And if by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.
The Christian doctrine of Divine grace
I. Man is the object of grace.
1. The present dispensation is only the perfection of many, and grace is the characteristic of all. But the gospel is emphatically “the gospel of the grace of God.” The Father is “the God of all grace.” “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Spirit is the “Spirit of grace.” This grace is uniformly stated as the cause of the electing purpose--the reason of our personal justification--the germ of the renovating process--the potent motive to all piety, as it is the prolific source of all favour.
2. The atonement is the effect of Divine grace. Jehovah is not merciful because Christ has died, but Christ has died because Jehovah was merciful.
3. “The grace which bringeth salvation,” is, in no sense, impaired by any arrangements which had a reference to ourselves. Antecedent questions of justice and satisfaction could not injure the display of that love which was equally in the Father and the Son; which was equally evinced in inflicting and enduring death.
4. The death of the Cross is only a means to the most benevolent end. A benefaction is not commonly reduced in its value by its cost, nor a deliverance by its peril. Is the grace of God the greater, or the less, when encountering no difficulty, or when encountering it to overcome it? Is the grace of God more brightly, or more faintly glorious, when associated with moral principles, or when disregarding them?
5. The gospel, while it upholds the claims of the Divine law, has an exclusive bearing upon us as sinners. Let the awful negotiations between the Father and the Son--who are one--be whatever they were--the sinner has no righteousness or claim. Salvation is a question not of justice but of grace.
6. No blessing of the gospel is in any legitimate sense the subject of purchase. Christians are “the purchased possession”; they are “bought with a price.” But the “sure mercies” of the covenant are free gifts. God was ready to forgive, but there was an impediment. The atonement removed that impediment and “the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ,” now flows without check or restriction. “By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men.”
II. The grace, which is so pre-eminent, cannot be confounded with any inferior or incongruous principle. Let us define--
1. Grace is free favour; it can be related to no right, and contained in no law. Whenever bestowed, it depends upon the mere will of him who exercises it. If there is any necessity for it, it “is no more grace.”
2. Work is individual action or conduct, and implies those particular qualities which provoke praise or condemnation. This course of accountable behaviour is properly--
(1) Personal. We all feel possessed of a something which we cannot transfer. Whatever we have taken part in still attaches to us. We reap what we have sown.
(2) Work must be voluntary to be accountable. If I am compelled to do what I disapprove, the hand is mine, but that hand is only a mechanical instrument of another’s will.
(3) Work, therefore, goes to form the general character of the moral agent. A succession of works forms, a habit, a variety of habits mould a character. Such has merit or demerit.
3. But if this be the just delineation of work, it cannot be employed indiscriminately with grace. Grace is opposed to work as it--
(1) Is extrinsic of the person. It reaches usfrom another source. Personal qualities it may inspire--but its origin is supernal and Divine.
(2) Is independent of the volition, Man had no desire to be saved in this manner; it is the “kindness of God our Saviour,” “who doeth as it pleaseth Him.”
(3) Most jealously and tenaciously challenges that merit and honour which virtuous and sinless obedience claims, and the Divine code awards. “To him that worketh, the reward is reckoned not of grace but of debt.”
III. Grace and work are often violently tortured into an unnatural alliance. That system cannot reconcile itself to the idea of grace, which--
1. Proceeds upon the merits of human ronduct. Merit is a relation of justice, and not of favour.
2. Rests human acceptance on a foreknowledge of some attractive qualities of character. For whence do these originate? Foreknowledge is not potential. Who has smitten the rock, and melted it into streams of grief? Who has turned the “wilderness into the fruitful field”?
3. Reckons on the self-determining power of the human will. How is it, in conversion, that the will, which is but the bias of our tainted nature, elects the part of good, but by the grace of Him from whom all good proceeds?
4. Accounts the gospel as a provision of simple facility to man to save himself. By this view we are never to invoke Christ’s righteousness and expiation, but when, after our most strenuous self-justifying efforts, we feel that a little more may be required to give our case its perfect recommendation.
5. Varies the universal freeness of the gospel by moral differences in man. Without distorting or forcing into one another the things which differ, Christianity surveys all men in their equal need of salvation, and in their ruin without it.
6. Founds our duty upon a bestowment of grace.
IV. The effects of these opposing principles.
1. How differently they explain Christianity! If work predominate over grace, the gospel is the republished law, and if the unabated law, is a message of despair; or if the extenuated law changes that glory into whatever is short-sighted and inconsistent; and in the prostration of that law, sinks the standard of our good, falls the pattern of our dignity. But let grace have the pre-eminence. What a change comes over the “great salvation”! It is pardon to the guilty, restoration to the undone. It never pauses until it has found out “our low estate,” and never relaxes its effort until it has lifted us from it.
