Notes, Chapter 2

  1  Romans 8:28

  2  If this summary of the gospel would be helpful in your own relationships with others, we have printed it in an attractive tract format entitled "Quest for Joy" available from Desiring God Ministries, 720 13th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MM 55415; phone: 612 338-7653; fax: 612 338-7656; Email: dgministry@aol.com.

  3  For the biblical support against anihilationism and in support of hell as eternal conscious torment see John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), chapter four.

  4  Among evangelicals the reputation of George MacDonald's works has promoted this notion of hell as remedial and not eternal. For example, Mac Donald's sermon called "Justice" in Creation in Christ (ed. Rolland Hein [Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976], pp. 63-81) argues vehemently against the orthodox view of hell:

Mind I am not saying it is not right to punish [wicked people]; I am saying that justice is not, never can be, satisfied by suffering-nay, cannot have any satisfaction in or from suffering.... Such justice as Dante's keeps wickedness alive in its most terrible forms. The life of God goes forth to inform, or at least give a home to, victorious evil. Is He not defeated every time that one of these lost souls defies Him? God is triumphantly defeated, I say, throughout the hell of his vengeance. Although against evil, it is but the vain and wasted cruelty of a tyrant.... Punishment is for the sake of amendment and atonement. God is bound by His love to punish sin in order to deliver His creature: He is bound by his justice to destroy sin in His creation. (pp. 71-72)

J. I. Packer discusses the contemporary forms of this view on "Good Pagans and God's Kingdom," Christianity Today (January 17, 1986, pp. 22-25).

  5  "The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners," The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol. I (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), p. 669.

  6  I want to express gratitude and deep admiration for Edward John Carnell's penetrating analysis of "the judicial sentiment" and its relation to the existence of God. The judicial sentiment is the moral faculty that is duly offended when we are mistreated. Here is a taste of his words from the profound and beautiful book Christian Commitment (New York: Macmillan, 1957):

Whereas conscience accuses the self the judicial sentiment accuses others. The direction of accusation is the important thing. Conscience monitors one's own moral conduct, while the judicial sentiment monitors the moral conduct of others.

Furthermore, conscience is subject to social and cultural conditioning, whereas the judicial sentiment is not. All normal men, past, present, and future, experience an aroused judicial sentiment whenever they are personally mistreated. (p. 110)

An aroused judicial sentiment is merely heaven's warning that the image of God is being outraged. Cultural conditioning may alter the direction of the judicial sentiment, but it does not alter the faculty itself (p. 112) .

The voice of the judicial sentiment is the voice of God (p. 136) .

  7  Propitiation is a rare word today. It has been replaced in many translations with more common words (expiation, atoning sacrifice). I keep it, in order to stress the original meaning, namely, that what Christ did by dying on the cross for sinners was to appease the wrath of God against sinners. By requiring of his Son such humiliation and suffering for the sake of God's glory, he openly demonstrated that he does not sweep sin under the rug. All contempt for his glory is duly punished, either on the cross, where the wrath of God is propitiated for those who believe, or in hell, where the wrath of God is poured out on those who don't.

  8  The verb form of "conversion" (convert) is used in the Authorized Version of the New Testament in Matthew 13:15 (= Mark 4:12 = John 12:40 = Acts 28:27), Matthew 18:3, Acts 3:19, Luke 22:32, and James 5:19-20.

  9  Regeneration is a big word for the new birth. It occurs in Greek (palingenesia) only once in the New Testament (Titus 3:5) in reference to the new birth of person (also once in reference to the rebirth of the creation in the age to come, Matthew 19:28).

  10 "In conversion man is active, and it wholly consists in his act; but in regeneration the Spirit of God is the only active cause."  Samuel Hopkins, "Regeneration and Conversion," in Introduction to Puritan Theology (ed. Edward Hindson [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976], p.180). I recommend this entire essay as an excellent statement on the relationship between regeneration (new birth) and conversion (repentance and faith).

  11 This is a great stumbling block for many people-to assert that we are responsible to do what we are morally unable to do. The primary reason for asserting it is not that it springs obviously from our normal use of reason, but that the Bible so plainly teaches it. It may help, however, to consider that the inability we speak of is not owing to a physical handicap, but to moral corruption. Our inability to believe is not the result of a physically damaged brain but of a morally perverted will. Physical inability would remove accountability. Moral inability does not. We cannot come to the light because our corrupt and arrogant nature hates the light. So when someone does come to the light  "it is clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought by God" (John 3:21 ). The best treatment of this difficult subject I know of is Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of the Will, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957, original 1754, also contained in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1).

