There are many things about God that we cannot explain. In his wisdom he has left certain aspects of his nature and will hidden to our understanding. We do not pry into God’s hidden nature. This is where our intellect does not belong; we walk by faith in God’s promises. Those who pry into the mysteries of God do so to their own loss, invariably robbing themselves of God’s grace. The grace of God is woven through the entire being of God, coloring every facet of the Godhead. Thus, seeking to explain the mystery of God requires simplifying God and his grace. To simplify his grace, his mysterious love for those who hate him, is to make this wonderfully inconceivable treasure into something really very ordinary. This is how the devil would take away the comfort of our justification.

We see from history how the devil uses the human intellect to pry into the mystery of God and undermine his salvation. In 1877 C.F.W. Walther presented six theses on the doctrine of election of grace. Opposition from some arose against these theses, expressed mainly by F.A. Schmidt, H.A. Allwardt, and F.W. Stellhorn. They stressed that God’s election is “in view of faith.” We will see how this is a result of their attempt to make the mystery of God fi t the human intellect, and how in so doing they robbed themselves of the comfort that God gives in the doctrine of election.

If election is in view of faith, then God in eternity determined to save those whom he saw would believe. This logically explains why God has saved some but not others. However, the phrase “in view of faith” makes God’s grace conditional upon our faith. Thus our salvation is no longer built on the solid rock of Christ, but on the shifting sand of faith. As it wavers, so would our salvation. By making grace solely dependent on the merit of Christ, God has given us an unwavering fortress in which faith may take refuge.

Furthermore, if God determined to save only those who would believe, then God can not be serious when he says that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” They deny that this promise of God is meant for whoever is in the world. In making God’s grace conditional upon faith and exclusive to believers, they take away the comfort that the gospel has for the troubled sinner. They lead the sinner to his faith as assurance of his salvation. How can a troubled sinner ever be sure of his faith? This is asking a person who sees nothing but his sin and God’s anger to fi nd something within himself that makes him worthy of God’s love. If a troubled sinner could do this, he would not be a troubled sinner.

In the gospel, God gives us a priceless comfort to give to such a soul. He tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” God’s salvation is here earnestly promised to all people. God points us to Calvary, where all the sins of all people were laid upon Christ. So now we can say to the troubled sinner, “Forget your faith and look to the cross. If you are part of the world, then your sins also died with Christ. Christ has taken your sins and offers you instead his righteousness.” Here is a wonderful and mysterious act. Christ has taken the fi lth of the world, but not as a thief; as payment he offers the world his righteousness. This transaction is not conditional upon anything good within us. The only condition is that you must have sin. Therefore, through Adam this transaction is objectively valid for all people. One question remains: Why would God do this? Here is where we must walk by faith alone, blind to the objections of our intellect. By faith we understand that God could not let the sinner die, so he had to redeem us. We accept that God elected in eternity those to whom he would give faith to receive his gift of redemption. To make this logical is to make God human, and a God with human qualities can give nothing that we can not give ourselves. But our comfort comes from a mysterious God, who has taken our sins to the cross and given us a robe of righteousness in their place. Our salvation depends on this mysterious God.

Jon Loescher is a SPaM Junior

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