Chp.102 ~ The Sovereign Providence Of God In The Birth Of Christ

“And what follows—‘My hope from the breasts of my mother. On Thee have I been cast from the womb; from my mother’s belly Thou art my God: for there is no helper. Many calves have compassed me; fat bulls have beset me round. They opened their mouth upon me, as a ravening and a roaring lion. All my bones are poured out and dispersed like water. My heart has become like wax melting in the midst of my belly. My strength is become dry like a potsherd; and my tongue has cleaved to my throat’—foretold what would come to pass; for the statement, ‘My hope from the breasts of my mother,’ [is thus explained]. As soon as He was born in Bethlehem, as I previously remarked, king Herod, having learned from the Arabian Magi about Him, made a plot to put Him to death: and by God’s command Joseph took Him with Mary and departed into Egypt. For the Father had decreed that He whom He had begotten should be put to death, but not before He had grown to manhood, and proclaimed the word which proceeded from Him. Justin Martyr. (1885). Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew. In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Vol. 1, pp. 249–250). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company. Picking up again, our study of Justin's thoughts on the 22nd Psalm before Trypho and his assembly, we see him digging under David's sufferings foreshadowed in Christ. As a quick reminder, Jesus had to suffer as truly man in order to be a identifying, sympathetic Mediator on our behalf, to intercede before God our Father as our Heavenly representative and earthly Head. What this meant for David means something far greater to God. David had no "spiritual" helper who qualified to be his Mediator as a sinful creature conceived under the fall of Adam. David came into this world being forced to trust in God for even the milk from his mother's breasts, and so in the same manner Christ came as a babe trusting the Father to feed him with the hands of fallen and lesser creatures not having been conceived through sin. Justin is laying the ground work, in this, to answer some serious questions about the freedom of the corrupt will and the absolute sovereignty of the Father's will. The fact that Christ was born as a babe and protected "until the time appointed" by the Father is to testify not to the freedom of man's will but of the absolute sovereignty of God. God has purposed that this Child would grow into a Man and "demonstrate" face-to-face with us the nature and character of the Heavenly image of God. Herod was "not able" to enforce his freedom of the will against the absolute sovereign will of God. The Father had indeed decreed that the Christ would be put to death, but not by the hands nor for the glory of this Herod's corrupt reign.

But if any of you say to us, Could not God rather have put Herod to death? I return answer by anticipation: Could not God have cut off in the beginning the serpent, so that he exist not, rather than have said, ‘And I will put enmity between him and the woman, and between his seed and her seed?’1 Could He not have at once created a multitude of men? But yet, since He knew that it would be good, He created both angels and men free to do that which is righteous, and He appointed periods of time during which He knew it would be good for them to have the exercise of free-will; and because He likewise knew it would be good, He made general and particular judgments; each one’s freedom of will, however, being guarded. Hence Scripture says the following, at the destruction of the tower, and division and alteration of tongues: ‘And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they have begun to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them of all which they have attempted to do.’2 And the statement, ‘My strength is become dry like a potsherd, and my tongue has cleaved to my throat,’ was also a prophecy of what would be done by Him according to the Father’s will. For the power of His strong word, by which He always confuted the Pharisees and Scribes, and, in short, all your nation’s teachers that questioned Him, had a cessation like a plentiful and strong spring, the waters of which have been turned off, when He kept silence, and chose to return no answer to any one in the presence of Pilate; as has been declared in the memoirs of His apostles, in order that what is recorded by Isaiah might have efficacious fruit, where it is written, ‘The Lord gives me a tongue, that I may know when I ought to speak.’3 Justin Martyr. (1885). Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew. In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Vol. 1, p. 250). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company. When the Lord ceases to speak according to His salvific will, then its bad news to those who fall under His silence. In this, the freedom of both the absolute sovereign will and of the corrupt will is guarded. This is essentially the point Justin is trying to make regarding the doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of God's sovereignty. The anticipated question that always arises out of knowing the power of God's sovereignty is that: if God is so good, why does He allow bad things happen to innocent people? But Justin tries to answer this with a question that directs their attention to seek first the sovereignty and glory of God before seeking the freedom of their own wills. You see, the problem with the faith/understanding of their trust in the sovereignty of God is that they believe it must be used to protect their innocence. Thus the question is framed, "Could not God rather have put Herod to death?" But Justin frames the question righteously, "Could not God have cut off in the beginning the serpent, so that he exist not, rather than have said, 'And I will put enmity between him and the woman, and between his seed and her seed?" You see, the problem is not with God's power to save or to destroy, the problem is with our presupposed innocence. We want to shape God's sovereignty around our understanding of "innocent until proven guilty," but the total depravity of man must be shaped around our guilt and slavery to sin. Certainly, we have freedom of the will, but our nature is so corrupt that we are unable to choose that which is good, and here is the emphasis - in God's sight.

