Monthly Archives: April 2015

Whose sin did Jesus atone for?

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Sproul JrR. C. Sproul, Jr. answers this question in the following way (from an article entitled “Did Jesus Suffer the Wrath of the Father for All Sinners?” at ligonier.org)

Did Jesus Suffer the Wrath of the Father for All Sinners?

Just for the elect. This truth is hard for some people for what seems like a good reason—it shows God treating people unequally. If Christ’s atoning work covers only some people, doesn’t this somehow make God unfair, treating one group of people one way, and another group of people another way? If people end up in different places, some in heaven and some in hell, then we can either attribute the difference to how God acts in our lives, or in how we act in ourselves. The latter choice has a great deal going for it. It absolves God of the charge of treating people differently. And no one in hell, of course, can complain about being there. They are there by their own doing.

The first choice, however, has three things going better for it. First, it means some people will actually go to heaven. Given the scope of our sinfulness, were God merely to make our salvation possible (which is itself a limitation of the atonement) and then dependent upon our natural obedience to His call, none would come. Dead people do not respond to the call to repentance, unless they are first made alive.

The second advantage is that this is what the Bible teaches. Consider, for instance, Jesus’ High Priestly prayer. If it is incumbent upon God to treat all men the same, would it not be incumbent on Jesus to pray for all men the same way? What, then, are we to make of this—“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours” (John 17:9). Here Jesus explicitly denies praying for those who are not His, while affirming that He prays for those who are His. Now if Jesus is unwilling to pray for those who were not chosen, on what grounds can we claim that He suffered the wrath of the Father for the sins of those for whom He would not pray? Remember that God explicitly affirms His liberty to treat some people differently than others—“For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion’” (Romans 9:15). What we try to free God from, the accusation that He treats some people one way and others another, God proudly affirms.

There is a third serious problem with the notion that Jesus died for all sins of all people. Hell. If Jesus atoned for all sins, just for what are the sinners in hell suffering? Those who seek to “protect” God’s integrity by arguing He must treat us all the same end up, accidentally, affirming that God punishes the same sins twice, once on Calvary and again in hell. Some might object in turn that the sinners in hell are being punished for their unbelief. But that too is a sin, and thus would have already been punished. If all sins have been atoned for, they can’t be punished.

God owes man nothing save damnation. What He chooses to give, outside of damnation, is all of grace. Which means in turn that He treats His elect one way, and the reprobate another. All to the everlasting praise of His glory.

R.C. Sproul Jr. is rector and chair of philosophy and theology at Reformation Bible College. Originally published at RCSproulJr.com.

Raised for our Justification

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sproul-77In an article entitled “Resurrection and Justification” Dr. R. C. Sproul writes:

How is the resurrection of Christ linked to the idea of justification in the New Testament? To answer this question, we must first explore the use and meaning of the term justification in the New Testament. Confusion about this has provoked some of the fiercest controversies in the history of the church. The Protestant Reformation itself was fought over the issue of justification. In all its complications, the unreconciled and unreconcilable difference in the debate came down to the question of whether our justification before God is grounded in the infusion of Christ’s righteousness into us, by which we become inherently righteous, or in the imputation, or reckoning, of Christ’s righteousness to us while we are still sinners. The difference between these views makes all the difference in our understanding of the Gospel and of how we are saved.

One of the problems that led to confusion was the meaning of the word justification. Our English word justification is derived from the Latin justificare. The literal meaning of the Latin is “to make righteous.” The Latin fathers of church history worked with the Latin text instead of the Greek text and were clearly influenced by it. By contrast, the Greek word for justification, dikaiosune, carries the meaning of “to count, reckon, or declare righteous.”

But this variance between the Latin and the Greek is not enough to explain the debates over justification. Within the Greek text itself, there seem to be some problems. For example, Paul declares in Romans 3:28, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.” Then James, in his epistle, writes, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar” (2:21) and “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only” (2:24).

