Dear Friends,
Aren’t we sometimes a ludicrous mess! We fight about things we should not fight about; we don’t fight when we should! Today’s devotional illustrates theological battles that are useless and unnecessary. As you read it, let it keep you for needless battling! God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Acts 2:23 (ESV)

  23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

“Perhaps the fiercest of fights has been waged over the great fact that salvation is of grace, and the equally certain fact that man is responsible to God under the gospel, and that, if he perishes, his ruin lies at his own door, and is not to be charged upon God in any sense whatever. This has been the arena in which intellectual gladiators have fought with each other age after age. If they had stood side by side, and fought the common enemy, they would have done good service; for I believe, in my soul, that they both hold some truth, and that either of them will hold error unless he will yield something to his rival. There are some who read the Bible, and try to systematize it according to rigid logical creeds; but I dare not follow their method, and I feel content to let people say, ‘How inconsistent he is with himself!’ The only thing that would grieve me would be inconsistency with the Word of God. As far as I know this Book, I have endeavored, in my ministry, to preach to you, not a part of the truth, but the whole counsel of God; but I cannot harmonize it, nor am I anxious to do so. I am sure all truth is harmonious, and to my ear the harmony is clear enough; but I cannot give you a complete score of the music, or mark the harmonies on the gamut, I must leave the Chief Musician to do that.

“You have heard of the two travelers who met opposite the statue of Minerva, and one of them remarked, ‘What a glorious golden shield Minerva has!’ The other said, ‘Nay, but it is bronze.’ They argued with one another, they drew their swords, they slew each other; and, as they fell, dying, they each looked up, and the one who said the shield was made of bronze discovered that it had a golden side to it, and the other, who was so bold in affirming that it was gold, found that it had a bronze side too. The shield was made of two different metals, and the combatants had not either of them seen both sides. It is just so with the truth of God, it is many-sided and full of variety…. It is clear that salvation is altogether of grace, and equally clear that, if any man perishes, it is not for want of invitations on God’s side, — honest, invitations to come to Christ. We hear our Master saying, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’… Many such invitations did Christ give, yet did he not also say, ‘No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him?’ Amid the soft rain of tenderness we hear thundering overhead that solemn truth, ‘So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.’ ‘Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.’ As we listen to that thunder, we bow to the sovereignty of God; yet, amid the pauses, we hear the Master say, ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely,’ and we also hear him say, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.’ Let us believe both sets of truths, and not oppose ourselves to friends who hold either the one or the other, but seek to bring them to believe both; for as the Bible is true, they are both of them the truth of the living God.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit LII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1906), p. 101-102]