(4) Common Grace Condemned By The Reformed Creeds (4)

Proponents of Common Grace love to quote Matthew 5:45 in an attempt to demonstrate that God loves not only the elect, but also the reprobate. The verse reads, That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. God sending rain and sunshine to the just and the unjust is supposed to convince us that God loves the reprobate, but this is a failed interpretation. The Bible is very clear that the only unjust individuals loved by God, the only sinners loved by God, the only children of wrath loved by God are those elected in Christ. God has only a perfect hatred for those who are reprobate.

Calvinism never interprets the sending of rain and sunshine as an evidence of Gods love for an individual, for Calvinism has always understood the sending of rain and sunshine only as an act of Gods providence. This is easily proved in the Calvinist Creeds. Take the Heidelberg Catechism for example. In that great Catechism we read the following:

What dost thou mean by the providence of God?
Answer:
The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by His fatherly hand
(The Heidelberg Catechism, Lords Day 10, Question and Answer 27)

If sending rain and sunshine is Common Grace, then so is drought, starvation, poverty, sickness, murder, all manners of wickedness, and even death, for God sends all these things to just and unjust alike. But you will never hear Common Grace proponents speak this way, for they have a specific agenda. They do not wish to teach providence, but they wish to imply a general love of God for the reprobates, a desire on Gods part to save the reprobates, and this is not Calvinism, but Catholicism and Arminianism, even Pelagianism. As Calvinists, we call Gods sending of rain and sunshine, even all things, providence, not grace. We do not confuse providence with grace, for we teach that Gods grace is always saving and always particular, while Gods providence is always sovereign and general--over all things, even sin.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Common
• Grace
• Calvinism
• Providence
• Predestination
• Sovereignty
• Creeds
• Reformed
• Theology