Monthly Archives: July 2011

John 3:16 and Effectual Grace

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Dr. R. C. Sproul, in his book, “Chosen by God” writes:

“It is ironic that in the same chapter, indeed in the same context, in which our Lord teaches the utter necessity of rebirth to even see the kingdom, let alone choose it, non-Reformed views find one of their main proof texts to argue that fallen man retains a small island of ability to choose Christ. It is John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

What does this famous verse teach about fallen man’s ability to choose Christ? The answer, simply, is nothing. The argument used by non-Reformed people is that the text teaches that everybody in the world has it in their power to accept or reject Christ. A careful look at the text reveals, however, that it teaches nothing of the kind. What the text teaches is that everyone who believes in Christ will be saved. Whoever does A (believes) will receive B (everlasting life). The text says nothing, absolutely nothing, about who will ever believe. It says nothing about fallen man’s natural moral ability. Reformed people and non-Reformed people both heartily agree that all who believe will be saved. They heartily disagree about who has the ability to believe.

Some may reply, “All right. The text does not explicitly teach that fallen men have the ability to choose Christ without being reborn first, but it certainly implies that.” I am not willing to grant that the text even implies such a thing. However, even if it did it would make no difference in the debate. Why not? Our rule of interpreting Scripture is that implications drawn from the Scripture must always be subordinate to the explicit teaching of Scripture. We must never, never, never reverse this to subordinate the explicit teaching of Scripture to possible implications drawn from Scripture. This rule is shared by both Reformed and non-Reformed thinkers.

If John 3:16 implied a universal natural human ability of fallen men to choose Christ, then that implication would be wiped out by Jesus’ explicit teaching to the contrary. We have already shown that Jesus explicitly and unambiguously taught that no man has the ability to come to him without God doing something to give him that ability, namely drawing him.

Fallen man is flesh. In the flesh he can do nothing to please God. Paul declares, “The fleshly mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7, 8).

We ask, then, “Who are those who are ‘in the flesh’?” Paul goes on to declare: “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom. 8:9). The crucial word here is if. What distinguishes those who are in the flesh from those who are not is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. No one who is not reborn is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. People who are in the flesh have not been reborn. Unless they are first reborn, born of the Holy Spirit, they cannot be subject to the law of God. They cannot please God.

God commands us to believe in Christ. He is pleased by those who choose Christ. If unregenerate people could choose Christ, then they could be subject to at least one of God’s commands and they could at least do something that is pleasing to God. If that is so, then the apostle has erred here in insisting that those who are in the flesh can neither be subject to God nor please him.

We conclude that fallen man is still free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. He has no desire for Christ. He cannot choose what he does not desire. His fall is great. It is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.”

Justification by Faith Alone (Pre-Reformation)

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TurretinFan answers the question, why didn’t anyone realize it before the Protestant Reformers?”

The answer is that while the Reformers may have better systematized, organized, and rendered consistent the doctrines known under the umbrella of “sola fide,” or justification by faith alone, they were not in uncharted territory.

That is not to say that the church fathers were consistent or that they all taught the same thing. Nevertheless, the idea of justification by faith alone certainly wasn’t new to the Reformers.

Chrysostom (349-407): Attend to this, ye who come to baptism at the close of life, for we indeed pray that after baptism ye may have also this deportment, but thou art seeking and doing thy utmost to depart without it. For, what though thou be justified: yet is it of faith only. But we pray that thou shouldest have as well the confidence that cometh of good works. NPNF1: Vol. XIII, On the Second Epistle of St. Paul The Apostle to the Corinthians, Homily 2, §8.

What is interesting about the above is that Chrysostom is denying the necessity of baptism for justification. He’s saying that good works provide confidence but that nevertheless one can be justified by faith alone.

Chrysostom (349-407): That those who were enemies, and sinners, neither justified by the law, nor by works, should immediately through faith alone be advanced to the highest favor. Upon this head accordingly Paul has discoursed at length in his Epistle to the Romans, and here again at length. “This is a faithful saying,” he says, “and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” As the Jews were chiefly attracted by this, he persuades them not to give heed to the law, since they could not attain salvation by it without faith. Against this he contends; for it seemed to them incredible, that a man who had mis-spent all his former life in vain and wicked actions, should afterwards be saved by his faith alone. On this account he says, “It is a saying to be believed.” But some not only disbelieved but even objected, as the Greeks do now. “Let us then do evil, that good may come.” This was the consequence they drew in derision of our faith, from his words, “Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.” NPNF1: Vol. XIII, Homilies on First Timothy, Homily 4, 1 Timothy 1:15, 16.

One reason to include the quotation above is the fact that it refers to salvation by faith alone, and this is explicitly contrasted with good works. Continue reading →

Look away!

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Philippians 3: 3 For we are the circumcision, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith..”

