The Covenant Promise
One of the most precious aspects of God’s covenant is the promise by which He makes His covenant known to us. In that promise He shows that His covenant really is a covenant of grace. By that promise He multiplies mercy and adds grace to grace.
That promise is found repeatedly in Scripture and is a kind of covenant formula. With minor word changes it is this word of God: “I will be your God and ye shall be my people” (Gen. 17:7-8; Ex. 6:7; Lev. 26:12; Deut. 29:13; Jer. 7:23, 31:33; Eze. 36:28, 37:27).
One could not imagine a greater promise than that or anything better than having God as our God, knowing Him, loving Him and having fellowship with Him. Yet God adds grace to grace and blessing to blessing, for that is not the whole promise of the covenant.
God in mercy adds to it the promise that He will also be the God of our children. We deserve nothing from Him, yet He not only promises salvation to us, but also to our children. What unspeakable grace!
That word of God regarding the children of believers is part of the covenant promise both in the Old and the New Testament. It is found first in Genesis 17:7-8 at the beginning of God’s dealings with Israel and their father Abraham. It is found again at the beginning of the history of the New Testament church in Acts 2:39.
We must understand that this promise never was and never will be a guarantee that God will save every one of our children. There are always Esaus and Cains in the families of God’s people, to their great grief. Rather, it is the promise that God will continue His covenant with believers and their seed, and that they, with their families in their generations, will not be cut off.
This is the promise that is commemorated and signified when the infants of believers are baptized. This is the promise that motivates all covenant instruction and discipline and gives assurance that these will be effective. It is the promise by which God shows us how great His grace is.
We would emphasize, too, that it is a promise—an oath sworn by God who does not change and who does not lie. That is something for parents to hold on to through all the trials and tribulations of rearing a family. It is even a reason for them to continue to pray when a son or daughter is wayward and disobedient.
May God by this promise show to many the grace and faithfulness of His covenant (Ps. 25:14). Rev. Hanko
Loving Our Enemies (4)
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:43-48).
Because this passage from God’s holy word has been used so often in support of “common grace,” and because more than one of our readers have asked for a discussion of this passage, we have decided to spend a few articles in dealing with it.
We have noticed already that to use this passage as proof of common grace involves one in problems, especially two. Because common grace advocates claim that this passage teaches that God loves all men and is kind to all, they are forced to confront the question of how it is to be explained that God hates the wicked.
The second problem the defenders of common grace face is to explain how common grace is earned for all men. Is it earned on the cross? Then the cross is universal. If the cross is universal, why are not all men saved?
We see no possibility of answering these questions.
Those who wish to defend common grace and who appeal to this passage in support of common grace face another problem.
Supposing for the moment that it is true that rain and sunshine are evidences of God’s love and favour upon all men, how is it to be explained that floods and hurricanes also come upon all men?
I do not know how often I have asked the defenders of common grace to supply an acceptable answer to this question. I have never received one.
We must understand the problem. God sends His rain and sunshine (as well as health, prosperity, fruitful seasons and all good things) to His people not only, but also to the wicked; to the elect not only, but also to the reprobate.
Some say that these good things are evidences of God’s love and favour towards all men.
But these are not the only works of God in creation.
God sends other terrible things as well: floods and hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones, war and destruction, famine and drought and pestilence and sickness. It seems sometimes as if the latter, in fact, outweigh the former.
But all these catastrophes and resultant sufferings also come upon all men. They do not come only on the wicked; they come also upon the people of God. Tornadoes do not snake their way through towns avoiding the houses of the righteous. Floods do not leave the farms and homes of saints untouched. Cancer is not limited to wicked people.
But if the good things in life are evidences of God’s love and favour, the bad things in life have to be evidences of His hatred and curse.
But then we are driven to the conclusion that God hates His people and curses them when He sends His judgments upon the earth.
How are the defenders of common grace going to solve that problem?
There is, in fact, only one way to solve that problem—if one insists on making rain and sunshine evidences of God’s love for all. And that is by maintaining that God’s attitude towards men changes from moment to moment.
He loves the wicked one moment, but a moment later He hates them. He blesses them for one year, but the next year He curses them. One moment they bask in the sunshine of His benevolence, the next moment they are crushed beneath the load of His fury.
But that is not so bad yet. What about God’s people?
One moment they are blessed; another moment they are cursed. One moment God loves them; the next moment God hates them.
That is dreadful!
How can we live that way?—never knowing how God looks upon us?
And how can we endure the storms of life and the trials of our pilgrimage if we are led to believe that a heart attack is God’s hatred and the loss of a loved one is God’s curse?
If we had to live that way in the world, only two courses of action commend themselves: Either eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, or, commit suicide and get out of it all, for it is all hopeless.
But this is not the hope of the child of God. He knows that all things work together for his good, for he is called according to God’s purpose.
What a comfort in the sorrows of life! Prof. Hanko
Body and Soul? or Body, Soul and Spirit?
One of our readers has asked: Is man a bi- or tri-partite being? Are soul and spirit synonyms?
We trust that those who read this will not be frightened away by the strange words. Bi-partite simply means “two-part” and tri-partite, “three-part.” The question, therefore, is whether we are created with two parts, body and soul, or with three parts, body, soul and spirit. Thus, too, we have the question whether soul and spirit are the same thing or two different things. (Note: the words dichotomy and trichotomy, are sometimes used—dichotomy having the same significance as bi-partite and trichotomy as tri-partite).
To some all of this may seem very unimportant. In the history of the church, however, it has not been unimportant. The view that man has “three parts” has been used both in the early church and by some modern theologians in defence of various heresies, and for that reason Christian theology has always leaned to the view that man is only “two parts” and that soul and spirit are more or less the same thing.
For example: the teaching that man is a tri-partite being has been used (by the earlier Semi-Pelagians and by some more recent German theologians) to defend the idea that there is something in man that is not affected by the fall or by original sin. In other words, though soul and body are corrupted, man’s spirit, including his reason, his will and his moral sense were not affected. So, they said, fallen man is able to respond to and cooperate with grace.
Earlier in the history of the church the same teaching was used to deny the full humanity of Christ. He had, so it was said, a human body and soul, but not a human spirit or mind. That was replaced by the divine Word or Mind.
There are many Scripture passages that teach that our spirits are essentially the same as our souls (Eccl. 12:7; I Cor. 5:5, 7:34; II Cor. 7:1) and that we are bi-partite. Man’s creation, however, is the clearest proof. There is no indication in the creation story (Gen. 2:7) that man is a tri-partite being.
The only passages in Scripture that could possibly be brought forward as proof of “three parts” are Hebrews 4:12 and I Thessalonians 5:23. The fact, though, that body, soul and spirit are all mentioned does not necessarily mean that they are three separate things, and in light of Genesis 2:7 they cannot be.
Why does Scripture speak of both soul and spirit? The answer seems to be that these two words refer to the same reality from two different viewpoints. The word “soul” speaks of man as a rational, moral being, a thinking and willing creature who knows the difference between good and evil. The word “spirit” points to the same reality as that by which man was able to stand in a relationship with God, to know God and to love Him, and by which, through grace, this is made possible again. Rev. Hanko
