God's choice of men : a study of Scripture

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ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER

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Part Second The Purpose Of Election Called To Fruitfulness

THE RigHT HAND OF FELLOWSHIP QUIETNESS

THE SECOND MILE : ‘ ‘ : THE UPPER Room. ; : : : WALKING WITH GoD . ; : é It 1s I MYSELF : ; : ° °

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Part First God's Call And Man’s Answer

‘* How often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not.”

‘* But as many as received him, to them gave he power.”

Chapter I Introductory

Mr. Banorort has called Calvin “the guide of republics ”;1 and it is a common remark among historical writers that for the present liberties of the world we are largely in debt to that great theologian and his disciples. It was a time when the cause of liberty stood in sore need of a champion. The first dawn of the Reformation had brought bright promises of freedom to Europe, but very soon the sky was clouded. The Protestants soon fell to wasting their strength in mutual jealousies and all sorts of wild extravagances. Luther died. Rome, recovering from her first panic, sets herself to regain the lost ground. Loyola sees visions and organizes his order of Jesuits, that most terrific organ of spiritual despotism. In Italy and Spain all troublesome inquiry has been trampled out by the Inquisition. In France the bell of St. Bartholomew has tolled. In Germany the imperial armies are steadily recapturing the land.

’ History of the United States, vol. i, p. 181. 3

Meanwhile, across the Channel, as Froude says, “it would have fared ill with England had there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the sluggish veins of the officials of the Establishment. There needed an enthusiasm fiercer far to encounter the revival of Catholic fanaticism.”1! For many years no one could guess which way the popular preference would finally incline; and till that was decided only the life of a queen, constantly threatened by assassination, intervened between the Kingdom and a restoration of the old Church.

In all Europe only two little specks of territory appear where men so detest the old falsehoods and so believe the new truths, that you may kill them off man by man, but you can never pound their new convictions out of them. And to-day it is because those two little countries would not know when they were beaten that Europe and America are free, and men can read the Word of God, and offer their own prayers, and think their own thoughts, and choose their own rulers, and make their own laws. We owe it, under God, to those two little countries, Holland and Scotland, invincible through the stubborn strength and vitality of their Calvinistic faith. That is what my historical teachers have told me.

In our day these doctrines of the old Reformed

1 History of England, vol. x, p. 114. 4

INTRODUCTORY

Churches have rather gone out of fashion; and I would not deny that there may have been reason for some change of doctrinal statement, or at least of doctrinal emphasis. For the conditions of the war have changed greatly since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. No one threatens us to-day with ecclesiastical oppression, and therefore we have no need to lock ourselves up in the old sixteenth century fort. What we do need in this twentieth century is a battle-cry that shall call all Christians out from their idle defences, to go and win the world for Christ. That need was not in mind when the old Reformation formulas were constructed, and finds no adequate expression in them.

Yet it is hard to believe that convictions which once showed such wholesome vitality could ever altogether lose their usefulness, or that the time could ever come when we might afford to throw them out upon the rubbish-heap. On the other hand, a time might come when the liberties of men should be threatened from some new quarter, and then it might appear that the only availing defence for human freedom would be this same old faith in a sovereign choice of God; for just that is the essence of Calvinism—it is a faith in God’s sovereign choice of men. If the individual of to-day has little to fear from the absolutism of king or priest, he might sometimes have much to fear from the absolutism of the people. Triumphant democracy might develop its own powers of civil and religious oppression, and so once more the world may have to turn for deliverance to some small company, or companies, of men who have that kind of faith in God and fear of God which deliver from all fear of mortal man.

It is with such thoughts in mind that I offer this little book, a new-fashioned treatment of the oldfashioned doctrine of God’s election of men. The provoking occasion of the book will be explained in the opening sentences of the next chapter. The remaining chapters of the book are designed to illustrate from different sides the scriptural doctrine of God’s plan for men and choice of men. The aim has not been to treat the theme dogmatically, or in a line with any confessional statement; indeed, it is hardly to be supposed that my effort would receive the unqualified approval of those who profess to speak for the traditional positions. I myself do not profess to speak for traditional positions, or any other, but simply to open the Word of God and let that speak for itself.

