Q.
1. “Is it not true that in this life the godly and the ungodly, the elect and
reprobate have all things in common?”
This
is certainly true. There is manifestly in this world a general providence of
God, by which the same things, both good and evil, rain and drought, abundance
and scarcity, health and sickness, life and death, prosperity and adversity,
peace and war, joy and sorrow, gifts, powers, talents and genius or the want of
these, regardless of the question whether they are godly or ungodly, just or
unjust, elect or reprobate. We may even emphasize this by saying that both
Scripture and experience teach, that less good and more evil are sent to the
godly than to the ungodly. (Herman
Hoeksema, “The Protestant Reformed Churches in America” [1947], p. 321)
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Q.
2. “Is it, then, not also true, that in these things of this present life both
the godly and ungodly receive tokens of God’s favor toward them?”
By
no means; for, as it must be evident both from Scripture and experience that
the evil things of this present life, such as sickness, pain, sorrow,
adversity, poverty, yea even death, are not sent to the godly in God’s wrath
and to curse them; so it must be evident that the good things of this present
life are not sent to the wicked in God’s favor and to bless them. We must not
confuse grace and things. (Herman Hoeksema, “The Protestant Reformed Churches in America” [1947],
p. 321)
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Q.
3. “In what light, then, must we consider the things which in this life the
godly and ungodly have in common, in order correctly to evaluate them and
understand their significance?”
In
the light of eternity. All the things of the present life are but means to an
eternal end. As they are received by us and employed by us as rational-moral
creatures they all bear fruit, either to eternal life and glory, or to eternal
death and desolation. If they tend to life they are bestowed on us in the grace
of God and are a blessing, no matter whether they are in health or sickness, prosperity
or adversity, life or death, for all things work together for good to them that
love God; if they tend to death and damnation, they are bestowed on us in God’s
wrath and are a curse, even though our eyes stand out with fatness and we bathe
in luxury. (Herman Hoeksema, “The
Protestant Reformed Churches in America” [1947], pp. 321-322)
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Q.
4. “Are, then, the things of this present life means in the hand of God or of
men?”
Both;
as God employs them He carries out His eternal purpose concerning us, whether
it be the purpose of salvation or of damnation; a we employ them as rational
and moral beings, they become means of either righteousness or of
unrighteousness. Thus God’s counsel is realized concerning us and we remain
moral and responsible agents. (Herman
Hoeksema, “The Protestant Reformed Churches in America” [1947], p. 322)
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Q.
5. “Does God
do good to all men?”
[We] agree wholeheartedly that God gives the gifts of this natural life to all. All men have in common the whole of natural life as it develops out of creation. We do not deny that these gifts of natural life are good. Who would deny that God does good? Who would deny that God always does what is good? Therefore, everything that comes from God is also good. The heathen receive from God good rain and good fruitful times, good food and good gladness. There is no difference whatever in that regard.
The question is whether God also gave “grace” to the
heathen. That is exactly what we deny and Scripture never teaches. If at the
moment when the murderer lifts his arm to strike the victim, God did not give
him good strength, that cruel arm would at that very moment drop lamely. God
therefore also does good in that instance, for He gives good strength. But who
will still say that God gives him “grace”? When God gives to the
Greek artistic skills, and He gives him the good marble, and the Greek then
makes an idol, who would dare to assert that God gave “grace” along with
the skill and the marble? When God gives to the Roman the sword and natural
jurisprudence, and that Roman stands before Jesus and says, “You are innocent,
but I crucify you,” who calls that “grace”? And when God gives to the
world a glad heart to wild pleasure and revelries, who will say that “grace”
is hidden in that gladness of the world? Therefore, let it be said again: grace
is not in things, but in the good favor of God, who works blessing in and
through the means. The things are always common in this world, but grace is
never common. (Herman Hoeksema, “Sin and
Grace,” pp. 248-250)
God is
good but does not shower His goodness to all men indiscriminately for their good. Where do the Scriptures
ascribe this action to His intention towards the non-elect? If providence shows
us that men receive things that are good—like cars and boats and houses and
food and children, where do the Scriptures, in those verses, ever attest that
God’s intention in giving those gifts to the non-elect is for their good and
happiness? It may very well be that men enjoy the things God gives them in
the way we perceive it, but God intends
something quite different. He intends an ultimate end to the praise of His
glory. Though food is used for temporary sustenance of life, it by no means
warrants that the eternal intention
is anything less than to fill up the
measure of their sins, or to cause the curse of God to abide on them all
the more. When men misuse the good gifts of God, they fill up their sins, and
store up wrath for the Day of Judgment.13 [13. Men fill up their
sin. Gen. 15:16, Matthew 23:31-33, and I Thess. 2:16.] Though God lavishes men
with the substances of life, this cannot be called “grace;” rather, it is God’s indiscriminate providence. (Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, “The Two Wills of
God Made Easy: Does God Really Have Two Wills?” [2016], pp. 68-69)
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Q. 6. “Are not the temporal
benefits enjoyed by the reprobate (e.g. earthly pleasures, fruitful wombs, rain
and sunshine on their crops, joy and laughter, long abundant and peaceful lives
etc.) tokens or proofs of God’s love? Are they not blessings, graces, mercies
and favours upon them?”
