Tag: #commongrace

“If we must avoid and flee the world that now lies in wickedness, to the extent that it lies in wickedness, then for God’s sake we must love and honour this very same world in its core and essence, as the artistic work of the almighty power of our God. We must not want it to go away and be destroyed so that our spiritual one-sidedness can be satisfied, but we must long for the moment when it will cast off its blemishes and will radiate in new form as the perfected artistic work of our God. So the world will not be lost. What will pass away is the present form of the world; but what remains is God’s creation, and that creation of God will ascend to still higher glory than it displayed at the time of its creation. As it was created, it was destined to develop to a still richer splendour. This was impeded by the curse. Rather than becoming richer, it became impoverished and parched. But this diminishing of the gold’s lustre is curbed, and then all the beauty hidden in it comes out again, even as it is simultaneously guided to its ultimate climax. Jesus himself calls this the regeneration of the creation (Matt 19:28).”

“In that coming of Jesus to the restored world, in that gathering of the exalted Christ before whom every knee will bow, together with the creation redeemed from the curse and renewed, therein lies the connection of the endpoint of common grace with the situation that abides for eternity. At that point all common grace comes to an end. It can restrain nothing anymore, because there is nothing to restrain. It will disappear. It will cease. It will have served God’s counsel. There will be no place for it to exist. But even so, it will not have been pointless. Through common grace alone it was possible for what existed to continue existing, and the manifold wisdom of God came forth in the fruit of its activity as well.”

Mark 10:29-30, along with the prophets, depicts the eternal age as featuring homes akin to ours but with no curse and pain – just the essence grown and blessed. Kuyper points to the natural world – butterflies from caterpillars, foliage from plants, generations from generations and says “Proceeding on that basis, one may and must insist that this entire world, as one organic creation of God, will perish in terms of its form and shape, but will nevertheless retain its essence, and will cause this to emerge later in new forms that are related organically to the old forms.” He notes that the exceptional and the precious here become the common there (c.f. Revelation 21:11-19) and that the new earth emerges from and is related to the old, our glorious body emerging from and is related to ours now, that genius and skill develop differently but interrelate and that dominion will bear the character of genius more than study but, then as now, the two can merge. 

Ultimately, it will be seen that it was common grace “that functioned to maintain the connection of God’s people with the world. It focused on the life of this world. It upheld in that world the honour of God’s creational work. And it worked together with particular grace in order along this route to make possible the permeation of the powers of the kingdom in that world.”

We know nothing apart from Scripture about the eternal future and it is pictorially explained to us therein as a new heavens and a new Earth, a city, a river of life flowing through the new paradise with abundantly flourishing fruit trees are flourishing, a feast with the finest food and drink. These depictions caution us against a spirit / flesh dualism which prizes the immaterial. Work and life in eternity are embodied and to be enjoyed as such: “God the Lord saves not only the souls of people, but also their body, and not only the bodies of people, but also nature, and in that nature, the external life of humanity.”

We should understand that there is abiding fruit both for the world and for individuals. 1 Corinthians 13:11 speaks about a maturing from childish knowledge. So, will our present expertise be any advantage in the afterworld? What kind of knowledge will that be and what kind of advantage? If our knowledge doesn’t go with us we become a tabula rasa, but in the verse, Paul’s metaphor is the transition from childhood to adulthood whereby knowledge develops and matured rather than being erased and replaced. In both 1 Corinthians 13 and 2 Corinthians 3, Paul asserts the comparison of seeing a poor reflection in the mirror with seeing unobscured. This, argues Kuyper, assists us in seeing that ultimately, nothing is lost in enriching yourself here using your aptitudes and developing. The parable of the talents exhibits the Lord’s passion for self-industry in developing your consciousness and person.

Revelation 14:13 tells us that the deeds done by God’s saints (that is, those ‘in Christ’) will ‘follow them’ into eternity. The produce of this labour and effort on Earth is a product of the common and special grace at work in the believer, translated into the hereafter. Kuyper raises the question of what this means for little ones who die before any possible effort is possible? He answers that it is coherent with his other gracious workings that the Lord will supply the deficit for them and suggests that judgement will be in accord with the time of personal formation afforded. Kuyper cites the parables of the Workers in the Vineyard and of the Rich Man and Lazarus in support of the idea that “the least fortunate on earth” will not “in eternity perpetually lag behind”. So he envisions a twofold path of natural giftedness and effort / sweating and provision. Either way, things get produced and the ‘work’/ fruit / profit follows the saints of God, thus explaining how those with short or long earthly existences both receive reward. Kuyper evidences a Protestant understanding of the receipt of full sanctification as a gift, saying “at death he cuts away sin from our heart once and for all and in this way completes our sanctification.”

