Isaiah 1:18-20—“Come now, and let us reason together”

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isa. 1:18-20).

 

WELL-MEANT OFFER ARGUMENT:

Q. “The interpretation of the ‘well-meant offer’ (aka, ‘hypo-Calvinist’) proponents of this passage is as follows:  ‘God is here pleading with a rebellious people who want nothing to do with him and who shake their fists at him. They hate his law and desecrate his public worship by heartless religiosity (vv. 2-15). Though he has the right to judge them by sending destruction, God instead graciously offers them a chance … He ‘puts the cards on the table,’ as it were, and sets before them the following proposition: ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool’ (v. 18). He calls them to consider this wonderful proposition he has for them, by the words ‘Come now, and let us reason together.’ God is here making known to this reprobate people that 1) he is graciously disposed toward them, 2) he loves them and 3) is graciously willing to ‘talk things through’ with them. He desires to reason with them; he is not willing that they perish; he wants them to be saved; he goes out to them in the preaching, beseeching them to reason with him and to plead their case—all with a view to saving them.… In our dispensation, the equivalent is that God, through the preaching, graciously makes known to sinful men that he is 1) graciously disposed toward them, 2) willing to ‘talk things through’ with them, and 3) offers them salvation upon the condition of repentance and faith’ …”

 

(I) 

Prof. David J. Engelsma

The explanation of the passage [put forward by] the majority of nominal Calvinists is sheer Arminianism and a contemporary form of Pelagianism.  God is gracious to all sinners alike.  He desires to save all alike.  To accomplish this desire, He (merely) offers salvation to all.  Whether any is saved depends upon his doing his part of the divine bargain by repenting and believing.

Necessarily, Christ died for all alike.  

This is sheer Arminianism, as rejected especially in the negative parts of the Canons of Dordt.

It is obviously and undeniably not the Calvinism of the positive sections of the Canons.

Why they want to be regarded as Calvinists at all is a conundrum to me.

My first response to [these] “hypo-Calvinists,” who are in reality not Calvinists at all, not even deceptively, for their Arminianism is out in the open in their explanation of Isaiah 1:18-20, is that they are would-be crypto-Arminians.  I say “would-be” because the theology of those who explain Isaiah 1 [in this way] is not even hidden Arminianism.  It is Arminianism as even the Arminians of old would not have dared to present their theology.  I think their explanation would have embarrassed Pelagius.  It bluntly makes salvation the will of the sinner, while ascribing failure to a hapless God.  Who carries away the glory of salvation is plain for all to see:  “Glory to the sinner, in the highest!”  This song will resound in the new world forever, according to this explanation of Isaiah 1.  If this is the hymn that is sung in heaven, I for one refuse to go to this heaven.  I refuse to chuck my Psalm-singing at the pearly gates.

By their own explanation of Isaiah, the persons who give this explanation confess salvation by the will of the sinner; the dependency of God upon the sinner; and the failure of God, and I suppose of Jesus, in that multitudes whom they desire and attempt to save perish.

The text lays out the divine reasonableness of the way of salvation—not man’s reason, which is that man must earn salvation, but divine reason, which is that salvation is purely gracious in Jesus Christ the Savior.  According to divine reason, which never entered into the mind of man to imagine, salvation is of such grace that God blots out the scarlet guilt and depravity of certain sinners with the whiteness of the atoning death of God’s own Son, which no sinner willed or thought of, much less accomplished by his own will.  This is divine reason in the form of a gracious promise:  “They shall be as wool.”  This is not a condition that the sinner must, or can, fulfill.  God will do this for His Israel.  His Israel is not a reprobate people, but an elect people, though they be few in number.  The true Israel is the Israel of election, whereas they are not all Israel that are of Israel (Romans 9).

Then in the way of their obedience, which is an aspect of God’s rendering their sins white as snow, this true Israel of God will enjoy the blessings of salvation.  This is the  work of sanctification, which is also God’s saving work of them.  He makes us willing and obedient, so that in this way He may give us the good of the land.