2. How oppositely they affect the mission of Christ! We honour grace in the degree to which we honour the mediation of Christ. But “if it be of works,” at once the Saviour’s mediation is degraded. For what did He “pour out His soul unto death”? According to this unworthy calculation--to follow in the train of the sinner who strives to save himself, ready to lend His aid, should occasion require it.
3. How inversely they influence the human mind.
(1) Which of these two principles is the better fitted to inspire that humility of dependence which every relation of the creature, and much more every adjunct of the sinner, dictate? There is all the difference of claim and suppliance. “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are”! “God be merciful to me a sinner”! The gospel repeats “By grace ye are saved”; it adds the reason, “blot of works, lest any man should boast.”
(2) But the spirit of grace, in contradistinction to work, is also the spirit of obedience. (R. W. Hamilton, D.D.)
Salvation by grace
Some are all their days laying the foundation, and are never able to build upon it to any comfort to themselves or usefulness to others. And the reason is because they will be mixing with the foundation stones that are only fit for the building. They will be bringing their obedience, duties, mortification of sin and the like, into the foundation. These are precious stones to build with, but unmeet to be first laid to bear upon them the whole weight of the building. The foundation is to be laid in mere grace, mercy, pardon in the blood of Christ; this the soul is to accept of and rest in merely as it is grace, without the consideration of anything in itself, but that it is sinful and obnoxious to ruin. This it finds a difficulty in, and would gladly have something of its own to mix with it; it cannot tell how to fix these foundation stones without some cement of its own endeavours and duty; and because these things will not mix, they spend fruitless efforts about it all their days. But if the foundation be of grace, it is not at all of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. If anything of our own be mixed with grace in this matter, it utterly destroys the nature of grace, which, if it be not alone, is not at all. (J. Owen, D.D.)
What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for.
The judgment upon Israel is
I. Partial.
II. Self-occasioned (cf. Rom_9:31-32)
.
III. A fulfilment of prophecy uttered--
1. By Isaiah.
2. By David.
IV. Is a warning to us. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
Israel’s failure
I.What he sought--righteousness.
II. How he sought it. Not by faith, but by works.
III. What was the result?
1. The elect obtained itby faith.
2. The rest failed--were blinded. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
Seeking and obtaining salvation
So many seek salvation and are not saved because they seek amiss. To seek that we may find, three things are to be observed.
I. The time. “Seek first the kingdom of God.” If thou seekest it not first but at leisure, it is a thousand to onethou shalt never find it. Usually men postpone this to their age: in their youth nothing but pleasure; old heads must not be set on young shoulders; but when they lie upon their death bed then send for the minister. Is this enough? I should marvel if God should be content with the dregs of thy life when the devil hath had the flower. There is an old saying--He that neglecteth the occasion, the occasion will neglect him, as it appeareth by the example of the five foolish virgins.
II. The place. He that hath lost a ring and seeks a mile from the place where he lost it is not likely to find it. Seek salvation where it is to be found: that is in Christ, in whom are all treasures. The Jews sought it in themselves and missed of it. But where is Christ to be found? In the house of God; not in an alehouse and the meetings of profane men.
III. The manner.
1. Seek painfully, as the woman for her groat. The mine of gold lies not in the first spade, it lies deeper, it is well if after all pains we find it at the last.
2. Continue seeking; he that continues to the end shall be saved; it is worth all our pains though all should seek a thousand years, give not over till thou hast found. Israel sought for salvation, in the obedience of the law, but found it not; what shall, then, become of thewicked who seek not at all: of those who seek only vanities. (Elnathan Parr, B.D.)
God hath given them the spirit of slumber.--
The spirit of slumber
Blindness of mind and hardness is a spiritual lethargy, when neither the thundering noise of the law nor the sweet sound of the gospel can awake us.
1. The Greek word used by Paul from the Septuagint signifies pricking and compunction (see margin). This meaning may well be retained, dead sleep being called compunction by a figure; the effect being put for the cause because no compunction can awake it, or the cause for the effect because compunction is the cause of dead sleep in the mind.
2. There is a double compunction: one coming from sorrow for sin (Act_2:37), another from envy and malice, which was in the Jews, because the gospel of Christ, whom they crucified, was as a dagger at their hearts. This compunction is the cause of such a deadness of mind that, as a man in a dead sleep hears and understands nothing, so an envious mind is impatient to hear or conceive anything for its good. Excess of grief brings a failing of the mind, and envy is a gnawing of the heart against our neighbour. When Stephen preached the Jews gnashed their teeth and stopped their ears. And when Paul preaches at Antioch the Jews rail and contradict, so that a man had as good speak to a dead man as unto them. Chrysostom expounds it as a nailing to their passion, whereby they are unmovable in their perfidiousness. Some translate it ecstasy, for envy makes a man beside himself, capable of no good instruction. Cyprian calls it transpunction, as a vessel having a hole stricken through the bottom, holds not the liquor put in it.
