Posted on 02/08/2003 7:43:01 AM PST by Matchett-PI
God and man must both do something before a man can be saved.
Hyper-Calvinism denies the necessity of human action, and Arminianism denies the true nature of the Divine action.
The Bible clearly sets forth both the divine and human as essential in God's plan of salvation.
This is not to say, as Arminianism does, God's part is to freely provide salvation for all men, and man's part is to become willing to accept it.
This is not what we said above, nor is it what the Bible teaches. In order to understand what God's Word really says and to try to answer some "straw dummy" objections, we shall establish the subject one point at a time.
ONE: A man must repent and believe in order to be saved. No one was ever forgiven and made a child of God who did not willingly turn from sin to Christ.
Nowhere does the Bible even hint that men can be saved without repentance and faith, but to the contrary, the Word always states these things are essential before a person can be saved.
The one and only Bible answer to the question "What must I do to be saved?" is "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."
TWO: Every one who repents and believes the gospel will be saved.
Every soul, without any exception, who answers the gospel command to come to Christ will be received and forgiven by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Philip Bliss put the truth to music when he said, "Whosoever will, forever must endure...
If we can be absolutely certain about anything, we can be sure that Christ will never void His promise to receive "all who come to Him." As old John Bunyan said, "Come and welcome" is the Savior's eternal word to all sinners.
THREE: Repentance and faith are not vicarious but are the free acts of men.
Men, with their own mind, heart, and will must renounce sin and receive Christ. God doesn't repent and believe for us~we repent and believe.
Turning from sin and reaching out in faith to Christ are the acts of man, and every man who so responds to the gospel call does so because he honestly desires to do so.
He wants to be forgiven and he can only be forgiven by repenting and believing.
No one, including God, can turn from sin for us, we must do it.
No one can trust Christ "in our place," we must personally, knowingly, and willingly trust Him in order to be saved.
Now someone may be thinking, "But isn't that what the Arminian teaches?"
My friend, that is what the Bible teaches-and teaches it clearly and dogmatically.
"But don't Calvinists deny all three of those points?"
I am not talking about, or trying to defend, "Calvinists" since they come in a hundred 'varieties.
If you know anyone that denies the above facts, then that person, regardless of what he labels himself, is denying the clear message of the Bible.
I can only speak for myself, and I will not deny what God's Word so plainly teaches.
"But haven't you established the doctrine of free-will and disposed of election if you assent man must repent and believe and it is his own act?"
No, we have neither proven freewill nor disproved election ... since it is impossible to do either.
We have merely stated exactly what the Bible says a man must do in order to be saved.
Let us now look at what the Scripture says a sinner is able to do and what he is not able to do.
FOUR: The same Bible that states man must repent and believe in order to be saved, also emphatically states that man, because of his sinful nature, is totally unable to repent and believe.
All of man's three faculties of mind, heart, and will, which must be receptive to gospel truth, have neither the ability to receive such truth nor even the desire to have such ability.
In fact the exact opposite is true.
Man's total being is not only unable to either come, or want to come, to Christ, but every part of his nature is actively opposed to Christ and truth.
Rejecting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is not a passive "non-action," but a deliberate volitional choice.
It is deliberately choosing to say "no" to Christ and "yes" to self and sin.
No one is "neutral" in respect to God and His authority.
Unbelief is just as much a deliberate act of mind, heart, and will as is faith.
This is what Jesus meant in John 5:40 when He said, "You will (you are deliberately making a choice) not to come to me."
Yes, unbelief is an act of the will. In fact unbelief is active faith, but unfortunately it is faith in myself.
To believe and preach points One, Two, and Three, without also preaching number Four is to grossly misrepresent the gospel of God's grace.
It is to give a totally false picture of the sinner and his true need.
It shows only half of the man's sin.
It misses the most crucial point of a lost man's need, namely, his lack of power or ability to overcome his sinful nature and its effects.
The "gospel" which is concocted out of this view is only a half gospel. It is at this point that modern evangelism so miserably fails.
It confuses man's responsibility with his ability, and falsely assumes that a sinner has the moral ability to perform all that God has commanded.
The "cannot" texts of scripture are either totally ignored or badly twisted by this perversion of the true gospel of God's saving grace.
