R.C. Sproul

voluntarily, that is by God's own personal disposition.

Now remember when we had our discussion about the difference between covenant and testament, the difference between the Hebrew word berith and the Greek word diatheka for testament.

I said the reason why the church finally settled and actually the Septuagint finally settled on diatheka was because it had that element in there of sovereign disposition.

And that's very important because we've been so conditioned in our own culture to think in terms of entitlement programs, that if we don't get these things, there's some miscarriage of justice.

I always am a little bit unhappy with some of the language that I hear, particularly in the academic world.

Well, what are you doing?

Well, I'm studying for my Ph.D.

That's okay if you mean by that that you hope that someday to achieve a doctor.

But it's not like there's one reserve for you somewhere that all you have to do is go down and pick it up because you're entitled to it.

But we do have this thing.

We now have come to think that the state owes us a college education.

It owes us a certain wage level.

It owes us this and it owes us that.

And we say, well, where do we get that from?

Who said that any government ever owed its people anything other than to rule justly?

But that's the way we are as creatures, and we let that influence our thinking with respect to how God relates to us.

God does not owe us anything.

Any blessing that He gives to us comes from Him voluntarily, from His grace.

Now because of that principle, which is so fully and firmly set forth in this first statement, the distance between the creature and God is so great that all reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto them as their Creator, yet they can never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He has been pleased to express by way of covenant.

Do you see the differences?