  12 The Bible requires that we speak of God's "call" in at least two distinct senses. One call is the general or external call that goes out in the preaching of the gospel. Everyone who hears a gospel message or reads the Bible is called in this sense. But God calls in another sense to some who hear the gospel. This is God's internal or effectual call. It changes a person's heart so that faith is secured. It is like the call, "Let there be light!" or, "Lazarus, come forth!" It creates what it demands. The key passage that demands this distinction is 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, "We preach Christ crucified [general call], a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called [effectual call] both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God .  " Among the generally called there is a group who are "called" in such a way that they are enabled to esteem the gospel as wisdom and power. The change caused by the effectual call is none other than the change of regeneration.

  13 The words for "grace" and "faith" are feminine in the original Greek. The word for "this" is neuter. Some have used this lack of agreement to say that the gift here is not faith. But this ignores the implication of verse 5: "Even when you were dead!" Grace is grace because it saved us even when we were dead. But it saves "through faith." How does it save the dead through faith? By awakening the dead into the life of faith. That is why faith is a gift in Ephesians 2:5-8. "This" refers to the whole event of salvation by grace through faith, and therefore does include faith as a gift. (Cf. Acts 18: 2 7, "When he arrived he greatly helped those who through grace had believed.")

  14 Some have tried to argue that Romans 9 has nothing to do with individuals and their eternal destiny. But I have tried in turn to show that this is precisely what Paul has in mind because the problem he is wrestling with in this chapter is how individual Jews within God's chosen people Israel can be accursed and God's Word still stand. See Romans 9:3-6. I wrote a whole book to demonstrate this interpretation: The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993).

  15 For a more extended treatment of the conditions of salvation and how they all resolve into faith and love see John Piper, The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in Future Grace, (Sisters OR: Multnomah Books, 1995), chapters nineteen and twenty, especially pp. 255-259.

  16 There is an interpretation that construes the treasure to be Israel, the field to be the world, and the man who sells all he has to buy the field to be Christ. The argument goes like this:

(a) The field is the world because the field in the parable of the weeds is the world (Matthew 13:38)

(b) the treasure is Israel because in Exodus 19:5 Israel is called God's peculiar treasure;

(c) Christ is never for sale, nor can salvation be bought.

I would construe the parable in the traditional way: The point is that the kingdom is more valuable than anything we could possibly own, and that we should be willing to joyfully give up everything to attain it. My argument goes like this:

(a) The kingdom is only like a man who sells all to buy a field with a treasure in it. Parables should not be pressed so hard that every word in them corresponds precisely to some particular part of reality. Pressing the details of parables opens the way for fanciful allegorizing with no control over what we make the details mean.

So the purchase of the field need not imply that salvation or Christ or the kingdom is purchased by us. It need only imply that the treasure of the kingdom is more valuable than all we have and that we should be willing to give up everything to have the kingdom.

(b) Just because the word "field" means "world" in Jesus' interpretation of the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:38) does not mean that it must mean "world" here in Matthew 13:44. The word "field" does not mean world, for example, in the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14:18.

(c) Why should we go all the way back to Exodus 19:5 in order to determine what Jesus means by "treasure"? Isn't his ordinary use of the term a better indication of what he has in mind-especially if it occurs in contexts similar to this one?

The closest parallel to this text is Mark 10:21, where Jesus says to the rich young man, "Go and sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.  "When the man turned away, Jesus said that it is indeed hard for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the kingdom is the real treasure that the man could have had if he had been willing to sell all his possessions and follow Jesus. The similarity between the wording of these two texts is so striking that I can't escape the implication that Jesus is really teaching the same thing in both places:

Matthew 13:44-"he goes and sells all that he has"
Mark 10:21-"Go sell whatever you have"

In both cases the reward of going and selling is the "treasure." In Mark it is explicitly called the kingdom. It would be very unlikely, then, if the treasure in Matthew 13:44 is not the kingdom.

Therefore, I conclude-( 1 ) from Jesus' ordinary use of the word "treasure," (2) from the close similarity in wording between Mark 10:21 and Matthew 13:44, and 3) from the speculative nature of the opposite arguments-that the traditional interpretation is correct. As John Calvin said in the 16th century,

The straightforward meaning of the words is that the Gospel is not given its rightful honor unless we put it before all the riches, delights, honors and comforts of the world; and indeed that we should be so content with the spiritual blessings which it promises, that we neglect everything that would draw us from it. For those who aspire after heaven must be freed from all hindrances.

A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke, Vol. 2, trans. by T. H. L. Parker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), p. 83.

  17 Recalling our discussion of the Trinity in chapter one (note 5) it is worth musing over the implications that the Holy Spirit is the divine Workman who gives us a new heart of faith, and is himself the personification of the joy that the Father and the Son have in each other. We might say the change that must occur in the human heart to make saving faith possible is permeation by the Holy Spirit, which is nothing less than a permeation by the very joy that God the Father and God the Son have in each other's beauty. In other words, the taste for God that begets saving faith is God's very taste for himself, imparted to us in measure by the Holy Spirit.