Thomas
Chalmers
Lectures on Romans
LECTURE LXXIII.
ROMANS, ix, 11, 13 - 24.
"For the children being not yet born, neither having
done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might
stand, not of works, but of him that calleth....As it is written, Jacob have I
loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then
it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth
mercy. For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I
raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be
declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have
mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he
yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will? Nay but, 0 man, who art thou
that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it,
Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the
same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if
God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much
long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore
prepared unto glory, even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but
also of the Gentiles ?"
WITHIN the circle of the preceding remarks
there lies enough for the guidance of mans conduct in time, though not
enough for scanning the counsels of God in eternity. The high doctrine of
predestination leaves all the scope Which they ever had, to the active and
moral principles of our nature; and just as notwithstanding that great
planetary movement of our world, in the tremendous velocity of which man it
might be fancied would be hurried off its platform, yet can he walk his earthly
rounds with as great security as if all were at rest - so, amid the lofty and
comprehensive movements of the great spiritual economy, man has a definite and
prescribed path, in which it is simply his business to move forward; and, let
the past decrees or the coming destinies which begin and which end the mighty
cycle of Heavens administration be what they may, it is our part if we
but knew the place which belongs to us - it is our part to work, and to watch,
and to strive, and to pray, and to go through the whole work and warfare of
practical Christianity, just as before.
This should be enough for one
who is simply bent on the attainment of his salvation, though not enough to
satisfy the proud the restless spirit of soaring adventurous and speculative
man - who, not content with knowing all that belongs unto himself, would lift
up the enquiries of his mind to matters that are greatly too high for it; and
seize, as if within the lawful domain of his intellect, on all that belongs
unto God. It is precisely at this point, we think, that the real difficulties
of the question begin; and they are just such difficulties as it is our wisdom,
not to brave, but to retire from. This is the very point at which the apostle
repels the question which he is either not willing, or more likely not able,
even with all his apostolical endowments, to resolve - Thou wilt say
then, Why doth he yet find fault, for who hath resisted his will! You
will observe that in these words, there is an arraignment of God, and a call or
a challenge for His vindication. The part which belongs to man, when plied as
he is most urgently and most affectionately by the offers of the gospel, is
abundantly clear. But in point of fact some do accept these offers, while
others turn away from them; and when this difference between the one and the
other is traced to the power and predestination of God, this brings the high
policy of the Eternal into view, and the reasons of that policy are not so
clear. Were the question never stirred as to the part which God has in the
matter, there might be nought to embarrass or disturb us - for all is simple
and shining as the light of day, about the part which man has in the matter.
Could we only prevail on him to bestow all, his intensity on the things which
properly belong unto himself, and which himself has personally to do with, all
would be plain and practical; and the great work of salvation would go on most
prosperously. But we will be meddling with the things which belong unto God;
and thus it is that a theology floundering beyond her depths, and compassed
about with difficulties through which she cannot make her way, gives forth her
hard sentences and her cabalistic sayings - when she might be otherwise and far
better employed, in lifting the direct and the urgent and withal the clearly
intelligible calls of the gospel.
It is when in the act of plying these
calls that the minister of the New Testament stands upon his vantage-ground. It
is when charged with the overtures of forgiveness to guilty men, he, in the
name of a beseeching God, presses the acceptance of them upon every creature
who is within the reach of his voice. It is when, in the discharge of his ample
and unexcepted commission to all who are sitting and listening around him, he
invites each, and forbids none, to cast their confidence on the great
propitiation; and then it is impossible they can perish. It is then on the
strength of this precious declaration, that whosoever cometh shall in no wise
be cast out, he both sends the invitation abroad among the multitude, and
brings it specifically home and with all the power of his tender and most
earnest solicitations to the heart of each individual. With him there is no
distinction between the elect and the reprobate, for he knocks at every door;
and while it is most true, that some do welcome, and others do most obstinately
and impregnably withstand him, yet his business is to address a free gospel
unto all, and to lift in the hearing of all the assurance - that, for each and
for every of our species, there is an open mediatorial gate to that mercy-seat
where God waiteth to be gracious.