It is part of divine reasonableness, which contradicts man’s reason also, that those who remain disobedient will perish (v. 20).  And this, although the guilt of the sinners is their own, is according to God’s eternal reprobation of them (Romans 9).

Election and reprobation are divine reasonableness, not human reasonableness, as those to whom you refer show.

I call attention to one glaring error of those who explain the Isaiah passage as you describe.  Israel is not a “reprobate” nation.  Israel is the elect nation in the OT.  But as Paul explains in Galatians 3, Israel was elect in Jesus Christ, not in the majority of human members.  To these elect in Jesus Christ, Isaiah made the promise of chapter 1:  “Though your sins,” etc.

Call your “crypto-Arminian” correspondents to recognize now that the explanation they give of Isaiah 1 in fact contradicts the gospel of salvation by grace.

Urge them to read the Canons of Dordt, which gives the glory of salvation to God. (DJE, 11/05/2022)

 

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(II)

George Martin Ophoff (1891-1962)

[Source: “Come Now, Let Us Reason Together,” in The Standard Bearer, vol. 15, no. 22 (Sept. 15, 1939), pp. 535-536]

“Come now, I pray …”  It is the Lord speaking to His people. He bids them to come to Him that He and they may reason, dispute together, speak with each other, He with them and they with Him.

Mark the Lord’s manner of speech. What eagerness it betokens! What yearning after His people! “Come now, I pray …”  It is, to be sure, a command to which the Lord here gives utterance. He cannot do otherwise than command, when addressing Himself to the will of His people, when making known to them what He would have them do.  For He is God, the sovereign Saviour. But the command is here cast in the form of a petition. The great God is here beseeching. To what extremes He goes to speak comfortably to His people!

“Come … Let us reason together …”  What may the Lord have in mind? What may there be to reason together about? The surroundings of this exhortation tell us. The Lord has lodged a charge against His people.  “I have,” says He to them, “brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.”  The Lord goes on to say, “The ox knoweth His owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.  Ah sinful nation, a people lade with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the holy one of Israel to anger, they are gone away backward.”

Such is the charge.  “Come now, I pray thee, and let us reason together, saith the Lord …”  Reason together about what? For one thing, about this charge. It may be that the accused maintain that the charge is not true. In fact, there were those who maintained just this. They said, not to the Lord’s face but behind His back and to the face of His prophet by the mouth of whom He accused them,—they said, “We are god-fearing. We walk in the way of God’s commandments. Consider this: We bring a multitude of sacrifices unto the Lord. We lay upon His altar burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts and the blood of bullocks. We appear before the Lord, tread His courts. We bring oblations and incense and keep the new moons and the sabbaths, keep the Lord’s feasts and make many prayers.”  But what saith the Lord, “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. When ye make many prayers I will not hear: your hands are full of blood” (Isa. 1:15).

It may be, too, that the accused imagine that they find evil in the Lord and that thus their apostasy was occasioned by his failing to do right by them. Or it may be that they are of the conviction that their evil conduct can be excused on other grounds. Whatever their reactions to the Lord’s charges may be, let them go to God and talk over the matter with Him. Let them deny the charge in His very presence, if they have the courage; say to His face that they find evil in Him; utter their excuses in His very audience.  “Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord.”

But can it be that this is what the Lord means?  Does the Lord actually afford man the opportunity to appear before His throne in His presence to tell Him what evil he imagined he finds in Him? Is God willing to discuss with man the charges He has lodged against him or to allow man to present whatever ground he thinks he may have, on the basis of which he imagines that his sins can be explained or excused? Is this the construction to be placed upon the divine petition, “Come now, let us reason together”?  It is indeed. In Scripture, the Lord over and over appears as affording man, His people, the apostate, this very opportunity. By the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord saith to His people Israel, “What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?” (Jer. 2:6).  And the prophet Micah, speaking for God, makes this statement in the audience of the apostate Israel, “Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel” (Micah 6:2).  Mark you, a controversy the Lord has with His people, a dispute, debate, disputation.  The accused may answer for themselves, deliberate with God on the charge that He has lodged. And He will answer them. How true this is appears from the questions that the Lord by the mouth of the prophet puts to His people, “O, my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me” (Micah 6:3).

