This two-part expository study was preached at Flagstaff Christian Fellowship in 2017 around the time of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther publishing his 95 theses. Audio and manuscripts are available for each lesson.
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October 29, 2017
Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, one of the most significant events in history took place when a 34-year-old Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed his now-famous “Ninety-five Theses” to the door of the All Saints Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. A church door was like a bulletin board; tacking a notice to it was an accepted way of requesting a debate on an issue. Luther wrote his theses in Latin, which the average commoner could not read. But someone translated them into German and thanks to Gutenberg’s recently invented printing press, thousands of copies were quickly disseminated in Germany and beyond. Luther had unintentionally changed his history and world history!
Luther was born into a German Catholic home in 1483. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, so he dutifully began law school in 1505. But that year a lightning bolt nearly struck him. Luther believed that God unleashed that bolt to judge his guilty soul. In terror he cried out to his father’s patron saint, “Help me, St. Anne, and I will become a monk!” Two weeks later, much to his father’s disapproval, he dropped out of law school and entered a monastery.
In later years, Luther reflected back on his life as a monk (cited by Stephen Nichols, Martin Luther: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought [P&R], p. 29):
“I myself was a monk for twenty years. I tortured myself with praying, fasting, keeping vigils, and freezing—the cold alone was enough to kill me—and I inflicted upon myself such pain as I would never inflict again, even if I could…. If any monk ever got to heaven by monkery, then I should have made it.”
But Luther found no relief from his guilt. He continued his studies and was a brilliant scholar. In 1510, Luther’s spiritual supervisor, who didn’t quite know how to deal with Luther’s extraordinary guilt, thought that a trip to Rome might help the troubled young man. But when Luther got to that supposed “holy” city, he was shocked by the debauchery, hypocrisy, and blatant sinfulness that he saw.
Luther returned to earn his doctorate in theology and teach at the University of Wittenberg. But his studies did not resolve his turmoil. He struggled with the question, “How can I be righteous before God?” The Catholic Church prescribed things like confession, penance, accumulating merits, and good works, but nothing helped alleviate his guilt. As he continued to study the Scriptures for his classes, he began to see that there was a huge difference between what Scripture taught and what the church taught.
In trying to grasp the meaning of Romans 1:17, “But the righteous man shall live by faith,” at some point (scholars debate the exact time), Luther came to the radical realization that we are not made right with God through our righteousness, but rather through God’s imputing the righteousness of Christ to us through faith. He later wrote of this breakthrough (Christian History, 34:15), “I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through gates that had been flung open.”
As Luther grew in understanding, he grew increasingly frustrated with the church’s sale of indulgences. So he posted his Ninety-five Theses, not knowing how that action would radically change both his life and the course of history. The pope at that time was the corrupt, hedonistic Leo X. Through his father’s wealth and connections, Leo had become a priest at age eight and a cardinal at 14. He became pope at the relatively young age of 37. He had no personal faith in Christ and no pretensions of being a religious man. His motto was (E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes [Barnes & Noble], p. 248), “God has given us the Papacy—let us enjoy it.” As pope, when someone had quoted to him from the Gospels, Leo remarked (ibid., p. 223), “How very profitable this fable of Christ has been to us through the ages.”
Leo had spent so much on his lavish lifestyle and extravagant tastes in art that he drained the Vatican treasury (ibid., p. 239). So to raise funds to build St. Peter’s Cathedral, he sold positions in the church and he sold indulgences. Albert of Mainz in Germany had already bought two bishoprics, but at age 23 he wanted a third because of the money and power that went along with them. But it was against church law to hold so many bishoprics, so it required a papal act to grant it. So the pope and Albert struck a deal. Albert needed the cash he had agreed to pay the pope. And the pope needed funds to build his cathedral. So the pope authorized Albert to sell special indulgences. He could keep half for himself and give the other half to the pope (ibid. p. 241).
Albert recruited a monk, Johann Tetzel, to sell the indulgences, a complex system that basically involved being able to shorten the time in Purgatory for yourself or a deceased loved one by paying money to the church. Tetzel was a showman and a salesman. He played on people’s emotions (Christian History, 34:39): “Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, beseeching you and saying, ‘Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.’” His advertising jingle was, “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs.”
At first, Luther naively thought that the pope would endorse his objections to this crass scheme. And the pope wrongly underestimated the threat of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, which were spreading like wildfire across Europe. The pope dismissed Luther as the ramblings of a drunken German who would think differently when he sobered up (Stephen Nichols, The Reformation [Crossway], pp. 29-30).