On the surface, it appears that we have a clear contradiction between Paul and James. The problem is exacerbated when we realize that both use the same Greek word for justification and both use Abraham to prove their arguments.

This problem can be resolved when we see that the verb “to justify” and its noun form, “justification,” have shades of meaning in Greek. One of the meanings of the verb is “to vindicate” or “to demonstrate.”

Jesus once said, ” ‘Wisdom is justified by all her children’ ” (Luke 7:35). He did not mean that wisdom has its sins remitted or is counted righteous by God by having children, but that a wise decision may be vindicated by its consequences.

James and Paul were addressing different questions. James was answering the question: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” (2:14). He understood that anyone can profess to have faith, but true faith is demonstrated as authentic by its consequent works. The claim of faith is vindicated (justified) by works. Paul has Abraham justified in the theological sense in Genesis 15 before he does any works. James points to the vindication or demonstration of Abraham’s faith in obedience in Genesis 22.

The Resurrection involves justification in both senses of the Greek term. First, the Resurrection justifies Christ Himself. Of course, He is not justified in the sense of having His sins remitted, because He had no sins, or in the sense of being declared righteous while still a sinner, or in the Latin sense of being “made righteous.” Rather, the Resurrection serves as the vindication or demonstration of the truth of His claims about Himself.

In his encounter with the philosophers at Athens, Paul declared: ” ‘Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead’ ” (Acts 17:30-31).

Here Paul points to the Resurrection as an act by which the Father universally vindicates the authenticity of His Son. In this sense, Christ is justified before the whole world by His resurrection.

However, the New Testament also links Christ’s resurrection to our justification. Paul writes, “It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Rom. 4:24-25).

It is clear that in His atoning death Christ suffered on our behalf, or for us. Likewise, His resurrection is seen not only as a vindication of or surety of Himself, but as a surety of our justification. Here justification does not refer to our vindication, but to the evidence that the atonement He made was accepted by the Father. By vindicating Christ in His resurrection, the Father declared His acceptance of Jesus’ work on our behalf. Our justification in this theological sense rests on the imputed righteousness of Christ, so the reality of that transaction is linked to Christ’s resurrection. Had Christ not been raised, we would have a mediator whose redeeming work in our behalf was not acceptable to God.

However, Christ is risen indeed!

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

The “loss” of salvation and the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit

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keptDr. Sam Storms has written a new book called “Kept for Jesus: What the New Testament Really Teaches about Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Security” (Crossway, 2015), where he looks at every passage in the New Testament that addresses assurance, security, and perseverance. I highly recommend it. He has also written a bonus chapter, available as a pdf here, where he answers a number of questions including these two:

1) “My son just turned thirty and told us today that he no longer believes in Jesus. He says he’s an atheist. What happened to him? Has he lost his salvation?”

We’ll call this young man Charley. Perhaps Charlene would be a more suitable name in your case. In any case, his (her?) life presents us with a painful and difficult dilemma.

Charley was born into a Christian family. His parents were devout followers of Jesus, and both of his siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, came to faith in Christ and have remained vibrant and deeply committed to him.

Charley was raised in the church and was usually present whenever the doors were open, whether at a Sunday service, a youth meeting, special events throughout the week, or a summer retreat. When he turned twelve, he professed faith in Jesus, largely through the influence of his parents and older brother. He was baptized soon thereafter and was discipled by his youth pastor over the course of the next few years. Charley’s faith appeared to be quite vibrant and joyful. He endured the same trials and temptations as do virtually all teenaged boys, but he never wandered far or failed to repent when he sinned. He prayed every day and read his Bible and was growing in his understanding of God.

Following graduation from high school, he went to college and fell in with a different group of friends. They challenged his faith and insisted that he was being naïve to believe in Jesus. It wasn’t long before Charley stopped attending church and eventually declared himself to be an atheist. He grew increasingly angry at the institutional church and nurtured a deep resentment toward those who had influenced him while he was growing up, having become convinced that they had hidden the truth from him and only wanted to control his life.

