“WITHOUT GOD, WE CANNOT;
WITHOUT US, GOD WILL NOT”

This pungent line from the pen of Augustine, that great theologian of the ancient church, speaks as much truth as most any sentence that one could produce. The old bishop presided in Hippo in north Africa, which became the theological center of the church of the fourth century due to his influence. He had a way with words, some of which were both cryptic and controversial, such as “Love God and do what you please.” If you crowded him on that one, he would have you conceding that if one really loves God he will do what pleases God.

But when I think of Augustine I think of the woman behind the man. Not his wife, for Augustine never married, but his mother Monica. If you are looking for a name for a promising baby girl, how about Monica? She shines in history as one of the most spiritual women of the church — of any age. Augustine could never forget his mother and her prayers for him, even when his life was steeped in sin. Due to her influence he kept praying to God, “Give me chastity, but not yet,” the kind of prayer man is tempted to pray. Augustine couldn’t or wouldn’t control his passions, so he had a way of taking unto himself concubines, a practice not uncommon in his day.

Monica, righteous but not self-righteous, would visit with her son even when he had a concubine at his side. But she urged him to give up his concubine and seek out a wife and live for God. And she never ceased praying for him. The occasion came when Augustine allowed the Scriptures to fall open where they would, and his eyes fell upon Rom. 13:11-14, particularly the lines “Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

That did it. The Spirit used those words to cut Augustine to the heart, a man now 32 who had lived a life of sin, as he would afterwards “confess” in his Confessions, now a classic in devotional literature. He proceeded to obey Christ in baptism and gave the rest of his life in quest of the City of God, the title of another of his great books. Augustine was touched by the grace of God, an experience that he never forgot, and God’s grace was the theme of his remaining years. Perhaps no one in the history of the church this side of Paul saw sin in all its ugliness as did Augustine, but this may be because he saw grace as few men have. Or is it the other way around? Perhaps he saw grace bountifully because he saw sin bountifully.

His mother’s prayers were answered, even if after her death. He not only buried her, but his 18-year old son as well, by one of his concubines. But now he knew the grace of God, which according to his Confessions, is the outpouring of God’s unconditional love. Few have come to hate sin, their own sins, as did Augustine. And he never forgot the godly, prayerful life of his mother.

Yes, you might name your daughter Monica, and as she grows up tell her about Augustine. Monica gave to the church one of its greatest princes — and she never gave up even when she visited with him in his sins.

Now you can better weigh that impressive statement, Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not. Where would one find a more meaningful truth, one packed with such theological significance? Understood and believed, it would help answer some of our most difficult questions about life. It is so embracing as to serve as a synopsis of a believer’s view of God and the world. I am impressed by the magnitude of its meaning. It is vintage Augustine, drenched with both the grace of God and the mind of God.

The first part, Without God, we cannot, reveals Augustine’s reliance upon the grace of God, which he would no doubt apply to all aspects of life. Because of God’s grace we have bread, but the wheat has to be harvested and milled, and the bread has to be baked. Loaves of bread do not come tumbling down out of heaven. We can have bread, but only with God’s blessings. Coal, iron, lead, copper are all by God’s grace, but they have to be mined to be of any value to us. We cannot have any of these things without God. Even so with life itself, for as the Scriptures put it, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Augustine speaks to the pride of man who supposes he can build his tower of Babel without any thought of his Creator. Without God, we cannot do anything.

It is noteworthy that the venerable bishop would emphasize the converse as equally true, Without us, God will not. Yes, we have bread from God’s hand — “Give us this day our daily bread” — but only as we are willing to do our part. If we leave the coal unmined, we will freeze to death. Without us, God will not put bread on the table or heat in our homes. Augustine is not limiting the power of God. It is not that God cannot, but that he will not. The bishop was drawing upon both Scripture and human experience. We learn that God will not do things that he could do. He is putting us through school, and he does not do our homework for us.

Even though Augustine believed in predestination, the one doctrine in his theology that church councils afterwards rejected, he placed emphasis on man’s free will. While God’s grace is a free gift, Augustine insisted, man receives that gift by responding through faith in loving obedience. There is something for us to do to be saved, but grace is nonetheless a free gift. God will take away our sinful nature, he believed, and make us new creations, but only through our faith in Christ. So Augustine saw the gospel in his aphorism, Without God, we cannot be saved; without our response to his grace, God will not save us.

But God’s grace goes beyond this in that in his aggressive mercy he pursues sinful man “down the night and down the days, down the arches of the years,” as Francis Thompson puts it in his The Hound of Heaven. It is not that God simply proffers salvation on a take-it-or-leave-it-basis. The one He calls He pursues. The Spirit works on the person’s heart. God is unrelenting in his grace, being “bountiful in mercy,” and the greater the sin the greater the grace, leading Paul to respond with, “Shall we therefore sin that grace may abound?”

