Predestined or Choice?

Introduction

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It seems that much of the pent-up emotion that a worldwide pandemic brought to us has been poured into a public, sometimes violent, protest against the injustice of what is supposed to be our justice system. The stories of George Floyd and many others around the country who have lost their lives due to violent policing have galvanized our country and the world. As you know, mostly peaceful protesters are taking a public stand in most major cities, calling for reforms to police policy and practice. The perspectives on what is happening are varied and nuanced.

The question we as a church have to ask is “how can we help?” Whether we’re staring down the long barrel of an invisible virus killer, or facing the reality of injustice, we as a church are called to live out our religion. It’s not sufficient that we simply believe; God is calling us to an active love.

Our conversations about this issue shouldn’t focus on political posturing. We should be exploring ways that we can work alongside the Holy Spirit to apply the gospel message to the hurt in our world.

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Proverbs 31:8–9 NLT

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.

I don’t have a specific plan for how our church can do that, but I was inspired by a story of a man who was able to change the environment and the attitude of a vigil being held at the memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis.

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Davide Martello brought his grand piano to the streets of Minneapolis. When he started to play classical music and then let others play too, protestors said that the tension in the crowd drained away.

Lauren Johnson, a reporter for CNN, wrote that,

“It's not the first time Martello has brought his music to the scene of a great tragedy.

In 2016, the German pianist brought his piano to Dallas for a memorial at the Dallas Police Department, after five police officers were killed and eight were wounded in a shooting.

He performed in Paris in 2015, after the terrorist attacks at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the November terrorist attacks that killed 130 people and wounded 494.

He also performed in Istanbul's Gezi Park during the demonstrations there in 2013, and in Kiev, Ukraine, during the Maidan revolution in 2014.”

Maybe the Lord has given you an idea for how our church can speak up for the helpless and see that they get justice. Maybe you’ve got an idea for how we can have an active love for our community. Please come talk to me and let’s [next slide] “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an every-flowing stream.” Amos 5:24

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We’re in the middle of a three-part series I’ve entitled “Get In the Boat.” Last time I spoke, we explored the embattled church of the 400s where they dealt with the big question, is salvation a result of God’s grace in choosing us from eternity past, or is it an active expression of right doing as God enlightens us about His commands—is it justification or sanctification?

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We saw Augustine’s boat where everyone is dead in the water and God chooses some to lasso and pull into the boat.

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We saw Pelagius’ boat where everyone is morally neutral and all they need to do to be saved is swim to the boat, climb the ladder of obedience to God’s law, and they’ll be saved.

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Then we briefly explored the Catholic church’s response to these teachers. The Catholic boat has everyone dead in the water, but as soon as the Catholic church comes by and baptises an individual, they are changed and are now capable of swimming to the boat of salvation, and climbing the ladder of participating in the sacraments of the church. As long as they are in the church doing the sacraments, they’ll be saved, but even if they wander away, they’re always the safety net of the righteousness of the saints or the cleansing fires of purgatory.

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Today, we’re going to jump forward more than 1,000 years to the 1500s when Luther and Calvin and Zwingli led the church in significant ideological and theological reforms. Just like last time, we’re going to bring up some important points, but not tie them off with a conclusion until next week’s sermon. Instead, I’m going to wrap up my teaching today with a story that gives us another picture of God’s character.

John Calvin

The Reformation stories that we hear usually focus on Martin Luther because of his outsized role in starting the ball rolling for the reformation. But Luther was a pragmatic person and his theology lacked a depth or cohesiveness. The theology of the Lutheran church of today is largely the result of Luther’s friend, Melancthon. Melancthon organized and systematized and edited Luther’s theology so that it was more transmissible from one generation to another.

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The man who is largely responsible for organizing the principles of the reformation is a guy named John Calvin.

Calvin was born in 1509 in France. He was trained as a humanist lawyer.