But the issue quickly became not just the sale of indulgences, but rather the authority of the pope. Did he have the right to issue forgiveness of sins on the basis of someone paying money to the church? Things quickly escalated, fueled by more of Luther’s writings, which urged major reform in the church. He declared that “a simple layman armed with the Scriptures” was superior to both popes and councils without them (Christian History, 34:15). In 1520, a papal bull threatened Luther with excommunication. He publicly burned it. These events led to the Diet of Worms in the spring of 1521, called for by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
Luther went, thinking that he would get to debate his Ninety-five Theses. But he quickly realized that this wasn’t a debate—it was a judicial hearing where he was asked to recant his controversial writings that challenged the authority of the church. After a day of soul searching, Luther gave his famous reply (ibid. 34:16), “Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning … then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience.” Then he probably added, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen.”
Luther was condemned, but granted the safe conduct that he had been promised. (A century before, the Czech reformer Jan Hus had been promised safe conduct, but was imprisoned, tortured, and burned to death at the stake.) Now as an outlaw, anyone could kill Luther without fearing reprisals from an imperial court. On his way back to Wittenberg, a group of armed horsemen came suddenly out of the forest, snatched Luther from his wagon, and rode off. They had been sent by Luther’s prince, Frederick the Wise, to keep Luther safe. They took him to Wartburg, one of Frederick’s castles, where he was hidden for ten months. During that time, he continued writing, but his most important accomplishment was to translate the New Testament into common German (the above two paragraphs follow Christian History, 34:15-17). And so the Reformation was launched.
As it spread across Europe, the heart of the Reformation was to recover, clarify, and emphasize the gospel of God’s grace, as opposed to the system of works that had engulfed the church. The Reformation challenged the authority of the pope and church tradition, subjugating it to the Bible. It replaced the Mass with the sermon. It abolished the system of indulgences and merits as necessary for salvation. It abolished the unbiblical doctrine of purgatory. It did away with venerating Mary, praying to her and the saints, and venerating relics, idols, or icons in the church. It reintroduced congregational singing. It put the Bible in the common language of the people, who could then read it for themselves. It taught the priesthood of every believer. It recognized only two sacraments or ordinances, not seven. It taught that a person’s vocation is his calling and has significance before God. It taught that marriage is good and that church leaders may marry.
But today some Protestant evangelicals think that the Reformation created sinful division in the church and that we should set aside our differences, come together where we agree, and reunite with Rome. Others, attracted to the ancient liturgy, are joining the Orthodox Church, believing that it is the only true church. So on this 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, I want to talk about why it still matters:
The Reformation matters because it recovered the gospel, summed up in the “Five Solas”: Scripture alone; Christ alone; grace alone; faith alone; and glory to God alone.
While sola Scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fide were used in the 16th century, no one seems to know for sure who first put the five solas together (R. Scott Clark, heidelblog.net, “Whence the Reformation Solas?”). One source (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_solae) states that all five were not systematically articulated together until the 20th century. But scholars today agree that these Five Solas sum up the heart of the gospel truth that the Reformation recovered. Each one could easily be expanded into a sermon, so my treatment here will be brief.
This plank of the Reformation deals with the source and authority for spiritual truth. How can we know God and spiritual truth? Is it through the pope, the church, church councils, or personal experiences or feelings? The Reformers rightly brought us back to the Bible alone as the authority for spiritual truth. This rests on several key Scriptures:
2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
2 Peter 1:20-21: “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
John 17:17: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”
In Luther’s day and beyond, the Catholic Church taught that Scripture is authoritative, but it could only be understood and taught by apostolic tradition, handed down through the teaching authorities in the church (the magisterium) and that these teachings may develop and deepen over time. Thus doctrines such as Purgatory, the infallibility of the pope, the immaculate conception and assumption of the Virgin Mary, praying to the saints, and other doctrines not found in the Bible are taught as true and equal to Scripture because the teaching authority of the church has declared them to be true.
Besides church tradition, an additional threat to the sole authority of Scripture is the claim of personal, direct revelation from the Holy Spirit. Many today in the Pentecostal tradition claim that the Lord has revealed to them things that are not in Scripture, sometimes things that are contrary to Scripture. For example, I once heard a well-known charismatic preacher claim that the Lord told him that he should have performed a wedding for a couple where one person was not a believer, even though Scripture is clear that believers should not marry unbelievers.