Charley is now thirty, twice divorced, an alcoholic, and painfully bitter and unpleasant to be around. He wants nothing ever again to do with Christianity.

So what’s up with Charley? What happened?

Some believe Charley was truly saved as a young boy but subsequently apostatized and in doing so lost or forfeited his salvation. Others also believe Charley was genuinely saved and always will be, but they believe that his reckless and unrepentant lifestyle will result in the loss of rewards in the age to come.

In ‘Kept for Jesus’ I argue for what is known as the Reformed or Calvinistic view. Those who embrace this perspective interpret Charley’s experience in one of two ways.

Some Reformed believers would argue that if Charley was truly saved at the age of twelve, he is still saved at the age of thirty and will, by God’s grace and the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, eventually come to his spiritual senses and return to the Lord. This may happen only after Charley endures severe discipline from his heavenly Father, but eventually God will bring him back. In some cases, people like Charley are disciplined straightway into heaven; that is to say, the discipline of the Lord results in their physical death. They die prematurely, under the discipline of God, but they are saved eternally.

Others who hold the Reformed view contend that the likely explanation for Charley’s departure from his professed faith in Christ is that he was never genuinely born again in the first place. His so-called faith was spurious. His life of apparent obedience was prompted by factors other than a genuine love for Jesus. He was self-deluded and deceived everyone who knew him. If he had been truly born again, he would have persevered in his faith.

2) “Is it possible that Charley was really born again and that he has blasphemed the Holy Spirit? Can a Christian commit blasphemy of the Spirit?”

This question is provoked by a well-known passage in Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus responds to the religious leaders who had accused him of drawing on the power of Satan to heal a young boy. Jesus says:

Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matt. 12:31–32)

For Jesus to declare that whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, neither now nor in the age to come, comes as a jolt. This ominous declaration doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Something happened to provoke it. So let’s look at the context. Continue reading →

It is finished!

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John 19: 28 After this, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Three words in English. One word in Greek: ?????????? (tetelestai).

What did Jesus mean when (on the cross) He declared, “It is finished!”? The answer is both multi-faceted and spectacular.

Quotes by Jerry Bridges

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JerryBridgesFor many years I have been blessed by Jerry Bridges’ writing ministry. Here are some of his quotes I put together. Enjoy!

“Don’t believe everything you think. You cannot be trusted to tell yourself the truth. Stay in The Word.”

“My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our personal relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace.  If we’ve performed well—whatever ‘well’ is in our opinion—then we expect God to bless us.  If we haven’t done so well, our expectations are reduced accordingly.  In this sense, we live by works rather than by grace.  We are saved by grace, but we are living by the ‘sweat’ of our own performance.

Moreover, we are always challenging ourselves and one another to ‘try harder’. We seem to believe success in the Christian life is basically up to us; our commitment, our discipline, and our zeal, with some help from God along the way. The realization that my daily relationship with God is based on the infinite merit of Christ instead of on my own performance is very freeing and joyous experience. But it is not meant to be a one-time experience; the truth needs to be reaffirmed daily.” – Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace

“If God’s blessings were dependent on our performance, they would be meager indeed. Even our best works are shot through with sin – with varying degrees of impure motives and lots of imperfect performance. We’re always, to some degree, looking out for ourselves, guarding our flanks, protecting our egos. It’s because we don’t realize the utter depravity of the principle of sin remaining in us and staining everything we do that we entertain any notion of earning God’s blessings through our obedience. And because we don’t fully grasp that Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins, we despair of God’s blessing when we’ve failed to live up to even our own desires to please God.