I was converted to Christ more than three decades ago. In encountering the reality of the risen Christ, the entire course of my life was forever changed. Today, all these years later, I would have to say that the Lord is even more precious to me now, than the day I first encountered Him. Yet it would be equally as true to say that the more I glimpse the beauty of Christ, the more I am aware of my own dismal failures and short comings. Can you relate to this? The more I gain a sense of God’s majesty and holiness, the more I see my own blemishes and the fact, that I am a scoundrel at heart, and am in desperate, radical need of His grace everyday. I see this more clearly than ever, even as I pursue the Lord. I am a wanderer at heart, a stranger to holiness. As the famous hymn says, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.” (Come Thou Font of Every Blessing)

Do you relate to this?

Paul realized this when he wrote, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” (Rom 7:18) Though now a converted man, he understood that even though he could measure progress in his Christian life, he would NEVER find the righteousness he needed by looking inward. If that is true for the Apostle Paul, that is certainly true for all of us. We will not find righteousness by looking inside of ourselves. In fact, we’ll not find anything good in that old fleshly nature. Settle that once and forever. Nothing good dwells in our flesh.

Now of course, as Christians, now converted, we make progress in holiness. We strive to be more like Christ. If that is not the case then we are not true Christians at all. The Scripture tells us, “without holiness, no one shall see the Lord.” (Heb. 12:14) The genuine child of God has the Holy Spirit living inside him (Romans 8:9) and He is at work to make us more like Christ. But never for a moment think that the progress you are making is enough to give you a right standing with God. Only a perfect righteousness is good enough in God’s sight and this side of the grave, not even the most devoted Christian has it.

What we need for a right standing with God is something outside of us. Its what Martin Luther called an “alien righteousness.” That is not merely the truth at the beginning of our Christian lives, as we understand our sins were transfered to Christ and His righteousness to us. This is true now, in the heat of the battle for sanctification and holiness.

I very much appreciate the insight of Dr. Rod Rosenbladt in assessing the oft repeated (and little understood) words of Luther to Melanchthon in this regard:

My task would be simple if I were merely to answer the question, “How am I to be saved?” For, the answer to this question is simple as well. It is “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved!” (see Acts 16:31 [nkj]; cf. 1 Tim. 1:16 [nkj]). Although the doctrine of justification is still under attack in many circles, most evangelicals understand the question of salvation and are able to grasp it in its bare simplicity: Christ died for me. But the more difficult thing with which Christians must come to grips is, “What does the gospel matter to my Christian life?” Or, in other words, “What do I do now? Do I still believe the gospel, or is the rest left up to me?”

An Alien Gospel
One of my favorite stories that illustrates this particular matter deals with a time when the German reformer Martin Luther was translating the Bible into German at the Wartburg castle and could only have contact with his colleague Phillip Melanchthon by courier. Melanchthon had a different sort of temperament than Luther. Some would call him timid; others of a less generous bent might call him spineless. At one time, while Luther was off in the Wartburg castle translating, Melanchthon had another one of his attacks of timidity. He wrote to Luther, “I woke this morning wondering if I trust Christ enough.” Luther received such letters from Melanchthon regularly. He had a tendency, a propensity, to navel-gaze and to wonder about the state of his inner faith, and whether it was enough to save. Finally, in an effort to pull out all the stops and pull Melanchthon out of himself, Luther wrote back and said, “Melanchthon! Go sin bravely! Then go to the cross and bravely confess it! The whole gospel is outside of us.”

This story has been told time and time again by less sympathetic observers than I in an effort to caricature Luther and the Reformation generally as advocates of licentious abandon. These critics assert that if we are not justified by our own moral conformity to the law, but by Christ’s, surely there is nothing keeping us from self-indulgence. This, of course, was the criticism of the gospel that Paul anticipated in Romans 6: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” Luther’s pastoral advice was calculated to jar Melanchthon out of morbid introspection. Great sinners know liberation when they have it, but Melanchthon had been a scrupulous, pious Catholic. Luther’s words did not bring him assurance, but only doubts. For his assurance depended not so much on God’s promise to the ungodly as ungodly (see Rom. 4:5), but on his own ability to see growth and improvement in his “Christian walk.” Luther’s frustrated counsel was not an invitation to serve sin, but an attempt to shock Melanchthon into realizing that his only true righteousness was external to him: “The whole gospel is outside of us.”

Melancthon’s experience is common among many Christians I know today. Many of them, such as Melancthon did 400 years ago, are looking for assurance of their salvation in all the wrong places. They tend to think that their standing before God-now that they are Christians-is based on their own obedience and their own righteousness. They have forgotten the fundamental fact that the gospel is “outside of us.” It was “outside of us” when we turned to Christ for salvation and it is “outside of us,” now, as we progress in our sanctification.

Al Mohler expressed this truth very well, “Most Americans believe that their major problem is something that has happened to them, and that their solution is to be found within. In other words, they believe that they have an alien problem that is to be resolved with an inner solution. What they gospel says, however, is that we have an inner problem that demands an alien solution—a righteousness that is not our own.” – ‘Preaching with the Culture in View,’ in Preaching the Cross (Crossway 2007), p. 81

That’s very clarifying. The world says: the problem is outside you, the solution inside you. The gospel says: the problem is inside you, the solution outside you.

Sinner, look away to Christ as your only means of righteousness to save you.

Christian, do the same!