Again it may be asked to explain this
wondrous diversity of influence among men, and why it is that some do reject
and others do receive these tidings of salvation ? Our answer roundly and
absolutely is that we do not know. But this we know, that the way to lessen the
number of those who shall reject, and to add to the number of those who shall
receive, is just to ply these tidings as heretofore in the hearing of all and
for the behoof of all. It is most true that God has the power over human
hearts, to turn them whithersoever He will; and if demanded why then do not all
the hearts of men receive that touch from the hands of His omnipotence which
might turn them unto the way of life, our reply is still that we cannot say.
But this we are empowered to say, that there is not a hard-hearted sinner
amongst you, who is not within the scope of the invitation, Come ye also and be
saved; and to your prayers for the clean heart and the right spirit, a
softening and a sanctifying influence will be made to descend upon you. For
aught we know our world might have never fallen, or after having fallen, a
voice may have gone forth again from Heaven, armed with a force and an efficacy
of grace, to recall every individual of its strayed and alienated family; and
if again the question be reiterated, why is it not so with the world we occupy,
again it is our answer that we cannot tell: But this we can truly tell, that
not an individual is here present, who has not the word and the warrant from
Heavens high throne, to believe in Christ that he might be saved.
That thing may be conceived, whereof we have the woful evidence that it has
not been realised - even a sinless universe, whose every sun lighted up the
habitations of unspotted holiness, and whose every planet was proof against the
inroads of every ruthless destroyer; and if called upon to vindicate either the
entry or the continuance of moral evil, we sink under the burden of the deep
and the hopeless mystery, and feel it to be impracticable; but of this we can
assure you, even a plain and a practicable way of escape for ourselves, both
from the tyranny of evil and from the terrors of that vengeance which is due to
it. And 0 if we but stopped at the place, where apostles stood silent and
solemnized and did reverently stop before us - if, forbearing a scrutiny into
the counsels of Heaven, we simply betook ourselves to that bidden walk upon
earth, which will at length conduct us both to the light and love of its
unclouded habitations - if, waiting and working at our allotted task here
below, we would but suspend that judgment, which we can neither pluck from the
recesses of the eternity that is past, nor from the yet unexplored distances of
the eternity before us - in a word, if, instead of speculating we were humble
enough to submit, and, instead of dogmatising were teachable enough and
obedient enough to do - This were the way for arriving at the resolution of all
difficulties; and we should at length, when the mystery of God was finished,
emerge into that region of purest transparency where we shall know even as we
are known.
Peter says of Paul in one of his epistles, "and account that the
long-suffering of the Lord is salvation, - even as our beloved brother Paul,
according to the wisdom given unto him, has written unto you, as also in all
his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard
to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do
also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
We doubt
not that in the reference which the one apostle makes to the writings of the
other, he in the~first instance had in his eye that passage in the second
chapter of the Romans, where Paul says, "Despisest thou the riches of his
goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of
God leadeth thee to repentance? but after thy hardness and impenitent heart,
treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his
deeds. But we have as little doubt, that he, in the second instance, had
in his eye some of those very things which now engage our attention in this
ninth chapter of the Romans; and more especially that passage which forms a
most remarkable counterpart to the one last quoted, and where the
longsuffering, instead of being related as it is by Peter to the salvation of
sinners, seems as if related by Paul to their destruction - What if God,
willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much
long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore
prepared unto glory, even us whom he hath called not of the Jews only but also
of the Gentiles ?"
We shall go over a few of the verses of this
chapter, and lay aside that in them which is hard to be understood from that
which is otherwise. It will be uniformly found that all that is difficult,
attaches to those prior steps which belong to the part wherewith God had to do,
before that mans part fell to be performed - leaving as clear and as
comprehensible as before, both the part which man has to do, and also those
posterior steps of the divine administration which follow on the part which we
shall have taken in the world. Or, in other words, if there be not enough of
revelation to appease the restless curiosity of man that would pry into the
concerns of God, there is enough to enlighten his conscience and to guide his
hopes in every thing which relates to his own proper and personal concerns.
