The Greatness of God

. . . the Spirit alone works both blessings in us, regenerating us, and preserving us when regenerate, without ourselves. . . . But He does not work in us without us, for He re-created and preserves us for this very purpose, that He might work in us and we might cooperate with Him. Thus he preaches, shows mercy to the poor, and comforts the afflicted by means of us. But what is hereby attributed to "free-will"? What, indeed, is left it but--nothing! In truth, nothing! (p. 268).

Are there problems raised by this Biblical doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God in providence and grace? Of course there are. Everything that God reveals of Himself transcends man's comprehension; every doctrine, therefore, must of necessity terminate in mystery, and man must humbly acquiesce in having it so. God does not tell men more of His purpose than man needs to know; and, just because man's knowledge of what God is doing is always incomplete, His actions will often appear to man to have precisely opposite characteristics to those which He Himself ascribes to them. But in such cases it is man's part deliberately to accept Gods interpretation in preference to his own.  Faith will not lean to its own understanding of the appearance; faith will take God's word as a safe index to the reality, and will wait patiently till contrary appearances dissolve away with the coming of greater light. The problem that presses in this case concerns the justice of God. Luther has full sympathy with the agonies of doubt and despair which this problem can cause to sensitive and realistic souls; he had been through the mill himself. "God conceals His eternal mercy and loving kindness beneath eternal wrath, His righteousness beneath unrighteousness," he writes.

Now, the highest degree of faith is to believe that He is merciful, though He saves so few and damns so many; to believe that He is just, though of His own will He makes us perforce proper subjects for damnation, and seems (in Erasmus words) "to delight in the torments of poor wretches and to be a fitter object for hate than for love." If I could by any means understand how this same God, who makes such a show of wrath and unrighteousness, can yet be merciful and just, there would be no need for faith. But as it is, the impossibility of understanding makes room for the exercise of faith . . .(p. 101).

And it is here, when faced with appearances that seem to contradict God's own Word, that faith is tried; for here reason rises up in arms against it.  Doubtless it gives the greatest possible offence to common sense or natural reason, that God, who is proclaimed as being full of mercy and goodness, and so on, should of His own mere will abandon, harden and damn men... . It seems an iniquitous, cruel, intolerable thought to think of God; and it is this that has been a stumbling block to so many great men down the ages. And who would not stumble at it? I have stumbled at it myself more than once, down to the deepest pit of despair, so that I wished I had never been made a man. (That was before I knew how health-giving that despair was, and how close to grace.) This is why so much toil and trouble has been devoted to clearing the goodness of God, and throwing the blame on man's will (p. 217). But the facts remain what they were: the cause of salvation and damnation alike is the sovereign will of God. Both nature and Scripture, if read aright, leave no doubt as to that.

What then shall we do? Luther has two pieces of advice for the man who is tempted to despair, and to deny God's justice altogether. The first is that he should leave alone all speculation and enquiry as to the hidden purposes of God, and confine his attention to what God has revealed and affirmed in His Word. Luther makes this point by developing the distinction between God preached and God not preached, God hidden (Deus absconditus).

Wherever God hides Himself, and wills to be unknown to us, there we have no concern... God in His own nature and majesty is to be left alone; in this regard, we have nothing to do with Him, nor does He wish us to deal with Him. We have to do with Him as clothed and displayed in His Word . . . God does many things which He does not show us in His Word, and He wills many things which He does not in His Word show us that He wills. . . . We must keep in view His Word and leave alone His inscrutable will; for it is by His Word, and not by His inscrutable will, that we must be guided (pp. 170f.).

And this means simply that we must listen to, and deal with God as He speaks to us in Christ, and not attempt to approach or deal with Him apart from Christ.  "We may not debate the secret will of Divine Majesty. . . . But let man occupy himself with God Incarnate, that is, with Jesus crucified, in whom, as Paul says, 'are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. . . .'" In Christ, God comes seeking the salvation of all men; He offers Himself to all; He weeps over Jerusalem because Jerusalem rejects Him. Hear Him, says Luther; rest on His word without fear; they who trust Him always find Him true. Shelve your problems about providence and predestination; be humble enough to receive as God's word the word which God speaks to you in Christ, and to trust yourself to Christ on the basis of it, however unable you may be to square that word with what you know, or think you know, of God's dreadful hidden purposes. Commenting on Christ's lament over Jerusalem (Matt. 23:27), Luther writes:

Here, God Incarnate says: "I would, and thou wouldest not." God Incarnate, I repeat, was sent for this purpose, to will, say, do, suffer and offer to all men, all that is necessary for salvation; albeit He offends many who, being abandoned or hardened by God's secret will of Majesty, do not receive him thus willing, speaking, doing and offering. . . . It belongs to the same God Incarnate to weep, lament, and groan over the perdition of the ungodly, though that will of Majesty purposely leaves and reprobates some to perish. Nor is it for us to ask why He does so, but to stand in awe of God, Who can do, and wills to do, such things (p. 176).

The second piece of advice to those in temptation and turmoil (Anfechtung) over God's justice is that they should remember that, as men, they cannot at present fully apprehend God; but that, though men, they may hope fully to understand in glory things that were hidden from them on earth. Luther develops these thoughts at the end of the book, in a noble passage of which we quote the conclusion:

I will give a parallel case, in order to strengthen our faith in God's justice. . .. Behold! God governs the external affairs of the world in such a way that, if you regard and follow the judgment of human reason, you are forced to say, either that there is no God, or that God is unjust. . . . See the great prosperity of the wicked, and by contrast the great adversity of the good. . . . Yet all this, which looks so much like injustice in God, and is traduced as such by arguments which no reason or light of nature can resist, is most easily cleared up by the light of the gospel and the knowledge of grace . . . in a single little word: There is a life after this life; and all that is not punished and repaid here will be punished and repaid there.

If, now, this problem.. . is swept away and settled so easily by the light of the gospel, which shines only in the Word and to faith, how do you think it will be when the light of the Word and faith shall cease, and the real facts, and the majesty of God, shall be revealed as they are?

Keep in view three lights: the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory. . . . By the light of nature, it is inexplicable that it should be just for the good to be afflicted and the bad to prosper; but the light of grace explains it. By the light of grace, it is inexplicable how God can damn him who by his own strength can do nothing but sin and become guilty. Both the light of nature and the light of grace here insist that the fault lies not in the wretchedness of man, but in the injustice of God. . . . But the light of glory insists otherwise, and will one day reveal God, to Whom alone belongs a judgment whose justice is incomprehensible, as a God Whose justice is most righteous and evident--provided only that in the meanwhile we believe it, as we are instructed and encouraged to do . . . (pp. 315f).