The whole plan from first to last is divine. The world is full of human
plans, some of which are successful and some total failures. One man
contrives one thing and one another, but God alone planned the great
salvation. It was not in the power of ruined nature to restore itself,
so in boundless mercy and in His own divine omnipotence He provided a
plan of restoration. Thus the purpose is divine, His own eternal purpose
before the world was; the mode of reconciliation is divine, the release
of the sinner through the imputation of sin to the sin-bearer. The
propitiation was divine, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in His blood.” {20a} The imputation of righteousness is
divine, “For God hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” {20b}
The work of sanctification is divine, “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who
of God is made unto us . . . sanctification;” {20c} and the final
gathering of God’s elect will be divine for “all that are in the graves
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” {20d}
It is most important to bear this well in mind, for it places the subject
beyond the sphere of human speculation. If a man starts a new system of
philosophy, or if people advocate any particular system in politics, we
are perfectly at liberty to criticise it. What one man does, another man
may criticise. But it is a very different thing with the salvation of
God. Once admit that it is a divine plan, arranged in divine wisdom and
carried out in divine power, and it is then manifestly beyond the reach
of human intellect. There may be things in it which seem to us very
mysterious; but what else can we expect when the infinite and divine
arrangements of God are subjected to the speculations of the finite mind
of man? If the whole salvation were of such a character as to present no
points of difficulty to the human inquirer, we might almost doubt its
divinity, and believe that as it is within the range of man’s mind, so it
had its origin in man’s ingenuity. But when we see it beyond the reach
of man, then we are taught by our own inability to fathom it, to regard
it as a plan above ourselves, for the simple reason that it is divine.