For the sake of convenience and clearness, I have divided my material into two parts, the first of which will give from Scripture various examples of God’s choice of men, and various examples of the human response to this divine election. The

INTRODUCTORY:

later part of the book will consider the purpose of the election, raising the inquiry what God chooses men for.

It is with regard to this later inquiry that the older statements of the doctrine now seem to many of us most seriously defective. The Reformation creeds might have left one to suppose that God sometimes elects His favorites to a sinecure; while, according to Scripture, God, showing no such partiality, elects men to office, and the office must be either filled or forfeited.

“‘ Hilection to service,” as Dr. Henry van Dyke says,' “is the supreme saving truth.” Faithful service will bring rich reward, no doubt, therefore election is the greatest favor to the individual; but any unfaithful servant may have reason to wish that he had never been counted among the elect at all. We are told that “many shall come from the east and west to sit down in the kingdom of God,” while the degenerate children of the chosen race are left out. That solemn truth of the perils of privilege should never be omitted from the scriptural doctrine of God’s choice of men.

I hope it may appear, before we are through, that this old faith in a divine election still offers men the right sort of courage for worthy living and for good hope in dying.

1The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, p. 316. yi

CHAPTER if

Mark xii, 2: ‘And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.’’!

Some months ago an editorial in a leading newspaper of this city contained the following statement: “The first duty of a Presbyterian clergyman who has professed what he does not believe is to vindicate his own sincerity. In our opinion, the common people are less likely to be troubled on their own account than on account of a spiritual leader who is outwardly faithful to a creed which they have reason to think he has inwardly rejected.”

The writer had already laid it down as a matter of common knowledge that a great many Presbyterian ministers share the view of one in a neighboring presbytery who had just been affirming that “there is no such God as the God of the Westminster Confession.”

Has this journalist, who so lightly charges his neighbors with hypocrisy, taken pains to inform

1 Preached in the Brick Church, New York City, December 18, 1904.

himself what the Westminster Confession really teaches concerning God? I will quote some of its characteristic utterances: “There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, . . . almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

That may not be a perfect definition of the divine nature, but, for my part, I should not like to undertake the task of writing a better.

I admit that the next chapter of the Confession, which treats of God’s Eternal Decree, says some things not easy to reconcile with this earlier definition. It has been confessed by innumerable loyal Presbyterians that our fathers tried to settle too many things about these high mysteries,’ “ reasoning,” to quote Milton’s words—and I have always suspected that when the poet wrote these words the memory of certain weary discussions in the Westminster Assembly was floating through his mind—

1¥or instance, in the distinction between common grace and special or saving grace, a distinction concerning which our theological disputants have had so much to say, while the Scripture maintains an impressive silence.

“reasoning of fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, finding no end in wandering mazes lost.” }

We have never professed to believe the Confession perfect. Such a belief is forbidden the Presbyterian minister by the very terms of his reception of the Confession; for before receiving it he is made to say that the Scripture is the only infallible rule.

But whatever you think of that Third Chapter as originally compiled, it must now be read in the light of the Declaratory Statement formally adopted in the Revision of 1902 and 1903, and which now forms part of our doctrinal standard. Listen to this: “‘ The doctrine of God’s Eternal Deeree is held in harmony with the doctrine of His love to all mankind, His gift of His Son to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and His readiness to bestow His saving grace on all who seek it; . . . that God desires not the death of any sinner; . . . that His decree hinders no man from accepting (His gracious offer) ; that no man is condemned except on the ground of his sin.”

That is the present Confession of our Church, and I am willing to take my stand before the world, and call God to witness that I have no apologies to offer for it, and employ no mental reservation in subscribing to it.