This was Asaph’s mistake, and it is the mistake of many. In "the sanctuary of God" (Ps. 73:17), Asaph came to understand that "the prosperity of the wicked" (v. 3)—their health (v. 4), food (v. 7), riches (v. 12)—was "surely" God’s setting them "in slippery places" before He casts "them down into destruction" (v. 18). God gave them good things in His providence, but He "despised" them (20) for their wickedness (v. 8). . . Solomon, the wisest of men, declared, "The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked" (Prov. 3:33). All the good things in his house—wife, children, possessions, food etc.—come not with God’s love but with His curse. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
[The implicit assumption of the
theory of common grace] is that the giving of good gifts to someone (or
something) implies God's love for them. However, this is patently unbiblical,
as the Scriptures often identify God’s reason for giving good gifts to the
reprobate wicked, not that He loves them, but that He purposes righteously to
destroy them (e.g., Ps. 73:3-28; 92:7-9). More generally, the Scriptures
explicitly state that “no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is
before them,” that is, all the good things which God gives to every man
(Eccles. 9:1). (Dr. Manuel Kuhs, British
Reformed Journal, Issue 59)
[If] the temporal benefits enjoyed
by the reprobate argue God’s love to them, what do the temporal deficits
endured by the elect argue? The logical conclusion would be God’s hatred
towards them. Yet, nobody would be prepared to concede such a conclusion. Why,
then, should the argument from temporal benefit to divine love be embraced? (Rev. Matthew Winzer, “Murray on the Free
Offer,” in The Blue Banner, vol. 9, #10-12, p. 11, n. 29)
Something that all advocates of common grace miss
is that God’s grace is not in things but in His disposition behind the things
that He gives (Ecc. 9:1-2). God’s providence is universal, not
particular. God upholds and governs even the wicked by His hand. God supplies
even the wicked with the good gifts of this creation. Often, the reprobate
wicked enjoy more of God’s creation and for a longer time than do His often
beleaguered children. But those good things are not in themselves grace. God
can give rain, sunshine, food and clothing graciously or in His wrath (Num.
11:33). If God has a benevolent disposition of good will toward a creature, in
which He desires to bless that creature, we call that good will “grace.” But God
might also have a disposition of wrath against a creature, in which He desires
to curse that creature. Never can we call such a disposition “grace” (Rev. Martyn McGeown, “An Answer to Phil
Johnson’s ‘Primer on Hyper-Calvinism’”).
Psalm 37 shows that the prosperity of the wicked is
illusory; they only seem to be favoured by God. In reality,
God is cursing them even in their prosperity. We quote some texts so that the
reader might get a flavour of the Psalm. “Fret not thyself because of
evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they
shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb” (vv. 1-2).
“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him
that prospereth in his way …” (v. 7). “For evildoers shall be cut off … For yet
a little while, and the wicked shall not be …” (vv. 9-10). “But the wicked
shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they
shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away” (v. 20). “I have seen the
wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he
passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found”
(vv. 35-36). Notice the temptations to which we are exposed by the seeming
prosperity of the wicked: envy and fretting oneself to do evil. A Christian who
believes that God is blessing the wicked with “common grace” will be tempted to
leave the path of obedience and to walk with the wicked, so that he might enjoy
more of God’s “common grace” also. That is exactly why Psalm 37 and 73 were
written—that we might not fret ourselves to do evil! (Rev. Martyn McGeown, “An Answer to Phil Johnson’s ‘Primer on
Hyper-Calvinism’”).