When you hear the word “humanist” you might be tempted to apply our modern definition of the word, but that would be inaccurate. Humanism in Calvin’s day was a really helpful system for studying ancients texts, not a worldview. It was humanism that dug up old manuscripts and developed techniques for evaluating original manuscripts. Humanists resurrected the Greek and Hebrew Bibles which were largely unused in that day because of the reliance on the Latin Bible translation. It was because of the work of humanists that Martin Luther had a Greek Bible to translate his German translation from.

Originally a Catholic, Calvin’s study of law, the Bible and other reformer’s writings lead him to break with the Catholic church around 1530.

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Before we briefly review Calvin’s ideas of salvation, I’d like to point out that Calvin’s theology is inseparable from his experience in history. Calvin grew into protestantism as it butted heads with the official church over issues like how the church should behave, whether church traditions were a valid source of truth, and what role the Bible plays in religion. But these were not the only issue at stake. The church—both catholic and reformed—was inseparable from the political, financial and social lives of the people. Luther consulted with German leaders about public policy and politics. The English government clashed with Catholicism over land and taxation and recruiting soldiers for war. And Calvin eventually became the head of the both the church and the government in Geneva. So, when Calvin talks about salvation he’s got all the controversies between Luther and Zwingli and himself in mind; he’s got the conflicts between Basil and Geneva in mind, and he’s got the theological battles over tradition and inspiration in mind.

There is no way we can unpack the roots of Calvin’s theology in just a few minutes, so we’re going to have to settle for a very brief summary of what he believed.

The best source for a summary is an acronym the reformed church came up with many years after the Calvin’s death with their doctrinal foundations were being challenged by the a group who followed Jacobus Arminius—more on him in a moment. The acronym is TULIP.

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Total Depravity

Unconditional Election

Limited Atonement

Irresistible Grace

Perseverance of Saints

We’ll compare those points against Augustine and Pelagius in a moment, but first there is another set of five things that we have to put into this picture—the five Sola’s of the reformation:

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Sola Scriptura —  Scripture Alone

Sola Gracia —  Grace Alone

Sola Fide —  Faith Alone

Solus Christus — Through Christ Alone

Soli Deo Gloria — Glory to God Alone

These sola’s were a direct response to the Catholic idea that salvation is a partnership between us and God.

Scripture Alone throws out Catholic tradition as a source of truth and demands that everything line up with scriptural teaching.

Grace Alone points to the all sufficient grace of Christ as opposed to the works of righteousness required by the church.

Faith Alone indicated that we receive God’s grace by faith alone and not by anything that would merit God’s grace.

Through Christ Alone points to Christ’s sacrifice once for all as sufficient for our salvation, and directly opposes the doctrine of transubstantiation where the Catholic church suggests that every time they perform the mass they make the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

Glory to God Alone underscores that no person or priest or bishop or pope or church can claim any part in meriting salvation. Zwingli suggested that God’s power and glory is diminished by just as much as we believe we can merit our salvation.

Keep these five ideas in your head as we look at Calvin and his counterpart, Arminius. These five sola’s were important to every reformation movement from Lutheranism to the Reformed church to the Anabaptists.

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Let’s go back to Calvin’s teachings and that TULIP acronym.

Total Depravity is Calvin’s teaching that we are born dead in sins, that we are guilty of Adam’s sin, and that we are completely incapable of even recognizing our need for God much less living righteously.

Unconditional Election is the belief that by God’s grace He predestined us in some past moment in time before anything was created.

Limited Atonement says that Jesus’ sacrifice was completely sufficient for the salvation of the elect, but those who were chosen to be lost can claim no part in Jesus’ atonement.

Irresistible Grace is the teaching that God’s grace in choosing you irresistible. You will be saved by God’s grace and you will like it whether you want to or not, but of course you’ll want to.

