Posted on 11/13/2006 11:01:10 PM PST by Dr. Eckleburg
If salvation is all of grace -- if God is God and he has chosen us for salvation even though we did nothing to deserve it -- then we ought to live by the grace we have received. Of course, some of you will look at that and say to yourselves, “Yeah, I really need to do better at living by grace. I’ve really been a failure there. I hope God will forgive me again.” If that’s you, you still don’t get it. Go back and re-read the last seventeen pages and (if you’re a believer) remember that you’re one of the elect!
Our hearts so quickly try to relate to God on a works-basis! It’s our pride, really. I’m convinced that that’s the problem with free-will Arminianism. People naturally process it like this: God requires one work from me, to believe. Once I believe, I’ve done my work and deserve heaven. Of course, in more hard-line Arminian circles, it goes a step further. Unless I’m holy enough, I’ll still go to hell, and maybe I’ve even committed the unpardonable sin and will be damned even if I’m sinlessly perfect from here on out. Legalism. Legalism. Legalism. Such a religion is barely recognizable as Christianity.
But Calvinists can fall into legalism just as easily. You see, I understand predestination. I’m a superior Christian. I’ve got all my theological “t”s crossed and my Reformed “i”s dotted. I sure am close to God. Pride is the Presbyterian’s favorite form of legalism, so watch out! But if God really is for us, and if we had nothing to do with that decision -- if even our faith was given to us by the Father -- then there’s no room for boasting. God’s sovereign choice of us leaves us free from pride. It leaves us aware of our brokenness and humble before God, but all the while confident that his eternal purpose will stand, that we will glory in God forever as objects of his saving mercy. As God’s eternal blessing really begins to sink from our heads into our hearts, we see a new freedom that we never would have imagined when we first encountered the raw, holy, sovereign power of God. Among the newfound freedoms:
1. Freedom from shame, guilt & Insecurity
Read Romans 8:28-39. Nothing can separate you from God’s love -- nothing in the past, nothing in the future. No one can stand against you. No one can accuse you. Even bad things (“all things”) are working right now to your benefit, to make you more like Jesus. God didn’t choose you because of your faith, and Jesus is not ashamed of you—even at your worst (Hebrews 2:11). He’s proud to have you in the family, proud to call you brother or sister -- even knowing what he knows. He’s displaying the glory of his mercy, remember. God’s law is no longer your enemy, but a friend. You can have confidence before God.
2. Freedom from destructive Perfectionism
If God really is for you, then you can quit trying to look good. If you’re trying to be good enough for God, he’s not buying it -- he didn’t choose you because of your great faithfulness. If you’re trying to be good enough for other people, don’t bother. God wants to display his mercy -- that means we have to be broken. God’s glory is not displayed by trying to look like you have it all together. Faith is not a work, and even if it were it still wouldn’t earn you any brownie points. Let God be God. If you won’t show your weakness, then others won’t see God’s power displayed in it.
3. Freedom from legalistic man-made rules
Some of the biggest practical opponents to living by grace are those legalistic little rules that we live by. We love to judge other with them -- they make us look good, and help us feel better about ourselves. (Pride again.) Dress this way, not that way. Wear this much makeup, not that much. Work. Don’t work. Home school is God’s way. Public school is God’s way. Christian school is God’s way. Drink. Don’t drink. Smoke. Don’t smoke. Dance. Don’t dance. This is God’s worship style. If we’re all about God’s glory, there’s no room for any of this. Do whatever you do for God’s glory without comparisons. God has freed you from judging others. You don’t understand God’ sovereign grace until you realize you are a beggar who’s been blessed without cause. You had nothing to do with it -- you’re just a receiver.
4. Freedom from Penance
Even repentance can be a sham if we’re trying to approach God with some vestige of self-reliance. Biblical repentance is a freedom we can enjoy daily, while penance is its counterfeit.