In the eleventh verse then, we cannot refuse the statement that God had
before the birth of Jacob and Esau an anterior purpose respecting their
destinations; and that the actual and historical difference which afterwards
took place between the two, was the effect of that purpose. Of this election on
the part of God I can give no account - I submit to be informed of the fact,
but I am utterly in the dark as to the reason of it. I have to remark, however,
that, although this purpose according to election is not of works but of Him
that calleth - aithough the purpose of the divine mind was the primary, the
originating cause of the favour shown to Israel, yet it followeth not, that
works on the part of those whom He does favour are not indispensable. You would
say of a stream of water that issued first from a fountain-head, and then was
collected into a reservoir or second fountain whence it flowed anew, you would
say that though it came through the lower fountain, it came from or of the
higher. And so of this high predestination on the part of God. All that regards
either our history in time, or our final condition in eternity, might originate
there; and yet it niay be true, that we cannot pass onward to glory in heaven,
without passing through a course of personal righteousness upon earth. The
primary will of God may be the aboriginal fountain of all the blessings which
the children of life are to enjoy; and yet there may be a secondary fountain
derived therefrom - even a fountain of grace struck out in the heart of man,
and whence all the virtues of moral worth and of spiritual excellence overflow
upon his history.
It is thus that we can harmonise the doctrine of an
absolute preordination on the part of God, with the indispensable necessity of
a conditional obedience on the part of man - So that while we admit the one as
true on the strength of the passage now before us, we can, in perfect
consistency therewith, admit to be true, and on the strength of other passages,
that without holiness no man can see God - that all shall receive according to
their works - that those who are predestinated unto life eternal are
predestinated to be conformed beforehand unto the image of Christ, so that they
shall not be ushered into the place of His exaltation, without being first
adorned by the virtues of His example - and lastly, which describes the
successive steps of this process, that "by grace are ye saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man
should boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good
works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
So that though Gods primary decree is not of works, it is at
least to works - insomuch that even among the children of the predestined
Israel, the rewards and the preferments of eternity follow in the train of good
works; and among the children of reprobate Esau, the disgrace and the
wretchedness of their irretrievable condemnation follow in the train of their
evil works. In the thirteenth verse we have a quotation from Malachi, where the
love and the hatred might not be the feelings on the part of the Godhead which
prompted Him to His respective acts of election, but the feelings wherewith He
regarded the respective characters of the good and the evil - not the prior
affection which caused the difference; but the posterior affection of a Being
of whom we distinctly know that He loveth righteousness, and as distinctly know
that He hateth iniquity.
The posterior affection is all that we have to
go by, for indicating the moral character of God. The prior one is hidden in a
depth that is behind us, and is to us unfathomable. On this point we can say no
more than the apostle has done before us. He can but assert, for he makes no
attempt to argue, that God may without injustice thus affix His distinctions
beforehand, on the creatures whom He calls into existence. He gives us only
assertion for this in the fourteenth verse, and no more than the bare
assumption of a sovereignty for God in the fifteenth verse. It is true that in
the sixteenth verse, he makes a statement which admits of being qualified in
the very same way with the previous statement that the purpose of God according
to election is not of works. In like manner as the predestination on the part
of God should be antedated before the performances or the works of
righteousnéss on the part of man, and yet these works are indispensable
- so the predestinating mercy of God should be antedated before the willing and
the running of man, and yet this willing and this running are indispensable.
The way in which this prior will of God goes forth and takes effect upon us, is
to set us a-willing. The way in which this prior work of grace by God goeth
forth and taketh effect upon us, is to set us a-working. He works in us, not to
supersede, but to stimulate our working for ourselves. He works in us to will
and to do of His good pleasure. And He does so, by the efficacy which He gives
to those familiar and everyday instruments, which are within the reach of man.