When God made Adam and the first woman, they were made with the nature to be pleasing in God's sight, but it was in God's sight that they partook of what was evil, even though it was good in their own sight (and nature). So God did not violate their free-will, for it was they who chose according to their own nature to do that which was evil in God's sight, choosing to believe the lie. Being created to choose, as Justin rightly said, "He created both angels and men free to do that which is righteous in the "appointed periods of time" knowing that it would be good, but in their choosing evil they refused to believe that their nature to choose righteousness would absolutely die. God, in His absolute sovereignty, prepared for this when He created them male and female, according to the Heavenly image, but appointed a Way through which this image would be regained when lost in the judgment of evil. Revelation 13:8 (NKJV) 8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Because they chose to worship the image of the serpent, the image of the Heavenly Mediation was lost to them, but their names and some of their children’s were written in the Book of Life, for which this "appointed" Child would become a Man and die bearing both the image of the serpent (flesh and blood) and the image of the Heavenly Mediator (the perfection of the glory of God). God chose to do this before Adam sinned, and so their remains this enmity between the image of sin and the image of God, but Christ puts the image of the serpent to death that the image of the Spirit would reign in Life. This was the Father's absolute will, that those who are written before the foundation of the world to have eternal life would be put to death by the nature of Christ and transformed by the nature of the Spirit to freely choose Life. Has your free-will been put to death by the nature of the Law? Have you seen your condemnation? Do you see your condemnation as just? Do you see how you personally have violated the sovereignty of God's saving will in your representative head - Adam? Have you seen how what was good and pleasing in your eyes is detestable in the sight of God? Have you come face-to-face with your own sinful nature? Have you come to the fact that if it was not for God's sovereign "restraining" and common grace that you would have chosen to do even more evil? The only reason that you are not as evil as you could be is because God kept you from exercising it. Has God stripped you naked of your free-will and planted His absolute sovereign seed into your exposed soul? Has the seed of Life restrained the desires of your unholy will? Have you surrendered to His irresistible grace? God chose not because you desired Him, but for the very reason you did not desire Him; and if you remain unattracted to Him, it is because He has left you to your own free-will. This is why Justin has said, regarding that which is good concerning the absolute sovereignty of God's free-will, "Hence Scripture says the following, at the destruction of the tower, and division and alteration of tongues: ‘And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they have begun to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them of all which they have attempted to do.’" What was it that "they have begun to do?" This "free-will" that they began to exercise was the imaginations and evil intents of their own hearts continually before the LORD (Gen.6:5). And so God did act, and God did restrain their evil, but are you willing, my friend, to confess that you are of the same nature? Are you willing to confess that you are of equal depravity?

Matthew 23:27–36 (NKJV) 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ 31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? 34 Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. John 9:34–41 (NKJV) 34 They answered and said to him, “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they cast him out. 35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him, He said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” 36 He answered and said, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” 37 And Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.” 38 Then he said, “Lord, I believe!” And he worshiped Him. 39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.” 40 Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, “Are we blind also?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains. Jesus coming into this world as truly man, yet truly God, trusting the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence he relinquished, to come under the Father's will as a blind babe of the future, suckling from the breasts of the flesh of a depraved mother, grew and walked flawlessly in the sight of God and men, to give us the milk of the pure and unadulterated Word of God. Isaiah 42:18–20 (NKJV) 18 “Hear, you deaf; And look, you blind, that you may see. 19 Who is blind but My servant, Or deaf as My messenger whom I send? Who is blind as he who is perfect, And blind as the Lord’s servant? 20 Seeing many things, but you do not observe; Opening the ears, but he does not hear.” And so, are we like the Pharisees who desire to remove the saving tongue of our LORD? Shall we be like the Pharisees who are committed to keep the covenant of death, only (2Cor.3:6)? Shall we hold the people of God under the condemnation of the letter of the Law? Shall keep them under an earthly and external covenant that has no promise of everlasting life? Shall we restrain them behind the bars of Sheol and the gates of Hades (Matt.16:18)? No, says Justin! Justin says, "The Lord gives me a tongue, that I may know when I ought to speak!" Again, when He said, ‘Thou art my God; be not far from me,’ He taught that all men ought to hope in God who created all things, and seek salvation and help from Him alone; and not suppose, as the rest of men do, that salvation can be obtained by birth, or wealth, or strength, or wisdom. And such have ever been your practices: at one time you made a calf, and always you have shown yourselves ungrateful, murderers of the righteous, and proud of your descent. For if the Son of God evidently states that He can be saved, [neither]4 because He is a son, nor because He is strong or wise, but that without God He cannot be saved, even though He be sinless, as Isaiah declares in words to the effect that even in regard to His very language He committed no sin (for He committed no iniquity or guile with His mouth), how do you or others who expect to be saved without this hope, suppose that you are not deceiving yourselves? Justin Martyr. (1885). Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew. In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Vol. 1, p. 250). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company. Justin says we are depraved in our birth, and if even the Son of God, though conceived apart from the seed of sin, needed to trust at the breasts of a fallen mother, how much more those of us who are created apart from the Heavenly image? There is nothing of the Providence of this world that can save us unless this Providence is directed by the absolute sovereignty of the Heavenly image. Jesus was born unto us as a son, that we would follow the steps of His divine faith, though walking as dying man before dying men, He was not without the vision of the blessed hope, for He walked not by the sight of the flesh, but by the vision of the Eternal Word, and in Him the eternal promises are yes and amen to those who believe.