In the third chapter of the book of Genesis, the Lord actually appears as reasoning with our first parents respecting their disobedience. To Adam, who together with Eve, has hid himself from the presence of the Lord, the Lord calls, “Adam, where art thou?” And Adam may reply, and he does, “I was afraid, because I was naked.” Then the Lord once more, “Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten …?”  Adam may again reply. He does so. He has an excuse to offer, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me …”  Amazing scene! The great God disputing with that ill-deserved speck of dust who had just turned his back to God and made common cause with the devil!

To Job, the Lord said, “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me” (40:7). Job had asked for this.  He has accused God of not doing right by him. It is well. Let him now sustain the charge if he can.

Why does God condescend to dispute with man? There is no iniquity in Him. His charges are unfailingly true, His appraisal unerringly correct. Man is without excuse. It is the way of God to allow the accused to answer for themselves, in order that the accused one may never be able to say that he was condemned by the Judge of all the earth without a hearing.

“Come now, I pray thee, let us reason together …”  But can there be found a man who would dare to find evil in God and testify against Him? Do not the wicked set their mouth against the heaven ever? Do they not say, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge with the Almighty?” Do they not rage and imagine a vain thing and take counsel together against the Lord? But the exhortation under consideration concerns God’s people.  The Lord’s controversy is with His people. They have forsaken Him. Why have they? Does the fault lie with God? Is there evil with Him?  No, none whatsoever. He is righteous God, thrice holy. Yet even God’s people do find evil in Him, in their carnal moments when they walk not with Him, or when God’s doings perplexes them and they stand not in their faith.

Asaph, seeing the prosperity of the wicked, was envious at the foolish. Then he said, “Verily have I cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.” During their wanderings in the desert, the children of Israel found iniquity with God over and over.  “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots … For ye have brought us in this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”  So they spake again and again. This speech was directed ostensibly to Moses but actually to God. The people of Israel persecuted God’s prophets. What else did it mean than that they were angry with and found iniquity in God on account of His rebuking them by the mouth of His prophets for their sin?

“Come now, my people, let us reason together … What have I done unto thee?”  “Tell me. Come into my presence and testify against me, or let me hear the ground upon which you think your sin perhaps can be excused. Deny the charge to my face, if you think it untrue. And I will answer thee. Come now, let us reason together.”

Let no one of God’s believing people say that this speech of God, this exhortation, does not concern him. Finding iniquity in God. This God’s believing people do as often as they murmur and complain on account of what God sends them in this life. How inclined they still are, when rebuked of God, to say that they have no sin, and to reason away their sin. How prone we are to become angry with God when rebuked of Him for our sin. But our trouble is that, in our carnal moments, we murmur and complain and find fault with God, and deny that we are being rightly accused of Him—not to His face but behind His back, so to say, and to the face of His servants. When the people of Israel said, “Ye have brought us in this wilderness to kill this whole assembly,” they were facing Moses and had their backs turned to God. But what they said was nevertheless meant for God’s ears. But this, of course, of what they would never have admitted. And when we are angry with God and are finding iniquity in Him on account of His demanding of us by the mouth of His servants that we forsake our ungodly ways and turn to Him, we bring our fist down upon the head of him by whose mouth God rebukes and admonishes us. But that blow is really meant for God. But what we refrain from doing is to testify against God to His face, to face Him with our excuses, to find iniquity in Him in His very audience, to actually go to Him to have Him dispute with us about our sin, about that evil way in which we may be walking and concerning which we insist that it is not an evil way. But God says, “Come now, let us reason together …”  “I with thee and thou with Me.”