Please note a few texts of Scripture that dogmatically state some things that a lost man cannot do:
Man cannot see-until he first be born again. (John 3:3)
Man cannot understand-until he first be given a new nature. (I Cor. 2:14)
Man cannot come-until he first be effectually called by the Holy Spirit. (John 6:44-45)
We do not have space to go into all the "cannots," but these three are sufficient to show that a sinner absolutely cannot (notice it is not "will" not) come to Christ until God first does something in that sinner's nature.
That "something" is what the Bible calls regeneration, or the new birth, and it is the exclusive work of God the Holy Spirit.
Man has no part whatever in regeneration.
FIVE: The new birth, or regeneration, is God giving us the spiritual life that enables us to do what we must do (repent and believe), but CANNOT DO because of our bondage to sin.
When the Bible says man is dead in sin, it means that man's mind, heart, and will are all spiritually dead in sin.
When the Bible speaks of our being in "bondage to sin," it means that our entire being, including our will, is under the bondage and power of sin.
We indeed need Christ to die and pay the penalty of our sin, but we just as desperately need the Holy Spirit to give us a new nature in regeneration.
The Son of God frees us legally from the penalty of sin, but only the Holy Spirit can free us from the power and death of our depravity in sin.
We need forgiveness in order to be saved, and Christ provides complete forgiveness and righteousness for us in His death.
However, we also need spiritual life and ability, and the Holy Spirit provides it for us in regeneration.
It is the Holy Spirit's work of regeneration that enables us to savingly receive the atoning work of Christ in true faith.
God is a triune God, and no person can understand His 'so great salvation" until he sees each blessed Person of the Godhead playing a distinct and necessary part in that salvation.
No man can declare the "glorious gospel of grace" and leave out the Father's sovereign electing love and the Holy Spirit's regenerating power as essential parts of God's work in saving sinners.
To speak of "God's part" in salvation as only being one of "providing" forgiveness and man's part as "being willing" to accept it is to ignore both the Father's work of election and the Spirit's work of regeneration.
This not only makes man a full "partner" with God in the work of salvation, it credits man with playing the decisive roll in the deal.
How dreadful, and ridiculous, to give Christ the glory for His work on the cross, and then give sinners the credit for the Father's work in eternity (election) and the Spirit's work in our hearts (regeneration).
It does great dishonor to the Sovereign Spirit to say, "The Holy Spirit will perform His miraculous work of quickening you unto life as soon as you give Him your permission."
That's like standing in a graveyard saying to the dead people, "I will give you life and raise you up from the grave if you will only take the first step of faith and ask me to do it."
What a denial of the sinner's total spiritual inability.
Amazing!
The root error of the Arminian's gospel of freewill is its failure to see that man's part, repentance and faith, are the fruits and effects of God's work and not the essential ingredient's supplied by the sinner as "man's part of the deal."
Every man who turns to Christ does so willingly, but that willingness is a direct result of the Father's election and the Holy Spirit's effectual calling.
To say, "If you will believe, God will answer your faith with the New Birth," is to misunderstand man's true need and misrepresent God's essential work.
SIX: The Scriptures clearly show that faith and repentance are the evidences and not the cause of regeneration.
Suppose a man who had been dead for twenty years greeted you on the street one day.
Would you conclude that the man had gotten tired of being dead and "decided' to ask a great doctor to perform a miracle and give him life?
I'm sure you would instead, exclaim in amazement, "Man what happened to you? Who brought you back to life?"
You would see he was alive because he was walking and breathing, but you would know these were evidences of a miracle having been performed on him from without and not the results of his own power of will.
Just so when a spiritually dead man begins to perform spiritual acts such as repentance and faith-these spiritual "fruits" show that the miracle of the new birth has taken place.
Let me illustrate this with a Biblical example. Acts 16:14 is a clear proof of the above.
By the way, as far as I know, this is the only place in the New Testament that uses the phrase "opened heart," and the Bible gives the whole credit for this "opening" to God's power and not to man's will.
Modern evangelism does the exact opposite and credits the opening of the heart to the power of man's "free will."
Remember that we are not discussing whether man must be willing to open his heart. We settled that under points One, Two, and Three.
