Grace Gate

Premise:

“Men will allow God to be everywhere, except on His throne.”  –Charles Spurgeon

Why is this?  It is because people, by their very nature, resist the idea of God’s sovereign dominion over their own destiny.  It is a rebellious pride that has existed since the fall. This fleshly impulse is well stated in the poem by British poet William Ernest Hennley,

INVICTUS

OUT of the night that covers me,  
  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,  
I thank whatever gods may be  
  For my unconquerable soul.  

In the fell clutch of circumstance          
  I have not winced nor cried aloud.  
Under the bludgeonings of chance  
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.  

Beyond this place of wrath and tears  
  Looms but the Horror of the shade,   
And yet the menace of the years  
  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.  

It matters not how strait the gate,  
  How charged with punishments the scroll,  
I am the master of my fate:   
  I am the captain of my soul.  

[Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885–1977). Modern British Poetry.  1920.]

 

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ITEM 1 OF 2

Why Do We Resist God’s Sovereignty, by John Piper

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ITEM 2 OF 2

Horatius Bonar on Resisting God’s Sovereignty

“If I admit that God’s Will regulates the great movements of the universe I must admit that it equally regulates the small. It must do this, for the great depend upon the small. The minutest movement of my will is regulated by the will of God. And in this I rejoice. Woe is me if it be not so. If I shrink from so unlimited control and guidance, it is plain that I dislike the idea of being wholly at the disposal of God. I am wishing to be in part at my own disposal. I am ambitious of regulating the lesser movements of my will, while I give up the greater to His control. And thus it comes out that I wish to be a god to myself. I do not like the thought of God having all the disposal of my destiny. If He gets His will, I am afraid that I shall not get mine. It comes out, moreover, that the God about whose love I was so fond of speaking, is a God to whom I cannot trust myself implicitly for eternity. Yes, this is the real truth. Man’s dislike at God’s sovereignty arises from his suspicion of God’s heart. And yet the men in our day, who deny this absolute sovereignty, are the very men who profess to rejoice in the love of God, – who speak of that love as if there were nothing else in God but love. The more I understand of the character of God, as revealed in Scripture, the more shall I see that He must be sovereign, and the more shall I rejoice from my inmost heart that He is so.”