The Pure and Good Will Of God

From my journal entry, December 8, 2017. 6:47 PM. Lifted from my personal study and understanding of applying simple logic to Scripture.

"God does not love everybody; if He did, He would love the Devil. Why does not God love the Devil? Because there is nothing in him to love; because there is nothing in him to attract the heart of God. Nor is there anything to attract God’s love in any of the fallen sons of Adam, for all of them are, by nature, "children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3). If then there is nothing in any member of the human race to attract God’s love, and if, notwithstanding, He does love some, then it necessarily follows that the cause of His love must be found in Himself, which is only another way of saying that the exercise of God’s love towards the fallen sons of men is according to His own good pleasure." ~ A.W. Pink

Doth the mere sacred covenant of matrimony stand as a guarantor that a man shall truly love his spouse with a whole and undivided heart? No, let us confess the painful truth! For I have witnessed many couples who share one earthly roof and rear their very own children, yet remain unwilling to be bound by that solemn ordinance. Likewise, there are those legally married who are not, by their own volition, singularly and wholly committed to their vows.

So too must we ask: Doth the designation of being a professing Christian imply that one loves and obeys God with a pure and undivided heart? Again, the solemn answer must be No! For I know of many professors who follow blindly after the outward form of godliness merely for the status and temporal benefits it may afford them. We are called to remember the clear distinction found in the Holy Scriptures regarding the different types of soil that receive the precious Word. The eventual fall of some who are currently within the embrace of the visible Church is not based upon the grandeur of their outward profession, but entirely upon the type of soil that they truly are within. Their inevitable failure, therefore, is not a matter of a sudden choice, or even if it shall occur, but sadly, only a matter of when it shall manifest. Because their hearts are not good soil, it is but a simple certainty of time that they shall wither and fall away from the truth.

Does God loving the world, save the world?

If the truth be that all men are drawn unto Him by virtue of His being lifted up , then why is it that wrath is yet kept against the wicked every day, and why are not all souls saved? Was He lifted up to draw the entirety of mankind unto His bosom, only to then reject them in the final reckoning, commanding them to depart from Him and hurling their souls into that everlasting fire reserved for the devil and his miserable angels? 

If the answer to the great paradox be Nay—if the drawing is not an irresistible force upon every soul—then let us consider why the declaration, "God so loved the world," is often given a greater prominence than the truth that "whosoever believing shall be saved." We must maintain this critical distinction: God loving the world doth not, and never shall, in any wise rescue the world, nor even save a single, solitary soul. That divine affection is the glorious source and font of salvation, but it is not the act itself! The saving power is only fully manifest when God, in His sovereignty, draws a man to His own Son by the immediate, quickening work of the Holy Ghost. It is God who must open the man's blind eyes to see, and his deaf ears to hear! He alone doth grant the grace to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ within that regenerated heart—this is the saving act! Thus, the love is the eternal motive; but the sovereign grace is the necessary power that makes belief possible and salvation certain for the elect.

Question : If a soul, in its earthly pride, cannot conjure for itself even one single minute of life-giving oxygen wherewith to sustain its fleeting breath—a provision entirely dependent upon the Divine Hand —then what delusion or vanity persuades that soul that there exists anything whatsoever within its wretched being that could merit salvation from the Holy God, apart from His sovereign, free, and unmerited Will? 

Answer : Nay! The creature, being utterly helpless to sustain its own body in this temporal life, possesses nothing of worth to contribute to the salvation of its eternal soul. This truth must humble every heart: Redemption belongs wholly and entirely to the Lord.

Question : Every soul that hath faithfully read the Holy Scriptures doth believe the dreadful truth: that "FOR ALL HAVE SINNED" and that "ALL ARE CONCLUDED TO BE UNDER SIN." This truth is a heavy chain upon all mankind! Now, let us imagine, for the sake of serious reflection, that the Almighty God were to leave the matter precisely at this point, abandoning man entirely to his own corrupt disposition. We then ask: Is it within the realm of sound reason to believe that even a single, solitary person would suddenly awaken to his doomed plight and spontaneously generate within himself the will to seek for salvation? Or, I put this before you: Is the Scripture lying when it declares in the Fourteenth Psalm that the Lord looked down from heaven and beheld none that doeth good to seek after God, and that ALL have gone aside, every one to his own ruinous way?

Answer : Nay! The Word of God cannot lie! The truth is this: Man is not merely sick, but spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. Just as the corpse cannot seek the breath of life, so the sinner cannot seek the Author of Life. If any soul is saved, it is entirely because the Sovereign Lord, in His unmerited mercy, first sought out that soul.