We are looking now for the source of power that enabled man to perform that spiritual act.
Arminianism insists that man's free will must furnish the willingness or power, and the Bible says that the Holy Spirit of God furnishes that power or ability in the new birth.
Let us examine the one text in Scripture that uses the phrase "opened heart" and see if it agrees with our previous points:
"And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul." (Acts 16:14)
The NIV says: "The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message."
First of all we note that Lydia did indeed "attend" or listen to the words of Paul.
She gladly heard and willingly believed his message. As we have already shown, she had to do this in order to benefit from the gospel and be saved.
Lydia's attending," or hearing and believing, illustrates points One, Two, and Three above, and refutes hyper-Calvinism, (which says the elect will be saved regardless of whether they hear and believe the gospel or not).
Lydia did choose to believe, and she herself did it only because she wholeheartedly wanted to.
She did not do it "unwillingly" nor did God hear and believe for her.
It was her own response and it was a most willing response.
Next, we notice exactly what God did. We see here demonstrated what God must do before Lydia can be saved.
(1) He provided a salvation of "by grace through faith" that could be preached. Obviously "the things spoken" by Paul were the gospel facts concerning the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and surely this Lamb is God's gracious provision.
(2) God also brought the message of His provision to Lydia. He sent a preacher to tell her about this great plan of salvation.
God went to a lot of trouble to provide such a gospel-He gave His only begotten Son up to death.
He went to great ends to provide such a preacher as Paul-read about it in Paul's testimony in Acts 22.
It is at this point that Arminianism departs from the Bible and proceeds to apply human logic to the above truths.
They tragically fail to look at the rest of the Biblical text and see that God must do something else.
(3) God must open Lydia's heart (or give her spiritual life) so she will be able to believe.
Her natural mind is blind, her natural heart is averse to God, and her will is in bondage to sin and spiritual death.
Only the power of God can free her from this graveyard of spiritual depravity.
The giving of this life and power is solely the work of God.
Notice that the Bible explicitly gives God alone the credit for Lydia's heart being opened.
It is impossible not see that in this text unless you simply refuse to accept what God clearly says.
Look at the words carefully: . . whose heart the LORD OPENED...
Notice also how clearly the Holy Spirit teaches us the relationship between the cause and the effect in the conversion of Lydia.
God was the One Who opened Lydia's heart, that is the cause, and He did so in order that she might be able to attend to the truths that Paul preached, that is the effect.
Now that is what the Word of God says!
Do not bluster about "dead theology" or throw Calvin's name around in derision, just read the words themselves in the Bible.
If you try to deny that the one single reason that Lydia understood and believed the gospel was because God deliberately opened her heart and enabled her to believe, you are fighting God's Word.
If you try to get man's "free will" as the one determining factor into this text, you are consciously corrupting the Word of God.
God's grace not only provides salvation, but His power also gives us the ability to both desire and receive it He works in us "both to will and to do."
His working in us to "will" is the new birth, and, I say again, this work of regeneration (new birth) is totally the work of the Holy Spirit.
The moment we lose sight of this distinction between being "saved by faith" (the act of man) and being "born again by the Holy Spirit" (the act of God), we are heading for confusion and trouble.
We will be convinced that man is able to do what the Bible emphatically states he is unable to do.
The necessity of the Holy Spirit's work being thus theologically denied, it will not be long before it is ignored in actual practice.
This is the plight of modern day evangelism.
Since the evangelists are convinced that the new birth is within the power and ability of man's will, their man made "me theology" has become far more important than the theology of the Bible, and organization and advertising are absolute essentials to success while the necessary work of the Holy Ghost is all but forgotten.
It is true that lip service is given to the need to "Pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance," and cards asking people to "promise to pray every day" are always sent out months in advance of the big campaign.
However, some people are not sure if the promise to pray or the other pledge (to give money) which is always included ( "only your gifts can make this great campaign possible") is the most important to the success of the campaign.
But that's another subject for another day....
Where?
As I read Wesley, he defined prevenient grace as that spiritual blessing which God gives everyone under the sound of the gospel. The old Calvinistic meaning of prevenient grace was simply that of spiritual blessings bestowed on God's elect before they become Christians for real. (For example, preventing the elect sinner's death in a terrible accident ten years before he becomes a Christian would be a Calvinist's example of prevenient grace. This is not what Wesley was talking about.)
