“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Titus 3:4-7
God saves sinners. Our God is the God who saves. The people He saves are sinners, one and all. God does not save the righteous or worthy, but only saves those who know they are unrighteous and unworthy. It is God’s work from start to finish so God gets all of the credit – “that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).
Often the tension between major schools of thought (Calvinism and Arminianism) is presented as “God is sovereign, but people are free.” On the one hand you see God’s power and authority to choose whom to save and on the other hand you see the freedom and autonomy of the individual to choose. So which way you lean between Calvinism and Arminiam depends (in this view) on which side you prefer to focus.
Calvinists focus on the sovereignty of God; Arminians focus on the freedom of people. Historically, the EFCA has embraced “the significance of silence” or better, “unity in the essentials,” remaining careful not to promote either Calvinistic or Arminian views. But individual Christians and E-Free churches are free and encouraged to express more focused views. This article is my attempt to guide you on my journey from an ambivalent “Calminianism” into what Calvin called “the doctrines of grace.”
J.I. Packer’s book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God helpfully nuances the above thinking into the more biblical terminology of the sovereignty of God and human responsibility. Freedom, with all of its American trappings, is a loaded term that has become nearly absolute (now totally absolute in the LGBTQ revolution). Biblically speaking is it true to say that all people are free? Is a blind man free to see? Is a crippled person free to walk? Is a dead woman free to do anything? Yet these are biblical descriptions of unsaved people – blind, crippled, dead. And this is why Jesus came – to give sight to the blind, to heal the lame and to raise the dead! He did this physically for many but even those healings were meant to point to the greater miracle of opening eyes spiritually, healing the broken spiritually and raising the dead spiritually.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
1 Corinthians 2:14
The natural person is the unsaved person – the one who remains “dead in sin” (Eph. 2:1), enslaved to their flesh and blind to their true condition. They are helpless; powerless. BUT GOD. In contrast to the blind, helpless, enslavement and death of the sinner, Jesus steps in as the light, the Savior, the Redeemer, the Resurrection and the Life. Truly, He is Mighty to Save!
Listen to this helpful summary of Calvinism from J.I. Packer (author of Knowing God).
“The very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on this subject. For the five points, though separately stated, are really inseparable. They hang together; you cannot reject one without rejecting them all, at least in the sense in which the Synod meant them. For of Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field soteriology: the point that God saves sinners. God – the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing. Saves – does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners – men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, blind, unable to lift a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners – and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner’s inability as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Savior. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology which the ‘five points’ are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen!”
J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness – in his introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ
This paragraph, and the larger article, shifted my thinking from moderate indecision in the debate into the joyful acceptance of the Calvinistic doctrines of grace.
I still believe strongly in the significance of silence and the importance of holding a gracious Calvinism. Often the problem in this discussion (that has gone on for centuries) is less what you believe and more how you express and apply your beliefs.
- I do not want to engage in long debates on this topic.
- But I do want to agonize with you in prayer over the lost, blind, enslaved condition of your loved ones outside of Christ.
- I do not want to sit back in proud complacency that “we are elect,” while billions of people slip into a Christ-less eternity.
- Rather, I hope the knowledge that God is the One who saves empowers us and emboldens us to take risks and even lay down our lives to reach as many as we possibly can with the good news of Jesus Christ!
Because the fact is that while God is sovereign over election – knowing from eternity past who would be saved – we cannot know who will be saved. But we can pray for our loved ones that the Almighty, All-gracious Savior would open their blind eyes, soften their hard hearts, heal their brokenness and raise them to spiritual life. May we never despair! May we never give up in sharing the gospel – for prayer and proclamation are the tools God uses to do His saving work!