The Satisfied Soul by John Piper

Author:John Piper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

57

“LORD, COMMAND WHAT YOU WILL, AND GIVE WHAT YOU COMMAND”

Only God Can Do What Needs to Be Done

Augustine’s prayer, “Lord, command what you will, and give what you command” (Confessions, X, 31), deeply offended Pelagius, his adversary. It implied that God not only told man what he must do, believe, and obey, but also that God gave the ability to do what He said we must do. This seemed to Pelagius to undermine human responsibility and lead straight to God’s deciding ahead of time who would believe and who would not.

Second Chronicles 30:1–12 is a remarkable example of the kind of Scripture that formed Augustine’s vision of God’s way of working. Hezekiah has become king in the place of several very bad kings. He “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 29:2). One of the ways he does right is by reinstituting the Passover, which had not been heeded for a long time. So in chapter 30 he sends word to “all Israel and Judah,” including Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord to keep the Passover (v. 1).

In the letters that Hezekiah sends to the tribes, the blessing of God is made strictly conditional upon the response of the people. Here is what the letters say (vv. 6–9):

“O sons of Israel, return to the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that He may return to those of you who escaped and are left from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were unfaithful to the LORD God of their fathers, so that He made them a horror, as you see. Now do not stiffen your neck like your fathers, but yield to the LORD and enter His sanctuary which He has consecrated forever, and serve the LORD your God, that His burning anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the LORD, your brothers and your sons will find compassion before those who led them captive and will return to this land. For the LORD your God is gracious and compassionate, and will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him.” (NASB)

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