1 Paradise Lost, ii, line 560. 10

But even to go back to the original language of the Westminster fathers concerning this mystery of God’s decree—for of course it is on this doctrine of decrees that we Presbyterians have been most commonly accused of misrepresenting the divine nature—let me read you their first article on that subject: “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

I have admitted that, in my opinion, our fathers tried to peer too far into this unsearchable mystery, but if you must attempt to say anything on the subject, I think it would be hard to better that statement. The men who wrote that article were not fatalists; Christian believers never are. Mahometans may be, I suppose, a sort of fatalists, but not the most hopeless sort, for they believe in God. The hopeless fatalism is atheism. The charge so often made against our Confession of Faith, that it marks some men out for blessedness and others for ruin by a rigid fate, and without regard to what they may choose to do, is a false charge. The school of teaching against which that charge could be justly preferred is that of materi-

rt alistic science and philosophy. It is a simple matter of fact that belief in a personal and sovereign God is the one thing that has established man’s belief in the freedom of the human will. So our Confession says: “ Nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures (by the divine decree), nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

So much, then, for this Third Chapter of the Confession. For myself, I like the language of the Bible itself better than any later creed, and prefer as a general thing to take my faith from it at firsthand; but when a charge has been published that a great many of us are hypocrites because we do not rise in our places and denounce and repudiate this venerable symbol, any Presbyterian minister may fairly ask leave to answer the charge.

But now will you come out into a larger region. Turn your thoughts back from the Westminster Confession to the scriptural doctrine which those men were trying to confess. For it is a shallow blunder to suppose that the Westminster divines invented the doctrine of God’s decree. They were simply doing their best to make what they could of a mystery which they found—and which we shall find unless we close our eyes—in the Bible itself.

Paul says that God chose Jacob over Esau before the children were born, and before they could do good or evil.’ There is the whole hard mystery of election. He says, “ Who maketh thee to differ from another?” ? He says, “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” 3

You say that you wish the Westminster divines had left out certain articles in the Third Chapter of their Confession, and I agree with you; but certainly, if the decision had been with me, I should have begged Paul to leave out that Ninth Chapter of Romans. But there it is; this hard mystery of divine election of men was planted in the Bible long before it appeared in the creed.

But more than that, this mystery was fixed deep in human life long before it appeared in the Bible; God’s choice of men—an election of some to positions of great advantage over others, and without any reference to what they themselves had done, good or bad; for in so many things the election was settled before ever the children were born. You yourself, who were born in this blessed country, in a Christian home, to an inheritance of freedom and enlightenment and faith—who made you thus to differ from the child who was born the same day in Central Africa, to an inheritance of cannibalism and fetich worship; or that wretched little Hindu baby, who was born to starve to death in the next

1 Romans ix, 11. ?T Corinthians iv, 7. 3 Romans ix, 16.

famine? There is the mystery fixed deep in the constitution of human life, creed or no creed, Bible or no Bible. Paul simply recognizes this mystery, and with what wisdom God gave him he tries to make some headway through it, but often gives up the task. How often he turns back from some experiment at solution with his emphatic “ God forbid”; as if he wished to say, ‘ Whatever it all means, certainly it cannot mean that to which my argument was leading me. God cannot be untrue or unjust. It cannot be that we must continue in sin to make His grace abound.” “God forbid,” says Paul. It really seems to me that one clear difference between Paul, the inspired man, and the uninspired men who formulated our creeds, is, that when their vigorous reasonings had sometimes threatened to run away with them, they did not always know enough to draw back, as he so often drew back, with a “ God forbid.”

Nevertheless, those men, like the Apostle before them, were only trying to make what they could of this mystery which appears everywhere in life, that men are chosen to a great many positions of privilege without any reference to their own previous merit or demerit. So often the most important part of the choice was settled before ever they were born; Jacob preferred to Esau, before the children were born.

For the last few generations it has been a common fashion—I might say a fad—to ignore this evident fact, and reason as if there could be no distinctions among men except those which the men make for themselves. In our day some even carry the principle so far as to argue that men ought not to be allowed to make these distinctions for themselves; for instance, a trades-union will sometimes insist upon a uniform rate of wages for all in a certain line of work, without any regard to the skill or industry of the particular workman; there must be no election among them; all equal.

