Posted on 01/01/2004 3:21:04 PM PST by Gamecock
Arminians must be nervous wrecks.
I was thinking about this while raking leaves on my front lawn. If I believed, as Arminians do, that sinners can choose to accept or resist the gospel, I’d be a nervous wreck. If I thought for a moment that the grace of God could be resisted and that even Christians - by sinning - can fall from the state of grace, I’d go nutzo. And I’d be a mess, believing that I could be doing lots more to persuade those sinners and redeem those fallen believers.
If it’s true, as Arminians argue, that salvation is a matter of human choice, I don’t know how I could live with myself. After all, here sinners are dying all around me, and what am I doing? I’m raking leaves. There are rest homes within a few blocks of my house, where sinners die each day. There are hundreds of people at the mall who need to be impressed with the message of the gospel. There are thousands of students over at the University who need to have their objections answered.
And what am I doing? I’m raking leaves, I’m eating lunch, I’m playing with my kids, I’m doing church work. All the while, sinners are dying and going to hell, in part because my yard took precedent over their souls, on the Arminian view. Tragically, the choices those souls made were not under the influence of my witness.
To make matters worst, I know I’ve been a bad influence on others, from time to time through my life. There was that kid in the 7th grade that I hated for pushing me off the bus. He knew I was a Christian, and I’ll bet he’s never forgotten my reaction to him and is even now using that as an excuse to keep God at arm’s length. How many people have I had that effect on? If I were an Arminian, and believed that sinner’s fates depended on the choices they make, conditioned by the testimony of people like myself, how could I live with myself?
This question comes up because of something a friend said over breakfast the other day. He told me that a relative, hearing that he was going to a church pastored by a Calvinist, said “Calvinists are lazy.” I thought later I should write a little response to that, but instead I napped.
Today, however, I am well-rested and want to answer this old objection to a high view of the sovereignty of God. The objection goes like this: since Calvinists believe that God predetermines everything that occurs according to His plan, Calvinists must therefore believe evangelism to be pointless. Since God has already elected the elect, Calvinism’s critics maintain, there is little motivation for Calvinists to get out there and win the lost. So, they’re lazy. That’s how the argument goes.
Of course, this objection has a twin, the “Why pray?” argument: if Calvinists believe that God has preordained everything that occurs, why should Calvinists pray? You know, how else will God stay up-to-date on stuff that might have escaped his attention?
This much-debated subject is covered elsewhere more thoroughly and eloquently. But I need to respond, since I don’t think Calvinists are lazy. To the contrary, I think Arminians must be exhausted or guilt-ridden (my upbringing proved this: whenever you want to guilt Arminians, just mention evangelism - “Sinners are dying and going to hell because you’re not witnessing!”). I think Arminians must be nervous, while Calvinists are rightly confident in God. You know, the God depicted in the Scriptures. The one who controls politics (Dan. 2:27; 4:17), nature (Mt. 5:45; Job 37:3-13; Lk. 8:22-25), weather (Ps. 42:7, 148:8) the past, present and future (Eph. 1:11). You know, that really powerful, biblical God.
He’s the God who controls what we call chance (Prov. 16:33), and He sends good and bad (Is. 45:7). We needn’t try to get him “off the hook” for tragedies by using the a-word (“God only allowed this or that to happen”), since he doesn’t allow things, he causes them. He “causes all things to work together for good” (Rom. 8:28). History’s greatest tragedy - worse than 9/11 or the slaughter of the innocents - was the murder of Jesus, an event planned by God according to his pleasure (Is. 53:10).
God determines the fate of all men, as well. How could he control politics and history if He didn’t (you couldn’t have a crucifixion without a Judas, for instance)? Think of notable biblical examples like Pharaoh, Jacob, Esau, Saul, David, Joseph, and the “objects of his wrath” (Rom. 9:22).
Because God saves, and not me, I can relax in my confidence in His sovereignty, instead of being paranoid because of some assumed personal responsibility.
I know some people resist this emphasis on God’s sovereign control and authority. Me, I’m thrilled with it. I’d rather that my fate for eternity rest in the will of a wise, just and merciful God, and not in me. I’m a little flaky. I know that some people think that my belief in the sovereign election of God makes me a puppet. Of course that’s silly: I’ve never done anything I didn’t want to do. So while God’s election doesn’t make me a puppet, of course I can’t do anything to controvert the will of God. What kind of a God would he be if his plan could be foiled by Dale Meador of Medford, Oregon?
Yep, I’m thrilled that my salvation is determined by God and not my choice. Like the rest of my species, I was dead – not merely ill – in my sin. So I’m delighted that my fate for eternity is bound up in the always-wise predetermined plan of God (Eph. 1:4, 5, 9, 11) and not my fickle attitudes. Else, I would have something to boast about (Eph. 2: 8,9), were it my decision.
On this, I agree with other “lazy” Calvinists like preacher George Whitefield, America’s greatest theologian Jonathan Edwards, Dutch pastor and politician Abraham Kuyper, untiring English abolitionist William Wilberforce, missionary to American Indians David Brainard, the courageous Presbyterian missionary John G. Paton, the “Father of Modern Missions” William Carey, “Amazing Grace” author and evangelist John Newton, the “Prince of Preachers” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, influential author Francis A. Schaeffer, preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, teacher R.C. Sproul, author R.C. Sproul, Jr., and pastor John Piper.