Keaggy has a good career as a solo Christian artist. He has even won a Dove Award or two. CD's that come to mind of his work include "the Master and the Musician", "Crimson and Blue", "220", "the Wind in the Wheat", and others. A search on Google should produce a lot of links to websites about him. If you like Clapton's music, you'll like Keaggy's, as Eric was a big influence for him, along with Michael Bloomfield, Julian Bream, and several acoustic artists. He also incorporates Celtic music influences into his music.
As for Eric Clapton, I've been a fan of his music for years, and while I know he's not always been too good in his personal life, I have heard that he does confess Christ, so I pray for him, that God would draw Eric closer to Him, and that Eric would manifest God's love and Word in his music and life. I also pray for Paul McCartney in the same way. I know Paul has heard the Gospel, and I've heard reports that he has, in fact, given his heart to the Lord. Paul is also a fan of Keaggy's music, and the two have met. Phil played for Linda (McCartney's) sister's wedding, as Linda's sister is a Christian.
Back to the article...yes, it does do a good job showing the difference between Hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism vis-a-vis Biblical Chrisitanity. Actually cleared up some hazy spots for me.
The assembly is where two or three or more are gathered in His name, and yes, error does reside in the same building as truth these days, (and probably always did). i can remember Cal Thomas (the syndicated columnist, a Ruling Elder in my Presbytery) coming to speak at the dedication of our new building. The phrase that most came to mind was something like..."Theology isn't important, just believe in Jesus"...i wanted to jump up in his face (he's 6'7", so i would have had to jump, literally) and say "Which Jesus Elder Thomas?"..."so theology does matter, doesn't it?" Funny thing about it is that his pastor is one of the best Calvinist thinkers in this nation, you'd think Thomas would know better.
Now we have to be so careful about what we allow in our pulpits and Sunday school clasrooms, that it is almost a full time job in itself. So, yes, let's define our terms before we start throwing them around!!!
You're close but not quite right. It's more "that spiritual blessing which God gives everyone at which time he prepares them and convicts them in the understanding of the gospel."
One of Wesley's very common exhortations to his preachers was to seek the "prepared" and not to waste time on those who were not.
That exhortation points directly at what Wesley meant by prevenient grace.
The distinction with Calvinism is minute. Both have the Holy Spirit making up the necessary difference. Calvin has the difference made up all the way to regeneration. Wesley has it made up all the way to enlightenment that makes the believing possible.
With Calvin, rejection is not possible. With Wesley rejection is possible.
Since absolute foreknowledge OR absolute predestination have the SAME NUMBER of people coming out saved on the far side of salvation, it is almost irrelevant to argue over the process that got them that way.
I'm more and more inclined toward DrSteveJ's statement that the believing, the regenerating, the saving, the justifying are not separated by time, but are instantaneous and at the same moment. He sees a "logical" order but not a temporal order. Bottom line....instantaneous.
We are trying to separate an instant and it cannot be separated.
This is an excellent exposition of the doctrine of salvation. What a great work God has done in the salvation of sinners. Truly, it is all of grace.
Pardon me for glossing over this. I should have said that Wesley's position is that prevenient grace is extended to elect and non-elect sinners, but not to all non-elect sinners under the sound of the gospel.
But that's where the Calvinists and the Wesleyans part company anyway.
I speak from personal experience. When you and I first met here, I believed in Prevenient grace, though I didn't know the phrase till later. I consider it a "semi-calvinist" position (remember I accepted the title "three-point Calvinist" with reservations? That I would have accepted T,U, and P, if I was careful in my definitions?), and one which was an important waystation in my gradual evolution to believing (and accepting) the full Calvinist position.
IMHO, "prevenient grace" is that where the Calvinist and the Wesleyan can agree -- that we both believe that the Holy Spirit has to open the hearts of unbelievers for salvation to occur. That' undeniably Biblical -- there's not even a prima facie case against it, unless you want to say it doesn't go far enough.