How now do those addressed respond? The carnal seed, the wicked, those devoid of grace, continue to set their mouth against heaven, to find iniquity in God. But this they will not continue ever. In the final judgment day, these will be made to appear before the throne of judgment. They will then be in the very presence of Christ. And they will stand there mute and trembling and without one excuse. They will confess through their silence that God’s charge is true and that He is righteous in His judgment. They will thus be testifying not against God but against themselves. But their confession comes too late. It does not spring from love but from fear; fear, that, as to its essence, is hatred of God. Such therefore perish everlastingly.

But there are God’s believing people. By the mercies of God, they say now in this life, and they say it often continually, “Lord, we dare and desire not to dispute with thee. Thy charge is true. We have sinned against Thee. And we are without excuse. The fault is all ours. Thou art righteous God. O, our sins! If Thou shouldst mark transgressions … Lord, have mercy!”

Now to such, God says, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” This word He speaks in the hearts of His people. Through it He genders in them that confidence toward Him which they need. And they go then into the holiest and appear in His presence before His face not to testify against Him but to cry out His praises.

 

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(III)

Robert C. Harbach (1914-1996)

(a)

[Source: The Standard Bearer, vol. 50, no. 14 (April 15, 1974), pp. 280-282]

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah opens with the old heavens and earth, and closes with the new heavens and the new earth. It treats of the whole intervening history of the church from the beginning of time to its end and to eternity. The book has a very sad and dark beginning, exposing the ingratitude, and incorrigibility and criminal immorality of the rulers and people. But Isaiah foretells a blessed end of glory and covenant fellowship in the New Creation.

The picture is so deplorable because Israel belonged to the Lord more than their cattle belonged to them. Yet Israel did not serve the Lord nearly so well as their cattle served them. Their sins had degraded them to a lower-than-animal level. The cup of iniquity had filled up to nation-wide extent: “Ah, sinful nation!” and had developed in the line of continued corrupt generations until the whole nation was a seed of evildoers. Now the point is reached where the Old Testament church, for the most part, is beyond the means of reformation. The work of reformation in the midst of the churches is always a good sign. However, in the case of many churches today, there has been no reformatory movement for generations, there is no sign of such at present, and because of so much ingrained corruption in both leaders and people, there is no possibility that there will be!

But we can be thankful that true reformation proceeds in the line of the very small remnant, and that we have our portion in the remnant of the election of grace. God’s people have ever been a very little flock. In the time of the Flood it was Noah and his family. In the destruction of Sodom, it was Lot and his. In the captivities, it was “Shear-Jashub,” “a remnant shall return.” It was always like this. Multitude was never a mark of the true church. The multitudes of Isaiah’s day were members of Sodom and Gomorrah, that is, Jerusalem, which spiritually is Sodom. All is not Israel which is of Israel. There are two seeds in Israel: the seed of evildoers, and the holy seed (6:13). All through this prophecy these two are related as light is to darkness. Jehovah speaks to both. Read the prophecy without keeping that in mind, without seeing that there are two seeds, and confusion results. The confusion appears in Jehovah declaring that He will rescue and save His people, and in the very next breath saying that He will destroy them. Therefore, the book cannot be understood except from the point of view of divine, absolute predestination, with its two parts, election and reprobation. This is precisely the case with the text before us—verses 18-20. Keeping in mind the two seeds we may then easily answer the question: what part speaks He to His elect, and what part to the reprobate?

1. The Activity Explained. “If ye be willing …”: First, in the light of humanistic views, this is not a request for man’s consent. It is not God making an attractive offer of terms to which He would have all men accede. That would put God in the place where He would have to wait for man to act. What is it in man on which God is dependent? Is it man’s sense of politeness? Does God wait for man’s innate courtesy to be expressed, as in a sort of “gentlemen’s agreement”? But Scripture does not picture man as a natural gentleman. Spiritually, he is enmity against God; he is dead to God. An offer to him would be useless. He has no ability to comply with an offer, nor does an offer have any enabling qualities about it. What man needs is a promise of that ability.