But Luther and the other Reformers saw that when Scripture, church tradition, or personal experience are placed on the same plane, tradition or experience end up trumping and perverting Scripture, resulting in all sorts of errors. This is not to disregard the wisdom embodied in the early church Creeds or the teachings of the church Fathers. But it is to say that even the creeds and teachings of the Fathers must be subject to and judged by the Bible, properly interpreted. Thus all spiritual truth, especially the central truth regarding the gospel, must come from Scripture alone. It is only through inspired Scripture that we can know and understand the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ.
Because God is holy (1 Pet. 1:15-16; 1 John 1:5) and all humans are sinners (Rom. 3:10-18, 23), neither religious rituals nor good works nor any religious leader can reconcile us to God. Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and people (1 Tim. 2:5). Personal faith in His atonement on the cross is sufficient to reconcile us to the holy God. Jesus said (John 14:6), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Peter testified about Jesus (Acts 4:12), “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Paul said (Rom. 3:24) that a person is “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
The gospel is not about how you can be financially successful, have good self-esteem, be happy, or have a happy family. The gospel (good news) is that you can be rescued from God’s judgment through trusting in Christ’s sinless life, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-4; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:1-3; Heb. 10:1-10). You can’t save yourself or help Christ save you. Rather, you must trust in Him alone to save you.
Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Romans 11:6: “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.”
God’s grace means His undeserved favor. God owes us nothing but judgment because of our sins. He didn’t choose to save us based on anything good that He foresaw in us, including our faith, but only because of His grace. The Cambridge Declaration of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals states it clearly (alliancenet. org/cambridge-declaration):
Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature ... God’s grace in Christ is not merely necessary but is the sole efficient cause of salvation. We confess that human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating with regenerating grace. We reaffirm that in salvation we are rescued from God’s wrath by his grace alone. It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life. We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
Romans 4:4-5: “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.”
Galatians 2:16: “Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.”
The Catholic Church in Luther’s day taught that in addition to faith in Christ you had to add penance, good works, the merits of Mary and the saints, and keeping the sacraments to cut down your time in Purgatory so that maybe eventually you could get into heaven. Also, they viewed justification as a process involving the infusion of forgiveness of sins and sanctifying grace, received initially through baptism (usually in infancy) and continued throughout life by good works. The Councils of Trent (an attempt to counter the Reformation), condemned to eternal punishment any who taught that we are justified by faith alone (see, Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom [Baker], 2:112-117).
The Reformers rightly taught that genuine saving faith always results in a life of good works. As James (2:14-26) asserts, “Faith without works is dead.” But good works are the fruit of salvation, not the cause of it (Eph. 2:8-10).
This is really important: If sinners can contribute anything to their own salvation, then they can share the glory with God. But if God saves sinners through Christ’s finished work alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, and it’s all a gift, then no one can boast.
1 Corinthians 1:26-31: “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”
Ephesians 1:4-6: “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
Romans 11:36: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” (See, also, Isa. 42:8; 43:7; 48:11; 1 Cor. 10:31.)
It’s important to understand that while God commands sinners to believe in Jesus (John 14:1, 11; Acts 16:31), at the same time, no one is able to come to Christ in faith unless the Father grants it and draws him (John 6:44, 65). The natural man is not able of understanding the things of the Spirit of God unless God opens his eyes (1 Cor. 2:14). Paul explained (2 Cor. 4:3-4), “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So, how can an unbeliever see and believe? Paul explains (2 Cor. 4:6), “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” If salvation depends on God graciously shining into our hearts, opening our eyes to the truth, and imparting faith so that we turn from trusting in ourselves and instead trust in Christ alone, then He gets all the glory!
So does the Reformation still matter? Yes, it matters greatly! It recovered the wonderful truth that the good news of salvation comes to us through Scripture alone. It is based on Christ and His finished work alone. It is received by grace alone through faith alone. Thus we give glory to God alone! Don’t be seduced by any other message. “This is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!” (1 Pet. 5:12b).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2017, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
November 5, 2017
“Why would the pastor want to preach on the five points of Calvinism? Is he trying to stir up controversy?” No, my aim is not to be controversial, but to clarify some important but frequently misrepresented and misunderstood truths about salvation that the Reformation recovered.
