Depravity and Election
"You were dead in your trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2.1). "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2.14). Are you made alive (regenerated) then you are capable of believing, or are you made alive because you believed?
"For by grace you have been saved through faith" (Eph. 2.8). If you are saved through faith, what comes first logically? The salvation or faith? "We are justified by faith" (Rom. 5.1). We are not justified by salvation which gives us faith, but we are justified through faith (we can obtain this gift) to be made alive by the grace of God. Justification doesn't give us faith but we are justified by faith. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16.31). Nowhere in the NT does it say wait to get zapped by God to be able to believe. In every case in Scripture you find the opposite.
How do you handle "dead in sins"? Dead doesn't mean annihilation but "separation." "Your sins have separated you from God" (Is. 59.2). Spiritual annihilation is not the meaning, but spiritual separation and still in His image and likeness: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man" (Gen. 9.6). Even an unsaved person is still in the image of God. Even after being separated he is still in God's image. Don't "curse we men, who are made after the likeness of God" (James 3.9). The image of God is effaced in fallen man, not erased (not there), so you do have the capacity to hear, understand and receive His sufficient grace.
"The LORD God called to Adam, 'Where are you?' He replied, 'I heard you'." (Gen. 3.9,10) Even though Adam was dead spiritually, he could still hear God and understand what He was saying. We are still in God's image. Our ability to hear God is still there. Our ability to respond to God is still there-to respond positively to accept or negatively to reject.
Paul says about the unsaved, "For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts" (Rom. 1.19). "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (v.20). Unsaved people who are dead in trespasses and sin can clearly see the truth of God revealed in general revelation. So clear is it, they are "without excuse" (v.20). Death doesn't mean they can't understand or perceive the truth. Instead, they are unwilling to receive the truth. "The natural man does not receive [dechomai: welcome]" the truth (1 Cor. 2.14). He understands in his mind, but does not receive it in his heart. If you can perceive the truth, you can receive the truth.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" (Eph. 1.3-5). "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined" (Rom. 8.29). "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Pet. 1.2). "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13.8) "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2.23).
The Calvinist says there is no condition for God giving election and there is no condition for man receiving it. Whereas Christians believe there is no condition for God giving it for it is given by grace, but there is one condition for receiving it which is by faith. "For whom He foreknew He also predestined" (Rom. 8.29). "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God" (1 Pet. 1.2). The Calvinist says God chooses some people apart from His foreknowledge of who will believe. Christians believe God chooses in accordance with His foreknowledge of who would believe. God picks people knowing they will receive the message of salvation.
I can offer you something unconditionally, but I can't give it to you if you don't receive it. A gift must be received. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16.31). "Believe on the name of the Son of God" (1 John 5.13). "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1.10-12). How do you get salvation? You must receive it, accept it and make an act of faith.
"Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1.13). This gracious act of salvation did not come out of your will, but came through your will. "For by grace you have been saved through faith" (Eph. 2.8). It is a mistake to say we cannot or do not receive the gift that He gave because it would be accredited to us. Who gets credit for salvation? If someone gives you something and you take it, how do you get credit for it? The person who gives the gift should get the credit. If you are dependent on God you will receive the gift, but if you are not dependent on Him, you will consider receiving the gift to be your credit. Are you willing to say you are the poor beggar and humble enough to say you are impoverished in yourself? You must accept it or you will be lost.
Atonement and Grace
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3.16). On face value God loves everybody. Does "world" mean "some," or just the saved or "elect world"? To do that is reading into the text not reading out of the text. What does the text mean in its context? "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5.6). How many people are ungodly? Just the elect or the whole world? "For the love of the Christ constrains us, having judged this: that one died for all, then all have died and he died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves" (2 Cor. 5.14,15). All have died because like all are in Adam, Christ's death covers all to receive co-death for those who believe. How can someone read this text and say Christ only died for some? How can someone with theological colored glasses read a verse that says all actually means some? "Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2.4). There is a very simple rule in the Bible: all means all and that's all it means. All means all and that's all that all means. If God did not desire all men to be saved, guess what? He would have said He desires only some men to be saved. Why not say so if that is what He means? When God says all, it doesn't mean some. It means all and that's all it means.
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3.9). How many people does God want to be saved in this verse? If some people are not saved what is the reason? Because they perceived but didn't receive. They knew it was true, but they refused to accept the truth. Christ came onto His own, but they were unwilling to receive Him. "And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2.2). Did Jesus die for the sins of the whole world or just the Christian world? John could not possibly mean the Christian world, because in verse 15 he said, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Are we not suppose to love the elect of the world? The world is defined: "For all that is in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world" (v.16). It couldn't mean the elect, because he puts the world as opposed to God.
For God to not love the world is contrary to the Bible and contrary to "God is love" (1 John 4.16). God is all loving. God cannot lie and cannot overlook sin. And God is love. If God is all just then He is also all loving. If God is all loving, He must love all. You cannot be all loving and just love some. To say God only loves some people is an insult to the nature of God which makes God arbitrary and capricious. It is to make God more like the God of the Koran like the famous Persian poet, Omar Khayyám said,
"'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
The God of the Islam is so sovereign that he can act contrary to his very nature if he wishes. If he wants, he can just love some people and hate other people. God in the Bible by His very nature loves all people. Picture this illustration. A farmer had a pond. And the neighborhood kids were want to go swimming. So he put up a fence and a sign, "Don't swim!" One day he was driving back in his field, three boys were found drowning, caught in weeds from below that had a grab on them. He just points up to the sign, tells them they are trespassing and that they deserve to drown then folds his arms. He lets all three boys drown. Would anyone say that was loving person? That's exactly what Calvinists think God can and could have done. They believe God didn't have to try to save anyone? The farmer is half right the children deserve punishment, but on the other hand, he is tragically and totally wrong to be so unloving not to try to rescue those children. To stand there and watch them drown may be all just, but he is not all loving. God of the Bible is both.
