Grace and Free Will
CHAPTER 38.
WE WOULD NOT LOVE GOD UNLESS HE FIRST LOVED US.
THE APOSTLES CHOSE CHRIST BECAUSE THEY WERE CHOSEN; THEY WERE NOT CHOSEN BECAUSE THEY CHOSE CHRIST
Let no one, then, deceive you, my brethren, for we should not love God unless He first loved us. John again gives us the plainest proof of this when he says, “We love Him because He first loved us.”1Joh 4.19 Grace makes us lovers of the law; but the law itself, without grace, makes us nothing but breakers of the law. And nothing else than this is shown us by the words of our Lord when He says to His disciples, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.”Joh 15.16 For if we first loved Him, in order that by this merit He might love us, then we first chose Him that we might deserve to be chosen by Him. He, however, who is the Truth says otherwise, and flatly contradicts this vain conceit of men. “You have not chosen me,” He says. If therefore you have not chosen me, undoubtedly you have not loved me (for how could they choose one whom they did not love?). “But I,” He says, “have chosen you.” And then could they possibly help choosing Him afterwards, and preferring Him to all the blessings of this world? But it was because they had been chosen, that they chose Him; not because they chose Him, that they were chosen. There could be no merit in men’s choice of Christ, if it were not that God’s grace was prevenient13 in His choosing them. This is why the Apostle Paul pronounces this benediction in the Thessalonians: “The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men.”1Thes 3.12 He gave us this benediction to love one another, who had also given us a law that we should love each other. Then in another passage addressed to the same church, seeing that there now existed in some of its members the disposition which he wished them to cultivate, he says, “We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all abounds toward each other.”2Thes 1.3 This he said lest they should boast of the great good which they were enjoying from God, as if they had it of their own mere selves.
This is the purport of his words: ‘Because your faith has so great a growth, and the love of every one of you all toward each other so greatly abounds, we ought to thank God concerning you, but not to praise you, as if you possessed these gifts of yourselves.’