In case you're wondering, I am not abandoning my beliefs in Calvinism. I am just trying to find better ways to communicate it to people than using the old TULIP model. Prevenient grace is a good starting place. It's part of what brought me back to the Calvinist system.
I don't think very many Calvinists believe that there is much, if any, separation of time between those.
Here's how I understand it. The_doc will likely correct me if my analogy is faulty, but here goes: It's like a chemical reaction. A lot of fast reactions are actually series of reactions. They might even seem instantaneous, but it's only because because the energies are right and they zip right along from one intermediate stage to another to the products. But one intermediate stage had to happen for the next to happen. Before your digestive system can break apart a complex biological molecule (say, a protein), it must first form the protein-enzyme complex.
Similarly, Calvinists, when they say regeneration precedes salvation, are usually splitting hairs. It's not that theres this long period where you're regenerate but not saved, but rather that in order to have faith, you had to be made alive first. In order to be saved you had to have faith. And so the "reaction" goes in a definate order. The "chain reaction" would not work otherwise.
I hope I did more to clear things up than muddy the water, though I fear that I didn't. Oh well. It's an idea I was shooting from the hip on.
DrJ's logical order is "regeneration, faith, justification, salvation, sanctification....If I remember correctly."
Wesley's logical order would flip "faith and regeneration."
But there is no regeneration to be had without and accompanying faith, and there is no real faith to be had without an accompanying regeneration.
What we must remember in this is that neither of them come to the Lord with God's grace moving them to that point.
In this life, there is no one that God's prevenient grace moves to the edge of regeneration that God's absolute foreknowledge doesn't know whether they'll be coming out the other side a new Christian.
A believer gets to a divine moment where all these things come together....bang, bang, bang.
And it's that instantaneous moment of rebirth, faith, justification, etc., that separates sincere folks who all dearly desire to see others brought to Christ.
Does this speak to an elect and limited atonment?..It almost sounds hyper calvinist...
"We would probably all save ourselves a lot of time and grief if we remembered that in our discussions here. " -Corin Stormhands
Corin, you must realize that Wesley and Arminius redefine "grace" and "election".
This is the common "trick" of Theistic Evolutionists. The Theistic evolutionist (and I've been taught by one of the "best") uses all the same language the creationist uses. He claims to believe in "creation", but he has completely redefined the word. The Theistic Evolutionist tells us he believes that God "created" man. But when one understands how he defines "creation" we see he defines "creation" as "evolution". We then understand that even though he "sounds" very close to the Creationist position, he is actually turning creation on its head!
Likewise, the Arminian redefines "grace" and "election" and "predestination". In doing so, the Arminian might "sound" very close to the Calvinist, but he actually turns the gospel on its head.
Jean
"Next, we notice exactly what God did. We see here demonstrated what God must do before Lydia can be saved.(1) He provided a salvation of "by grace through faith" that could be preached. Obviously "the things spoken" by Paul were the gospel facts concerning the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and surely this Lamb is God's gracious provision.
(2) God also brought the message of His provision to Lydia. He sent a preacher to tell her about this great plan of salvation.
God went to a lot of trouble to provide such a gospel-He gave His only begotten Son up to death.
He went to great ends to provide such a preacher as Paul-read about it in Paul's testimony in Acts 22.
It is at this point that Arminianism departs from the Bible and proceeds to apply human logic to the above truths.
They tragically fail to look at the rest of the Biblical text and see that God must do something else.
(3) God must open Lydia's heart (or give her spiritual life) so she will be able to believe.
-John Reisinger
Allow me to play devil's advocate here:
Notice that in Acts 16:14 the Scriptures record that Lydia was already a worshipper of God.
What is to prevent the Arminian from utilizing this text as proof for their contention that Lydia had "made the decision" to "believe" and only as a result of that did the God open Lydia's heart?
I think I know why this is not possible if we are honest with the text, however, understanding the desire the Arminians have frequently demonstrated to twist Scirpture (i.e. Romans 8:29 is twisted from God "foreknowing" people to God "foreknowing" that people would "choose" him), I think we need to make certain that they are not allowed to twist the Scriptures to suit their purposes in this text!
Jean
Nowhere does scripture tell us that God's election is based on the condition that God "foreknew" that some would make the decision to believe him.
Jean
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.