doubtless represent the case of those whom the indulgence of God, to commend the excellence of grace, has rewarded in the decline of the day and the conclusion of life; not paying the price of labor, but shedding the riches of his goodness on those whom he chose without works; in order that even those who bore the heat of the day, and yet received no more than those who came last, may understand that they received a gift of grace, not the hire of works," (Lib. 1, cap. 5). Lastly, it is also worthy of remark, that in those passages in which eternal life is called the reward of works, it is not taken simply for that communion which we have with God preparatory to a blessed immortality, when with paternal benevolence he embraces us in Christ, but for the possession, or, as it is called, the fruition of blessedness, as the very words of Christ express it, "in the world to come eternal life," (Mark 10:30), and elsewhere, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom," &c. (Mt. 25:34). For this reasons also, Paul gives the name of adoption to that revelation of adoption which shall be made at the resurrection; and which adoption he afterwards interprets to mean, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23). But, otherwise, as alienation from God is eternal death,--so when man is received into favor by God that he may enjoy communion with him and become one with him, he passes from death unto life. This is owing to adoption alone. Although after their manner they pertinaciously urge the term reward, we can always carry them back to the declaration of Peter, that eternal life is the reward of faith (1 Pet. 1:9).

4. Let us not suppose, then, that the Holy Spirit, by this promise, commends the dignity of our works, as if they were deserving of such a reward. For Scripture leaves us nothing of which we may glory in the sight of God. Nay, rather its whole object is to repress, humble, cast down, and completely crush our pride. But in this way help is given to our weakness, which would immediately give way were it not sustained by this expectation, and soothed by this comfort. First, let every man reflect for himself how hard it is not only to leave all things, but to leave and abjure one's self. And yet this is the training by which Christ initiates his disciples, that is, all the godly. Secondly, he thus keeps them all their lifetime under the discipline of the cross, lest they should allow their heart to long for or confide in present good. In short, his treatment is usually such, that wherever they turn their eyes, as far as this world extends, they see nothing before them but despair; and hence Paul says "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable," (1 Cor. 15:19). That they may not fail in these great straits, the Lord is present reminding them to lift their head higher and extend their view farther, that in him they may find a happiness which they see not in the world: to this happiness he gives the name of reward, hire, recompense, not as estimating the merit of works, but intimating that it is a compensation for their straits, sufferings, and affronts, &c. Wherefore, there is nothing to prevent us from calling eternal life a recompense after the example of Scripture, because in it the Lord brings his people from labour to quiet, from affliction to a prosperous and desirable condition, from sorrow to joy, from poverty to affluence, from ignominy to glory; in short, exchanges all the evils which they endured for blessings. Thus there will be no impropriety in considering holiness of life as the way, not indeed the way which gives access to the glory of the heavenly kingdom; but a way by which God conducts his elect to the manifestation of that kingdom, since his good pleasure is to glorify those whom he has sanctified (Rom. 8:30). Only let us not imagine that merit and hire are correlative terms, a point on which the Sophists absurdly insist, from not attending to the end to which we have adverted. How preposterous is it when the Lord calls us to one end to look to another? Nothing is clearer than that a reward is promised to good works, in order to support the weakness of our flesh by some degree of comfort; but not to inflate our minds with vain glory. He, therefore, who from merit infers reward, or weighs works and reward in the same balance, errs very widely from the end which God has in view.

5. Accordingly, when the Scripture speaks of "a crown of righteousness which God the righteous Judge shall give" "at that day," (2 Tim. 4:8), I not only say with Augustine, "To whom could the righteous Judge give the crown if the merciful Father had not given grace, and how could there have been righteousness but for the precedence of grace which justified the ungodly? how could these be paid as things due were not things not due previously given?" (August. ad Valent. de Grat. et Lib. Art.); but I also add, how could he impute righteousness to our works, did not his indulgence hide the unrighteousness that is in them? How could he deem them worthy of reward, did he not with boundless goodness destroy what is unworthy in them? Augustine is wont to give the name of grace to eternal life, because, while it is the recompense of works, it is bestowed by the gratuitous gifts of God. But Scripture humbles us more, and at the same time elevates us. For besides forbidding us to glory in works, because they are the gratuitous gifts of God, it tells us that they are always defiled by some degrees of impurity, so that they cannot satisfy God when they are tested by the standard of his justice; but that lest our activity should be destroyed, they please merely by pardon. But though Augustine speaks somewhat differently from us, it is plain from his words that the difference is more apparent than real. After drawing a contrast between two individuals the one with a life holy and perfect almost to a miracle; the other honest indeed, and of pure morals, yet not so perfect as not to leave much room for desiring better, he at length infers, "He who seems inferior in conduct, yet on account of the true faith in God by which he lives (Hab. 2:4), and in conformity to which he accuses himself in all his faults, praises God in all his good works, takes shame to himself, and ascribes glory to God, from whom he receives both forgiveness for his sins, and the love of well-doing, the moment he is set free from this life is translated into the society of Christ. Why, but just on account of his faith? For though it saves no man without works (such faith being reprobate and not working by love), yet by means of it sins are forgiven; for the just lives by faith: without it works which seem good are converted into sins," (August. ad Bonifac., Lib. 3, c. 5). Here he not obscurely acknowledges what we so strongly maintains that the righteousness of good works depends on their being approved by God in the way of pardon. [454]

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