Repentance/Penance
Comes with empty hands/Tries to bargain with God
Acknowledges real sin as against God/Makes excuses for sin
Grieves over displeasing God/Grieves over getting caught
Asks for help to do better/Promises to do better
Is willing to publicly confess, if needed/Is too proud to publicly confess
Relies on God's promises to us/Relies on own promises to God
Turns outward, away from self, to God/Turns inward on self
Produces freedom, joy, and confidence/Produces guilty feelings, anxiety
God has obligated himself to receive any repentant sinner who comes to him. Without this realization, true repentance is impossible. Until we realize that God is for us, we cannot truly be for God.
To clarify, did God elect based on NOTHING within the creature, but on His good pleasure alone, or did God elect because He knew who would believe and who wouldn't believe?
Regarding "believe and be saved," what must we do to live?
We must breathe.
And how do we breathe?
By the grace of God who gives us life and breathe and lungs and a diaphram and determines the day on which we begin breathing and also the day on which we will stop breathing, whether we hold our breath until we turn blue or we're hit by a bus we don't even see.
It's the same with belief. All those who are given faith will believe and be saved. You leave out the determinant and comprehensive impetus in order to glorify the action. You're not reading deeply enough, not taking Scripture to its ultimate raison d'etre -- God Himself. Read Van Til.
And the Holy Spirit does the rest. It is Him that breathes life into the dead causing all who were predestined by the good will of the Father to be born again.
Grace precedes faith.
AMEN! This cannot be stated too often. Grace saves, and grace alone.
Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." -- Ephesians 2:8-10 "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Believers' faith and all subsequent "good works" were ordained by God for His glory.
Anything else is "boasting."
Where do you find "trinity" in the Scripture? Or homoousios?
Well, at least Grace doesn't equal faith.
Not so with "free will." Quite the opposite.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" -- Philippians 2:13
You want to say that there is no reference to free will in the Scripture?
Was I unclear?
Can you flap your wings and fly, even if you really, really want to and will it so with real determination?
Fallen man is subject to his fallen nature. His will is at the mercy of his unregenerate heart.
The man who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ has been born again by the Holy Spirit. His will becomes the will of God "to do and to will of His good pleasure."
I agree with Luther...
"Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God." -- Martin Luther, "Bondage of the Will" -- (xviii) Of the comfort of knowing that salvation does not depend on free-will' (783) "I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want 'free-will' to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities, and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my 'free-will' (for one devil is stronger than all men, and on these terms no man could be saved) ; but because, even were there no dangers, adversities, or devils, I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air. If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God, Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt' as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required something more. The experience of all who seek righteousness by works proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfort¬able certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. `No one,´ He says, `shall pluck them out of my hand, because my Father which gave them me is greater than all´ (John 10.28-29). Thus it is that, if not all, yet some, indeed many, are saved; whereas, by the power of ´free-will´ none at all could be saved, but every one of us would perish.
Thanks to you and Marlowe for your answers. Regarding the above, I am not sure if you are saying that those with saving faith can possibly lose it.
5. Unconditional Election. Seeing that our Lord was slain from the foundation of the earth, there is no one saved who is not elect in Him from before creation.
Well, how about the "unconditional" part? I thought that you held that election was conditional on God's foreseeing free will belief.
I do not believe it is possible. I am no more kept by my works than I am saved by them. I am saved by grace and kept by grace. IF I am saved, then God will see me through to the end.
Well, how about the "unconditional" part? I thought that you held that election was conditional on God's foreseeing free will belief.
Election is not conditioned by anything that man does, but on the will of God. That being said, God has indicated that all who believe on his son will be saved and all who do not believe on his son will be damned (indeed are already damned). Belief is a condition of salvation. Therefore election is predicated upon belief. If God set the condition before he created man, and he elects in accordance with that condition, then election is ENTIRELY in accordance with what God wills and not what man wills. We do not elect ourselves. That is God's job. Our job is to hear the gospel and believe on his Son.
You are most circumlocutory.
Exactly. Our agency may be contingent, but it's not an illusion.
Wow!
Great word, cornelis!
Can I use it?
I promise not to abuse it.
No, it's not. If you read the Belgic Confession, you would know that.
And if you read Paul, you'd understand that...