If [a person] desires to prove common grace, he
needs to prove that, when God gives good gifts to the wicked, this is evidence
of His favour upon them, which favour then ends at death, when He casts the
same wicked, whom He supposedly favoured in time, into everlasting destruction.
However, this creates other problems, for how can God’s grace, mercy or love be
temporary, especially when Psalm 136 declares twenty-six times that “his mercy
endureth for ever”? [The theory of common grace] confuses God’s providence, which is common, with God’s grace, which is not common (Rev. Martyn McGeown, “An Answer to Phil
Johnson’s ‘Primer on Hyper-Calvinism’”).
[If] God, in giving good things to the wicked, is
blessing them, speaking His favour upon them and seeking to do them good [then]
that would be a blessing of God, which does not accomplish their good, but
increases their guilt; a blessing of God, which comes to an end when they die
and go to hell; and a blessing of God, which changes into a curse. (Rev. Martyn McGeown, “An Answer to Phil
Johnson’s ‘Primer on Hyper-Calvinism’”).
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Q. 7. “But doesn’t it say somewhere that God
‘loveth the stranger, in giving him
food and raiment’?
This does not mean that God loves absolutely all strangers
or that He has mercy, grace or favour for all strangers. And
it certainly does not mean that God loves reprobate strangers
or that He is gracious to them. Moreover, that God loves some by giving them
food and raiment does not mean that, whenever God gives food and raiment,
He always gives these things in love (or in “common grace”),
and, whenever God withholds food and raiment, He always withholds
them in wrath as a sign of His displeasure.
An ungodly rich man, upon whom the curse of God
rests in Proverbs 3:33, has a house stuffed full of food and raiment, and the
poor man, in whose house the blessing of God resides, is deprived of much food
and raiment, for “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great
treasure and trouble therewith” (Prov. 15:16).
In Numbers 11, God supplied quails for Israel, but
we read, “And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was
chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and
the Lord smote the people with a very great plague” (v. 33). Psalm 106:15 is a
commentary on that history: “And he gave them their request; but he
sent leanness into their soul.”
[Many Calvinists] are short sighted in their view
of providence: food and clothing are never in themselves indications of God’s
favour. The Heidelberg Catechism makes a wise distinction
here, for we learn to acknowledge in our prayers, that “neither our care nor
industry, nor even [God’s] gifts [of daily bread] can profit us without [His]
blessing” (A. 125). God can and does give daily bread to the wicked without His
blessing or so-called “common grace.” (Rev.
Martyn McGeown, “An Answer to Phil Johnson’s ‘Primer on Hyper-Calvinism’”).
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Q.
8. “If temporal benefits are not tokens of love,
mercy, kindness etc. toward the reprobate, what do we call this seeming
‘kindness’ to the wicked? After all, He feeds them, sustains them, and even
gives them His revelation (both special and general). What is this if this
isn’t grace?”
They are simply good gifts which show God’s
goodness and leave man inexcusable. (Rev.
Angus Stewart)
The good gifts of providence that he gives to the
wicked, are meant as a testimony to them that He is a good God, full of
kindness and love, and therefore one worthy to be worshipped and before whom
they should repent were they in their right mind, and that if they were to do
so they would experience His loving fellowship as sweet. (Prof Herman C. Hanko)
[The] ungodly are indeed the recipients of the good
gifts of God, not as evidence of His grace, but according to His providence. To
be sure, unless the ungodly receive all the gifts of God, they could never sin,
and they could never increase their guilt and fill up the measure of iniquity
and become ripe for destruction. These very gifts constitute, as it were, the
capital wherewith they sin and develop in ungodliness. We must understand,
therefore, that these things are a means both for God, who sovereignly executes
His purpose, and for the wicked, who act as responsible, moral agents. The
wicked employ God’s gifts knowingly and wilfully in the service of sin and
corruption; thus they are responsible and harden their hearts unto their own
destruction. God uses these same means according to His sovereign counsel and
in His wrath over the ungodly, thus fitting them as vessels of wrath unto
destruction. Thus the greater gifts and talents, the more means the wicked have
wherewith to sin and to develop in sin, and the more swiftly they run to
destruction. (Homer C. Hoeksema)
An act of God toward a human can
be good in the sense that the act itself or the gift itself is pleasing to the
sinner and advantageous to his earthly life—health, financial prosperity,
earthly power—without being a gracious act of God toward the sinner to whom the
good is given. If God bestows the good in His wrath and with the purpose to render
the sinner guilty of ingratitude and with the purpose to harden him for eternal
destruction, the good thing is not gracious on God's part, but the expression
of His just wrath and the agent of His will to harden and destroy the sinner.
