http://reformedaudio.org/kuyper.html

I hope you find this of interest.

Blessings!

Greetings! How are you? Happy belated summer solstice to you, I hope all is well with an enchanting Oregonian summer in full swing. Things are quite well in SoCal for my part as I have felt able to take advantage of lack of school obligations and enjoy friends, the mountains the surf, leisure reading, etc. Things at Harbor are also going great. lots of opportunities to gain invaluable experience and knowledge, I’m really thankful. The one damper on the summer so far has been that the job search has proved painstaking and extensive beyond my wary expectations. Some economy. Thankfully I’ve finally landed one job, we’ll see what happens from here.

Anyway, it looks like you’ve got a fine sermon series going for the summer. I’ve enjoyed sifting through the material you’ve posted. This sermon in particular got me thinking again about a few questions pertaining to common grace which I have held in mind for some time.

First off, this interpretation of 1 Tim. 4:10 struck me as quite interesting. I know I have struggled in the past to reconcile this passage with the plethora of others so strongly supporting a TULIP approach to things and have usually ended up conveniently adding to the text so it reads “… God, who is the Savior of all *types* of people, especially of those who believe.” But even through my (blasphemous) additions I haven’t solved the problem because of the “especially.” Even if we take “all people” to refer to select individuals from “all types of people” God is still Savior of these individuals -and- in a special way, some subset of these individuals, namely, the class of those who believe. So either way God is Savior of people who don’t believe. Perhaps then this is the best way to reconcile this text for systematics purposes, taking it as a reference to common grace (also nice in that it can avoid a bit of blasphemy).

This however leads to what has been my question - Is common grace gotten through the work of Christ?

It seems it must be for what besides the work of Christ the Son of God could stay the hand of Almighty retributive justice even for a time from executing outstanding tasks of punishment demanded by the Lord’s very nature?

Yet on the other hand it might seem it must not be, since this temporal natural generosity on God’s part will ultimately be nullified in the case of unbelievers and glorified in the case of believers and would thus make the work of Christ (whose work we know always to be effectual) in procuring temporal common grace to have been ultimately in vain.

Also if common grace exists only as a means of preserving a context in which for the process of salvation of the elect to play out in history and for God to “show His wrath and make known His power… in order to make known the riches if His glory for vessels of mercy which He has prepared beforehand for glory,” a mere, “enduring with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,” it seems Christ’s intervening work and mediation might not be necessary for its procuring. Indeed Christ came that God may be just and the justifier of the sinner who has faith in Jesus, but perhaps God of His own kind paitient and longsuffering nature may be inclined simply to tolerate the wicked for a time, even generously giving to them without violating His perfect justice by eventually loosing the judgment that is due.

I realize that this, however, tends to obliterate the notion of common grace as actually gracious at all. And it seems that any way one looks at it, unregenerate sinners are recieving blessing they do not deserve in the unspeakably rich and many good things of this life. This notion is thoroughly biblical and therefore it seems Christ’s mediatorial work would be necessary on some level in displaying God’s attributes of temporal longsuffering endurance and patience, analogously to its necessity in displaying His eternal mercifulness and graciousness. Christ also came that God may be just and the longsufferer of and generous provider for vessels of wrath prepared beforehand for destruction.

This also goes with what you have said elswehere about common grace serving to glorify God in its own right, the many excellences with which unbeleivers are endowed shining forth the image of the Lord. Also common grace bestows intrinsic good on its recipients and is not truly nullified by final judgement but remains catalouged as true past historical enjoyment of blessing that was ill-deserved. If we were to stretch the notion a bit it might even be said to have eternal effects. If, as the Westminster Larger catechism (and the Bible) teaches, there are degrees of eternal punishment (Matt 12:20-24) if the degree to which eternal punishment will be dispensed is based to some extent on the types and heinousness of sins committed in this life, and if common grace is distributed to restrain sin, then this temporal common grace could be understood to work to effectually determine the eternal lot of a reprobate person.

O.k., this is getting kind of long, and rather incoherent. I think I’ll call it quits here, please don’t feel pressed to respond, although I would love to get your two cents on all this stuff at some point. But yes! Take care I’m looking forward to continuing reading and writing. Bye now.

David