Nor is this a divine contrivance with conditions. According to the generalizing tendencies of Arminianism, in Scripture there are promises merely this-worldly, having nothing to do with salvation. For example, there is the promise that the disciples should find a colt tied and ready for their use (Mark 11:2); and the promise that the men on board ship with Paul would be safe if they remained aboard (Acts 27:22-24). Beside these so called “promises,” so the claim is, God even promised life to the reprobate Ahab. The truth is that Jehovah merely predicted that judgment would not fall in his day; and not life, but death was predicted for him (I Kings 22:28). Such error would not persist if distinction were maintained between predictions and promises. God makes predictions to the reprobate, but “promises” never. He makes exhortations to the reprobate, but never the “promise” which corresponds to the exhortation. For example, He says to the reprobate, “walk in My ways,” but never promises the reprobate, “I will cause you to walk in My ways.”

But, it is argued, the promise here, “ye shall eat the good of the land,” is conditional, because the stipulation is there laid down, “If ye be willing and obedient,” and the promise made here does not include the willingness and obedience. There is a “good” promised, and there is a condition demanded. The demand must be met before the promise can be enjoyed. The answer to this is that then the promise will never be realized, for who will or can perform the conditions? Conditional promises are of no value, and are no gospel, to dead sinners.

Also it is sometimes argued that where there is failure to meet the conditions, that then the promise is forfeited, and so cancelled out. The demand, “be willing,” and the threat, “but if ye refuse,” suggest that it is in man’s power to accept the proposition, or reject it. If this is true, then isn’t it also true that there is the possibility (according to this Arminian thinking) that none might be willing, and that all might refuse? Then the promise of God would be frustrated. But this shall never be. The threatening, “if ye refuse and rebel,” puts the situation on an “either-or” basis: it is either Christ or destruction! Either one bears the mark of the Christian, the white robe of Christ’s righteousness, or the mark of anti-Christ, the scarlet robe of Babylon. To refuse is the mark of the reprobate. God warns him, but makes no promise to him, no promise of cleansing under that shed blood. That promise goes to those who bear the marks of His elect, the marks of faith and obedience.

Nor is there a contradiction when the Lord says, “If ye be willing,” and “it is not of him that willeth or runneth,” not of man’s fulfilling conditions, “but of God that showeth mercy.” “So then, it,” that is, electing mercy (Rom. 9:11, 15) is “not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God.” Men have no power to run, except that “their feet run to evil” (Isa. 59:7).

Next, in the light of Scripture, consider the promise, which is not in verse 19, to be exact, but in verse 18, and it is absolutely unconditional. Following the promise is an enlargement on it, and that enlargement takes in the whole range of the promise, from the forgiveness of sins to The Land—the New Earth (18-19). The promise is enlarged upon with an exhortation to willingness and obedience. But the whole of Scripture, with its promise-content, sets over against its exhortations the heartening feature of corresponding promises. There is the exhortation, “walk in My statutes,” and the corresponding promise, “I will cause you to walk in My statutes.” (cp. Ezek. 20:19 with 36:27, and Dt. 10:6 with 30:19). There are three elements in the text, “willingness,” “obedience” and “goodness;” really but two: good works and reward. Is the one a prerequisite to the other? Impossible; for both are gifts. (cp. Eph. 2:8-10). Man’s willingness is the work of God. In proof of this, such texts as the following should immediately come to mind merely on reading their references. (Ps. 110:3; Jn. 1:12-13; Phil. 2:13; Tit. 3:5; Jas. 1:18).

As for the obedience demanded, the promise makes it possible. Isaac was the child of promise. But there could be no obedient Isaac if there were no promise. Just so, no Abraham who believed God, if no promise of faith; and no willingness, nor obedience, if no promise of either! Why talk about the activity of faith when it is only to divorce it or abstract it from that which produces it? Both the being of faith and the power of faith must remain unseparated from its source, the fountain of election. But why do some want the flowing stream, without the fountainhead? Why do they want the light of day without the sun? Why do they call the children of the promise beautiful and well-behaved, but have no praise for their mother? If men loved these virtues as much as they pretend they do, they would love the sovereign election which produces them.

