5. Unsearchable Grace
5
Unsearchable Grace1
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
—Romans 11:33
Paul shows that God has committed all to unbelief, that He might have mercy on all (Rom. 11:32). He shows a reason why the Lord was pleased to cast off His ancient people for a time and to ingraft the Gentiles, the wild olive, in their place in saying, “O the depth!” (Rom. 11:32). He cannot find any reason other than the bottomless and unsearchable freedom of grace and free dispensation to some people and persons, and not to others. I confess it would not be such depth if the Lord from eternity had equally loved all to salvation, but, because of the creature’s running and willing or his not-running and not-willing, had later been urged by wiser and riper thoughts and a consequent will to save or not save, as men and angels in the high and indifferent court of their free will shall think good. In this case there would be no other depth than is in earthly judges, who reward well-doers and punish ill-doers, or in a lord of a vineyard who gives wages to him that labors and no wages to him that stands idle and does nothing.
This would be the law of nature, of nations, and no depth; it would be God rewarding men according to their works and showing mercy to those who cooperate with and improve well the benefit of God’s antecedent will and not showing mercy to those who do not cooperate with His will, but out of the absoluteness of indifferent freewill fail to make use of the benefit of God’s will.2 But the great and unsearchable depth is the way in which God should so carry on the great designs of the declaration of the glory of pardoning mercy and punishing justice, as there should be some persons and nations who are chosen and must obey the gospel and be called, without any respect to works, but of grace (Rom. 11:5–7; Rom. 9:11), as He did with the Jews first, and not the Gentiles, as of old; and now the Gentiles are taken into Christ and the Jews are cast off; and again,…both Jews and Gentiles…. Now, in both these,
1. God is free in His grace.
2. He is just in His judgments, though He neither calls nor chooses according to works.
3. The damned creature is most guilty.
4. The Lord is both justly severe and graciously merciful.
5. None have cause to complain or quarrel with God, and yet God might have carried out the matter an entirely different way.
6. The head cause of this various administration, with nations and persons, is the deep, high, sovereign, innocent, holy, independent will of the Great Potter and Former of all things, who has mercy on whom He will and hardens whom He will; and this is the depth without a bottom.
No creatures—angels or men—can behave in this way to their fellow creatures and still be free, just, holy, wise, etc., but one creature can deal with his fellow creature according to the rules and roadway of an antecedent and consequent will, as a king may deal with his people, a governor with those he governs, a father with his children, a commander with his soldiers, a lord of a vineyard with his hired servants. All these may order their goodness, mercy, rewards, and punishments in a way that is befitting the use, industry, and improvement of free will or the rebellion, injustice, wickedness, and slothfulness of their underlings. But no master or lord can call laborers to his vineyard and exhort, obtest,3 beseech them all to labor, and promise them hire and yet keep from the greatest part of them the power of freely stirring their arms or legs to labor and suspend his acting on them so that they shall willingly be carried on to willful disobedience and be the passive objects of his revenging justice, according to the lord’s determinate counsel, because he willed out of his absolute sovereignty to deal this way with some and deal a just contrary way with the least part of the laborers because he purposed to declare the glory of his grace on them. Either there is an unsearchable depth here, or Paul knew nothing.
1. Christ Dying, 543–45.
2. Rutherford uses irony in referring to Arminian terms here.
3. obtest: testify to or supplicate