While understanding the five points is not essential for salvation, these truths are important for your spiritual life. They will deepen your understanding of God and His grace; man as sinful; salvation being for God’s glory alone; Christ’s work on the cross; the new birth; assurance of salvation; and, evangelism. Many godly giants of the faith have proclaimed these doctrines of grace, including the Reformers, most of the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, C. H. Spurgeon, George Muller, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and many others.
The view that opposes Calvinism is called Arminianism (after Jacob Arminius). Spurgeon humorously pointed out that by nature we’re all born as Arminians (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography, The Early Years [Banner of Truth], 1:164), so God has to open our eyes to these truths. Usually, it’s a process. My aim is to help you along in that process. Spurgeon (ibid. 1:168) calls these truths, “the essence of the Bible,” “the gospel, and nothing else.”
In my case, I came to understand four of the five points long before I ever read a page of Calvin or any Reformed theologian. As a college student, I used to wrestle with Romans 9, where Paul states (v. 16), “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” Finally, I realized that I wasn’t wrestling with Paul. By resisting God’s sovereignty in salvation as plainly and repeatedly revealed in Scripture, I was fighting against God Himself! At that point, I submitted to God’s Word. But I didn’t come to understand the fifth point, so-called “limited atonement,” until the mid-1990’s when I read John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ [Banner of Truth]. (More on that later.)
Calvin himself did not delineate these five points. He died in 1564. In the early 1600’s, Jacob Arminius (1560-1609) and his followers disagreed with some of the main teachings of the Reformers. They came up with five points to state their views. Reformed scholars at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) rebutted these points by coming up with what are now called the five points of Calvinism. They are summarized by the acronym TULIP: Total depravity; Unconditional election; Limited atonement; Irresistible grace; and, Perseverance of the saints. Those titles don’t accurately describe these doctrines and have led to a lot of misunderstanding (Piper, Five Points [Christian Focus], p. 13). But, since they’re an easy way to remember the points, I’ll use them here.
But you still may wonder, “Why speak on these points since they are so controversial?” The fact that they are controversial is no reason to avoid them. The Bible has many difficult, controversial truths. The question is, are these doctrines in the Bible? If they are, then we need to understand them for our spiritual good (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Since books have been written on these points, I can’t go in depth or answer all objections. But here’s why they matter:
The five points of Calvinism matter because they help you glorify God by better understanding His great salvation.
J. I. Packer (Introduction to Owen, Death of Death, p. 6) says that the one point of Calvinism is that God saves sinners; sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all. If you were partly responsible for your salvation, then you can share in the glory. If God did it all, He gets all the glory. So salvation is totally of the Lord. That is the main issue.
Some mistakenly think that “total depravity” means that people are as evil as they possibly could be. Thankfully, that’s not true! Total depravity refers to the impact of sin on every part of every person: our intellect, emotions, and will are sinful by nature. Because of Adam’s fall into sin, all people (except for Jesus) have been born sinners, alienated from God. As sinners, no one is willing or able to come to Christ apart from God’s intervention. The will of sinners is free to act according to its sinful nature, but it is not free to choose and follow Jesus Christ apart from the new birth. As Charles Wesley put it (“And Can it Be?”) we were “fast bound in sin and nature’s night.” We were enslaved to sin, spiritually blind and dead (all biblical metaphors that picture inability).
Ephesians 2:1-3 asserts: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Later (Eph. 4:17), Paul asserts that unbelievers are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.” Being dead in sins, darkened in understanding, and hard of heart picture the total spiritual inability of the natural man.
Paul also explains (1 Cor. 2:14): “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” “Cannot” means inability. He repeats (2 Cor. 4:3-4): “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Blind people are incapable of seeing the glory of Christ in the gospel.
Paul also describes those outside of Christ (Rom. 8:7-8): “… the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” He is again asserting the inability of fallen sinners to please God. Since saving faith pleases God, apart from God’s gracious intervention, no sinner is able to believe in Christ.
Jesus taught the same thing. He told Nicodemus (John 3:1-8) that his religious piety would not get him into God’s kingdom. He needed to be born again by the Holy Spirit. Just as a baby cannot will himself to be born, so a sinner can’t will himself to be born again. Jesus said to the Jews who were challenging Him (John 8:43): “Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word.” He added that the reason they could not hear His word was that they were of their father the devil. They needed to be born of God. Many of Jesus’ miracles, such as healing the lame, opening the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, and raising the dead are spiritual pictures of the helpless condition of sinners. They need God’s mighty power to save them.
