Paul's fifth argument is from the love of God. As stated above,1 the Apostle argues from the greatness, the freeness, and the immutability of that love that its objects never can be lost. " He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things." If He has done the greater, will He not do the less ? If he gave even his own Son, will He not give us faith to receive and con- stancy to persevere even unto the end ? A love so great as the love of God to his people cannot fail of its object. This love is also gratuitous. It is not founded on the attractiveness of its ob- jects. He loved us " while we were yet sinners;" "when we were enemies." " Much more, then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." God's love in this aspect is compared to parental love. A mother does not love her child because it is lovely. Her love leads her to do all she can to render it attractive and to keep it so. So the love of God, being in like manner mysterious, unaccountable by anything in its objects, secures his adorning his children with the graces of his Spirit, and arraying them in all the beauty of holi- ness. It is only the lamentable mistake that God loves us for our goodness, that can lead any one to suppose that his love is de- pendent on our self-sustained attractiveness, when we should look to his fatherly love as the source of all goodness, and the ground of the assurance that He will not allow Satan or our own evil hearts to destroy the lineaments of his likeness which He has im- pressed upon our souls. Having loved his own, He loves them to the end. And Christ prays for them that their faith may not fail.
It must be remembered that what the Apostle argues to prove is not merely the certainty of the salvation of those that believe ; but their certain perseverance in holiness. Salvation in sin, ac- cording to Paul's system, is a contradiction in terms. This per- severance in holiness is secured partly by the inward secret influ-
1 Page 107.