Coconut
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- Joined
- Feb 17, 2005
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- 4,663
We hear much of what man does and can do and ought to do. But we by no means hear so much of what God is doing and has purposed to do.
Man’s agency stands very prominently out to view. God’s arm and power are hidden. It seems almost as if man would thrust God aside, take the reins of government out of His hands and be to himself a god.
Man gets much credit for doing and saying great things. God gets little glory. The position of the sinner, as a mere receiver of salvation (and every blessing connected with it in this life or the next), is denied. And man is exalted to be a co-operator with God in the matter of salvation. He begins the work by becoming willing, and God ends it. He does what he can, and God does all the rest. He is represented as helping God to save him. Or, rather we should say that God is represented as helping man save himself.
In the old creation, God did it all. But in the new creation, as it is a far more stupendous work, He requires the assistance of man. Nay, He commits at least the most difficult and momentous part of it to man himself.
If some of the new theories be true, God is not all in all, but is, on the contrary, considerably indebted to man — and man, in like manner, is not a little indebted to himself. In all this we hear still the whisperings of the old serpent, “Ye shall be as gods,” and we see man, like his first father, aspiring to the Divine prerogative.
-excerpt
"Truth and Error - 2" by Horatius Bonar
Man’s agency stands very prominently out to view. God’s arm and power are hidden. It seems almost as if man would thrust God aside, take the reins of government out of His hands and be to himself a god.
Man gets much credit for doing and saying great things. God gets little glory. The position of the sinner, as a mere receiver of salvation (and every blessing connected with it in this life or the next), is denied. And man is exalted to be a co-operator with God in the matter of salvation. He begins the work by becoming willing, and God ends it. He does what he can, and God does all the rest. He is represented as helping God to save him. Or, rather we should say that God is represented as helping man save himself.
In the old creation, God did it all. But in the new creation, as it is a far more stupendous work, He requires the assistance of man. Nay, He commits at least the most difficult and momentous part of it to man himself.
If some of the new theories be true, God is not all in all, but is, on the contrary, considerably indebted to man — and man, in like manner, is not a little indebted to himself. In all this we hear still the whisperings of the old serpent, “Ye shall be as gods,” and we see man, like his first father, aspiring to the Divine prerogative.
-excerpt
"Truth and Error - 2" by Horatius Bonar
