The Three Points

In our last editorial on the above subject we stated that the implied explanation of the texts in Matthew 5 and Luke 6by the Synod of 1924 (I say “implied” because the Synod merely quotes) is not only contrary to all the rest of Scripture but that it is also impossible and leads to absurdity.

It is certainly true that there is a general providence of God according to which the righteous and the wicked receive the same things from God in this world. They all receive rain and sunshine, health and strength, life and provisions, power and talents, peace and prosperity. But let us not forget that both the godly and the ungodly also receive more under the providence of God. They alsojall receive all kinds of calamities such as floods and droughts, earthquakes and upheavals, poverty and want, pestilences and all kinds of sicknesses, and finally death. Now if rain and sunshine and the rest of the good things in this world are “common grace” must not the evil things be regarded as a “common curse” of God both on the righteous and the wicked ? If the former are tokens of God’s favor on all men, are not the latter proof of God’s disfavor and wrath? But this is absurd and also contrary to Scripture. For the Bible teaches everywhere that, while all things work together for good to them that love God, the very prosperity of the wicked is meant for their destruction. Thus, for instance, in Ps. 37: “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger and for: sake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth . . . . The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming . . . . A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked . . . . The Lord knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time; and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away . . . . Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.” vss. 7-38.

This is the teaching of all Scripture.

Hence, it ought to be evident that we must conceive of the things which, both the godly and the wicked receive in this present time are but a means to an end, namely, to eternal glory or to eternal desolation. All these things, according to the whole of Scripture, are received by men, as rational creatures, and they are used by them as such. And they all bear fruit, either to eternal life and glory or to everlasting destruction. If they tend to life eternal, they are means and tokens of God’s grace, whether they are the so-called evil or the good things in this present life. On the other hand, if they tend to destruction, they are tokens of the wrath of God and are a curse for us, even though we bathe in luxury and our eyes stand out with fatness.

This the Bible teaches throughout as we all know.

God employs the things of this present time for the destruction of the reprobate, and men also employ them for the same end as rational moral creatures.

Thus God’s counsel is realized and man remains responsible.

But there is no grace of God for the wicked.

But the question is now: how must the passages inMatthew 5 and Luke 6 be interpleted?

The entire passage in Matthew 5 reads as follows:

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, 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 that 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 shine 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.”

As to the context in Luke 6, it must not escape our attention that the Lord, first of all, pronounces a fourfold woe upon the ungodly:

“But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers unto the false prophets,” vss. 24-26.

It is evident that the Lord pronounces this woe upon the wicked that are rich in this world, that are full and laugh and of whom all men speak well. It is also evident that the Lord does not love those wicked or is kind to them, for they shall mourn and weep. This we must remember when we attempt to explain the verses that follow.

There we read:

“But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them which curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other, and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take away thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to them of whom they hope to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, even as your Father also is merciful,” vss. 27-36.

Here, then is the entire passage in the context.

Now, first of all, it is evident that the emphasis of both passages falls on the fact that the people of God love their enemies, which reveal their hatred by all kinds of inimical acts. The question, therefore, is first of all: what is love? And how do the people of God reveal this love to their enemies? It is clear from both passages that the love of the believers must be a reflection of the love of God and even of His mercy, cf.Luke 6:36.

Love in God is the bond of perfectness. As the triune God He loves Himself, of the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. It will be evident that with this love, as the divine bond of perfectness, God cannot love or be merciful to His enemies as such: there is no bond of perfectness between them and God. Yet this divine self-love is the only love there is. It is also evident from the texts quoted above that God loves His enemies. How then is this possible, and how is this love of God to His enemies revealed? My answer is, first, that this is possible only because of eternal election. God chose His own, that were to be His enemies in time, from all eternity in Christ, and beholding them in Christ He sees no iniquity in Jacob and no transgression in Israel. Deny the eternal and sovereign counsel of election, and the love of God and His mercy are forever impossible: God hates the wicked every day. Secondly, my answer is that God realized this eternal love of His people in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection. For in Him all the sins of the elect are blotted out forever and they stand before God as perfect. And, finally, my answer is that this bond of perfectness is realized in the elect by the Holy Spirit which was given unto Christ after His exaltation and dwells in our hearts.

Such is the love of God and it is the only love there can be.

Now, just as God loves His enemies so we must love our enemies. We must reveal His love in our lives. For then we shall be the children of the Highest.

How then can we reveal that love to our enemies? Can we do so by flattering him, by giving him a good time, by playing games with him, by preaching the doctrine of “common grace” to him and assuring him that God loves him in his wickedness? Then we lie about God. Then we do not love him but hate him. No, but we shall proclaim Christ to him. We shall rebuke him for his wicked life and walk, tell him that in Christ is the only hope for the sinner and that, if he does not repent, he shall go into eternal desolation. And if then he shall despitefully use us and persecute us, we shall not reward evil for evil but continue to show him the love of God.

More about these passages next time, D.V.

—H.H.