“Your worst days are never so bad that you’re beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you’re beyond the need of God’s grace.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“Not only has the debt (of our sins) been fully paid, there is no possibility of ever going into debt again.”  Jerry Bridges

“One of the best kept secrets among Christians today is this: Jesus paid it all. I mean all. He not only purchased your forgiveness of sins and your ticket to heaven, He purchased every blessing and every answer to prayer you will ever receive. Every one of them – no exceptions.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“Why is this such a well-kept secret? The core issue is that we don’t believe we’re still spiritually ‘bankrupt.’ Having come into God’s kingdom by grace alone solely on the merit of Another, we’re now trying to pay our own way by our performance. We declared only temporary bankruptcy; we’re now trying to live by good works rather than by grace.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“The atonement was God’s extending favor to people who deserved not favor but wrath. The atonement was God’s bridging the awful ‘Grand Canyon’ of sin to reach people who were in rebellion against Him. And He did this at infinite cost to Himself by sending Jesus to die in our place.” – Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love

“Our good works are not truly good unless they’re motivated by a love for God and a desire to glorify Him. But we cannot have such a Godward motivation if we think we must earn God’s favor by our obedience or if we fear we may forfeit His favor by disobedience. Such a works-oriented motivation is essentially self-serving, prompted more by what we think we gain or lose than by a grateful response to the grace He has already given us through Jesus Christ.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“Most of us probably entertain either of these attitudes on different days. On a good day (as we perceive it), we tend toward self-righteous Pharisaism. On a not-so-good day, we allow ourselves to wallow in a sense of failure and guilt. Either way we’ve moved away from the gospel of God’s grace, trying to relate to God directly on the basis of our performance rather than through Christ.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“Have you ever thought about the wonderful truth that Christ lived His perfect life in your place and on your behalf? Has it yet gripped you that when God looks at you today He sees you clothed in the perfect, sinless obedience of His Son? And that when He says, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17; 17:5), He includes you in that warm embrace? The extent to which we truly understand this is the extent to which we will begin to enjoy those unsearchable riches that are found in Christ.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“Reflect on these words from John Brown, a nineteenth-century Scottish pastor and theologian: Nothing is so well fitted to put the fear of God, which will preserve men from offending him, into the heart, as an enlightened view of the cross of Christ. There shine spotless holiness, inflexible justice, incomprehensible wisdom, omnipotent power, holy love. None of these excellencies darken or eclipse the other, but every one of them rather gives a lustre to the rest. They mingle their beams, and shine with united eternal splendour: the just Judge, the merciful Father, the wise Governor. Nowhere does justice appear so awful, mercy so amiable, or wisdom so profound.” – Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God

“Because we have a natural tendency to look within ourselves for the basis of God’s approval or disapproval, we must make a conscious daily effort to look outside ourselves to the righteousness of Christ, then to stand in the present reality of our justification.” – Jerry Bridges, The Bookends of the Christian Life

“All of us have a natural drift toward a performance-based relationship with God. We know we’re saved by grace through faith – not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9), but we somehow get the idea that we earn blessings by our works. After throwing overboard our works as a means to salvation, we want to drag them back on board as a means of maintaining favor with God. Instead of seeing our own righteousness as table scraps to be dumped, we see it as leftovers to be used later to earn answers to prayer. We need to remind ourselves every day that God’s blessings and answers to prayer come to us not on the basis of our works, but on the basis of the infinite merit of Jesus Christ.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“C. Samuel Storms has so aptly written, Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit. . . . Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human demerit. . . . [Grace] is treating a person without the slightest reference to desert whatsoever, but solely according to the infinite goodness and sovereign purpose of God.” – Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love

“In the person of Christ God beholds a holiness which abides His closest scrutiny, yea, which rejoices and satisfies His heart; and whatever Christ is before God, He is for His people.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“Jesus paid it all. I mean all. He not only purchased your forgiveness of sins and your ticket to heaven, He purchased every blessing and every answer to prayer you will ever receive.” – Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love

“The realization that my daily relationship with God is based on the infinite merit of Christ instead of on my own performance is a very freeing and joyous experience. But it is not meant to be a one-time experience; the truth needs to be reaffirmed daily.” – Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love