What is meant by Revelation 21:26 which tells us that “People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations” into the New Jerusalem? Do the products and achievements follow us into the eternal age? Kuyper does not close off this possibility, saying that neither the totality of this creation will carry over, nor will nothing at all. “We have to imagine”, he writes, “that all the forms in which the fruit of common grace blossoms now will one day perish, but the powerful germ that lies at the foundation of all of these things will not perish but abides, and one day will be carried into the new kingdom of glory”. He likens this life to the nursery which we will one day leave, as he explains; “one could say that here on earth we did little else than play, but nevertheless, when our toys are one day destroyed, the fruit of this playing whereby we developed will be seen in eternity.” But because this ‘playing’ of humanity has been so utterly formative to its maturing “If we will be human beings there, just like here we were born and exist as human beings, then it is absolutely necessary that these various constituent parts of our human life transfer together into eternity.” Kuyper argues that personal and communal / national development are separate and progress separately and certain judgements can be made about the relative ‘honour and glory’ of nations can be made. But ultimately that which will be carried over is “the progressive communal development that our entire human life achieved and will achieve in the history of the nations. And we are told that this profit, which of course is nothing else than the fruit of common grace, does not simply perish and is not simply destroyed in the universal cosmic conflagration, but such profit will have an abiding significance for the new Jerusalem, that is, for the new earth”

Common grace continues to operate in the whole of life but in different ways. It operates in our internal life in civic righteousness, family loyalty, natural love and faithfulness, and our external life when human power over nature increases and in artistic and technological flourishing. The latter (external) working of common grace will increase at the expense of the former (internal) working and this will be the form of the coming Babylon. 

Sin is equally wicked in both spheres but wealth increases turpitude. “Actually it must be admitted consequently that the common grace of the one side assists the development of the world’s sinful power, and thus also the power of Satan… In his kingdom Satan has indeed been enriched by common grace.” This stark news is tempered by considering that “the end will consist of having the outcome of world history provide a single testimony for the indispensability of particular grace, and the culmination of things will glorify the Christ of God as the only true Saviour of the world.”

In the final section of his Biblical theology of Common Grace, Kuyper asks what of this creation will endure into the eternal age. He summarises: “Common grace produces three kinds of fruit for the kingdom of glory. 

1. We find such fruit in the development of our human race and of the gifts God embedded within this human race (the honour and glory of the nations). 

2. We find such fruit in the development of character and personality among the individual elect (their works that follow them). 

3. We find such fruit in the continued existence of this world so that it could be renewed (the new vine in the kingdom of the Father).”

There is a length of time between the ascension and return of Christ and something is holding back the return. Common grace has levelled an area for the church to flourish and for people to be gathered into God’s new community. Common grace has also brought about greater knowledge and skill and has lead to greater weapons and the slide towards lawlessness. 

Kuyper offers the example of better development of schools and illumination through knowledge. The fruits of common grace are placed at the feet of righteous and evil alike: Murdering is more advanced, theft is more covert, fornication is more refined, false witness is more egalitarian, advertising increases covetousness, pride and ambition are applauded. Common grace raises the standard and ease of our social life and equally, common grace better arms sin. The misuse of our advancement culminates in a person – the Man of Sin – and then the end comes.

Doesn’t this terrible end make grace not grace? Not necessarily; Golgotha was awful and glorious. God ‘sewed all of these capacities in the field of human nature’. 

Babylon has been symbolic of the great and misdirected achievements of humankind and has been applied figuratively to places like Rome and Paris – where world power in its expansion and sin manifest. Babylon will radiate glory but be destroyed in an hour, as has happened with Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh and Paris. But whilst ‘Babylon’ falls in one place, it rises in another; John in Revelation is talking of a totalising.

Turning his attention towards the New Testament’s teaching on the future, Kuyper surmises that the nations of the Earth will have common grace rescinded from them totally but haven’t yet. The revealing of the son of perdition / the man of lawlessness (see 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10) and a concluding intermingling of Common and Saving grace. 

The prophecy refers to “an event which does not lie in the midst of history, but which will conclude the history of our race and will be followed immediately by the appearance in the clouds of the sign of the Son of Man.” Therefore, an orderly reducing of common grace will occur until summation happens. There is an order to be observed before God’s plan culminates in the return of Christ. 

Christians concerned with ‘millennial’ visions of the future (who Kuyper terms ‘Chiliasts’), despite their oddities, have been helpful in putting the return of Christ back on the reformed agenda, but extreme positions (no expectation / immediate expectation of Christ’s return) are to be avoided.

Common Grace manifests over and in all spheres of life; it might function well in one, such as the arts and simultaneously very minimally in another, such as morality, in the same nation. For example, ancient Israel enjoyed the highest degree of common grace in the religious and moral sphere but showed little evidence of blessing in terms of artistry.

Nevertheless, it can be noted that when God withdraws the extent of his common grace to a nation, it is synonymous with this ‘giving over’ wherein “not only does shame disappear but the conscience is so completely falsified that people begin to take pride in evil and to rejoice when they see evil. This is the devilish feature: Not falling and succumbing out of weakness, but from lust in evil, even where people themselves do not seek enjoyment or profit in the evil. It is purely rejoicing in the fact that evil occurs.”