Underground Exiles

So I had another conversation this morning at church before the service started surrounding the question of free will.  There is a dear, dear lady at the Well who walked up before church started and noticed that our pastor had a copy of Erasmus and Luther’s debate on Free Will.  She picked up the book and said she’d never read anything by Erasmus and thought she might be interested in the book.

Seeking to engage the conversation, I mentioned that Pastor Todd had loaned me the book several years ago, and that I thought Luther’s writing in Bondage of the Will was by far the best piece of writing he’d every produced.

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I recently interviewed with a church on the South Carolina coast, and the conversation with the gentleman I would have been working with left me a little upset.

On a good day, at most I’m a four and a half point Calvinist.  Other days, I’m maybe a three-point or at most four-point Calvinist.   I still just can’t figure out where I fall on the Limited Atonement question, so I often oscillate back and forth.  I didn’t become a Calvinist by just jumping on a bandwagon; I arrived here after throwing myself against the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Romans for about 2 years.  For reasons of biblical faithfulness, I hold to a Reformed theology.

The gentleman I would have been working for on the coast is an all-out Arminian.  These two teams of Calvinist and Arminian have been holding different theological positions for several hundred years - the argument between them ain’t new by any stretch.

So as I sat and talked to this man, he was the most hostile person to Reformed theology that I’ve ever met.  I was actually taken aback at the amount of venom he spoke with; to be honest, I was shocked, since I’m not that angry about folks holding to Arminian theology.  I believe since I arrived at being a Calvinist by a lot of theological reflection, then obviously an Arminian must have as well.  I think that stands to reason.

At any rate, our conversation got me thinking down a particular vein: why can’t we get along?  I’m convinced that there are good, biblical reasons to be Arminian in your theology.  I don’t think that the Arminian position says anything the Bible doesn’t say, I just don’t think it says everything the Bible does.  Nevertheless, it’s not heresy; this is an in-family debate.  I can’t think of a single Calvinist I know personally that would berate or browbeat someone of a Wesleyan Arminian theology.  Why is it then that Calvinists have the reputation of being bullies, when it’s the Arminians I know that are hostile?  I just don’t understand it.

There are only three questions I have to have answered to be able to work with someone:

1. Do you love Jesus?
2. Do you love the Bible?
3. Do you desire to see people reached with the gospel?

As long as the answer to all three questions is yes, I can work with you, no matter what you believe about election and predestination.  As long as we both love the Bible, we can disagree, and still have a place to go back to to settle our disagreements, since we both hold Scripture to be the final authority.

Has anbody else experienced this?

Freedom is at the heart both of God’s grace, and who God is.

When God reveals Himself to Moses, He virtually defines Himself as an absolutely free giver of grace. In Exodus 33.18, Moses says to God,

“Please, show me your glory,”

God’s first reponse to this prayer is to give Moses a verbal revelation that precedes the visual one. In effect, what God says is, Here is my glory: “I will be gracious to whom I would be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”¹

When God says, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,” he means: I am free in showing grace. If you were to ask, “Who are those to whom you show grace,” the answer is: “Those on whom I show grace.” In other words, God doesn’t look outside His own will for an impulse to move his grace. Ultimeately grace is not constrained by anything outside of God Himself.

Right at the very heart of God’s self-revelation is the declaration that He is free in the way He dispenses His grace. And this freedom belongs to the very essence of what it means to be God. God is gracious to whom He will be gracious. He is not limited by anyone’s wickedness. He is not ever trapped by His own wrath; His grace may break out anywhere He pleases. And this is a great encouragement to the worst of sinners to turn from futile hopes and trust in God’s grace…

1. Exodus 33.19, ESV, emphasis mine. [↩]

This post is really a final thought about, and extension of, my sermon series on the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. As I tried to articulate to the college crowd at H²0 over the last 6 weeks, the Law is what God demands; the Gospel is what God provides. Articulating this distinction is essential to understanding and living life in Christ.

The more I’ve mulled over the topic in my head, even after the series has been completed, the more I realize that I could have preached in that series for the rest of 2008 and not come close to exhausting all that the Bible has to say on this particular topic.

For the most part, I use the word gospel nearly interchangeably with the word grace. I do this because Paul repeatedly speaks of the gospel of God’s grace, with grace being the focal point of the gospel. When the Law demands, the Gospel provides, and what is provided by the gospel is grace! Grace which is unmerited and totally free, and grace and freedom is at the absolute heart of who God is.

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“A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.” - John Owen, D.D.

This quote is one of many from John Owen, who is generally regarded as perhaps the greatest English speaking theologian ever. As a pastor and theologian, Owen was a man intimately acquainted with controversy, and wasn’t shy about meeting it head on. His style of writing is, frankly, hard to read, as it is ponderous and quite weighty, but slogging through it is well worth the effort.

Owen is perhaps best known for his works on sin in the life of the believer, as well as his Brief Declaration and Vindication Of The Doctrine Of The Trinity. It’s his work on the believer and indwelling sin, however that have moved me the most profoundly.

“The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.” - John Owen, D.D.

Owen was a man that wrote prolifically on the believer’s need to put sin to death, and his works on personal holiness are some of the most practical and sound that I’ve ever read. If I can recommend one great Puritan to you, it would be John Owen.