One of the clearest revelations of the difference between a good thing and
grace is Psalm 73. God lavishes the ungodly with good things in order that they
slide into perdition. If all the good things that God bestows on the reprobate
wicked in this life are grace, my petition is, “God, spare me Thy grace.” (Prof. David J. Engelsma)
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Q. 9. “Why can’t we call the good things in this world that the
wicked receive ‘grace’ or ‘favor’? Is it not possible to consider the temporal
things apart from the eternal and thus maintain that in this life the ungodly
enjoy many good things as tokens of God’s grace toward them?
He
that enjoys a nice sleigh-ride on a beautifully smooth and slippery road that
ends in a deep precipice, or he that takes keen delight in a pleasant boat-trip
down the stream toward the Niagara Falls, would be considered a fool. So is he
an abominable fool that considers the pleasures of this present time grace and
a blessing though their end is inevitable destruction. You cannot separate the
eternal from the temporal. All things are means to an end. It is, then, grace
and a blessing to climb along a steep and rugged road to heaven; it is wrath
and a curse to slide down a smooth road to hell. (Herman Hoeksema, “The Protestant Reformed Churches in America” [1947],
pp. 322-323)
This
question is also answered by Homer C. Hoeksema in the following link:
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Q. 10. “But can we not truly say,
that God bestows the things of the present time upon the ungodly in His grace,
though the wicked employ them unto their own destruction?”
You would not ask this question
from a Reformed viewpoint nor if you are acquainted with the Word of God. For,
then you know that God certainly and sovereignly predestinated both the elect and
reprobate unto their own end. He is God and not man. And as He predestinated
their end, so He certainly predestinated the way and all the means to that end.
Although, therefore, it is certainly true that the wicked with all the means at
their command serve sin and work out their own destruction, yet, it is equally
true that they do so in full harmony with God’s counsel and under His
providence.
Besides, the viewpoint expressed
in the question is contrary to the plain declarations of the Word of God … (Herman Hoeksema, “The Protestant Reformed Churches in
America” [1947], p. 323)
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Q. 11. “But is not this a terrible
doctrine?”
All true doctrine is terrible for
the wicked and ungodly, for God is terrible to them. It is one of the earmarks
of the falsity of the theory of common grace, that it is pleasing to the
ungodly. It is a great comfort to the godly, however, to know that all things
work together for good to the righteous and for evil to the unrighteous. And it
may rightly be characterized as an unethical, very corrupt and pernicious
doctrine to teach that God favors the workers of iniquity and smiles upon them
in His grace! (Herman Hoeksema, “The
Protestant Reformed Churches in America” [1947], p. 323)
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Q. 12. “Why can’t we say that God both blesses and curses, or
curses and blesses the same individual?”
Proverbs 3:33 teaches, “The curse of
the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the
just.” God does not curse those upon whom He is gracious; and God does not
bless those whom He curses. Blessing and cursing are mutually exclusive: “For
such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of
him shall be cut off” (Ps. 37:22). On the Last Day, Christ will declare that
His elect sheep are blessed (both in time and into eternity), while the
reprobate goats are cursed (both in time and into eternity) (Matt. 25:34, 41,
46). (Rev. Martyn McGeown, “An Answer to
Phil Johnson’s ‘Primer on Hyper-Calvinism’”)
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Q. 13. “Does God rejoice with the
ungodly in their prosperity?”
Psalm 73 is God’s own answer to this question. As regards the “prosperity of the wicked” (v. 3), by His giving the wicked many good things and in their enjoyment of a comfortable earthly life, God sets them “in slippery places.” He casts them “down into destruction,” so that they are “brought into desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors” (vv. 18-19). No empathy of shared joy here!
