Q. 1. “The command to love our neighbour was
perfectly fulfilled by Christ. He was ‘made under the law, and did perfectly
fulfill it’ (Westminster Confession,
8:4). In order for this to be true, He must have shown love, mercy and
compassion to both elect and reprobate neighbours, as God requires us to do.
Moreover, to say that Christ only loved His neighbour in His human nature is
heretically to divide the person of Christ, who ‘was and continueth ever to be,
God and man, in two distinct nature’s, and one person, forever’ (Shorter Catechism, 21). Obviously this
topic of common grace involves important issues, since our salvation
(justification) demands that our Mediator perfectly fulfil the law on our
behalf. (see also Ps. 40:7-8; Matt. 3:15; 5:17-20; Rom. 13:10; Gal. 4:4-5; Heb.
10:7)” (Source: David Silversides)
(a)
Rev. Angus Stewart
A) With regards to this argument, we
should explore with advocates of Common Grace and the Free Offer what
exactly they are aiming at and what they are committing themselves to. Obviously,
they want a love of Jesus and ultimately a love of God for all men. But this
is in opposition to, or leads to the watering down of, election and
reprobation. Their doctrine is essentially the same as the Arminians (a love of
God for all and desire of God to save everybody). Only,
they use a novel, clever argument to gain this end.
Note: If Jesus exactly like us loved all
His neighbours, He loved them with a love that also desires
their salvation! This surely is our love (Rom. 9:1-5;
10:1). This posits Jesus the Christ as loving all with a saving love
(for we, in loving our neighbours, desire not simply their earthly
welfare but their deliverance from sin and hell). From this it follows that He
must also have laid down His life for all without exception (for even humans do
this for those that they love; cf. John 15:13)—for love, in
us, does not only desire the good of others; it also does what
it can to realize itself in the welfare of the beloved. Thus, the
common grace advocates are already at the heresy of universal atonement with
all its implications for a gospel of salvation. Thus,
their argument proves too much! This goes to show again that there is
no common grace in distinction from special grace. Every defense of a
common grace invariably implies or soon takes form as universal,
resistible, saving grace.
Let me repeat this in different terms. If, (1)
because we are called to love everybody, Jesus really had to love
everybody; and (2) we are called to love others even to the extent of laying
down our lives for them (cf. John 15:13), then Jesus must have loved
and died for everybody! UNIVERSAL, ARMINIAN ATONEMENT! It
is similar with regard to Christ’s prayers:
If we are to pray for people as part of our love for them, and Jesus
really loved everybody, then He must have prayed for everybody. But this
is expressly ruled out by John 17:9! Therefore, this clever argument for common grace
falls to the ground as proving too much. Also we are also to pray for future people
(those yet unborn) (Westminster Confession 21:4; cf. John 17:20; II
Sam. 7:29; Ruth 4:12), so this common grace argument would require
Christ to pray for everybody future to Him, while on
earth (including the reprobate, even the Antichrist), yet Christ only prayed
for the elect and not the reprobate (John 17:9),
and He only prayed for future elect (John 17:20). In fact, Christ prays against
the reprobate (cf. Ps. 69:21-28 in context; cf. also 109:6-20).
Also, God’s grace is ONE
and ETERNAL and UNCHANGEABLE, just as God Himself is one, eternal and
unchangeable, for God is His attributes (this is a vital
aspect of the truth of divine simplicity) so that He IS His love and mercy and
righteousness and eternity, etc. Here we should recall that
this notion of a universal love of Christ and God for the reprobate is
excluded by solid arguments which cannot be overthrown by this
more recent (and involved) argument for common grace from Christ’s
“being
under the law.”
Furthermore, the classic Scripture text stating
that Christ was “made under the law” (Gal. 4:4)
doesn’t
argue for “common grace” or a resistible form of “saving
grace.” It says nothing about Christ loving
everybody because we are called to love our neighbour. It
speaks of the unity of the church in all ages (OT Israel and the NT
church are one—the same person in its childhood [OT] and maturity
[NT]) (vv. 1-7) … and is thoroughly particular. God’s
covenant promises were made to Christ (Gal. 3:16) and those in Him
(v. 29) and Christ was “made under the law”
(4:4) precisely in order to “redeem”
us by the cross “that we might receive the adoption
of sons” (v. 5) and be God’s heirs through
Christ (v. 7). This is assured to us by the Spirit of God’s
Son in our hearts (v. 6).
The error in this argument for common grace is
the one-for-one, flat comparison of Jesus under the law with us mere
men under the law. Jesus was under the law exactly
as the Mediator—God in the flesh, not as a mere man like us. And
God, according to Scripture and the Reformed confessions, put Jesus under the
law on behalf of the elect of whom He was head. It was out of love for the
elect that the eternal Son became a man. It was love for the elect
that put Jesus under the law. It was Jesus’ own love for the elect whom
the Father had given Him out of the world that motivated Him Himself to
place Himself under the law. How perverse, then, to explain His being
under the law as His love for all without exception!
The answer is to stress both that Jesus was
the incarnate Mediator, unlike us in that regard, and that, as God in the
flesh, He loved His neighbours, who were truly near Him according to
election. All men were not His neighbours. The reprobate, whom He
knew, were infinitely far from Him, as they are from God Himself.
Then there is the biblical proof that Christ hated
some humans—for instance, those whom He cursed in
the name of God (Matt. 23) and the wicked, whom He will destroy with a
bloody destruction at His bodily return (Rev. 19).
B) Here is a sort of summary of the above in point
form:
1. Christ’s Person is the eternal Son
of God.
2. Christ’s office was that of the Messiah
who came to do the work of the Triune God who sent Him (John 4:34; 6:38; 17:4),
which work is particular—for the salvation of those whom the
Father gave to Him (Matt. 1:21; John 6:38-40).
3. This involved His loving His own unto the
end and so dying for us on the cross (John 13:1) and also judging
Satan and the reprobate ungodly world by the cross (John 12:31; Gen. 3:15), and
praying for His own and not for the world (John 17:9).
4. Christ knew all things,
according to His divine nature, including human hearts (Matt. 9:4; John
2:24-25) and specifically who were and who were not elect (John 6:70-71;
13:18-30; 17:9-12), so He could love His people and not love the
reprobate (unlike us, for we don’t know who the elect and reprobate
are).
5. Even we must hate God’s
enemies (Ps. 139:21-22; II Chron. 19:2)—so why cannot Christ (our example
in this too, surely!) do this perfectly while on earth?
C) To explain further the nub of the
issue (Christ’s being under the law but not exactly in
the same sense/ways as us), consider:
1. 6th commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”).
As part of His mediatorial work of saving the elect, Christ was given specific
commands different from the rest of us, e.g., in John 10:17-18 (cf. 14:31),
Christ has authority from God to lay down His life (and take it up again), so
that His death is entirely voluntary. The Lord died by an act of will,
even crying out with a loud voice, indicating that He still had strength (Luke
23:46)! But for this divine command, Christ’s death would
have been a form of suicide, and so contrary to the 6th commandment.
Thus God’s specific command to Christ in this regard was a “modification”
of the 6th commandment. This is an example which indicates that Christ was “under
the law” but not exactly in the same way as we are—and
so we can argue, by analogy, that Christ didn’t have to
love His neighbour exactly as we are called to do.
2. Similarly, regarding the 5th commandment, when, in Luke 2,
Christ stayed behind in the temple without expressly telling His parents.
In anyone else, this would have been a breaking of the 5th commandment. But
Christ was sinless and did not transgress in this because He was behaving as God’s
special servant, the Mediator. Thus,
He Himself explained it: “Wist ye not that I must be about my
Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). Likewise, Christ’s
word to His mother, when she wanted Him to do a miracle at the wedding in Cana
(John 2:3): “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”
Jesus explains that He does not simply obey His mother in this regard because
of His messianic role and mission: “mine hour is not yet come”
(v. 4).
3. This is something that we should look out for
more when we read the gospel accounts. Jesus is “the only
Redeemer of God’s elect” (Westminster Shorter Catechism,
A. 21)—this is who He IS. He is a particular
Saviour, sent on a particular mission to save a particular people
through His particular atonement and particular prayers on behalf
of God’s particular, gracious covenant. Christ is
our “example,” yes,
but this is subservient to His being our Redeemer. (AS, 04/05/2012)
(b) Anon. (PRCA)
Indeed, Jesus did fulfil fully the law of the
loving of His enemies. In Romans 5:10 we read: “for if, when we were
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being
reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” We by nature are enemies
and rebels against Christ and His Word. Yet the unfathomable wonder is
that Christ loved us, ugly, miserable, totally depraved, totally wicked
sinners. That’s the glory of the love of God for His enemies.
Christ also fulfilled the law to hate those that hate Jehovah. Jesus
fulfilled the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 139:21, “Do not I hate them, O
LORD, that hate Thee? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee?”
Proof of this righteous hatred of Christ for His enemies is found in Psalm
109:
Set thou a wicked man
over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let
him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let
another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread
also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath;
and let the strangers spoil his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto
him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. Let his
posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted
out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not
the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. Because that he
remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he
might even slay the broken in heart. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto
him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed
himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels
like water, and like oil into his bones. Let it be unto him as the garment
which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. Let
this be the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak
evil against my soul (vv. 6-20).
Christ fulfilled the imprecatory oaths of the
Psalmist against his avowed enemies, who were enemies of Jehovah.
Did Christ give good earthly gifts to the
reprobate, as we inevitably will also do in and throughout our lifetime? He
certainly did. But, the giving of good earthly gifts to the reprobate,
whom He knew as reprobate, was not an indication that He loved them or desired
to save them. Christ was bound by the will and purpose of God that, according
to Psalm 73, the giving of the good things of this life (bread, fish, water) is
governed by God’s eternal counsel, unchangeable purpose, and sovereign good
pleasure.
So, yes, Christ in His fullness fulfilled the law
in perfect righteousness.
The question remains, of course, did Jesus love
every one of His enemies? Jesus loves only His sheep whom the Father gave
to Him in election. The Scriptures teach that Jesus did not love every one
of His enemies. There are specific persons that Jesus revealed that He did
not love, or that He hated. One example was Judas Iscariot. Jesus did
not desire the salvation of the son of perdition, nor extend a supposed
“general” or “common” goodness or love towards Judas.
The question or issue raised by the promoters of
common grace, according to what you wrote, can be framed as a question this
way: Could Jesus love in His human nature those who in His divine nature
He hates from eternity? Could Jesus hate in His human nature those whom
Jesus in His divine nature loved? Can the man Jesus love those whom the
Son of God hates from eternity?
The answers to those questions must be “no.” The Creed of Chalcedon teaches that there is
no conflict between the two natures of Christ. Christ’s will is one. Christ’s love
is one. (08/03/2018)
(c) Prof. David J. Engelsma
(i)
Following this argument, Christ in His love for all
humans must also have died for all humans and must also save all humans in His
love for them all.
As to His person, Christ is God Himself, for whom
humans are not His neighbors, but His creatures, with whom He may do as seems
good to Him, predestinating them to life or death as seems good to Him. Although
the law reflects Christ’s good nature, the commandments are not applicable to
Him as they are to mere creatures. He is the law giver as to His person. In
John 10, He Himself avows that He loves only some—His sheep—and not all
inasmuch as they are not of His sheep. (10/04/2018)
(ii)
First, both as personally God the eternal Son and
as Saviour in His office, Jesus the Christ did not love all humans with whom He
came into contact with the love that desired their salvation. It is this about
the contemporary theory of common grace that is most offensive to the
Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) and to me. Not that God has a superficial
favor towards all humans that results in their receiving good earthly gifts
(although we deny this also), but that God loves all humans with His love in
Christ, desiring their salvation and graciously offering them salvation out of
this desire to save them all.
This fundamental element of the contemporary theory
of common grace, Jesus Christ did not have during His earthly ministry
according to the Scripture. As the eternal Son personally, He hated some humans
and decreed their damnation in the way of their unbelief (Rom. 9). As the
official Saviour of humans, He Himself said that He laid down His life for His
sheep (the elect), not for all humans without exception (John 10). He did not
have or express or act upon a (saving) love of God for all humans without
exception. His gospel was not motivated by His will that all hearers should
believe and be saved. But His purpose with the gospel was (as it is still
today) that His sheep, or elect people, and they only, be saved by it (John 10:27,
28). Concerning the others, the reprobate, the purpose of Jesus with the gospel
was, and still is, that they not truly hear it and believe (John 10:26). Notice
concerning John 10:26 that Jesus teaches that some believe not, because they
are not of His sheep. He has already explained that people are His sheep
because the Father gave them to Him in eternity in the decree of election. The
reason then why some do not believe when they hear the gospel is because they
are not elect. God does not will their faith and salvation. God does not give
them faith when the gospel is preached. On the contrary, He hardens them in
their unbelief, which is conclusive against the notion that the gospel is a
well-meant offer by God to all humans without exception. That God hardens some
by the gospel is the teaching of Romans 9:18: “whom he will he hardeneth.”
The conclusion is, then, that Jesus did not, and
does not, love all humans with the love that purposes their salvation and did
not, and does not, offer salvation to all with the well-meant desire that all
be saved by the gospel. As God, Jesus does not have “neighbours,” whom He must
love, but only creatures whom He may love or hate as seems good to Him. He is
not subject to the law, as we are, but is the lawgiver.
This, for the PRC, is the main issue in the
controversy over common grace. Common grace, as officially taught by the Christian
Reformed Church (CRC) in 1924, when the PRC began, and as taught by many today,
including the Banner of Truth in Great Britain, is the doctrine, above all
else, that Jesus as the Saviour sincerely desires the salvation of all humans
without exception and in this desire offers salvation to all humans in the
gospel. This is Arminian heresy, condemned by the Canons of Dordt with its “five points of Calvinism.”
Then the question remains: Did Jesus as a human, as
a real man, in His human nature love all His neighbours in any sense at all?
In the sense that He obeyed perfectly the second
table of the law, the essence of which is loving the neighbour as oneself, He
did. His behaviour towards even His reprobate enemies was righteous, a
returning good for their evil, the behaviour of love in His dealings with them.
An example is His behaviour before Pilate. He honoured the authoritative
position the Roman magistrate occupied, despite the unjust treatment of Himself
by Pilate. This was a keeping of the fifth commandment of the law of God as the
behaviour of love towards that reprobate unbeliever. But even this was not the
grace of the contemporary theory of common grace. For in this obedient behaviour
of Jesus towards Pilate, God was at work—and Jesus Himself was at work as God
the Son—to leave Pilate without excuse and to render him worthy of judgment.
There was no grace of God towards Pilate in Jesus’ behaviour of love towards His
neighbour for God’s sake.
If someone objects that this has Jesus hating and
loving one and the same person at the same time, hating as God the Son and as
Saviour, and loving as a human in that His behaviour was upright and honourable,
my response is that there is an important sense in which even we do the same.
As a believer, I must love my wicked neighbour, by doing good to him and not
retaliating for evil by evil myself. At the same time, I hate him as the enemy
of God (Psalm 139).
At the same time, in His human nature Jesus is in
perfect accord with the will of God that Jesus is the loving Saviour of some
only and that the end of His ministry be the hardening of some humans.
Also, the neighbours who are truly close, or near,
to Him—His elect out of the human race, Jesus as a man loves with the full,
profound love of the will to save. (16/03/2016)
(d) Prof. Herman C. Hanko
One
question [frequently raised by proponents of “common grace”] is the question
whether Jesus, from the view point of His humanity, loved all men. The argument goes like this: “When our Lord Jesus Christ came into our flesh, He came under the law
(Gal. 4:4). The law demands of everyone under it that he love God and his neighbor
as himself. A man’s neighbor includes all those without distinction with whom
he comes into contact. No man under the law knows who is elect and who is
reprobate, except our Lord Jesus Christ, who did know who were His people and
who were not. And so, because Christ also was under the law, even though He
knew His own and knew also who were not among His sheep, He had to love the
reprobate as well as the elect if He was to keep the law—although this was only
in His human nature.”
I
recall that there was a controversy over this very point in a Presbyterian
church a number of years ago. The controversy centered in the “gracious gospel
offer,” but involved the same line of argumentation as is used in this question
we now consider. The defender of this view talked personally with me to explain
his position. In order to explain his position on the discrepancy between
Christ’s love for all revealed in the “gospel offer” and Christ’s sovereign
love for His people only, he appealed to the distinction between the “divine
nature” and the “human nature” of Christ. He claimed that Christ in His divine nature loved only the elect, but
in His human nature, He loved all
men.
He
was correctly charged, by his church, with Nestorianism,
an ancient heresy, which separated the two natures of our Lord so completely
that Christ possessed, according to this view, two persons. Nestorianism was condemned by the Council of Ephesus
in 431 AD and by the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
All
that our Savior did while on earth and all that He now does is His work as the divine-human Mediator. It is wrong to
say that Christ did one thing in His divine nature apart from His human nature, or to say that Christ does something
according to His human nature without the
involvement of the divine nature. It is yet more wrong to say that Christ
in His human nature could do something completely
at odds with His divine nature, so that the two natures did not agree with
each other. Hence, in answer to the question, Did not Christ, who came under the law, fulfill the law by loving all
His neighbors, whether elect or reprobate?, we insist again that the
biblical answer is, No. Christ, who knew His own that were given Him
of the Father, loved His neighbor, but only His elect neighbor. This truth is, in fact, clearly stated in John
13:1: “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was
come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he
loved them unto the end.”
I
really do not understand very well the force of this argument. Neither for
Christ, nor for us, is our neighbor “every man who lives in the world.” My
neighbor is the one with whom I come into
contact, with whom I must live, who is on my pathway, who requires my
attention, who places me under certain obligations towards him. My neighbor
is my wife, my child, my fellow saint—as
well as the man along side of me in the shop. And I am called to love him in
such a way that I, caring for whatever need he may have, seek his salvation.
Love always seeks the good of the object of that love; and no greater good can
we show to someone we love that to seek
his salvation. I do this because I do not know who are elect and who are
reprobate, and it may please God, should he be an elect, to use my love for him
to bring him to salvation (Matt. 5:16).
But
the Lord loved His neighbor too. He sought the salvation of His neighbor and,
in fact, accomplished it. But His
neighbor was the one for whom He was sent
into the world to die: the elect in this world whom the Father had given
Him from all eternity. That neighbor was by no means kind towards Christ. That
neighbor opposed him, rejected His gospel of the kingdom and finally crucified
Him. But the power of the love of Christ, on the cross, brought (and still
brings) that neighbor to faith and salvation.
This
truth is clearly taught by the Lord Himself. At the time the Lord received a
delegation from the imprisoned John the Baptist to inquire whether He was the Messiah,
or whether another was still to come, the Lord addressed the people by
extolling the important place John had occupied in the working out of God’s
salvation in Christ (Matt. 11:7-15). At the conclusion of this sermon, the Lord
pronounced dreadful woes on the cities of Judah and spoke of the fact that
Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as Tyre and Sidon, would not be punished as
severely as Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin (Matt. 11:20-24).
Immediately
after this solemn and divine pronouncement of judgment on apostate Judah, it
seems the Lord paused to pray—although He must have prayed audibly—“I thank
thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father:
for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt. 11:25-26). This prayer was not,
however, a conclusion to which the Lord was driven by what He observed, as He
witnessed the unbelief of the leading cities of Palestine; He not only
acknowledged that such “hiding” and “revealing” belong to the sovereign work of
His Father (“Thou hast hid these things … and revealed them …”), but He also
emphatically states that He is on the earth to carry out this divine purpose of His Father: “All things are
delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (v. 27).
(Source: “Common Grace
Considered” [2019 edition], pp. 130-132)
#########################################
Q. 2. “Romans 13:10 states, ‘Love worketh no ill to
his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’ Christ ‘did no
ill’ to any of His neighbours who were reprobate. But how can we say that
Christ did not ‘love’ those (reprobate) neighbours whom He did no ill, when the
apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, tells us that ‘working
no ill’ toward our neighbour IS ‘love’? If it’s not love, did Christ then do
them no ill out of hatred toward
them?”
(a) Anon. (PRCA)
What does “ill” according to the original Greek mean? The
word means “evil.” Christ did not commit any evil or sin towards others
because He is holy and righteous.
You ask: “… If it’s not love, did Christ
then do them no ill (i.e. evil, RJS) out of hatred toward
them?” We could ask a similar question: If the law requires “love
your neighbor,” and Christ hated reprobate neighbors in His earthly life, then
did not He violate the second table of the law so that there is
unrighteousness and disobedience with Him?
First, we know that there is no unrighteousness
with Him, even in His hatred of the reprobate.
Second, we know that He could not love every one of
His neighbors because of His knowledge of the Triune God’s election and
reprobation.
Third, we also know that He did obey authority, did
not murder neighbors, did not commit fornication, did not steal, did not lie,
did not covet any of His neighbors things, but obeyed wicked Caiphas under
oath, honored Caesar with tax money, fed the 5,000, remained chaste for His
bride, the church, was always filled with a zeal for the glory of God and stole
from none, was honest and truthful, and was entirely content with the Father,
His Word, His Will, and His provision of daily bread.
Fourth, all of Christ’s obedience was done in
submission to His Father’s will. He did the will of His Father. The
will of His Father meant that some of His obedience to the second table of
the law meant the destruction and condemnation of the reprobate, while His
obedience to the second table of the law is the perfection and
righteousness earned for the elect and imputed to them by faith alone in our
justification.
Fifth, let us remember that Christ did not have two
contradictory wills. Instead of that incorrect view of the will of Christ,
we believe that His will was one (united). For example, in the case of
wicked Caiphas, Christ obeyed Caiphas according to the fifth commandment
in love to the Father but out of the knowledge of His eternal purpose with
Caiphas and according to His eternal good pleasure, according to which Christ
hated whom the Father hated from eternity. He obeyed Caiphas out of His eternal
hatred for Caiphas, because Christ knew the mind of the Father, as His Counsellor,
with regard to Caiphas. According to the Father’s will, Christ obeyed
Caiphas and told the truth under oath, but did so in hatred for Caiphas for His
condemnation and eternal ruin. Christ willed not to love any of the
reprobate. If Jesus of Nazareth had loved any of Satan and any of his
reprobate seed, Jesus of Nazareth would have violated and would have rejected
the eternal will and sovereign good pleasure of His Father. That violation of
the Father’s will would have revealed that Jesus of Nazareth was not God. But,
as the Scriptures state, Jesus of Nazareth is in the flesh the I AM, and the I
AM THAT I AM is the eternal and unchangeable God, His covenant in Christ with
His elect seed.
Finally, in distinction from Christ, our love is
vastly different. We obey the wicked, but we cannot judge as God does or
make the same conclusions Christ did regarding His neighbors. We cannot
judge or conclude that any particular wicked neighbor is indeed reprobate. We
can judge their works and their confession as wicked, warn them that they walk
the path of the reprobate to destruction, but we cannot judge that they are
indeed reprobate. Our love to them is the call to repent and believe in
our Lord Jesus Christ. Our desire is that the wicked repent from their sin
and turn to Christ for deliverance and salvation. We might even pray for
their conversion simply because we don’t know if they are reprobate or
not. Only God knows that. Even our desire and prayers we submit to
the will of the Father because ultimately His will of double predestination
ordains and determines whether one believes or does not believe the call of the
Gospel.
Further, our love towards the wicked neighbor in
our daily life is used by the Father to teach us a little in this life the
profound magnitude of Christ’s unconditional, undeserved, unmerited, and
wondrous love and grace for His elect. The kind of people that Christ
loves are just as wicked and unworthy as those who fill up the jail cells in
the federal prisons and those who live a wicked life to the fullest. That
is the kind of people that Christ loves: totally depraved, worthless, despicable,
God-hating sinners. That’s the kind of people we are. And, yet, Christ
loved us according to and in fulfilment of the Father’s eternal good pleasure.
As a result, I am opposed to a statement that
Christ loved His reprobate neighbors in any sense. The Scriptures do not teach
that the Immanuel, God with us, loved reprobate people that He dealt with in
His earthly ministry. John 13:1 states that “when Jesus knew that His hour
was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved
His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” This text
implies that Christ loved His own but hated the world. Christ knew His
sheep by name, and thus also knew who were not
His elect sheep. He loved His sheep only, and hated those not His
sheep. With regard to those who were not His sheep, we do not read later
in John 13 (even with respect to Judas Iscariot) that Christ may have had some
kind of love (or mercy or grace or goodness or intention to desire their
salvation) for those who were not His own (i.e. reprobate).
That, I believe, is in harmony with the Scriptures
and our Reformed confessions, especially the Canons of Dordtrecht. (11/03/2018)
#########################################
Q.
3. “Can we not say that Christ did love His reprobate neighbours, but that it
was a love that was void of affection or emotion, since such affection or
emotion is not required in order to fulfil the law, i.e to love our
neighbours?”
(a) Anon. (PRCA)
“Can we not say that Christ did love His reprobate
neighbors …?” May we say that at all?
What do the Scriptures and Confessions give us permission to confess about the
love of Christ? May we say that Christ loved or showed mercy or a little
grace to the reprobate in any way? No we may not, especially when there is
no proof for such ideas from Scripture or in the Three Forms of Unity.
When Christ fed 5,000 with bread and fish, did He
in any way love those whom He knew were reprobate, would reject His preaching
and miracle as the Bread of Life, and turn away from Him? Jesus later rejoiced to the Father that the
Father had hid from those wise and
prudent the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He in His sovereign good
pleasure did not love them, and had no intentions of saving them by the good
gifts of food and drink that He gave them, and even by the preaching of the
Gospel to them from the boat on the Sea of Galilee. Even in His obedience
to the second table of the law, He hated
the Esaus among His neighbors, and loved only His Jacobs.
Christ did not love the reprobate because He was
sent and determined to do the will of His heavenly Father, which included both
the commandments of God and the ordinances of God’s eternal counsel, including
election and reprobation.
This understanding seems to be in harmony with the
Scriptures and within the boundaries of our Reformed Confessions regarding the
love of Christ, even in His earthly life. (11/03/2018)
No comments:
Post a Comment