“Christ is indeed the savior of all people prior to the day of judgment (I Tim. 4:10). Christ sustains the whole universe (Col. 1:17). Without Him, no living thing could survive. He grants to His creatures such gifts as time, law, order, power, and knowledge. He grants all of these gifts to Satan and his rebellious host. The answer to the question, ‘Does God show His grace and mercy to all creation, including Satan?’ is emphatically yes. Satan is given time and power to do his evil work. To the next question, ‘Does this mean that God in some way demonstrates an attitude of favor towards Satan?’ the answer is emphatically no. God is no more favorable toward Satan and his demons than he is to Satan’s human followers. But this does not mean that He does not bestow gifts upon them — gift that they in no way deserve.
Thus the doctrine of common grace must apply not only to men but also to Satan and the fallen angels. This is what Van Til denies, because he defines common grace as favor in general rather than gifts in general. The second concept does not imply the first.
God does not favor ‘mankind’ as such. He showers favors on all men, but this does not mean that he favors men in general. Man in general rebelled against Him in the garden. Adam and Eve, mankind’s representative, brought the entire human race under God’s wrath. God in His grace gave them time and covenant promises, for He looked forward to the death of His Son on the cross. On this basis and only on this basis, men have been given life in history. Some have been give life in order to extend God’s Kingdom, while others have been give life (like Pharaoh) to demonstrate God’s power, and to heap coals of fire eternally on their head.”
Dr. Gary North
Dominion and Common Grace — The Biblical bases of progress –pg. 44-45
Whether or not common grace really exists has been a bone of contention for centuries. If common grace exists then the seeming problem is that we are insisting that God loves those that Scripture teaches he has hated before they were born. A genuine contradiction. If common grace doesn’t exist then the seeming problem is that it is difficult to see how it could be true that “the goodness of God to the reprobate was intended to lead them to repentance,” or how in despising this genuine goodness of God towards them they were storing up God’s wrath. If God never had any inclination of goodness towards them that was to issue in repentance then how could they be storing up God’s wrath by living in defiance of that goodness?
The answer to this is in making distinctions between God’s gifts (favors) given and God’s favor given. Perhaps common grace should be defined as God giving gifts (favors) to those (reprobate) whom He has no favor towards. If we could use this definition then we could say that God extends favors towards the reprobate without extending favor to the reprobate. By extending His favors towards the reprobate, He superintends how His eternal decree works out in time so that the reprobate who have been differentiated from the elect from eternity by God differentiate themselves from the elect in time and history.
Try to imagine the reprobate as Christmas Geese set apart for the day of destruction by Farmer John. Over the course of the year Farmer John gives the Christmas Geese the best of gifts in the way of feed that will fatten them up. On the outside it may even look that Farmer John favors the Christmas Geese even more then the other Geese of the barnyard.
Despite the gifts of Farmer John the Christmas Geese despise Farmer John. Through their despite of Farmer John they are storing up wrath. In all of this Farmer John gave gifts to the Geese without having any intention of favor.
By dividing common grace up in this fashion we avoid the contradiction that God loves those He has set apart for destruction while at the same time we avoid denying that God gives good gifts to the reprobate. We would also be able to truthfully teach that the reprobate despise the goodness of God, that the reprobate have only themselves to blame for not repenting in the face of God’s goodness, that the reprobate, by not repenting have stored up for themselves God’s wrath because of their hardness of heart.
Some might insist (with understandable reasons) that this is equivocating on the traditional definition of common grace. Perhaps we should call this God’s “common benevolence.” If we did that then we could deny common grace while insisting upon common benevolence.
Nice post Bret. Very perspicacious.
Pastor Bret,
I found this post quite helpful. I discovered it after searching “common grace” on your site. I have experienced the teaching of “common grace” often being used as a type of ice breaker to push through more daring R2K distortions. The presentation is always made in a its simplified form, not addressing the particulars that you delineate above. A young visiting Pastor to our church, and graduate from Westminster West, delivered the teaching in a way that actually “made it sound” like a “another gospel” to the unrepentant, sort of a “consolation prize”. Many Christian’s fill in the next step by following God in his “tolerance” with administering a type of hypothetical forgiveness without repentance to the unrepentant. Then predictably follow the distorted teachings of “love your neighbor”, “unconditional forgiveness” and “the love gospel”, The responsibility of the believer to speak God’s Word gets its big toes removed, not standing for long, due to the fact that we wouldn’t want to countermand “common grace”. To be fair, the teaching is not delivered with it’s implications as overtly stated as I do here, and most often no pietistic applications are made, or commands clearly given. It is dangled in front of believers, as a “teaching of scripture”, but when acted upon (or perhaps, not acted upon), without a clear understanding of it’s contextual relevance in scripture, is profoundly dangerous. I’m reminded of the serpent’s words to Eve. I’m not sure why others are not picking up on this. Any criticisms or points of clarification to my comment would be appreciated. Thank you