So, back to the statement made by my friend’s relative: are those of us with high views of God’s sovereignty lazy? I turn the question back to the critics: what are they doing, arguing such matters? Since they suggest that Calvinists are lazy because Calvinists believe in the sovereign election of God to salvation, they must believe it is the choice of man that matters. If they actually believe that a man’s fate for eternity rests primarily on his or her decision, what are they doing wasting time arguing such matters? On their view, people are dying without enough information. Unbelievers are dying and going to hell because these evangelists are not there to press them to make that fateful decision for Christ, on which their fate for eternity rests.
What is my friend’s brother-in-law thinking? How can he vacation or relax or work or linger over a meal, while people on his block and in his town are dying because he’s not there to give them the information he thinks they need, or press them to the decision that he thinks they must make? How can he live with himself? What about all the things he’s said, that were flat wrong or merely imperfectly worded, that might have doomed someone to eternity because he gave the hearer the wrong impression of the Christian faith? Or what about his sinful or inconsiderate actions, which might have led to some soul’s eternal damnation because that soul was “turned off” to Christianity by the brother-in-law’s deeds?
These are all plausible results of the view that men are responsible for salvation, and not the Lord alone. How could the belief that men are responsible for their salvation not leave you frantic?
The truth is that Calvinists believe that the offer of the gospel is for all men, and are compelled by their delight in God and obedience to his word to lead winsome lives before the unbelieving world. In this way, the Lord might use their earthly display of His love as a means by which God will draw some unto Himself. At the same time, God’s sovereign choices cannot be thwarted by the Calvinist’s reluctance to do so. Praise God, God’s use of willing hearts is not the same thing as fantasizing that we are responsible for any man’s salvation.
There is no contradiction between God’s sovereignty and our privilege in proclaiming the gospel or, for that matter, in praying. On the subject of prayer, Jesus repeatedly calls attention to how close and sure his kingdom is (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 10:7; etc.), but nonetheless tells his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” Of the importance of evangelism, in the face of God’s control over all things, John Piper writes:
Jesus promised with absolute certainty, that this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14, RSV). In other words, the great commission will be completed. There is no doubt. Yet Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) and to “pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send our laborers” (Matthew 9:38, RSV).1
Are we Calvinists sometimes inclined toward selfishness or laziness? No doubt. But no one is going to hell because of our sloth or conceit, just as no one is going to heaven because of our skill or zeal. None will be lost by Jesus, as He promised.
Dale Meador is pastor of Bear Creek Church in Medford, Oregon.
Notes 1. John Piper, “Praying For What Cannot Fail”, A Godward Life: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life (Multnomah Publishers, 1997), p. 115.
So Arminians, the question is Why are you wasting time on FR?!? Get out there and save people!
Q. 28) What advantage comes from acknowledging God's creation and providence?
A.) We learn that we are to be patient in adversity, grateful in the midst of blessing, and to trust our faithful God and Father for the future, assured that no creature shall separate us from his love, since all creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they cannot even move." -- John Calvin, "The Heidelberg Catechism," 1563
Is this fellow saying that God is a cause of evil? That evil, instead of being a result of the movement of the creature's will, is in fact a movement of God's will (if such things could be compared)? If he is saying that it is a particularly blasphemous statement. God cannot be the cause of evil, for He is Good. 'God is light; in Him is no darkness at all.' He is, after all, the One Who Is, the I Am; and evil is a negation, an absence of good, a negation of being. It would be ridiculous to assert that God could be the cause of evil.
Of course, the author may simply be using his terms carelessly, and perhaps not in the Augustinian sense that immediately sprang to my mind. Nontheless, he is using terms I would not at all imagine using.
I said no such thing, Dale Meador said it.
You make an excellant point.
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I The LORD do all these things.
oh, and that 'darkness' claim?
Jeremiah 13:16 Give Glory to the LORD your God, before He causes darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while you look for light, He turns it into a shadow of death, and makes it gross darkness.
Now you have done it. I have a name for those who resort to "huckstering" God to the masses: Kapeleuo-Christians
I've said it before: if we, as Christians, don't evangelise, we're not hurting God any, nor are we really hurting the as-yet-unbeliever either. If they're elect, God will get them. If I'm lazy, and sit on my duff doing absolutely nothing, God's not going to see his plan go to pot because I failed to do something.
No, I'm only hurting myself. Remember Paul -- In ICo. 9, he discusses why he must preach the Gospel. It's not because the stakes are high and the salvation of souls depends upon his efforts. Rather, he says "woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel." (9:16) His big concern is that he would fail to fulfill his ministry-- and embarrass himself and God (v. 27).
It's quite liberating, actually, to consider it that way. Noone is going to hell because I failed in my evangelism, any more than anyone is going to heaven because of my work in evangelism. They go to hell because of the hardness of their heart, they go to heaven because God worked in their hearts to bring them to Him. Either way, the glory goes entirely to God.
Yea no crowns for them :>)
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