Perseverance of the Saints is Calvin’s way of saying that a person who is chosen to be saved by God will be saved—there will not ever be anyone lost who God has chosen to save. Sometimes we call this once-saved-always-saved, but that’s not where Calvin was going with this teaching. It’s not that once you give your heart to Jesus you’re going to heaven no matter what heinous thing you do after that. No, Calvin was saying that God’s powerful grace and all-sufficient salvation will work in you and save you and will not fail.

Do you notice the influence of the five solas in Calvin’s theology?

I wish I could explore all the implications of Calvin’s teachings, but we just don’t have time. His belief system was clearly rooted in his context where the church was intertwined with the government and society and where kings and an aristocracy ruled the land. Calvin didn’t go to the extreme that the Catholic church did in making the church a necessary part of salvation, but he said that if you’re elected by God then you’ll be a confirmed member of his church. So, while the church wasn’t the means of salvation, it was an indicator that you had been chosen by God. Also, although rejecting the meritorious nature of the sacraments, Calvin and other reformers continued to practice the sacraments in some form, and they believed that these sacraments were essential in the salvation process because they strengthened and enlivened your faith.

[calvin’s boat]

If we were to put Calvin’s theology into our boat picture, it would look pretty much exactly like Augustine’s salvation boat, though more refined in its presentation.

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Notice that Calvin’s teaching is really inseparable from Augustine’s in their most basic form.

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When Luther talked about predestination some people asked him, “if God chose some for salvation before creation, didn’t He choose others to be lost?” This idea is called double predestination and it’s an inescapable reality of the doctrine. When Luther got this question he dismissed it and said that the whole thing is a mystery that we shouldn’t dwell on. Calvin, however, stepped right into that questions and said, “yes, God determined some to be saved and some to be lost.” The principle of “All to the Glory of God” was paramount in Calvin’s theology, so to him, it would be to God’s glory for both our salvation and other’s damnation. Even though we don’t understand this aspect of God’s sovereignty, it will all end up glorifying Him in the end.

Let’s think about this idea for a minute. God looked down through the ages and saw me. The thinking is that God’s foreknowledge of something actually causes that thing to happen—because he has seen it, it will be just as he saw it. So, when God sees me and chooses me for salvation, he makes my salvation happen. When God sees someone else and determines that they will be damned, he makes that happen to. There are two ideas that are inseparable from this teaching.

That God exists outside of our time—that he sees all time at once

and because of this God cannot be changed, impacted, or altered in any way by events that take place in time because they are all known by Him in advance.

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Doesn’t Malachi 3:6 say “For I the Lord do not change...”?

Jacobus Arminius

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While Calvin did much to systematize and organize the theology of the reformation, his teachings were the source of a lot of debate. A few years after Calvin, one of the teachers at a reformed college slowly began to reveal in sermons and classes that he didn’t agree with every aspect of Calvin’s teachings.

Jacobus Arminius’ story begins in Rotterdam in 1559. His father died when he was an infant and a compassionate pastor helped to educate him. When he was fifteen he was away studying at the University of Marburg when the Spanish destroyed his town and murdered his mother and siblings. Arminius poured himself into his studies and his teachers began to hold him in high regard. After finishing his education he returned to the Netherlands to pastor the church in Amsterdam in 1588. In 1602 Arminius was asked to be a professor of Divinity at the Univeristy of Leyden. It was during his time as the pastor of the church in Amsterdam that he began to cross paths with a certain strain of thought about God’s predestination that made him question the whole theology.

These people believed that the fact that God’s foreknowledge causes our salvation can be applied to every other aspect of life. God knew I would say what I’m saying right now and therefore his knowing caused me to say it. This extreme idea demonstrates that the roots of the teaching on divine election are in a philosophy, not a biblical teaching.

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Predestination is based on the idea that God sits over time, peering into it as though he were looking into a crystal ball but completely separate from it. Let’s call this the Static God theory—the immovable mover as some philosophers describe.

Arminius seems to have considered the implications of Calvin’s God and recognized a disturbing and unavoidable conclusion: [next slide] if God preordained everything, then he is the designer and creator of evil. Further, He is the actuator of evil—the very proponent of its existence and acts.