He does so by the moral urgency of bibles, and pulpits, and zealous messengers
of salvation, and Christian parents labouring for the immortality of their
children, and bringing the truths and the lessons of revelation to bear upon
their consciences - so that, while behind the curtain of our visible world
there is a predestinating God, the movements of whose finger we can neither
trace nor account for, yet before that curtain there is a scene of movements,
which correspond to those that be veiled from observation on the other side,
and which being on this side are palpably before our eyes; and what we behold
of all those destined heirs of immortality is, that they are striving to enter
through the gate which leads to it - and working out their own salvation - and
so willing and running as that they may obtain - and putting forth all the
activities of their nature, in quest of a blissful eternity - and carrying
their point, only by urging onward with an intensity of effort which our
Saviour Himself has characterised by the epithet of violence - Insomuch that He
hath told us, how, under that economy which He has instituted, the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
I cannot
bid you too often, my brethren, distinguish between the anterior part of this
process which belonged to God, and the present or the posterior parts which
belong to man - between those secret footsteps of the Almighty which preceded
the ushering of His creatures into the theatre of their actual existence, and
the parts which now that they have been introduced upon the theatre they are
called upon to perform. The darkness of thickest midnight may rest upon the one
quarter of contemplation, while the other is lighted up by the blaze of
noon-day effulgence. The question of what man ought to do, may be met by the
promptest and the plainest deliverance. The question of what God has done amid
the counsels and the measures of His past eternity, or what He is now doing
behind that impenetrable mantle which lies on the hidden part of His ways -
this question may be one of deepest and most hopeless obscurity. I may know the
present counsel which should be given to my fellows. I know not the past
counsels of the profound, the predestinating Deity. This is a reflection that
falls with overwhelming force on the perusal of the two fo1lowing verses, and
with mightiest emphasis of all when we come to the last clause of them.
To the demand for a vindication of Gods proceeding in this matter, I
can only reply with the apostle in the three following verses; but, while
professing all the impotence of a child when viewing Gods part of the
question, I cannot look to mans part of it without such distinct and
decisive feelings, as I am sure will be sympathised with by all who hear me. It
was the part which a haughty tyrant had taken against the liberties of a
captive and subjugated people, whose piteous moanings had now reached unto
heaven, and the blood of whose slaughtered little ones cried aloud for
vengeance. But ere the stroke of vengeance should fall, the voice of warning
was sent unto him; and repeated miracles were wrought before his eyes; and
demonstrations were given of a power that was long brandished over his head,
before it came down upon him with the fell swoop of a final and irreversible
destruction; and, at each of the ten successive plagues, there were space and
opportunity given for repentance; and if he would but have been righteous and
redressed the wrongs of a sorely outraged and oppressed nation, neither would
the angel of death have put forth his hand upon the families of Egypt, nor
Pharaoh and his mighty hosts have been overwhelmed in the Red Sea. But after
every new chastisement, did he gather into a stiffer and a prouder attitude
than before; and alike cast the judgments of Israels God and the
remonstrances of Israels patriarchs away from him; and, in despite of
that sore and bitter cry which reached to his inner chamber from all the
weeping families of a people to whom his own had owed their preservation, did
he send forth from his despot throne the mandates of a still more reckless and
relentless cruelty - aggravating a bondage that was already intolerable, and
trampling more fiercely and scornfully than ever on the trembling victims of
his wrath. We again say, that we positively are not able to pronounce on the
movements of that secret but supreme power, in whose hands the whole power of
Egypts monarchy was but an instrument for the accomplishment of higher
purposes; but, looking to him who filled that monarchy, we instantly and
decisively pronounce upon the doom that rightfully belonged to him - nor, while
the heart of man remaineth as it is, can he keep it from revolting against this
false and unfeeling oppressor, or from rejoicing in the destiny which hurled
him from his throne. And should, in this worlds latter day, the scene be
acted over again, between the struggles of a patriot nation and the stern
resolves of a lordly and barbaric despotism - neither what is told and
authoritatively told of the mysteries of a predestinating God, nor what is
reasoned and irrefragably reasoned of the metaphysics of an unveering
necessity, shall ever overbear the judgment or the sensibilities of our moral
nature; but, in spite of ourselves, should the spectacle again be offered of a
triumphant people and a tyrant overthrown - still, as heretofore, should we
feel it to be a retribution of Heaven's high justice upon the one; and still
unite with the other in their lofty acclaims of gratitude, loud as from the
hosts of Israel when the horses and the chariots of Pharaoh were cast into the
sea, and joyful as the song of Moses over his now liberated nation.
Go to Lecture 74
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