All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.
~ John Calvin
Wedgewords
All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.
~ John Calvin
One of Calvin’s high points. Let me ask you a question. And there is no hook hidden in this bait. We know that we deserve nothing from God, and salvation is a free gift offered to all. But what do we deserve within the covenant once the gift has been received? I had a discussion with a close friend who thinks she does not deserve to be protected and provided for by her husband because God does not owe us anything. I am tempted to tell her that in Christ, God owes us a great deal. Whatever He has promised in the new covenant. None of the Lord’s prayer is a request from God, they are all telling Him what he has promised to do and affirming His kingly authority to do so. Does she have the right to tell her husband to love her as Christ loves the Church? Or should she sit back and see her husband as God’s gift and quietly pray for him to change?
I don’t know about “deserve,” but you can ask God to be true to His promises.
Mark,
The comparison you’re making is between incommensurate relations. God owes us nothing, not even by way of “condign merit”, though it is true that He has revealed Himself as perfect love, and wants us to be audacious in asking of Him, the Giver of all good things.
But the marriage relation is between two creatures, not between God and man; and thus the canon of justice measures it. The husband, in justice, owes the wife certain things; love is one of them, and she can, in whatever fashion is appropriate, remind him of that if she thinks such an open reminder is likely to produce the intended effect; that is a matter for prudence, of course. With respect to her prayer, she can plead with God that her husband will change, but she has no actual claim of justice upon God; no creature really ever does. In acknowledging this, however, on should always point out that God, being who He is, chooses to relate to us mercifully; so it is not as though we, having no claims of justice upon God, are in a precarious situation. The fullness of God’s mercy is our Advocate, and in Him we can bring our requests boldly before the Throne.
peace
P
Guys,
Lets think about this in light of this verse:
John 6:33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Couldn’t we say that God indeed has and does continue from moment to moment to uphold is “responsibility” as Creator and preserver of His creation and that the incarnation of the Son is His declaration of this very fact, and that it is this that shows our sin to be the most wicked? That our obligations to one another flow from the command that we imitate our heavenly Father?
Now if this is true and we bring this down to the covenantal or ecclesiastical level we have The Father’s promise to the Son and by extension to all whom, upon condition of faith, are in union with the Son. So, that in the case of the wife needing a husband to imitate Christ she needs that husband to perform the duty that Christ himself has freely and graciously pledged to do for His church. And because Christ is indeed faithful therefore the husband “owes” this imitation of Christ to his wife.
And, also what makes our sin even greater is that God has gone beyond just mere Creator to creature preservation but He continues to love and to be good to those that hate Him and have rejected the clearest testimony of His goodness. i.e. the giving of the bread from heaven for the life of the world, the incarnate Son himself.
Just thinking out loud.
Blessings,
Terry
Thank you for all the responses. Very helpful. I was thinking along some of those lines as well. Since we bear the image of God, a deficit of angels, I believe God is jealous for His own image to be unmarred in us. Those who reject His grace also reject His image and become grotesquely inhuman within the fires of Gehenna.
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