Arminians claim that because of what they call “prevenient grace,” God has given all people the ability to believe in Christ. Otherwise, they argue, it is absurd to tell unbelievers to believe in Jesus if they are incapable of believing. While that argument sounds logical, it is not biblical, because as we’ve seen, the Bible repeatedly teaches the unwillingness and inability of sinners to repent and believe in Christ. And yet Scripture repeatedly exhorts sinners to repent and believe. Also, there are no solid verses to support the idea of prevenient grace (see Thomas Schreiner, Still Sovereign [Baker], pp. 229-246).
If you accept total depravity as true, then the other four points necessarily follow:
The common misunderstanding here is, “If God chose who would be saved, then we’re just robots. We don’t have any free will.” But “free will” is a misnomer. None of us are totally free. We didn’t choose our family or when or where to be born. We didn’t choose our DNA or gender. We didn’t choose to be born sinners. As I said, sinners are free to act in line with their nature, but they’re not free to choose Jesus Christ. They are slaves to sin (Rom. 6:17) and they love their sin (John 3:19-20). Unless God intervenes to open their blind eyes and deliver them from the power of sin, no one could or would come to Christ for salvation. He has to take the initiative in our salvation.
Scripture is clear that He graciously took this initiative before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). Paul states (Eph. 1:4-5), “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will ….” Or (Rom. 8:29-30), “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”
Arminians pounce on “foreknew,” asserting that God predestined those whom He knew in advance would believe. I deal with this at more length in my sermon on Romans 8:29. But here I can only point out that the theology behind the Arminian view robs God of His sovereignty and gives it to sinful people. God’s eternal plan would be contingent on which sinners decide to choose Christ. So rather than creating the universe and devising the plan of salvation for His glory, God just saw how the parade of history would go and jumped in front of the parade. He was relieved to see that a rebel like Saul of Tarsus would decide to believe, but He didn’t graciously choose to save Paul before Paul was born. Read the account of Paul’s salvation and see if that interpretation fits!
A second reason to reject the Arminian view of foreknowledge is the biblical usage of the word. When God is the subject, to foreknow means to choose or determine beforehand, often with the sense of choosing before to enter into a relationship (Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans [Eerdmans], p. 532). Obviously, God foreknows everything because He is omniscient. But He foreknows His people in the sense of choosing to enter a special relationship with them (Rom. 11:2; Amos 3:2; Jer. 1:5; Acts 2:23; 1 Pet. 1:20). Geoffrey Bromiley explains (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology [Baker], p. 420), “What [God] knows, he does not know merely as information. He is no mere spectator. What he foreknows he ordains. He wills it.” As Paul puts it (Eph. 1:11), we were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.”
Some object, “If God didn’t choose everyone for salvation, then He doesn’t love everyone. And the Bible says that He is not willing that any should perish.” But the Bible is clear that God chose Israel as His people (Deut. 7:6). That means that before Christ He didn’t choose any other people on earth. And since the time of Christ, there have been many peoples who have lived and died with no gospel witness. Does that mean that God predestined some to go to hell? The Bible is clear that if anyone is saved, it is because God chose to save him. But if anyone goes to hell, it is because of his willful sin. For reasons we do not know, God permits many nations to go their own ways (Acts 14:16). He will be perfectly just when He judges them. No one will be judged unfairly (Matt. 11:20-27).
As I said, this was the last point that I came to understand. It does not mean that we should limit the offer of the gospel to the elect (we don’t know who the elect are before they believe). Also, as many have pointed out, everyone limits the atonement in some way. The Arminian limits the effectiveness of Christ’s death: It didn’t actually save anyone, but only made salvation possible for those who choose to believe. The Calvinist limits the intent of the atonement as being only for the elect, but affirms that it is absolutely effective for them.
“Limited atonement” could better be called “particular redemption.” The real issue is the purpose for Christ’s death. Did He die to make salvation possible for all, but certain for none? Or, did He die to “save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21)? Did He die on the cross even for those who will finally reject Him and be condemned? Or, did He give Himself for His church, which He purposed to save (Eph. 5:25)? Revelation 5:9 pictures the redeemed in heaven singing, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” He didn’t purchase all people, but rather some from every people.