But still God pursues so as to evoke a response in the sinner. It might be said that God gives him the power, even the motivation, to respond, for grace is overwhelming. Still the sinner must respond, and in the light of Scripture it is evident that even among the called, those to whom God extravagantly manifests his grace, not all are chosen. Some repudiate the grace. How sad those words of Jesus: “Often I would have gathered you, but you would not” (Lk. 13:34). Without us, God will not!

Augustine’s maxim is applicable to common-sense issues as well as to the soul’s salvation. We all know that a schoolboy has to do more than pray if he is to make his grades. Prayer plus study! And those who advance in their profession “by God’s grace” are those who have applied themselves. We would all be pleased for the surgeon who operates on us to be a man of prayer, but we would choose the pagan surgeon who knows his stuff over the praying surgeon who is long on prayer but short on skill. It is well for a preacher to rely on the power of God, but if he does not apply both heart and mind to the task through diligent study God’s power is not likely to be evident.

We cannot do it without God, but God will not do it without us is a truth that touches the whole life and one that exposes a shallow concept of the nature of God, such as makes him a kind of errand-boy or a bell hop. Our notion to “leave it to God” may be as superficial as “leave it to Beaver.” We may assume that God does a lot of things that he will not do. I always pray that God will watch over me as I travel and that is especially appropriate for one who drives over Texas highways — but that should make me no less defensive in my driving or less cautious in keeping my car in good running condition. And to take special care in inclement weather. God will not watch after a fool driver, no matter how much he prays.

I do not believe in praying for the weather, to the dismay of some of my readers. I thank God for the weather, both “good” and “bad” weather, and I praise his name for all the wonders of nature, including the weather. When I take kids on a picnic, I do not encourage them to pray for a “nice day,” except as our right attitude makes a day nice, rain or shine. We should pray for a joyous time together and make the best of the day, whatever kind of day it is. Nor do I ask God to abort a tornado or cause it to strike someone besides me. I believe in storm cellars, closets, and common sense!

I believe in a world of snow tires, raincoats, storm windows, and sanding crews, and I thank God for them all. It is a world in which we are almost certain to get hurt, and maybe badly hurt, however much we pray. Heart attack. Cancer. Accidents. Murder, perhaps by a drunk driver (I support MADD, for I am mad at drunk drivers, and prayer alone will not get them off the highway!). And I believe in the police, armed forces, laws, and courts of justice. In Dallas a man was recently convicted of scalding a four-month old baby to death. A transvestite, he masqueraded as a girl and baby-sat for this couple, who may well have been deeply-devoted Christians. At our church last Sunday we prayed for a Dallas family that lost a son in the crash of the military plane in Newfoundland. It was the fourth child this family has lost in violent accidents!

Electric evangelists like to parade “victorious prayer” on TV, whether those healed of cancer, delivered from bankruptcy, or saved from foreclosure. They make it a simple matter, one only needs to pray with them then and there. Name it and claim it, they say. There is no need to be poor or sick or unemployed. Trust God! Pray! This can leave the wrong impression and has the potential of doing great harm. What will hundreds, even thousands, think who have suffered for years of untold agony from a legion of tragedies and with no relief despite constant prayer — and many no doubt in response to the pleas of these evangelists, both in terms of prayers and dollars. What does it do to their faith? Perhaps these evangelists presume to know too much about what God will do and is doing. I suspect that old Augustine would be more cautious than that.

Can we not say that these tragic things happen to us all, saints and sinners alike, because we all live in a troubled world? Yes, of course, God sometimes delivers one from some calamity while not delivering another, and for reasons known only to him, but how can we know the mind of God and thus serve as his counsellor? One who boldly asserts “God spared me!” from a fiery airplane crash while scores of others perished, might do better simply to thank God that he is still alive. It might only be that he was sitting in the right place on the plane.

What really matters is that God has promised to be with us through all the uneven experiences of life, and that in the end he will give us the victory, however brutal life may prove to be. And that He will even take the brutalities and use them to His glory and for our good. That is what prayer and faith are all about: not for escape but for resources of power “For the Living of These Days,” as the great hymn puts it.

Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not. Augustine may have been inspired by those words from Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” The one who wrote those lines lived a life of incredible suffering and at last died a martyr’s death.

That tells us something of what the pilgrim’s progress is all about. We may have the wrong idea if we suppose God will carry us through the skies on flowery beds of ease, as another old hymn goes, with little or no suffering, with no burdens to bear, with no haunting, impossible questions to face. We do well to remember that He is in control, and that His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways. — the Editor.