And you, Solomon my son, know you the God of your father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts: if you seek him, he will be found of you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
All Commentaries on 1 Chronicles 28:9 Go To 1 Chronicles 28
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
There is a passage in the first book of the same Chronicles that declares the choice of the will: “And you, Solomon, my son, know you the God of your father and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts; if you seek him, he will be found of you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.” But these people find some room for human merit in the clause “if you seek him,” and then the grace is thought to be given according to this merit in what is said in the ensuing words, “he will be found of you.” And so they labor with all their might to show that God’s grace is given according to our merits, in other words, that grace is not grace. For, as the apostle most expressly says, to them who receive reward according to merit “the recompense is not reckoned of grace but of debt.”
