Enjoying God's Best - Part One

Extract

Enjoying God’s Best – Part One
A. W. Pink

Introduction

In the January and February 1946 issues, we wrote two short articles entitled, “Enjoying God’s Best” and “Missing God’s Best;” and it must be confessed that we were rather surprised at receiving no criticisms, or at least questions, from some of our Calvinistic readers, for we felt it would be very difficult for them to “harmonize” their contents with what they had been taught. That is not said in any invidious or satirical spirit, for some of our closest and warmest friends are Calvinists, nor is the writer in the least afraid or ashamed to avow himself one, yea, a high Calvinist— though not a “hyper.” There is a very real difference between the two, though few today are aware of it. A “high” Calvinist not only believes in the absolute sovereignty of God, in His having predestinated everything which comes to pass in time, in the unconditional choice of His people in Christ from all eternity, in particular redemption, in the invincible operations and effectual call of the Holy Spirit, but he also believes that God made choice of His elect irrespective of or without any foreview of their fall in Adam; and thus, he is a “supralapsarian” regarding God’s act as influenced by nothing outside of Himself. But a “hyper” Calvinist is one who goes beyond the teaching of Scripture—from which alone the great Reformer formulated his theology—resorting to reasoning and philosophizing upon various aspects of truth, which leads to his repudiating other aspects thereof. He makes an idol of “consistency”—i.e. what appears to be consistent to his mind. He attempts to square everything by the rule of logic. Since he finds that Scripture teaches particular redemption, that Christ obeyed and suffered only in the stead and on the behalf of God’s elect, he regards the “free offer” of the Gospel to all who hear it as “contradictory.” Since fallen man be totally depraved, dead in trespasses and sins, utterly incapable of …