Love worketh no ill to his neighbour:
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:10).
COMMON GRACE
ARGUMENT:
“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?”
(I)
PRCA
[Source: Anonymous. Private Correspondence, March 11,
2018]
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) 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 although Christ has two
wills—an earthly will and a divine will—at no time where they contrary to one
another. Instead, we believe that His will was one. 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.
-----------------------------------------
(II)
More to come! (DV)
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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