"Those attributes which God accounts his greatest riches and greatest glory, Rom. 9:23, even his mercy and free grace, which he intends most to exalt, never saw light till now; the doctrine of salvation by Christ being the stage, wherein only it is represented, and elsewhere it is not to be seen, and upon it acts the greatest part, for all passages in it tend to this, to shew, as Eph. 2:5, that 'by grace we are saved;' and therefore, 1 Peter 2:10, the whole work of salvation is called 'mercy,' all God's ways to his people are mercy, Ps. 25:10, the whole plot and frame of it is made of mercy, and therefore the doctrine of the gospel is called grace, Titus 2:10, 11. Mercy manageth the plot, gives all other attributes, as it were, their parts to act; mercy enters in at the beginning, acts the prologue in election; and, giving Christ, continues every part of it, sets all a-work, ends the whole in glory…"
Thomas Goodwin: The Glory of the Gospel, Sermon 1
Thus the gospel promise is to as many as who believe it, even the elect. We don't need to know who is or is not elect in order to say that.
ReplyDeleteRomans 9: 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much LONGSUFFERING vessels of wrath prepared for destruction
Romans 2: 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
I Peter 2: 8 and “A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were ordained to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of DARKNESS into his marvelous light
http://markmcculley.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/engelsma-on-psalm-73/
Mark Jones----But what of Tchividjian's claim that these false teachers assume "that the law (in all of its uses) [has] the power to produce what it demands"? Would anyone argue such nonsense? Well, I do know of some ministers - in fact, even some who were responsible for crafting the Westminster Confession of Faith - who have argued that after Adam's fall, "God therefore set forth a copy of his law in his word, which is the means of sanctifying us; and sanctification itself is but a writing of that law in the heart" (Thomas Goodwin). Likewise, Anthony Burgess argued that God's commands not only inform us of our duty, but are also "practical and operative means appointed by God, to work, at least in some degree, that which is commanded." Samuel Rutherford said essentially the same thing in his disputes against the antinomians because they denied that the law was a true instrument of sanctification. http://www.reformation21.org/articles/my-offer-to-publicly-debate.php#sthash.df843RmU.zsaeA14J.dpuf
ReplyDelete