“The problem with self righteousness is that it seems almost impossible to recognize in ourselves. We will own up to almost any other sin. but not the sin of self-righteousness. When we have this attitude, though, we deprive ourselves of the joy of living in the grace of God. Because you see, grace is only for sinners.” – Jerry Bridges

“In a sermon entitled “God’s Providence,” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Napoleon once heard it said, that man proposes and God disposes. ‘Ah,’ said Napoleon, ‘but I propose and dispose too.’ How do you think he proposed and disposed? He proposed to go and take Russia; he proposed to make all Europe his. He proposed to destroy that power, and how did he come back again? How had he disposed it? He came back solitary and alone, his mighty army perished and wasted, having well-nigh eaten and devoured one another through hunger. Man proposes and God disposes.” – Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

“All my labors are marred by sin and imperfection. As I think of every act I have ever done for God, I can only cry out, ‘Oh, God, forgive the iniquity of my holy things.’” – Jerry Bridges, The Transforming Power Of The Gospel

“God does not believe for us, but through His Spirit He creates spiritual life in us so that we can believe. Faith is the gift of God. It’s part of the whole salvation package that God gives to us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It’s not our contribution, so to speak, to God’s great plan of salvation. God does it all. It’s part of the unsearchable riches of Christ.” – Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journey

“The solution to staying on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance. The road to repentance is godly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow is developed when we focus on the true nature of sin as an offense against God rather than something that makes us feel guilty.” – Jerry Bridges

“The sin of worldliness is a preoccupation with the things of this temporal life. It’s accepting and going along with the views and practices of society around us without discerning if they are biblical. I believe that the key to our tendencies toward worldliness lies primarily in the two words ‘going along’. We simply go along with the values and practices of society.” – Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate

“W. S. Plumer said, “We never see sin aright until we see it as against God…All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught…Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul and Judas each said, ‘I have sinned’; but the returning prodigal said, ‘I have sinned against heaven and before thee’; and David said, ‘Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.” – Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

Jesus Became A Curse For Us

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reflections on Christ - crucifixionIn an article entitled, “The Curse Motif of the Atonement” Dr. R. C. Sproul writes:

One image, of the atonement has receded in our day almost into obscurity. We have been made aware of present-day attempts to preach a more gentle and kind gospel. In our effort to communicate the work of Christ more kindly we flee from any mention of a curse inflicted by God upon his Son. We shrink in horror from the words of the prophet Isaiah (chap. 53) that describe the ministry of the suffering servant of Israel and tells us that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Can you take that in? Somehow the Father took pleasure in bruising the Son when he set before him that awful cup of divine wrath. How could the Father be pleased by bruising his Son were it not for his eternal purpose through that bruising to restore us as his children?

But there is the curse motif that seems utterly foreign to us, particularly in this time in history. When we speak today of the idea of curse, what do we think of? We think perhaps of a voodoo witch doctor that places pins in a doll made to replicate his enemy. We think of an occultist who is involved in witchcraft, putting spells and hexes upon people. The very word curse in our culture suggests some kind of superstition, but in biblical categories there is nothing superstitious about it.

The Hebrew Benediction

If you really want to understand what it meant to a Jew to be cursed, I think the simplest way is to look at the famous Hebrew benediction in the Old Testament, one which clergy often use as the concluding benediction in a church service:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
(Num. 6:24–26)

The structure of that famous benediction follows a common Hebrew poetic form known as parallelism. There are various types of parallelism in Hebrew literature. There’s antithetical parallelism in which ideas are set in contrast one to another. There is synthetic parallelism, which contains a building crescendo of ideas. But one of the most common forms of parallelism is synonymous parallelism, and, as the words suggest, this type restates something with different words. There is no clearer example of synonymous parallelism anywhere in Scripture than in the benediction in Numbers 6, where exactly the same thing is said in three different ways. If you don’t understand one line of it, then look to the next one, and maybe it will reveal to you the meaning.