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
Election is specifically NOT based on ANYTHING good or evil which men do, even believing on Him who gives faith. Election is based on God's will alone. You're missing what Paul is telling you. Election first; faith follows. Saved by grace through faith.
I was only speaking of saving grace since I'm not sure what prevenient grace is good for. It seems to be a completely unnecessary step. I think we all agree that by whatever method, God already has His elect set at the foundation. If true, then why does God bother to give prevenient grace to those He already knows will not benefit from it at all?
Those who are saved do NOT choose Him. He chose them. They are passive recipients of His saving grace.
I agree, so then how can saving grace be resistible? This implies to me that God can choose Fred, but then Fred can say "No". But that wouldn't match the idea that God only elects (chooses) those He already knows will choose Him.
Belief is a gift from God to those who are being saved in that it is logically at the same time as their salvation. Humans are brought by God's own goodness and the only thing to derail would be their resistance.
Are there then three types of people: those to whom God gives no saving grace, those to whom God gives saving grace but they refuse, and those to whom God gives saving grace and they accept? If you agree with this, then I would make the same argument concerning wasted saving grace as I did with wasted prevenient grace. Why does God bother?
Why did God create man in the first place? Why did Jesus need to die on the cross? If men were already elected it "seems an unnecessary step"? It seems....
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Is the prevenient grace you are speaking of given to all men?
In order for an offer to be valid, then wouldn't the offeror have to include enough information to the offeree in order to make a reasoned decision? If I offered you one shiny brand new "bliksenater" and told you nothing of it, you couldn't possibly know whether to choose to accept. Does prevenient grace carry this information? If it does, then who with prevenient grace could reasonably say "No" to heaven over hell? If it does not, then prevenient grace does not foster a true offer.
Any time someone comes to saving faith it is because of the working of the holy spirit, and any time someone denies the faith it is because of their own free will. IOW in order to choose to come to God you must first surrender your free will (and everything else for that matter) to God.
(Same idea. If someone has fair information, who could refuse?) Is the idea here that all men are saved until they decide to blow it on their own?
The Bible is quite clear that Christ died for the sins of the whole world and not merely for the sins of the elect.
Well, we would say it is just as clear in the other direction. :)
The effect of the atonement is only applicable to those who believe on Christ, but Christ suffered and died even for those who will ultimately perish.
If Christ suffered for the reprobate, would He have suffered less if He only did it for the elect? If yes, the obvious follow-up would be why did He do it then? However, if you were focusing on the death, then how was it not partially wasted? I understand it can be useful to tell a lost person that "Christ died for you", but from a theological standpoint, how does it glorify God for Him to have died for the reprobate?
God does not "foresee" and then elect in any temporal sense. God made his election based upon his own will, and we read from the bible that those who believe shall be saved and that all who are saved are elect. Why is it necessary to take it further than that?
Just to be sure we are talking about the same thing. If man's belief is the driving force behind election then that is very different from the reverse. From our POV it may all come out the same in the end, but God's sovereignty is on the line here. :)
If there is no prerequisite act required on the part of men for salvation, then the gospel is meaningless.
That depends on whether you are talking about "salvation in fact" or "salvation such that we know it". When does the former actually take place? If the elect are already set in stone from the beginning, then no other "act" is required of a man's free will to be elect. Now, if one is elect, then certainly some things will necessarily happen, belief, perseverance, etc., however, nothing a man could possibly do could ruin his status as an elect. God alone handles all the details.
The Philippian Jailer asked "What must I do to be saved?". If there were no prerequisite act required, Paul's honest answer would have been "Nothing! You can't do anything."
Since Paul (like all of us) could not have known whether the jailer was of the elect, he answered in accordance with what God tells us. However, if the jailer had been able to ask God directly, then the answer might very well have been "Nothing! You can't do anything". :)
Free will references in the scriptures:
Ezr 7:13 From me was made a decree that everyone of the people of Israel, and their priests and Levites in my kingdom, who desire of their own free will to go up to Jerusalem, go with you;
Ezr 7:16 and all the silver and gold which you can find in all the province of Babylon, with the free will offering of the people and of the priests, offering willingly for the house of their God in Jerusalem.
Who gives you your belief?
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