I presume that we are perfectly agreed as to the Scriptural truth,—that
our salvation in Christ Jesus is to be ascribed entirely to the Father’s
electing love. We know that it was not our fallen, ruined, sin-corrupted
will which chose Him, but His own boundless grace which chose us to life.
In other words, we know that salvation is the result of God’s election,
and we believe in the words of our Lord,—“No man can come to Me except
the Father which hath sent Me draw him.” But we have all probably felt,
at some time or other, the difficulty of reconciling such a fact with the
free offer of life to all. It is not unnatural that men should argue,
that if the elect alone are saved, to them alone must the salvation be
offered. I am not prepared to find any fault with the logical process
which leads to this conclusion, for I fully admit that to my own mind the
logic seems correct; but God’s eternal counsels rise high above all human
logic, and there are deep mysteries in His infinite mind, which we finite
thinkers are utterly unable to unravel. So it is in this instance. Our
logic breaks down, but His Word stands fast; and that Word teaches us
that God’s election does not neutralize the free offer, any more than the
Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ neutralized His Manhood. How it is we
cannot explain, any more than we can the union of two natures in the one
Person of our Blessed Saviour. But, thanks be to God, we find in
Scripture the universal offer side by side with electing love; so that,
accepting Scripture as we find it, we learn that election does not narrow
the breadth of the offer, or take away its universality. It does not
blot out the “whosoever” from the words of our Saviour. It does not
contract the glad tidings; but it leaves the Gospel perfectly open to
every man, without qualification, without limitation, and without the
necessity of any evidence of election to precede a trust in the Lord
Jesus for pardon, life, and immortality.
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II. But we must pass on to the _freeness_. For there might be an offer
made to every one, but yet on such terms that no one could accept it; and
so would this have been, had God required that there should be one act of
sinless obedience on our part, as a preliminary qualification to our
being saved in Christ Jesus. The person who is possessed of nothing is
as little able to pay one pound as a hundred; and the ruined man, dead in
sin, is as little able to produce one act of life as a hundred. So long
as he is dead he can produce nothing; for he is not only without God, but
also without strength. Oh, the depth of the riches of the tender
lovingkindness of our God! Oh, the wonders of that grace that does not
wait till the sinner can produce a something, however small that
something be; but freely, and graciously, and mercifully, and lovingly,
bestows a free, full, perfect, complete, and everlasting reconciliation
on the poor ruined sinner, even at the very time of his utter ruin! I do
not pretend to know all the various religious systems of the world; but
this I can most safely say,—that I never yet heard of anything but the
blessed Gospel of the grace of God, which proclaims reconciliation to men
without a claim, and at the very time that they are without a claim. In
every other system the order is amendment first, and forgiveness second:
but in the Gospel the order is reversed, and we find the forgiveness
first, as a free gift, while the amendment follows, as the blessed fruit
of the Spirit in a repentant and loving heart. The language of Scripture
is not what any natural moralist would have written,—“There is
forgiveness with Thee if I can but fear Thee sufficiently:” but God
reverses the order, so that those who cannot, for one moment, stand
before Him, are taught to say,—“There is forgiveness with Thee that Thou
mayest be feared.” I should like to know from those who boast of the
superior benevolence of their system, what that system does for the
helpless,—for the man whose soul is paralyzed, and whose power to rise is
gone, being deadened by his sin. I fearlessly ask the advocate of mere
natural religion, what the religion of nature can do for such an one.
His moral sense may teach him his duty, and his conscience may bring him
in guilty of not having fulfilled that duty; but what does natural
religion do to reinstate and restore him? Our Gospel proclaims to him
pardon, and our Saviour gives him life, even at the time of the deepest
ruin. But what does nature do for him? What does conscience do to
restore him? It leaves him condemned, ruined, sunk, and helpless; and
holds out to him nothing better than the hope, that when he has got out
of the pit, he may find mercy through the benevolence of God. If that
were the Gospel, it would be glad tidings to those only who have already
recovered themselves from their ruin. The Lord Jesus would be a Saviour
for only such as do not need one. It would be a promise of life to those
only who have already raised themselves from death; but it would be a
sentence of everlasting exclusion against all those who have failed as
often as we have done, and have had to learn from bitter experience the
sad lesson of their utter helplessness. But, praised be God, the whole
ransom has been paid, the whole claim of the law satisfied, the utmost
depth of ruin fully provided for; so that now there is life in the midst
of death, and full, complete, and final reconciliation presented to the
sinner, at the very time when he is lost in his fall. Did the world ever
produce an offer so free? and was there ever yet a religious system in
the world which presented such a salvation, on such terms, to the sinner?
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