We see in the benediction three stanzas with two elements in each one: “bless” and “keep”; “face shine” and “be gracious”; and “lift up the light of his countenance” and “give you peace.” For the Jew, to be blessed by God was to be bathed in the refulgent glory that emanates from his face. “The Lord bless you” means “the Lord make his face to shine upon you.” Is this not what Moses begged for on the mountain when he asked to see God? Yet God told him that no man can see him and live. So God carved out a niche in the rock and placed Moses in the cleft of it, and God allowed Moses to see a glimpse of his backward parts but not of his face. After Moses had gotten that brief glance of the back side of God, his face shone for an extended period of time. But what the Jew longed for was to see God’s face, just once.

The Jews’ ultimate hope was the same hope that is given to us in the New Testament, the final eschatological hope of the beatific vision: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Don’t you want to see him? The hardest thing about being a Christian is serving a God you have never seen, which is why the Jew asked for that.

The Supreme Malediction

But my purpose here is not to explain the blessing of God but its polar opposite, its antithesis, which again can be seen in vivid contrast to the benediction. The supreme malediction would read something like this:

“May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace. May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever.”

When on the cross, not only was the Father’s justice satisfied by the atoning work of the Son, but in bearing our sins the Lamb of God removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. He did it by being cursed. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). He who is the incarnation of the glory of God became the very incarnation of the divine curse.

Excerpt taken from “The Curse Motif of the Cross” by R.C. Sproul in Proclaiming a Cross Centered Theology, Copyright ©2009.

Hyper Calvinism

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Dr. James White, though accused of being a “hyper Calvinist” is no such thing, as the video below clearly demonstrates:

Dr. White writes, “Even though I had fully responded to David Allen in 2008, the need arose to do so again, fully, in reference to his accusation that I am a hyper-Calvinist. This allowed me to address the entire issue of hyper-Calvinism, provide some descriptions and definitions, and finally get to the real issue, whether you must deny that God’s redemptive love is specifically for the elect of God, or not. Discussions of prescriptive and decretive wills, etc., will abound in this 75 minute program, but hopefully it will be of assistance to those interested in this field of study.”

The Federal Headship of Adam

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“Started off with a fairly quick review of this past week’s ministry in Florida, including comments on the debates with Imam Muhammad Musri and Dr. Gregg Strawbridge. Then we transitioned (about 22 minutes in) to a Radio Free Geneva! Spent a lot of time in the text of Scripture dealing with federal headship, walking through especially Romans 5:12-19, and then, having done that, we listened to the important sections of the dialogue/non-debate between Malcolm Yarnell and Tom Ascol from BMA Seminary in Jacksonville, Texas, which took place last week. Hopefully an important and useful two hours!” – Dr. James White

The Deity of Christ (in the Early Church)

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opponents of this doctrine allege it was the invention of church history. In making such claims, they often point to historical developments in the fourth century—contending that belief in the Trinity began under Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.

The cult of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (also known as the Watchtower Society) makes the claim:

“The testimony of the Bible and of history makes clear that the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for several centuries thereafter.”

“For many years, there had been much opposition on Biblical grounds to the developing idea that Jesus was God. To try to solve the dispute, Roman emperor Constantine summoned all bishops to Nicaea. . . . Constantine’s role was crucial. After two months of furious religious debate, this pagan politician intervened and decided in favor of those who said that Jesus was God. . . . After Nicaea, debates on the subject continued for decades.Those who believed that Jesus was not equal to God even came back into favor for a time. But later Emperor Theodosius decided against them. He established the creed of the Council of Nicaea as the standard for his realm and convened the Council of Constantinople in 381 C.E. to clarify the formula. That council agreed to place the holy spirit on the same level as God and Christ. For the first time, Christendom’s Trinity began to come into focus.” – Should You Believe in the Trinity? (Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1989). A detailed response to this Watchtower booklet can be found in Robert M. Bowman, Jr., Why You Should Believe in the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993).