The Calvinist have their own version. They will respond the story is the same up to the point of when the farmer returns to the pond. He throws a rope to just one of the boys and lets the other two drown. Neither is this found in the Bible from the above verses (for God loves all), nor in the depth of my heart can I accept it. I am made in God's image with a moral sensitivity to believe such a god could never be worthy of our commitment. Moreover, my spirit is regenerated with God's life. A god who is not all loving is not worthy of all our love. God says "love the LORD your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. 11.13). God says, I AM love. For God to not try to rescue the other two is not an all loving God.
What the Farmer really does is throw a rope to all three boys. One person accepts the rope. The other two say, no thanks, I can do it myself. We can swim ashore on our own. The two drown. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin. "And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.... When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth" (John 16.8,13). God sends a rope to everybody-sufficient grace to all! But some, like Calvinists, do not accept His love. They want to do it on their own and assume they have been regenerated without having had to repent and believe in Christ to be regenerated. They get to have their cake and eat it to. For them, the deck is stacked.
Now the Calvinist will say his god uses overpowering grace to save some, but the question is left wanting, why doesn't he do so for everyone? This problem leads to many adopting the belief as an off-shoot from the Puritans coming over to America that God will save everyone (universalism and unitarian) since the extreme view of sovereignty leads to a more reasonable conclusion a god who can save everyone rather than the evil tyrant represented by the god of Calvinism. Both are dead wrong!
Why is Jesus pleading with all of Israel in Matthew 23? "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" (Matt. 23.37). He wanted to save them all. The Holy Spirit was sent to convict all of them. This tells me a loving God can never do something against a person's free choice. Let's say a man courting a woman tries to persuade her to marry him, but she says she is not interested. He continues, but she asks him not to press her further. He then decides to force her to marry him as can be done in some evil dictatorships. Is that love? Forced love is rape! God is not a divine rapist. Not the God of the Bible! Love NEVER forces itself on anyone else.
C. S. Lewis said in his book, The Great Divorce, there are only two kinds of people. Those who say, "Thy will be done O God!" The other, God says to them, "Thy will be done." Irresistible grace is contrary to God's nature and man's nature. "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you" (Acts 7.51). Choice is the issue! "As it is written, 'Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated'." (Rom. 9.13) "But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me like this?' What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction" (Rom. 9.20,22). Margin notes reference Malachi 1.2 for verse 13.
"I have loved you," says the LORD. Yet you say, 'In what way have You loved us?' Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" Says the LORD. "Yet Jacob I have loved" (Mal. 1.2).
This verse is talking about the nation Jacob Israel, and the nation Esau which was Edom (v.4) whom God hated for their sins. God didn't hate the person, nor was it about the predestination of an individual. And this is not a heavenly destiny but an earthly purpose. This verse has nothing to do with individual election, but corporate election for a temporal purpose to bring Israel back together and to bring in the eternal Savior. This word "hate" really refers to "love less" as in Luke 14.26 and in Gen. 29.30-31. It's a Hebrew idiom.
God hardens hearts because He can't get you to respond with His loving stroke. So He has to take you in the other direction. That's why He hardened the Pharaohs heart, because the Pharaoh hardened his own heart first. When you pet a kitten and it purrs, suppose you are still petting the same way but the kitten turns around the other way. Did you stop give loving strokes rubbing the fur the wrong way? No.
Preservation or Perseverance?
The Calvinist believes if you are the elect you will persevere to the end. If you are unfaithful, slipping into the sin, that's proof if you are not one of the elect in their minds. There is no full assurance unless you endure unto the end. Two very popular Calvinists are Sabbatarians and said if they took a plane or other mode of transportation on Sunday (the belief in a Christian Sunday Sabbath), they would know they were not one of the elect. They have no assurance for their salvation because it was never their choice. Incidentally, the Sabbath is not required to be kept, for the Sabbath rest was fulfilled when the veil was rent and the Holy Spirit came to be our rest by indwelling the Holy of Holies-our inner man. Nor is Sunday like the Sabbath, for Sunday is a day of spiritual vitality and activity.
"And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand" (John 10.28).
"For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Tim. 1.12).
Many Puritan divines trembled as they approach death because they weren't sure if they had been faithful enough.
Dr. Norman Geisler shows us clearly Calvinists strike out on all 5 points of TULIP. God is love. There is not a single Calvinist on the planet that can consistently look at an unsaved person and say Jesus died for you. He doesn't know whether he is one of the elect. You can't if you are a Calvinist go up to a person and say to him, I have Great News for you. Jesus died for you. Jesus loves you.
Whereas a Christian can look at every person in the eye and say Jesus loves you and He died for you. Christ died for you and wants you to be saved, but He is not going to force you. I pray you are willing to receive Him now my Calvinist friends to stop holding the cup upside down and putting the cart before the horse. Don't say, "I think, therefore I am." Say, "I am, therefore I think." May Calvinists receive You God in the love that You have shown them. Amen.
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