God has no joy in the pleasures of
the ungodly. He has no joy in their life at all. Their life angers Him, for
they live apart from Him, and in enmity against Him. All their pleasures are
sinful pleasures, for whether they eat or drink, work or play, marry or
divorce, they do nothing to the glory of God. What joy can God have in sin?
God has no “feeling” of delight in
the things that most please and gladden the ungodly. As far as He is concerned,
they have no business rejoicing in those things. “Thus saith the LORD, Let not
the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty glory in his might,
let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in
this, that he understandeth and
knoweth Me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment,
and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD”
(Jer. 9:23-24).
God has no joy in the reconciling of two unbelievers, for their reconciliation dares to oppose peace apart from God in Jesus Christ. God has no joy in the “repentance” of one whose repentance does not include, indeed is not rooted in, sorrow of heart that he has sinned against the good God. God has no joy in a non-Christian’s forgiveness of her adulterer husband, for she “forgives” without reference to the sole ground and source of forgiveness, namely the grace of God in the atonement of the cross. God has no joy in the loving marriage of two secularists, for they do not thankfully receive the great good of marriage from God its maker, nor live in it according to His will, nor devote it to His praise.
We opponents of common grace have this against the theory, that it is a spiritual soporific to the ungodly in their decent, comfortable, pleasurable, brief lives in the world. It is as if the preachers of common grace run along the banks of the lovely river on which the ungodly are drifting—ever more swiftly!—in their fine vessels, enjoying themselves to the fullest, with the preachers shouting to the ungodly, “God loves you! He rejoices in your joy of floating comfortably down the river! He has a gracious purpose with your blessed river cruise! And around the next bend are the dreadful falls that will plunge these ungodly into eternal perdition.
I
wonder whether, since the defenders of common grace would not listen to the
testimony of the Protestant Reformed Churches, God will not have the damned convince
them of the error of common grace. On the day of judgment, before the condemned
depart to their place, they will turn to those who taught and defended common
grace, and say, “Why did you go out of your way to leave the impression with us
that all was well with us in the very favor of God? Why did you not warn us,
sharply and incessantly, that God’s wrath lay on our prosperity, that He was
angry with our joy, and that His curse was in our house, so long as we remained
unconverted to Him, to whom all life ought to have been lived? Why did you
Calvinists not teach us what your own Heidelberg
Catechism plainly asserts in Lord’s Day 50, namely, that God’s good gifts
are one thing and His blessing quite another, that people can have the gifts
without the blessing, and that the gifts without the blessing do not profit?” (Prof. David J.
Engelsma, “Common Grace Revisited,” pp. 45-47)
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Q. 14. “The term ‘Common Grace’ refers to the fact that, in this life, God treats all men, whether elect or not, far better than they deserve. He sends sunshine and rain upon both the wicked and the godly. It is called “common” because these blessings are given to elect and non-elect alike. It is called “grace” because these blessings are undeserved ... Although God allows men to be afflicted with disease or injury, yet He often sends healing to them, that they may regain their health. Many of those who mourn are eventually comforted. Many of those who witness the horrors of war are protected from its devastation and are preserved to see the return of peace. How many of the unsaved can give accounts of how they were saved from fire, drowning, windstorms or other calamities? In these and countless other ways, God shows kindness to the unsaved every day—a kindness that none of us deserves.”