2. The Ground of Its Performance.  “Come now!” The performance of that willingness is on the ground of an efficacious summons, and not a mere suggestion, left optional, for man to give his approval or disapproval of it. This is not a mere opportunity to come to the Lord to be regenerated or not to be regenerated. It is not an “invitation,” followed by a “condition,” a contingency dependent on a contingency! There are no such humanistic boastings. But this summons is the plea of the shed blood of Christ. “Come now,” enter into court and begin the trial, argue the case. Not that man, a gnat of a summer’s day, may or can quarrel with God. There is no quarrel possible with the Almighty, nor does man have a legitimate case to sue out in God’s court. There is no reasoning with God at the bar of justice. If He should mark iniquity in strict justice, none could stand before Him. There is no arguing (of condemned criminals!) with God on the basis of justice. Therefore, to reason together with Jehovah means to draw near to Him, mindful of the breach our sins have made between Him and us, but, nonetheless, to come, “Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me.” This means that the sinner does the only reasonable thing; he throws himself on Christ’s just mercy and on His merciful justice. There alone is discharge from God’s court with pardon and acquittal!

The context shows that the Lord had very severely denounced His people Israel. Through the prophet Isaiah, He had called them rebellious children, a seed of evil-doers, from head to foot totally corrupt. The heads of the people God called men of Sodom. If this characterized the rulers, what must the masses be like? They had rejected the Holy One of Israel. Now He would reject them. He would have none of their worship or sacrifices. He abominated all their religious observances. He fully and flatly condemned their whole moral and religious life. Their case looked hopeless. It was hopeless! There was nothing they could do, nothing, save die in their sins. Such was their condition in itself. But God did not leave His people in their state of sin and misery. No, but according to His plan from all eternity He did covenant to bring them into His grace and deliver them from their sin by the Redeemer of God’s elect. This note of divine deliverance is sounded in the words, “Come now, if your sins were as crimson, they will be made white as snow; if they were red as crimson, they will be (as white) as wool.”

This is the ground on which the willingness and obedience shall be performed. It is on the ground of the efficacious command, “Come now!”, and on the plea of the shed blood, on the ground of pardon through the atoning blood. In the symbolization of the colors here there is gospel mystery. There is the mystery of the beauty of perfection. Here is perfect salvation in the blood. The promise of God to His elect is that their sins shall be “as white as snow.” When we reason truly about our sins, we perceive that they have made a deep, a double-dye on our souls. They are as scarlet, red like crimson. We are stained both with original and actual sins. We are sinners by birth and by practice. Twice-dyed in iniquity, yet, mystery of mysteries, we shall be cleansed as white as wool! We have lain long in the dye-vat of sin and death, yet the blood of God cleanseth us from all sin.

The emphasis is on the gospel mystery of it, not in any literalness. Sin is still in our nature (sin is not dead). The sin is still sin; you can’t change sin. Sin does not cease to be sin. So the sins are not in reality made white. There are no white sins. But the persons of sinners are made white. In the book of the Revelation, the saints are shown to be clothed in white, in contrast to Babylon, clothed in purple and scarlet. Red in contrast to white is the color of sin, the color of murder (their hands were full of blood!), the color of the Evil One, the Red Dragon, a murderer from the beginning. The saints in contrast to all this are robed in white. Their sins are regarded as non-existent, and they in their own persons are regarded as the exact opposite of their sins, considered in Christ as washed in His blood, clothed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before His throne!

What God does here is to save us from the love of sin; He cleanses us from the pollution of sin; He discharges us from the guilt of sin; He frees from the reign of sin; He redeems from the penalty of sin; He will guard against a fatal fall into sin; He will yet deliver from the very presence of sin. Such is the mystery of sins being white as snow! Guilt-laden they are, as “red” and “crimson” portray. But made white as snow expresses the glorious idea that they are forever and entirely blotted out. “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions; and as a cloud thy sins: return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee” (Isa. 44:22). To say our sins are made as white wool is to say, in figure, “I, even I am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake; and I will not remember thy sins” (43:25). Then it may be said of all the redeemed people of God, “They washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14).