Our own national Declaration of Independence did not go so far as that, but it leads off with this as a self-evident truth, “that all men are created equal.” That was a noble State paper; we do well to be proud of it; but can any mortal man tell what they meant by that opening sentence, that all men are created equal? How equal?—in height? in weight? in muscular strength? in intellectual insight? in amiable disposition? For a self-evident truth this one is singularly obscure; and even if they meant to say, “all men are equal in social or political rights,’’ you must remember that many of the signers of that Declaration were and continued to be slave-owners ; how would they define that self-evident equality between the Caucasian master and the African slave? It was simply one of those fine sayings that men can make themselves think they believe, if you do not crowd them too hard to tell what it means. ;

I suppose they were trying to say that we ought to aim at giving all men an equal chance to make the most of themselves, which we all believe, but that is not at all what they said. We honor the great Declaration because, in spite of some questionable utterances, due to the prevailing influence of Rousseau and other French philosophers, it marked a noble struggle for human rights and liberties. But let me tell you that the type of religious belief which gave birth to our Westminster Confession, this belief in God’s sovereign election of men, has really done more for human rights and liberties than any political document ever written in the world.

As a monument, or bulwark of human freedom, I do not hesitate to affirm that this Westminster Confession itself deserves to outrank the American Declaration of Independence; for it is more truly universal and fearless in its democracy. It does not deal in misleading platitudes about all men created equal, but it does tell of “ God’s elect”; and that may be the plain Dutch burgher as against mighty Philip of Spain; it may be John Knox, or his very humblest hearer, as against Marie Stuart, the Queen; it may be one of Cromwell’s plain pikemen as against King Charles and all his nobles; it may be a black slave on a Southern plantation as against his master up in Philadelphia signing the Declaration. ‘For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are.’ In the long fight for human rights and liberties nothing has ever put such heroic courage into the breasts of humble men as this belief in a sovereign choice of God.

That all men are created equal is not a self-evident truth, nor any other kind of truth; and if you try to build any great structure—civil, political, industrial, religious—on such a doubtful foundation, sooner or later it will give you trouble. It is simply not true that human life is a dead level of mediocre equality. Men have always been made to differ ; that is the self-evident truth ; and a Christian’s belief about it is simply this, that all these many evident differences between himself and his fellows, many of them less highly favored than he, were not given because he had earned them, but are under the control of an all-wise and a most loving God, the carrying out of some gracious purpose

if of His. That is the substance of this doctrine of decrees, of God’s sovereign election of men.

But now we come to the great question what it is all for. We cannot understand where the difference comes from, except as we consent to leave it to the wise decision of God. The Bible does not say where the difference comes from, but it does show clearly what these differences ought to be working toward. And just here, let me say, was a most serious defect of our Westminster Confession of Faith; for our Confession did not show clearly what God elects men for; what He would have them do with their election. That was a very serious fault, and it is well that we have partly corrected it by the new chapter on the love of God and missions. This is by far the most important part of the doctrine of election as it is taught in Scripture.

It begins far back at the beginning with Abraham, the man who was called out from among his idolatrous kindred in Ur of the Chaldees that he might become the friend of God. But why did God call him? Was it because He had some unfair partiality for Abraham, and some unfair prejudice against the other nations of the earth? Did He choose to lift friend Abraham up, that He might push the unfriended heathen down? Abraham’s descendants were apt to think so, but their own Bible was always against them, for it said that

Abraham was chosen that in his seed all the families of the earth might be blessed.

Then, a few generations later, God chose the child Jacob rather than the child Esau, and chose him above all other babes then coming into the world; so that this Jacob and his descendants, this family of Israel, should be the chosen people. But what for? Was it in order that God might bless Israel with knowledge of Him, and curse the other nations with heathenish ignorance? No, no; they were to be a priestly nation, ministering to all the world whatever knowledge of the true God they got themselves. They might not fully understand it for a while, but that was God’s plan from the beginning; and when Christ came, He and His apostles told the Jews plainly that God had been choosing them all these years in order that through them He might bless all the nations of the world with His salvation. The great body of the Jews were unwilling to accept this view of their election, and so they forfeited their privilege. They, the elect, were shut out, and the other unelected nations came in ahead of them. “The last were first, and the first last.” That is the theme that runs through the whole New Testament. And it is a very serious theme, solemn reading for the elect.