Question : Is it the poor, wandering sheep that determines to return and seek its Shepherd ? Or is it indeed the Good Shepherd Himself who takes pity upon His lost possession and sets forth to seek and rescue the one that is lost? Doth the Shepherd waste His precious time in searching for goats—the unrepentant and the hardened? And can the goat, by its very nature, ever possess the inclination or the will to seek out the saving presence of the Shepherd? 

Answer : Nay! The Scriptures and the experience of true conversion attest that salvation is entirely of the Lord. The sheep is utterly incapable of returning until the Shepherd, by His own Sovereign Hand, finds it, cleanses it, and carries it home rejoicing.

God is evil?

Let this truth be eternally settled in the heart: Whatever proceeding God doth undertake is eternally and completely good, whether it appears to be for or to be against the convenience of man. The term "evil," by man's limited and prideful definition, is ever directed solely toward the affairs of the creature, a word used to describe anything unfavorable, inconvenient, or set against his own temporal favor and safety. In God's own term, however, true evil is manifest when man doth bypass the Eternal One, setting up himself as his own small deity, choosing all that which pleases his own corrupted will. 

It is a dreadful vanity when man assumes that God hath no right to inconvenience him or to allow him to suffer harm, yet this same fallen creature hath no trouble acknowledging that God was pleased to bruise His own Son with evil upon the Cross, using that wicked instrument to effect eternal salvation. Consider then the great and unassailable events of history, where God used what man calls "evil" as His righteous instrument: He was pleased to destroy the whole of creation with a terrible flood, sparing only eight souls, thereby establishing His own covenant. He destroyed the pursuing Egyptian army in the bitter waters of the sea, sparing His chosen Israel, demonstrating His mighty hand of deliverance. He destroyed the nations that lived in abundant security, favoring Israel over them and giving them their promised land for an inheritance. In all these fearsome acts, the hand of God wrought what was destructive to the wicked, yet proved to be the highest good for the righteous and the fullest display of His own majestic Glory!

Isaiah 45:5-7 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Yet, behold the carnal Christian, who proclaims loudly that God holds sovereign rule and supreme choice, but instantly forfeits that Divine Goodness for evil the moment harm or inconvenience is intended toward man. This sort of man cannot comprehend an "unfair" God—a God who would elect one person over another, even as He preferred Jacob over Esau while they were yet in the womb, having done neither good nor evil (Romans 9:11-13). However, this same carnal heart doth not object when God casts the unrepentant wicked into hell. Neither doth he mind that God sent Satan no Savior for his ancient rebellion. Why? Because the heart deludes itself into believing that God was gracious to send His Son for him because he is merely of a lesser evil than the arch-fiend. Nothing, I assure you, can be further from the glorious, dreadful truth! The depravity of man is so profound that his salvation is no less a miracle of sheer, unmerited election than the condemnation of that fallen angel.

It is therefore none other than dangerous and damnable pride to boast that you were saved because you chose to believe God by virtue of your own sovereign choice. Likewise, it is prideful to assume your neighbor was justly damned because he did not so choose, thereby making yourself better than every soul who remains in unbelief! In reality, the power to believe was nothing but unmerited mercy that reached down and enabled your dead heart to embrace the Saviour! We must lay aside all earthly judgment and bow before the truth: God raising up the Adversary, Satan, and allowing his wretched fall was ultimately good in His sight. God raising up the tyrant Pharaoh to display His power and destroy that heathen nation was good in His sight . Just so, God raising up His own Son, Christ Jesus, and allowing Him to suffer the bitterness of death was the highest good in His sight. God hath no respect whatsoever for the opinion or the complaint of fallen man, and rightfully so! Every single purpose of God, however cruel or evil it may appear to the limited, earthly gaze of man, if it be for the unfolding of His own eternal glory, is both perfectly good and purely righteous.

Let every soul be instructed in this fundamental truth: Everything that God doth is both good and absolutely fair! The chosen vessels are the recipients of His boundless, unmerited mercy, and the rebellious receive the full measure of His perfect justice. I have heard, with deep spiritual alarm, certain men of God who do ignorantly demand that the Almighty should merely be "fair." Yet, I declare that God cannot possibly be singularly fair apart from being perfectly just! His fairness is His justice; and His justice demands the meting out of the sentence. I ask the proud heart to consider: What sentence is there left for the criminal who stands before the Holy God, having refused the sheltering blood of Christ, remaining outside of His redemption? There is but one sentence remaining, and that sentence is eternal, righteous condemnation.

Fairness and justice would send the entire world to hell. His mercy is what separated those whom he chose to be His.