04.28. LESSON 28

LESSON 28 For morally insolvent and ruined men to accept God’s mercy at Sinai, or at Calvary, does not exhaust mercy for them, does not repay him, and certainly does not make him their debtor. In profound gratitude for his compassion, they must continue to avail themselves of his unwasting goodness and aid so that they may more and more grow into meek, consecrated, joyous servants, well knowing however that they must ever remain unmeriting, yea, unprofitable, servants.

God’s religion to redeem fallen humanity begins, on the human level, with the universal failure and wreck of humanity. Any religion that does not begin here is not from God, and therefore has no power to save men from either past sins or from present and future sinning. Christianity goes to the seat of human malady, and, according to God’s infinite love, knowledge, wisdom, grace and power is faultlessly adapted to reconcile estranged men to God, and to woo and to persuade them to take his full, super-human treatment for the cleansing, healing, and making them holy (whole) again. Is not a correct diagnosis necessary for the successful treatment of any disease? What other religion ever produced a Paul? The Hardening of Pharaoh In Romans 1:1-32, it is taught that God progressively gives men up to the hardening effect of sin as they progressively give him up for idolatry, thus punishing sin with more sin. Romans 9:17, "For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, for this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might be published abroad in all the earth," focuses this divine method on Pharaoh, whom God made king of Egypt, sustained under the plagues, and abandoned to the hardening effect of his persistent, even with ever increasing, light, willing, rebellious sinning against God. God also dealt, centuries later, with the Jewish nation after this fashion: "They have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations: I will also choose their delusions...; because when I called, none did answer" (Isaiah 66:3-4). Nor has he changed his method in our Christian age: "They received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie... who... had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).

Because God always has just cause and adequate reason for everything he does, he never arbitrarily hardens any man. But by the ordinary, natural workings of his moral law in men who first harden themselves by defying him, lie, somewhat as civil law may further harden criminals, further hardens men who have already committed "a sin unto death," for which prayer avails not (1 John 5:16).

Exodus shows that Pharaoh first questioned God’s authority, and that his heart was "stubborn;" then, the words, "Pharaoh hardened his heart," are used before it is said that "Jehovah hardened his heart." When such men as Pharaoh, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, et al, harden themselves, he, who "overrules men whom he cannot rule," weaves them, contrary to their purposes and consciousness, into his overall world government, and makes them, so to speak, passively glorify him. For this reason, God calls Nebuchadnezzar his "servant" (Jeremiah 25:9), and Cyrus his "shepherd" (Isaiah 44:28). From such scriptures as 1 Samuel 4:8; 1 Samuel 6:6 (this last verse shows that the Philistines knew that Pharaoh hardened his own heart), and 1 Samuel 17:46, we learn that God’s name was known in Canaan. And truly his name, where the Bible is known, is "published abroad in all the earth" today. God needed a Pharaoh to demonstrate his own character, and to warn the world of the demoralizing effect of sinning against light; and he knew where to find him. "The Most High ruleth over the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will" (Daniel 4:32).

Pharaoh is a divinely forged key with which Paul unlocks God’s character and the secrets of his government of the world; he is an immortal monument to the power and works of God. History is really made over the heads of human history makers—"the supernatural in the natural." Are not Caiaphas, Judas, and Pilate examples of God’s using wicked men, even to give us our Savior? All this, and more, supports Paul’s conclusion: "So then he hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth."

Human Accountability

Paul has just shown that God neither broke his word to Abraham, nor dealt arbitrarily with Pharaoh. This establishes God’s prerogative of choice and his personal righteousness. Now he brings up the correlative, inevitable question of man’s accountability. "Thou wilt say then to me, why doth he still find fault? For who withstandeth his will?" Paul, the only apostle academically equipped to discuss this highly abstruse, speculative, impracticable subject, absolutely declines all further discussion and uncompromisingly denounces the attitude of the questioner: "Nay but, 0 man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why didst thou make me thus?"

Considering what Paul has already said in Romans, I think, he is in effect saying: "Remember, man, who you are; you belong to a proscribed race of dead creatures who receive from Adam an infected moral nature that in time (age of accountability) invariably leads to actual, personal sins just as you receive from Adam an infected body that in time invariably leads to death; you are a sinner by both nature and practice, a creature "dead through your trespasses and sins," with no rights whatsoever before God, and should instead of "talking back" to him, be humbly, gratefully receiving any favor his mercy bestows."

Paul has learned the lesson God in kindness tried to teach the race symbolically by the tree of forbidden knowledge in Eden—the ineffable difference between Creator and creature. The lesson is exceedingly hard for both angels and men to learn. Overvaulting, creatural pride cost the former heavenly and the latter earthly paradise. "Secret (unrevealed) things belong to Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 29:29), and men who aspire to pry into them are drawing too nigh unto the burning bush (Exodus 3:5). Without a metaphysical discussion of the relationship between the divine and the human will, the Bible everywhere takes for granted that men, at least before they harden their hearts, are free to accept or reject God’s mercy; and regardless of how they talk, men know they are free to choose. Had theologians never eaten of this forbidden tree, Christendom had been spared a needless, baffling, disastrous controversy.

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