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The Rapture of Our Wills

            The realm of human love relationships is a very interesting one indeed!  I speak from the perspective of a male because that is all I know.  I know how a man goes about pursuing relationships and the things that delight us and the things that frustrate us.  This perspective illustrates some important things that we can see about God’s sovereign will over ours and how that interacts with love. 

 

            Most men, if they are honest with themselves, desire to be loved by a woman and to be in a love relationship with one.  While we all have various requirements for the “woman of our dreams”, the basic fact is that we desire to be loved by this “perfect person”.  The responsibility which weighs upon the shoulders of a man, at least in our western culture, is that he is the one who is supposed to take the initiative in the relationship in every phase from initial pursuit to engagement and marriage.  But, how are we to go about this pursuit of relationships and how are we going to get that “perfect woman” to fall in love with us?  Every man, again, if they are honest, would say that they desire to be loved freely by this woman.  She should fall in love with us without any coercion on our part.  How many of us would brag about the fact that we were in a relationship with a girl because we had forced her or convinced her through complex arguments that they should be with us?  I think that not many would desire this scenario.  Having a woman say, “I love you” when she was forced or convinced to say that would not be very fulfilling or pleasing to us.  No, coercion would seem to take something out of the basic essence of love and so we all want to be loved freely.  However, there is a third option to this scenario.  What if a woman did not love you freely, simply because she arbitrarily chose to and she did not love you because you forced her or convinced her to love you but loved you simply because in light of who you were she could do nothing else.  Everything about who you are draws her attraction and when she is allowed to see you for who you are, she is unable to do anything else but love you because of your perceived beauty and perfection.  Would this not be the most satisfying scenario for most men?  She loves you not because of an arbitrary choice or coercion but simply because you are so amazing that it would be impossible for her not to love you.  How incredible! 

 

            I think that this illustration from human relationships shows us something which is not often understood in our thinking about God: namely that He draws us to Himself because of His ultimate beauty and perfection and when our souls accurately perceive this, it is impossible for them not to be drawn to God.  I have often heard the objection made against Calvinistic Theology that God desires to be loved freely by His creation and so any Sovereign Act of His will in that process would cause the love He receives not to be genuine love.  Thus, for God to be truly glorified and loved by His creation, there must be something of our autonomous choice in the matter, otherwise He is not loved and He does not receive true pleasure in being loved.  And so, the matter is often bifurcated in this way: either God does all the work of saving in which He takes our wills and “forces” them to choose Himself or we are left to our own choice with God “hoping” that we will choose Him and love Him so that He can be glorified.  However, from my perspective, these are both wrong estimations of the issue and both of them are, ultimately, not very glorifying to God.  What if God’s irresistible grace worked in another way completely different to anything we have yet examined here.  Let me propose this scenario.  Our minds are darkened by sin so that they cannot rightly understand or perceive God.  They spend all of their energy on the pursuits of the things that their darkened minds think will give them pleasure.  What our minds do not accurately perceive is that God, in all of His beauty and perfection, is the source of all the pleasure our souls could ever want.  And so God, in His sovereign mercy, lifts the veils off our eyes to behold His glory.  When God is then beheld by the soul in all of His glory, the soul is enraptured by this beauty and perfection and is unable to do anything but gladly and with great rejoicing, forsake whatever it had pursued in the past and drink deeply from what it not understands to be its true pleasure.  God brings men to themselves and they are brought to love Him not by some arbitrary choice which it makes and not by some dry and impersonal force of God’s will but by the beholding of God in His infinite perfection and beauty.  This is what is ultimately most pleasing to God because He is delighted in by His creation because of what He has enabled them to see: namely His beauty.   

Irresistible Grace

Irresistible Grace!

Apprehended by the love of Christ, what shall I do?
To the right or left my heart cannot go,
But only straight on through
To the rapturous delights of Divine Love!

Shall my heart now grumble at its apprehension?
How could that ever be so;
For in that wonderful, Divine Condescension
My Soul apprehends its perfect joy!

“God’s yoke is burdensome” my heart shall never say.
But ever will it praise the One
Who bore the burden that my soul may,
By Grace, see and be satisfied!