Evolution, Long Periods, or Days

We will continue the narrative of creation as recorded in Gen. 1 especially with a view to discovering whether there is anything in this narrative that warrants the conclusion of unbelieving evolutionists that, after all, it is nothing but a Babylonian myth and an invention of primitive minds who knew nothing, of course, of the great discoveries of modern science. We also have in view to show, positively, that there is nothing in this narrative of the creation of the world in six days that is contrary to the facts as we know them, while, at the same time, it is corroborated by all the rest of Scripture, both in the Old and the New Testament. The narrative is simply a historical account of creation as revealed by God. It must be accepted as such or it cannot be accepted at all. And if this account cannot be accepted as literally true, one cannot accept the Holy Scriptures as the verbally inspired Word of God. Writes Keil, Commentary on Genesis, pp. 39, 40:

“In contrast with all these mythical inventions, the biblical account shines out in the clear light of truth, and proves itself by its contents to be an integral part of the revealed history, as which it is accepted as the pedestal throughout the whole of the sacred Scriptures. This is not the case with the Old Testament only; but in the New Testament also it is accepted and taught by Christ and the apostles as the basis of divine revelation.”

And again he writes:

“The biblical account of the creation can also vindicate its claim to be true and actual history, in the presence of philosophy and the established results of natural science; So long, indeed, as philosophy undertakes to construct the universe from general ideas, it will be utterly unable to understand the creation; but ideas will never be able to explain the existence of things. Creation is an act of the personal God, not a process of nature, the development of which can be traced to the laws of birth and decay that prevail in the created world. But the work of God as described in the history of creation, is in perfect harmony with the correct notions of divine omnipotence, wisdom and goodness. The assertion, so frequently made, that the course of the creation takes its form from the Hebrew week, which was already in existence, and the idea of God’s resting on the seventh day, from the institution of the Jewish Sabbath, is entirely without foundation. There is no allusion in Gen. 11:2, 3 to the Sabbath of the Israelites; and the week of seven days is older than the Sabbath of the Jewish covenant.”

As to the conclusions of science, Keil writes:

“By all modest naturalists, therefore, it is assumed that the origin of matter, or of the original material of the world, was due to an act of divine creation. But there is no firm ground for the conclusion which they draw, on the basis of this assumption, with regard to the formation or development of the world from its first chaotic condition into a fit abode for man. All the theories which have been adopted from Descartes to the present day, are not the simple and well established inductions of natural science founded upon careful observation, but combinations of partial discoveries empirically made, with speculative ideas of very questionable worth. The periods of creation, which modern geology maintains with such confidence, that not a few theologians have accepted them as undoubted and sought to bring them into harmony with the Scriptural account of the creation, if not to deduce them from the Bible itself, are inferences partly from the successive strata which compose the crust of the earth, and partly from the various fossil remains of plants and animals to be found in these strata. The former are regarded as proof of successive formation; and from the difference between plants and animals found in a fossil state and those in existence now, the conclusion is drawn, that their creation must have preceded the present formation, which either accompanied or was closed by the advent of man. But it is not difficult to see that the former of these conclusions could only be regarded as fully established, if the process by which the different strata were formed were clearly and fully known, or if the different formations were always found lying in the same order, and could be readily distinguished from one another.”

Then Keil goes on to show that the latter is by no means the case. And also, according to him, the view that the fossil types are altogether different from the existing species of plants and animals is “one of the unscientific exaggerations of actual facts.” And he concludes by reminding so-called science of two facts which they cannot explain: the curse that was pronounced upon the earth, and the flood by which everything perished except Noah and his family.

I have quoted Keil rather extensively to show that he even does not belong to those that believe in long periods.

Certain it is that no honest biblical scholar can harmonize the theory of long periods with the record of creation found in Gen. 1.

But now let us return to the narrative of creation.

On the second day God created the firmament. Of this we read in Gen. 1:6-8: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

We may notice here, first of all, that also the firmament, like the light on the first day, was created by the Word of God. For we read: “and God said? And, therefore, we may conclude that, just as on the first day God said, “Let there be light and there was light,” so on the second day God said: “Let there be a firmament” and immediately upon the Word of God the firmament came into being. It certainly cannot possibly mean that the firmament came into existence by gradual development from the original chaotic waters that were everywhere. When, therefore, we read in vs. 7: “And God made the firmament” we must take this as a further explanation of vs. 6: “God made the firmament by the Word of His power.” Besides, also at the end of the account of the creation of the firmament we read: “And the evening and the morning were the second day.” And by no stretch of the imagination can these words be interpreted as referring to a long period of billions of years.

We must certainly choose, therefore, between the Bible and modern science. We cannot have both.

As to the firmament itself we can be brief. We may notice, first of all, that the text makes distinction between the waters below and the waters above the firmament. The waters below are those that belong to the earth as it then was, that is, still in its chaotic form. And the waters above are not the clouds, for they were not as yet and, besides they belong to the earth and to the waters that are below; but they refer to the waters that were in the still chaotic heavens. The firmament itself is stretched out between these waters. From our earthly viewpoint it is the blue sky as it stretches itself like a beautiful dome over the earth on a clear sunlit day. In reality it is nothing but an amazingly deep and wide ocean, in which all the heavenly bodies as well as the earth float. It separates, according to the text, the waters from the waters, which also implies that it separates the heavenly bodies and keeps them in their places and their courses in space. And in the end, when the present world will be destroyed to make room for the new heavens and earth, the firmament shall also be removed, according to Scripture, for thus we read in Rev. 6:14: “And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together.”

—H.H.