What was the reason for it? The reason was in God’s mind, an inscrutable
reason which we do not know, and which if we knew probably we could not
understand. Had you and I been put upon the choice of which should have
been spared, I do think it probable we should have chosen that fallen
angels should have been saved. Are they not the brightest? Have they not
the greatest mental strength? If they had been redeemed, would it not have
glorified God more, as we judge, than the salvation of worms like
ourselves? Those bright beings– Lucifer, son of the morning, and those
stars that walked in his train– if they had been washed in His redeeming
blood, if they had been saved by sovereign mercy, what a song would they
have lifted up to the Most High and everlasting God!
But God, who doeth as He wills with His own, and giveth no account of His
matters, but who deals with His creatures as the potter deals with his
clay, took not upon Him the nature of angels, but took upon Him the seed of
Abraham, and chose men to be the vessels of His mercy. This fact we know,
but where is its reason? certainly not in man. “No for your sakes do I
this. O house of Israel, be ashamed and be confounded for your own ways.”
Here, very few men object. We notice that if we talk about the election of
men and the non-election of fallen angels, there is not a cavil for a
moment. Every man approves of Calvinism till he feels that he is the loser
by it; but when it begins to touch his own bone and his own flesh then he
kicks against it. Come, then, we must go further. The only reason why one
man is saved, and not another, lies not, in any sense, in the man saved,
but in God’s bosom. The reason why this day the gospel is preached to you
and not the heathen far away, is not because, as a race, we are superior to
the heathen; it is not because we deserve more at God’s hands; His choice
of Britain, in the election of outward privilege, is not caused by the
excellency of the British nation, but entirely because of His own mercy and
His own love. There is not reason in us why we should have the gospel
preached to us more than any other nation. Today, some of us have received
the gospel, and have been changed by it, and have become the heirs of light
and immorality, whereas others are left still to be the heirs of wrath. But
there is no reason in us why we should have been taken and others left.
“There was nothing in us to merit esteem,
Or give the Creator delight.
‘Twas ‘Even so, Father!’ we ever must sing,
Because it seem’d good in thy sight.”
And now, let us review this doctrine at length. We are taught in Holy
Scripture that, long before this world was made, God foreknew and foresaw
all the creatures He intended to fashion; and there and then foreseeing
that the human race would fall into sin, and deserve His anger, determined,
in His own sovereign mind, that an immense portion of the human race should
be His children, and should be brought to Heaven. As to the rest, He left
them to their own deserts. to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, to
scatter crime and inherit punishment.
Now, in the great decree of election, the only reason why God selected the
vessels of mercy must have been because He would do it. There was nothing
in any one of them which caused God to choose them. We all were alike, all
lost, all ruined by the fall; all without the slightest claim upon His
mercy; all, in fact, deserving His utmost vengeance. His choice of any one,
and His choice of all His people, are causeless, so far as anything in them
was concerned. It was the effect of His sovereign will, and of nothing
which they did, could do, or even would do; for thus saith the text: “Not
for your sakes do I this, O house of Israel!”
As for the fruit of our election, in due time Christ came into this world,
and purchased with His blood all those whom the Father hath chosen. Now
come ye to the cross of Christ; bring this doctrine with you, and remember
that the only reason why Christ gave up His life to be a ransom for His
sheep was because He loved His people, but there was nothing in His people
that made Him die for them. I was thinking as I came here this morning, if
any man should imagine that the love of God to us was caused by anything in
us, it would be as if a man should look into a well to find the springs of
the ocean, or dig into an anthill to find an Alp. The love of God is so
immense, so boundless and so infinite, that you cannot conceive for a
moment that it could have been caused by anything in us. The little good
that is in us–the no good that is in us–for there is none, could not have
caused the boundless, bottomless, shoreless, summitless love which God
manifests to His people.
Stand at the foot of the cross, ye merit- mongers, ye that delight in your
own works; and answer this question: Do you think that the Lord of life and
glory could have been brought down from Heaven, could have been fashioned
like a man, and have been led to die through any merit of yours? Shall
these sacred veins be opened with any lancet less sharp than His own
infinite love? Do you conceive that your poor merits, such as they are,
could be so efficacious as to nail the Redeemer to the tree, and make Him
bend His shoulders beneath the enormous load of the world’s guilt? You
cannot imagine it. The consequence is so great, compared with what you
suppose to be the case, that your logic fails in a moment. You may conceive
that a coral insect rears a rock by its multitude, and by its many years of
working; but you cannot conceive that all the accumulated merits of
manhood, if there were such things, could have brought the Eternal from the
throne of His majesty, and bowed Him to the death of the cross: that is a
thing as clearly impossible to any thoughtful mind, as impossibility can
be. No; from the cross comes the cry–”Not for your sakes do I this, O
house of Israel.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