The issue is not whether ungodly persons receive good gifts from God, for example, health and riches, but whether these good gifts come to them in a favor of God towards the ungodly and are God’s blessing of them. Good gifts are not necessarily indicative of God’s favor or grace, nor are they necessarily blessings, that is, gifts that effect the good of those who receive them. If they are, earthly evils are expressions of God’s wrath and accomplish the harm of those saints who receive them from God. In this case, God was gracious to the rich man of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus and worked the good of him by the gifts of wealth and ease, whereas God was wrathful to poor, sick Lazarus and effected the hurt of Lazarus. Grace is not in things. Grace is in Jesus Christ. All things work together for good to those who love God. All things work together for evil to those who hate God. Psalm 73 demolishes the assumptions of the advocates of common grace. The afflicted believer of the psalm was sorely troubled by the fact that the ungodly enjoyed many good things belonging to earthly life, whereas he, the believer, suffered lack and trouble. Then in God’s house, where the gospel is proclaimed and where the cross of Christ is set forth as the satisfying of the wrath of the just God against sinners, the psalmist understood that by the good things of earthly life God in fact sets the ungodly on slippery places so that he slides swiftly into the desolation of eternal death, whereas by the afflictions of earthly life He prepares the godly for eternal life and glory. The basic errors of the proponents of common grace is that they identify earthly prosperity with grace and blessing and they explain this life apart from the cross (which testifies that the only removal of wrath is the cross of Christ) and without regard for the eternal state, heaven or hell. (Prof. David J. Engelsma)
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Q. 15. “Are not fallen men hell-deserving sinners and therefore ‘undeserving’ and ‘unworthy’ of all these good gifts showered upon them? Have they not
forfeited the right to have these
wonderful things? Is it not therefore in that sense ‘grace’?”
Many who believe in “common grace” do so because
God in His providence gives good gifts to the reprobate wicked, which
they do not deserve. “Every day that a wicked person lives in this world is
grace to him, for everything apart from hell is grace,” is the argument of
many. We agree wholeheartedly that the reprobate wicked deserve nothing—they do
not even deserve to live. However, that is not the same thing as grace. It is important in order to avoid
confusion to use words as Scripture uses them. In this case, it is important
not to confuse grace with providence. Sometimes, those who believe in “common
grace” and those who do not are talking past one another because they do not
properly define their terms.
Grace in Scripture is God’s favour.
The issue is not whether God gives good things to the wicked, which they do not
deserve to have [or which they did not ‘merit’], but what is God’s purpose in
so doing and, especially, what is God’s attitude to the wicked to whom He gives
such good gifts? If God’s purpose in prolonging the life of the reprobate
wicked is to enable them to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath (Rom.
2:5) or to place them on slippery places so that they are cast down into
destruction (Ps. 73:18) or that they might be destroyed forever (Ps. 92:7), we
cannot call that grace. (Rev. Martyn
McGeown, “An Answer to Phil Johnson’s ‘Primer on Hyper-Calvinism’”)
[It is] true that from a certain
point of view God’s gifts are always unmerited. Man can never merit with God,
nor the creature with the Creator. Even when we have done all that is required
of us, we are still unprofitable servants (Luke 17:10). If God gives good gifts
to men, these are surely unmerited.
There are those who refer to this
unmerited character of God’s gifts when they speak of grace. They mean nothing
more than that God gives gifts to men which are totally unmerited by them. We
have no objection to this idea in itself, although we noticed in an earlier
article that the word “grace” in Scripture means more than the giving of an
unmerited gift. It also refers back to an attitude of God. Grace is unmerited favor; and favor is an attitude. The
question is: Do the good gifts God gives express His favor towards the wicked? (Prof. Herman C. Hanko, Protestant Reformed
Theological Journal, vol. 27, no. 2 [April 1994], p. 24)
In most radical modern
forms of the common grace theory it is argued that, because God in this life
gives good and unmerited gifts to the reprobate wicked, this means that He must
have a temporary favour or love for them. But the cause of God giving these things
must be sought in the end or purpose God has ordained for them, just as the
reason God afflicts and brings evil upon the righteous must be sought in His
end purposes for them. In both cases, the way in which God views these two
different types of people cannot be understood without specific reference to
His final purposes concerning them. Such passages as Proverbs 16:4 and more
particular Psalm 73:17, 18, show clearly that, since the end purpose of God
towards the reprobate wicked is wrath and destruction, the cause of Him giving
them good things is to prepare them for this end, and so cannot be an
expression of love. (British Reformed
Journal, Issue 9 [January - March 1995], pp. 22-23)
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Q.
16. “Some hold the term “common grace” to mean nothing more than the providence
of God in His daily rule of creation— the providential control
of rain and sunshine which God is pleased to send upon the earth.”
[While]
one may perhaps quarrel with the use of the term “grace” in this connection, no
one will quarrel with the idea. That God’s providence is His power by which He
controls all that happens in all creation is a truth written large on every
page of Scripture and imbedded firmly in all Reformed and Presbyterian creeds. (Prof. Herman C. Hanko, PRTJ, April 1992)
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Q. 17. “What is the main objection to the idea that
God loves all men?”