John Owen (The Death of Death, pp. 61-62) clarified and convinced me of this truth with his argument that Christ did not only aim for our salvation when He died, but He died in our place actually to secure our redemption. He fully paid our penalty so that we do not have to pay. Owen presents three options: Either God imposed His wrath and Christ paid the penalty for all the sins of everyone, in which case everyone will be saved. But this contradicts Scripture, which teaches that some will be lost. Or Christ died for some sins of everyone, the sin of unbelief being excepted. But where does the Bible teach this? And, how would unbelief be atoned for? This leaves a third option: Christ died to pay the penalty for all the sins of some people, namely, the elect, whom the Father gave to the Son before the foundation of the world.
Practically, this means that when Christ died, it wasn’t an impersonal, blanket plan for whoever may believe. Rather, He died specifically for you as His chosen child. He went into the orphanage, picked you out, and paid the price to make you His child.
Thus you were helplessly, hopelessly lost in sin. But God graciously chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world. Christ came and died to pay the penalty of sin that you owed.
This could better be called, “effectual calling.” It doesn’t mean that sinners are dragged to Christ kicking and screaming against their own will. Clearly, some sinners resist the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51; Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19). Rather, it means that the Holy Spirit effectually makes those He chooses to save gladly willing to come to Christ.
Jesus taught this (John 6:37): “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” He did not say, “I hope that all the Father gives to me will decide to come to Me, but it’s their choice.” He stated that they will come to Him because the Father had already given them to Him. He added (John 6:44), “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” When some of His disciples stumbled over this and turned away, He didn’t soften it, but rather reinforced it (John 6:65): “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.” But if the Father grants it and draws that person, he will definitely come to Jesus for salvation.
Does this mean that a person has no choice in the matter? No, you must gladly decide to follow Jesus (as we sometimes sing), but you never would have decided to follow Jesus if God did not first graciously open your blind eyes and draw you to the beauty of Christ crucified for your sins. As His sovereign gift, He revealed to you the treasure of all that Jesus is. As a result, you joyously sold everything you had so that you could buy the field with that treasure (Matt. 13:44). The reason you chose to trust in Christ is that the Spirit first softened your hard heart to draw you to trust in Christ. Finally,
Some teach that if a person prayed the sinner’s prayer or went forward at an altar call and professed faith in Christ, he is eternally secure, even if there’s no subsequent evidence of repentance or new life. But that’s not true. Genuine saving faith results in a life of godliness. The perseverance of the saints means, as Jesus promised (John 6:39-40; 10:27-30), that He will not lose any whom the Father has given to Him. On His part, He keeps us. On our part, perseverance in faith and obedience is the evidence that we’re truly saved.
I’ve had many Christian parents tell me, “I know that my child is going to heaven because when he was ten, he made a decision for Christ.” So even though he’s into drugs and immorality now and wants nothing to do with God, they think he’s saved because he made that decision. But the question is, did God change his heart through the new birth? Did he become a lover of God and His Word? Did he repent of his sins and seek to grow in obedience out of love for the Savior?
Granted, some true believers backslide for a time, but if the Holy Spirit lives in them, they can’t be happy in their sins. They can’t persist in unbelief and disobedience. As John explains (1 John 3:9-10): “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.” Perseverance in faith and obedience is the evidence that a person is one of God’s elect (2 Pet. 1:10-11).
In this one message, I cannot answer all of your questions or objections. But I assure you that there are solid biblical answers to those questions! The Arminian view that is common in American evangelicalism has a truncated view of God and an inflated view of man. It is based on human logic, but is not in submission to what God’s Word repeatedly asserts. Historically, Arminianism is dangerous because it has led to theological liberalism and Unitarianism. The current Open Theism teaching, which denies that God knows or controls the future, is a logical outworking of Arminianism.
Understanding these truths will deepen your understanding of how sinful you were when God rescued you; how amazingly gracious God is; and how great His love for you is as seen in sending His own Son to die to save you. It will give you a deeper love for God. You will glorify Him more as you see that He saved you by His grace alone (Rom. 11:33-36). You will have hope that what He began in you, He will perfect (Phil. 1:6). You will be encouraged to evangelize, knowing that God will save His elect through the proclamation of the gospel (Acts 13:48; 18:9-10; 2 Tim. 2:10).
So I encourage you to go deeper in these truths! For a short, easy to understand treatment, John Piper’s Five Points [Christian Focus] is a good place to start. James Boice & Philip Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace [Crossway], and David Steele, Curtis Thomas, and Lance Quinn, The Five Points of Calvinism [P&R], are also helpful. The five points of Calvinism matter because they will help you glorify God alone by better understanding His great salvation.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2017, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation