But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth
his Son, made of a woman, made under
the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive
the adoption of sons. (Gal. 4:4-5).
COMMON
GRACE ARGUMENT:
“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
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). (AS, 04/05/2019)
(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. (RJS, 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. (DJE, 16/03/2016)
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For more on the topic of
Christ’s obedience to the Law’s requirements as our Substitute, check out the
dialogue on the following page:
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