The Lamb in the decree of God is slain from the foundation of the world. The elect, then, have forgiveness of all their sins from eternity. They have forgiveness before they receive it. The gospel is sent “that they may receive the forgiveness of sins” (Acts 26:18). This implies that forgiveness was already prepared before they experienced it. If it were not already prepared before they experienced, it could not be received. The receiving of it implies that the thing received was prepared in Christ, and had an existence in free grace long before our receiving it. It is eternal forgiveness!

So the only ground for reasoning, willingness and obedience is gospel ground. On this ground obedience is ensured. The doing of good works is not to be “justified by His blood,” but on the ground that we have been “justified by His blood.” The promise of salvation was made on the ground of the price paid by the Lord in His own blood. He purchased with that precious price all gifts and benefits of salvation. He purchased peace, pardon, forgiveness, the place to draw near to God, the gifts and grace of willingness, obedience and all good works. Willingness and obedience are, therefore, the fruit of His merit on the cross. “Not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth …” Yet the believer does run: “So run, that ye may obtain” (I Cor. 9:24); and “let us run with patience …” That running is of God that showeth mercy. It is a running which mercy activates.

3. The Reward of It.  “If ye be willing” was looked at first from the point of view of the activity explained, then the ground of its performance, now its reward. That is seen to be “the land,” in “ye shall eat the good of the land.” This, from Isaiah’s point of view (as also from Peter’s and John’s) is the New Heavens and the New Earth. Canaan is a type not of an earthly sort of gold-plated kingdom, but of the New Creation, the real golden age itself, where all is gold that glitters. This is that better country, the heavenly country, that which is meant in the expression the “meek shall inherit the earth.” That is not this earth, but the New Earth, the new earth under the new heavens in the new creation.

According to dispensationalism, the land given to Abraham, which extends from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates (Gen. 15:18), is to be restored to the Jews. The promise is interpreted to mean that Abraham and his seed are to be raised from the dead and are to return to and possess this land. Yet the book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham was not seeking an earthly, but a heavenly country. If we take the promise in the natural, rather than the spiritual, sense, then Abraham is to return to earth and possess the land of Canaan for ever! But how can Abraham possess the natural land of his earthly sojournings, if this earth is to be destroyed by fire, and there be formed then the new heavens and the new earth? Matthew Henry is correct when he says the good of the land is “all the blessings of the new covenant, of the heavenly Canaan; all the good of that land.”

This eating in the land is the enjoyment of the actual possession of the New Heavens and New Earth. The elect obtain it. The believers eat of it. The rest are blinded. The reprobate refuse it. If they can’t have this earth, they will have nothing. But the elect do not refuse and rebel. There is proof of this. It is true at the crucifixion, the elect “all forsook Him and fled,” they denied Him, they even despaired of Him; but they never wished His death; never cried, “Away with!” never screamed, “Crucify!” never made a covenant with death, nor said, “His blood be upon us!” They shall eat the good, the best of the land. Christ with them shall eat and drink in His Father’s kingdom (Mt. 26:29). Then we shall have the best heaven has to offer.

“If (or even as) ye be willing …”* Or, since ye be willing …! Does my presence in the enjoyment of heaven depend on a little “if”? Not on any shaky, uncertain Arminian “if,” no, but upon nothing but Jesus’ blood and righteousness. Every blessing flows from that blood, the fountain, of all good: forgiveness, willingness, heaven and the best of the New Earth.

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FOOTNOTE:

* Calvin says “the papists openly maintain that men, by the exercise of their own will are free to choose either good or evil.” Willingness to obey God “is placed in our power.” That is by all other Scripture denied. The question is, or the answer is, that man by his bad will, which is natural to him, moves not from good to evil, but from one evil to another, and from bad to worse. Man by nature does not have the choice of good and evil, but of only evil, that continually. “there is not a glimmer of anything good in the description of the persons to whom this text is addressed.” — Charles H. Spurgeon.

 

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(IV)

More to come! (DV)