However, as Nathan Businitz has stated, “In keeping with the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, evangelical Christians are rightly convinced that the truth of any doctrine must be established and grounded in the Scriptures. The authoritative basis for sound doctrine is the Bible, not church history. Consequently, evangelicals ultimately embrace the doctrine of the Trinity, not because it is affirmed throughout history, but because it is revealed in the Word of God.”

We believe in the Trinity because the Bible teaches (1) There is only one God and (2) God exists as three distinct Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of Whom is equally and fully God.

However, if we ask the question “Did the Early Church Believe in the Deity of Christ?” (which is of course, a key component of the doctrine of the Trinity) the answer is unquestionably “yes” as the article below shows. Nathan Businitz writes:

Ask your average Muslim, Unitarian, Jehovah’s Witness, or just about any non-Christian skeptic who has read (or watched) The Da Vinci Code, and they’ll try to convince you the answer is no. From such sources we are told that the deity of Christ was a doctrine invented centuries after Jesus’ death — a result of pagan influences on the church in the fourth century when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion.

Emperor Constantine, in particular, is blamed for being the guy who promoted Jesus to the level of deity, a feat of cosmic proportions that he managed to pull off at the Council of Nicaea in 325. As Dan Brown put it (through the lips of one of his literary characters): “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. . . . By officially endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable” (The Da Vinci Code, 253).

So how can believers answer such allegations?

The best response, obviously, is to demonstrate from Scripture that Jesus is God. We can be confident that the early church affirmed Christ’s deity (and that we should do the same) because the New Testament clearly teaches that truth. The biblical case can be made from many places. Without going into detail in this post, here is a small sampling of texts that teach the deity of Christ: Isaiah 9:6; Matt. 1:23; John 1:1, 14, 18; 20:28; Acts 20:28; Rom. 9:5; 1 Cor. 1:24; 2 Cor. 4:4; Php. 2:6; Col. 1:15–16; 2:9; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:3, 8; 2 Pet. 1:1; 1 John 5:20.

But what about church history outside of the New Testament? Did the early church fathers affirm the deity of Jesus Christ? Or was it only after the fourth century (and the Council of Nicaea) that Christian leaders began to articulate their belief in God the Son?

Though it’s not an exhaustive list, here are 25 quotations from a number of ante-Nicene church fathers demonstrating their belief in the deity of Jesus Christ (with portions underlined for emphasis). These early Christian theologians all lived before the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. As such, they provide incontrovertible proof (from post-New Testament history) that Constantine was not the first person in church history to affirm this doctrine. Rather, the early church embraced the truth that Jesus is God from the time of the apostles on.

1. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 50–117): For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit. (Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians, 18.2. Translation from Michael Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 197)

2. Ignatius (again): Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life. (Ibid., 19.3. Holmes, AF, 199)

3. Ignatius (again): For our God Jesus Christ is more visible now that he is in the Father. (Ignatius, Letter to the Romans, 3.3. Holmes, AF, 229) Continue reading →

Election and Evangelism

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stormsIn an article entitled “Election and Evangelism: Friends, Not Foes” Dr. Sam Storms writes:

When I hear people object to the doctrine of unconditional election they don’t typically direct my attention to a particular passage of Scripture that they believe teaches conditional election. Instead, they insist, for example, that unconditional election is inconsistent with any meaningful call to evangelistic outreach. “Why should I preach or share or in other ways make known the gospel of Jesus if God has already determined from eternity past who will ultimately be forgiven and granted entrance into the eternal kingdom? Why should I put my life at risk in taking the gospel to foreign, unreached people groups if God is finally sovereign over who does and does not believe?”

I understand the reason for this kind of thinking and I do not take it lightly or casually dismiss it as the misguided musings of a typical Arminian. Our Arminian brothers and sisters have a genuine concern for the integrity of gospel proclamation and intercessory prayer for the lost souls of the world. And so must we who identify as Calvinists.