Negatively, the theory that God loves all men is,
of course, in plain contradiction to the teaching of the Scripture (e.g., Ps.
5:5, Ps. 11:5, Mal. 1:3, Rom. 9:13). Positively, the Scriptures confirm that
God loves only His people. An example of this can be seen in the doctrine of
election. Why are some chosen to life and some not? Simply because God only
loved some, and thus only chose some. Thus “foreknowledge” in Romans 8:29 is
equivalent to “forelove” and is the ground of our predestination to
glorification. This loving choice of God involves two elements—aetiology (the study of original causes)
and teleology (the study of purposeful ends). The cause of our election and
salvation is found in the love of God to us. But this electing love also shapes
our final destiny and end both as far as this life is concerned (Eph. 2:10) and
ultimately in that which is to come (Rom. 8:29). (British Reformed Journal, Issue 9 [Jan – Mar 1995], p. 22)
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Q. 18. “Can we not distinguish between man as righteous or wicked and man as a creature or God’s workmanship?”
That is an abstraction which is nowhere found in Scripture (Herman Hoeksema, “The Standard Bearer,” vol.
37, no. 11).
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Q. 19. “In the Bible, and in experience, we clearly see
that God’s dealings with wicked men in this world are that He nevertheless
still treats them ‘as men.’ Is this not said to be gracious?”
How
else could God deal with men but as men?
Surely, He could not deal with men as animals, or as devils, or as stocks and
blocks? Does God not always deal with each of His creatures according to the
nature which He Himself gave that creature? Or I could ask the question: is
God, then, also gracious to the reprobate in hell? Also there, remember, He
continues to deal with men as men,
that is, He causes them as men to suffer the everlasting torments of hell-fire.
But is this perhaps gracious? (Homer C.
Hoeksema, “The Standard Bearer,” vol. 50, issue 9 [Feb. 1974])
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Q.
20. “But what about when wicked men become successful and prosperous in life?
Is not this a gracious blessing of God and something that they do not deserve?”
[It] is very essential that we clearly distinguish
between “success” and “blessing.”
Not infrequently the two are confused, and what is
mere “success” is considered blessing. When a man prospers in the world, when
he enlarges his place, gains in influence and power, increases his substance
and possesses many temporal things, it is by no means uncommon that men call
him blessed, or that he even considers himself blessed. Yet, if nothing else
can be said of such a man, he is merely successful. If with all his success he
is a wicked man, he does, indeed, have a reward, but his reward is,
nevertheless, no blessing, but a curse to him. Blessing is the word of God’s
favour and grace upon us and to us; success is no proof of the grace of God at
all, may consist of slippery places upon which He places us in order to cast us
down into destruction. God’s blessing is upon His people; it is never upon the
wicked, however successful and prosperous they may be. God’s blessing is based
upon the righteousness which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; success has no ground
of righteousness and leaves a man under the wrath and curse of God. Blessing
means that God causes all things to work together for our eternal good, that we
may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ; success is limited to the things
of this present time and hemmed in on all sides by death and destruction.
That is why we speak of a curse-reward.
As long as we consider the things of this present
life, the success and progress, the advancement and the prosperity of the
wicked well-doer, as blessings of God upon him, gifts of His grace which the
Most High bestows upon him in order that he should enjoy them for a time; as
long as we separate the things of this present time from their eternal purpose
and end, we shall never understand that even the reward of the wicked well-doer
is a curse. But as soon as we see all things in their true light and relation,
this becomes very clear. For, when the wicked well-doer is successful,
increases his wealth, enlarges his place, gains in power and influence, he
merely enhances his obligation to serve God. For, the things of this present
time are God’s capital, entrusted to us, placing us under the obligation to
serve and glorify the Most High with it all. But the wicked cannot and will not
employ all things in His service. To him the things of this present time are
means to satisfy the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life. And, therefore, the more he increases his substance and position, the
greater sinner he becomes, the more he aggravates his judgment, the severer
will be his eternal punishment. (Herman
Hoeksema, “The Curse-Reward of the Wicked Well-Doer”)
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