1 Genesis xxii, 18.

God, in His wisdom, does make men to differ; they are not all created equal; He does choose particular men to particular positions of advantage; but it is with a view finally to the greatest good of all.

Why, if you study this doctrine of divine election not from human creeds or newspapers, but from the Bible, you will never suspect God of any unjust fondness toward the elect; you might sometimes find yourselves fearing that God discriminated unfairly against His elect, laying too much upon them, demanding too rigid an account from them. You might fear that He had dealt too harshly with His chosen people Israel. Of course that is not true, but it might seem so to us.

When we first opened our eyes to the facts of the world, those facts seemed to us grossly unfair —one born in a palace, one in a hovel; one growing up strong, another a helpless invalid; one in the radiance of the cross, another under the black shadow of a heathen idol. That was all that we could see, and to us it seemed grossly unfair. But: the Bible shows us more than we could see—not everything; a thousand questions are still unanswered; but it does show how God is working all this toward a sublime fairness at the end in the greatest good of all; so that in the end, as Paul says, “there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.” ! They may not all enjoy the good, alas! for they may not all accept it; there is Where the mystery of the human will comes in, with its possible refusal of God’s goodness, and therefore ruin and tragedy. But so far as God’s election is concerned, the Bible shows us how it is working toward the free and loving offer of the best good to all. So that it shall be to the greatest advantage of the whole world that Abraham was called, that Jacob was chosen, that Paul was elected, or you yourself to such advantages as God has given you, or I to such as He has given me.

Why, in your own body there is going on a constant process of divine election. Are all the parts and members of your body created equal? Can you see with your foot? Can you hear with your hand? Can you taste with your eyes? By nomeans. Each member is elected to some very peculiar power of sense or motion; but having been thus elected, each member must faithfully exercise that function for the good of the whole body, else it will become atrophied and reprobate. The eye must go on seeing, or it will lose the power to see. The hand must go on working, or its muscles will shrivel into helplessness. It is for the infinite advantage of the

1 Romans x, 12.

whole, that God has chosen to give such difference of power and honor to all the several parts.

And so God has chosen to deal with us men and women, making us to differ. It is a sovereign choice, and all the political papers in the world cannot interfere with it. God has not created men equal; He has made them to differ; but for every differing advantage that He has chosen to confer upon any man, He will hold that man to a strict account. ‘'T’o whom much is given, of him shall much be required” ; and if Abraham, or Jacob, or Paul, or any other who has been elected to high office, fails to discharge its duties worthily, he or his elect descendants must be turned out, and some worthier put in his place. ‘ God will let His vineyard to other husbandmen,” our text said, “ who will render Him the fruits in their season.”

What a terribly practical doctrine this election is when you study it from the Bible! Men had treated it as a mere abstraction. Like good Calvinists we believe it, counting ourselves among the elect; or perhaps we deny it; but, either way, it is a matter of words with us, an abstract theory. But here is this unquestionable fact, that in a thousand ways you differ from your neighbor, being more highly favored than he. Who made you to differ, and why?

Why did God choose to give some of you more money than He has given your neighbors? There was a certain poor widow who cast two mites into the treasury, and she has become a very popular character, and many of us are apt to talk complacently about our “mites.” Softly, am I a poor widow? God has elected many of us to the privilege of dropping into His treasury on any one Sunday more money than that poor widow ever touched in all her life; and God will demand of them an accounting whether they have done it. When a Christian man holds money that honestly belongs to him, it ought to mean a greater advantage to the whole community, and to the cause of God, that that money has come to him, than if the same money had gone to any one else, or to some public treasury. An all-wise God has chosen this particular man to the office of purse-holder, and He chooses him for the benefit of all; and unless the all are benefited, there is something wrong with the office-holder. I wish we could learn to look upon our private property, if we have any, in this light, as one application of the great doctrine of divine election, one act of the God who maketh us to differ.

And so with any other distinguishing advantage —advantages of birth, of education, of artistic gift, of personal attractiveness, of social charm. A follower of Jesus will learn to value any such advantage as he is able to use it to make others happier or better; to brighten and sweeten and gladden this world in which we are appointed to live.