3. The text teaches that God in His just judgment gives over such as are enemies to the gospel to be blinded, that they cannot convert (Joh_9:39; 2Co_4:3).
I. Many in worldly things are of great apprehension and judgment, and yet as blind as beetles, very blocks in religion. Eyes they have, they are no fools, yet they perceive not the things belonging to their peace. As bats and owls see best in the night, so their chiefest understanding is of worldly matters. As a mole within the ground is nimble and quick, but above the ground can make little shift, so talk or deal with these men of earthly matters, they are cunning, but speak of religion and you pose them as with a strange language. Achitophel, a great statesman, goes home in a dudgeon, and in a sullen fit hangs himself; could any idiot have done more foolishly? Pray that thy wit may be sanctified, otherwise thou mayest prove an enemy and be besotted with the worst folly. It is a fearful state to envy thegospel: such are given over to the devil to be blinded, and what will not the devil bring such unto? Needs must he go whom the devil drives: as he tumbled the swine into the sea, so will he thrust such into all iniquity.
II. To have eyes and not to see, to know the truth and to have no power to apply it to our consciences, is fearful. It is uncomfortable to be born bodily blind, much more is spiritual blindness uncomfortable. When Christ came nigh Jerusalem He wept over it for the blindness of the Jews. When He raised Lazarus He groaned in the spirit for the hardness of their hearts. A grievous plague must blindness of mind he when Christ so wept and groaned for them which were stricken with it, when He never cried Oh! for all His own bitter passions. Repent of thy malice to the Word that thou mayest see. (Elnathan Parr, B.D.)
The hardened sinner
I.His moral condition.
1. Insensible.
2. Blind.
3. Prejudiced.
II. The cause.
1. Resistance of grace.
2. Retributive justice.
III. The consequences.
1. Misery.
2. Despair.
3. Death, unless God interpose in sovereign mercy. (J. Lyth, D,D.)
The present condition of the Jews
I. The result of long-continued disobedience.
II. A literal fulfilment of prophecy. Instance--
1. Their moral insensibility, blindness, and prejudice.
2. Their exposure to plunder and misfortune.
3. Their intellectual deterioration.
4. Their servility and subjection to oppression.
III. A lesson to the world. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
Spiritual blindness
“My blindness came on very gradually. I first began to notice that I could not see so far as I used to do, and one morning when looking from the window I could only see across the road. As time went on I could see no further than the mantelpiece, and at length I had to grope my way about the room; and now no one knows what that darkness means but one who has experienced the same.” As she concluded her sad story, I thought that was just like spiritual blindness. Some sin comes, and gradually obscures the light of God in the soul. By and by the darkness deepens, until at length it is darkness which may be felt. Only the removal of the cause of darkness will secure a return of light; and only when sin is forgiven and abandoned is it possible to walk in the light of God’s countenance.
Let their table be made a snare.--
Abuse of privileges
David is speaking both as a prophet and as a type of the Messiah (Psa_69:22-23). His words are quoted and applied to Jesus (Rom_15:3; Joh_2:17; Joh_19:28-29), and applied to Judas (Act_1:20). Similar denunciations are to be similarly interpreted. They are not the utterances of personal or vindictive feeling, but the denunciations and predictions of God’s Spirit.
I. Table. What would otherwise have been for good.
1. Daily and common mercies.
2. Spiritual privileges. Sin brings a curse which converts food into poison (Mal_2:2). “Their table.” A believer’s table is spread for him by God (Psa_23:5); the table of the unbeliever is regarded as his own.
II. Snare. Cause of unexpected destruction. Their very mercies are an occasion of sin and misery. To faith the means of grace are salvation; to unbelief, a snare. Table a snare. When the gospel proves a savour of death unto death. The gospel table was spread first for the Jews (Mat_22:28); the preaching of forgiveness began at Jerusalem (Luk_24:47), and being rejected proved a snare.
III. Trap--a capture. The sinner caught in Satan’s trap when he rejects the Saviour. Note the gradation--a snare for the foot, a trap for the whole body. The Old Testament falsely interpreted confirms the Jews in unbelief; the New Testament disbelieved becomes the occasion of deeper sin. In opposing the gospel the Jews filled up their sins (1Th_2:16). In this sin the wrath of God came upon them to the uttermost. Their passover-table was made their trap. Multitudes thus caught in the siege of Jerusalem perished.
IV. Stumbling-block--that which causes to fall into a snare or trap. The gospel when believed raises men to heaven; rejected it trips them into the bottomless pit. Christ a foundation to some, a stumbling-block to others (Rom_9:32-33). (T. Robinson, D.D.)
