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.
Fair, polite post.
To say that a depraved human being WILL not choose the good is to agree that the depraved human being has a free will.
Sadly, we all will be convicted on our own sin and not just because of our sin nature.
These are on sale for Christmas, garden center, far aisle
Ps 137:2
We hanged our harps upon the willows
God FIRST opened the jailer's eyes to the light and God FIRST opened his ears to the truth and God FIRST gave the jailer a heart of flesh in place of his heart of stone and THEN the jailer believed -- the EXACT SAME WAY you and I and all believers came to faith.
The Holy Spirit is 100% responsible for your belief and mine, x. 100%.
To miss this fact is to "boast" of your own ability when faith is a gift given by God alone and has nothing to do with any good or wise "choice" or ability to believe, which is precisely what Pelagians maintain.
"You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God..." -- 1 Peter 1:23,25 "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God" -- 1 John 5:1 "...to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me." -- Acts 26:18. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." -- Ezekiel 36:26. "Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee." -- Psalm 65:4"...we know, brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction." -- 1 Thess. 1:4,5
Rebirth precedes faith because it was ordained by God from before the foundation of the world, based on "nothing good or evil" anyone can or would do, but on His good, electing pleasure alone.
Or else men would have plenty to boast about.
Read...
"Can we possibly, without utter absurdity, maintain that there first existed in anyone the good virtue of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his heart of stone? How can we say this, when all the time this heart of stone itself signifies precisely a will of the hardest kind, a will that is absolutely inflexible against God? For if a good will comes first, there is obviously no longer a heart of stone." -- Augustine, On Grace and Free Will
Don't make the mistake of thinking Calvin equated "common grace" with "prevenient" grace, x.
They are light years apart.
Calvin's understanding of "common grace" as written in his Institutes and Commentaries, refers to the fact that the sun shines on the wicked as well as the redeemed. We all have good days and bad.
However, Calvin never speaks of "prevenient" grace because he does not believe in the faulty concept. It was a phantasy concocted by Wesley to make an end-run around the Reformation and return the church to a works-based salvation.
Sadly, Wesley has succeeded to a large part. But as we're told...
"Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" -- Matthew 7:14
Sigh. I can almost hear them.
And yet the text says more than that. It says Paul is actually reminding them that God causes them to "both to will and to do of His good pleasure."
Anything less than that and men can "boast" in themselves and not 100% in Christ risen.
God's love draws us, energizes us, charges us, renews us, emboldens us, strengthens us, drives us, to want and do his pleasure.
All good parents have a similar role. I am a household engergizer for my children. It's a social thing.
Amen.
I would add that even before the bestowal of grace comes God's predestining decree to accomplish everything He determined from before the foundation of the world.
And because God's purpose CREATES faith in men and their desire to believe, God's purpose is accomplished without any regard to the individual man, but only to His own perfect and good pleasure.
Per the Westminster Confession...
IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished. V. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, has chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace. VI. As God has appointed the elect unto glory, so has He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. VII. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy, as He pleases, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praised of His glorious justice."III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.
Saved by grace through faith.
"Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." -- 2 Thess. 2:13-14"But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
"Chosen for salvation." And how does God carry out this choosing? "Through" the sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth."
"(God) hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" -- 2 Timothy 1:9
Respectfully, it's not. It's a federal thing. What the Father determines, happens.
It's also a judicial thing. What has been found guilty of the crime has then been acquitted by Christ taking on the punishment due the sinner.
"(God) hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" -- 2 Timothy 1:9
I think the foundation of this misunderstanding comes from the temporal world whispering in our ears that Trinitarian Christians are no different than the rest of the fallen world. But Trinitarian Christians have never been part of the world, not in the same sense as the condemned because they were redeemed before the foundation of the world by the "Lamb slain before the world began." And this distinction is born out of God's creative will, and not out of men's ability to discern "correctly."
I'm really fascinated lately by the way Zanchius articulated the distinctions, especially here, in his excellent REPROBATION
"Our Lord (in John 17) divides the whole human race into two great classes -- one He calls the world; the other, "the men who were given Him out of the world." The latter, it is said, the Father loved, even as He loved Christ Himself (ver. 23), but He loved Christ "before the foundation of the world" (ver. 24), i.e., from everlasting; therefore He loved the elect so too, and if He loved these from eternity, it follows, by all the rules of antithesis, that He rejected the others as early. So, "The children being not yet born, neither having done good or evil, that the purpose of God," etc. (Rom. 9). From the example of the two twins, Jacob and Esau, the apostle infers the eternal election of some men and the eternal rejection of all the rest..."
Now some think this impedes evangelism, and they would be wrong. We are to preach the Gospel to every ear on the planet. And those to whom God has given ears to hear and a new heart will hear and understand and believe, all by God's will and the work of the Holy Spirit alone.
Soli Deo Gloria.
I disagree. Not all of God's actions are forceful. Love is a dance.
Nice metaphor. I would add that God is always leading.
"The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:
Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?
In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat?
With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.
With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding.
Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.
Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.
With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.
He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.
He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle.
He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.
He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged.
He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty.
He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.
He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.
He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man." -- Job 12:-25
"Salvation is of the Lord." -- Jonah 2:9
Those are all good things. But I don't subscribe to determinism. That is heresy.
God's will is not heresy.
Conjecture: IF God determined everything in existence, would that be a bad thing?
Amen, Dr. E. How come I never knew the letter to the Hebrews was so beautiful?
Hbr 2:1 Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let [them] slip.Hbr 2:2 For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward;
Hbr 2:3 How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard [him];
Hbr 2:4 God also bearing [them] witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
Hbr 2:5 ¶ For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak.
Hbr 2:6 But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Hbr 2:7 Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands:
Hbr 2:8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing [that is] not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.
Hbr 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
Hbr 2:10 ¶ For it became him, for whom [are] all things, and by whom [are] all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Hbr 2:11 For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified [are] all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren,
Hbr 2:12 Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.
Hbr 2:13 And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.
"For it became him, for whom [are] all things, and by whom [are] all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified [are] all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren" -- Hebrews 2:10-11
Amen, AG!
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." -- Hebrews 9:11-12"But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
In addition to what Harley wrote, I was talking about entries such as:
100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.
113 2. Read the Scripture within "the living Tradition of the whole Church". According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church's heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God's Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81). (emphasis added)
This is what I meant by the Holy Spirit turning His back on the laity. He only guides the Magisterium with interpretation. The above says that the true meaning of scripture is unavailable to anyone except through the filter of the Magisterium. This is not a revealed faith. Many Christians in the world have a Bible, but no ongoing access to the Magisterium. So much for their growth in the faith, I suppose.
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