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‘So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.’
Rom_9:16
I. Scripture recognises quite as frequently and as positively the balancing truth of man’s free will and man’s responsibility.—It argues with men, it entreats them to accept the proffered blessings of the Gospel, it uses language which certainly implies that it lies with men to choose or refuse what is offered. St. Paul himself, who, when occasion offers, affirms so strongly the doctrine of the Divine election, states the counterbalancing truth of man’s free will. ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ Though he entertains within himself a humble hope that he is personally a subject of the Divine election, he can yet speak as if he were fully conscious that he might by his own demerit forfeit his privilege. ‘I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a castaway,’ a man rejected and disapproved at the final decision of the race. Grace is contemplated as liable to be lost. St. Peter admonishes, ‘Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.’ The surety of the calling, then, is dependent on continued diligence in Christian living. ‘If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they had known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.’
II. We must hold at the same time the two great truths of God’s predestination and man’s free will.—They cannot be stated separately as complete intellectual propositions; they are mysteries which we cannot adequately conceive or express. In philosophy as well as in religion they are mysteries. We cannot conceive of God as absolute will; that makes Him the author of evil as well as of good, and denies His attribute of righteousness. We cannot conceive of man’s absolute free will, for that is a denial of the obvious fact of the weakness of his moral nature and of the almost overwhelming forces of habit and example. To preach predestination only is to preach fatalism and to drive the ungodly to despair or recklessness; to preach man’s free will only is to deny the need of God’s grace and to claim all for human merit. Extreme Calvinism makes God a capricious tyrant. Extreme Arminianism denies the corruption of human nature, and makes man his own saviour.
III. But it remains none the less true that predestination, resting on a Divine purpose, is a doctrine of Scripture, and therefore as such asserted by every Church true to the deposit of primitive faith. And there is a right use of the doctrine, spite of all its grievous perversions. But that right use is only for ‘godly persons,’ i.e. such as are leading godly lives and feeling in themselves the waking of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things. That right use is—
(a) To greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, according to Christ’s own encouragement. ‘Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’
(b) To kindle fervently their love towards God. That is the way in which St. Paul used the doctrine in that eighth chapter of the Romans, where, at the close, we have the very triumph song of adoring gratitude and love. If in the immediate prospect of the hour of death and the day of judgment we are enabled in any measure to appropriate its sublime consolations to ourselves, we shall feel that the Divine election is not a puzzle of the intellect, nor a wrangle of barren controversy, but a stay of the fainting soul, and that in very deed salvation ‘is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.’
Rev. Prof. Inge.
Illustration‘This ninth chapter of the Romans brings us upon one of those passages of St. Paul’s Epistles “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 get into the region of such mysterious subjects as predestination and election and reprobation. These subjects occupy now much less general attention than they did in earlier days of Christian doctrine. We know that in the fifth century they formed the principal topic of controversy in Western Christendom, when St. Augustine protested so vehemently against Pelagianism. At the period of the Reformation and in the following century they assumed enormous prominence under the powerful influence of the eminent theologian John Calvin. The rival systems of Calvinism and Arminianism separated whole Churches. The Presbyterian Churches of England and Scotland, under the guidance of the West-minster Assembly, epoused the Calvinist theory. The Nonconforming communities which looked up to John Wesley and George Whitfield respectively as their founders parted asunder owing to their divergence of views on this great controversy. In this century the antagonism is not so violent. Rival views are, indeed, held firmly and conscientiously, but they are not so perpetually pressed upon attention. Pulpits do not so constantly resound with sermons on what used to be called the doctrines of grace, the five points of predestination, the extent of Christ’s redemption, free will and human corruption, conversion by irresistible grace, final perseverance. The probable reason of this may be a consciousness that whatever may be the truth on these high matters, they are only a part and not the whole of Christian doctrine, and are rather speculations of the intellect than foundations of practical rules of holy living. And possibly, too, with this consciousness is associated a conviction that the mysteries handled in this controversy are really mysteries.’