What I find especially interesting is that instead of answering such questions in the sort of straightforward way we might prefer, the NT authors prefer to describe evangelistic fervor and the unqualified universal appeal of the gospel alongside and in virtually the same breath with the reality of divine sovereignty. It never seems to strike them as in the least inconsistent or contradictory to affirm both truths side by side.

One of the places we see this is in the ministry of Jesus himself. In Matthew 11:25-26 Jesus declared: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” He then tells us that “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27).

This is precisely at the point where some assume Jesus’s next words would be something like this: “You who are elect, and you only, I now invite to believe in me and follow me. After all, why would I extend such an invitation to those whom the Father didn’t give me in eternity past? They alone are the ones for whom I will lay down my life and the only ones whom the Father, through the Spirit, will draw to faith in me” (see John 6:37-40, 64-65).

But much to the surprise of everyone, Jesus immediately extends this universal and indiscriminate appeal: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Evidently there was no conflict in the mind of Christ between, on the one hand, the sovereign and distinguishing choice of the Father to grant knowledge of the Son to some but not others and, on the other hand, the universal offer of eternal life and spiritual rest. You and I may wrangle over the two, insisting that the truth of one necessarily precludes the truth of the other, but Jesus had no such problem.

Yet another place where this dual emphasis is found is in the words of the apostle Paul to Timothy. He exhorts his young spiritual son to remember Jesus as risen from the dead in spite of the fact that he, Paul, is “bound with chains as a criminal” (2 Tim. 2:9). The reason for this is that although the messenger is in jail the message continues to flourish and spread. Then he says this:

“Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).

Paul believes that some hell-deserving sinners have been chosen by God; they are his elect people. He also knows that the only way the elect can enter into the experience of salvation “with eternal glory” is through conscious faith in Jesus. Therefore, he is determined to endure incredible pain and hardship and even imprisonment so that he might spread the truth of the gospel everywhere. The fact that people are “elect” does not lead him to say: “Whoo! That takes a load off my mind. I can ease off the gas pedal of gospel proclamation and stop praying so fervently for people now that I know with certainty that God has chosen some for eternal life. Furthermore, I can stop behaving in the sort of way that leads to chains and imprisonment.” No, instead he confidently persists in preaching and willingly embraces suffering precisely because he knows that such are the means by which God will bring the elect to saving faith in Christ.

Some might assume that if the doctrine of election didn’t lead him to cease praying and preaching then surely his belief in the necessity of praying and preaching would lead him to reject the doctrine of election. But that’s not what happened. At no point does Paul or any other NT author reason like this: “Well, if I have to preach the gospel for people to be saved I can only conclude that there is no such thing as unconditional election. The only thing that counts is that people make a choice.” Instead, Paul is determined to endure great suffering and hardship precisely “for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain” salvation (2 Tim. 2:10a).

In other words, his commitment to suffer so that the gospel might spread and be made known does not mean that no one has been chosen before the foundation of the world to believe it. Rather, it means that he and others like Timothy are the ordained instrument through which God is pleased to save the elect.

Let me cite just one more example. After preaching in Corinth, Paul was opposed and “reviled” (Acts 18:6) by the Jewish community there. He left town determined to take the gospel to the Gentiles. But Jesus appeared to him one night in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:9b-10).

Paul’s response to this revelation from Christ was not to say: “That doesn’t make any sense, Jesus. If you’ve got many elect people in Corinth then they will undoubtedly come to faith in you regardless of whether or not I or anyone else preaches to them. I’ve got better things to do with my life and time than to preach unnecessarily.”

No, instead “he stayed a year and six months [in Corinth], teaching the word of God among them” (Acts 18:11). Again, we may not be able to grasp how these two truths are compatible, how the reality of unconditional election actually requires rather than precludes gospel proclamation and intercessory prayer, but God nowhere asks or expects us to. He asks and expects us to preach and pray, confident that such are the means by which he is pleased to bring his “people”, the elect, to eternal salvation in Christ.