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Arminius countered Calvin’s theory and suggested that God is dynamic. Although God has foreknowledge of the future, he does not cause it to be simply because he knows it will be. Even though he is the creator of time, he enters into time and interacts and responds to His creation inside of time.

Think of the story of Abraham talking with God about Sodom and Gomorra. Or about Moses reasoning with God about not destroying the Israelites. Or about Jesus coming to earth and living with us for 33 years. Each of these stories suggests a God that is dynamically responding to the circumstances on earth and the prayers of His people. After all, doesn’t God say that He works all things for good for those that love him? Isn’t that God dynamically responding to evil?

And so Arminius formed an alternate theology to rival the TULIP doctrines of Calvinism. Unfortunately, since the acronym, TULIP, didn’t exist until after his death, Arminius’ points don’t form a neat acronym. In fact, he never organized his thoughts into these concise, five points. I’m doing it here to make the comparison obvious.

Total Depravity — Arminius agreed with Calvin, we are totally depraved, dead in sin and incapable of meriting any aspect of salvation. Yet, he agreed with Ezekiel 18 where it says that the son shall not die for the sins of the father, and concluded that we are not born with the guilt of Adam though we all have the inclination to sin and we all fall short of the Glory and goodness of God.

Conditional Election — Arminius believed what Revelation 13:8 tells us which talks about the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” He believed that the plan of salvation was instituted before there was sin, and that God has provided a way for all to be saved. God has elected everyone to be saved, and given us the choice to receive His salvation by faith or reject it.

Unlimited Atonement — Arminius simply read John 3:16 and pointed out what the Bible clearly says, “God so loved the world… that whosoever believes.” This means that salvation is available to the whole world on the condition of belief.

Resistible, Necessary Grace — Arminius taught we can do no good without God’s grace preceeding, awakening, following and cooperating with us. But this grace is not irresistible.

Perseverance of the Saints — Arminius read scriptures like “no one can pluck them from his hand” and “He who began a good work will complete it...” and determined that God’s children will be saved, and that God’s grace is sufficient to bring us safely to heaven. However, he taught that it is possible to fall away and refuse God’s grace and therefore lose your salvation.

The reformed church responded harshly to the teachings coming from Arminius’ classroom. They called his students before hearings and boards and groups of elders to see if they could trap them into revealing some heresy they could fire Arminius for. They wrote him cease and desist letters. And leaders had many one-on-one talks with him. Before they could call him before an official church tribunal, Arminius died of an illness.

That would have been the end of it, but a group of his followers began to organize, publish papers, and articulate in public what Arminius was teaching in private. These people became known as the Remonstrants. [next slide] Unfortunately, they moved towards Pelagius in their teaching on free choice. Theologians call this semi-pelagianism, and it was not what Arminius was actually teaching. The Remonstrants failed to effectively communicate the core teaching of Arminius’ theology—prevenient grace.

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Pre— before

Venient — to intervene

Definition: The action of God to intervene in our lives prior to our ability to recognize a need for God’s grace or to choose Him.

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Ephesians 2:4–5 ESV

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

Arminius taught that God’s saving grace is only applied to those who believe—that’s the grace made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus. But God’s prevenient grace is given to all mankind. We are born dead in trespasses and sins, but God gives us the possibility of knowing, desiring and choosing Him though His prevenient grace that intervenes before any thought or possibility of righteousness on our part. This is the “enmity” that God promised to Adam and Eve—the possibility of recognizing the nature of evil and our need for God’s grace.

If they had fully grasped that idea, the remonstrants could have said, “Soli Deo Gloria” — To God be the Glory! But they didn’t, and today Arminius is dragged through the mud as a follower of Pelagius, when he was truly a reformer who could embrace every one of the five solas of the reformation.

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If we were to describe Arminius’ theology in our boat illustration it would look like this:

You are dead in sin. Incapable of even recognizing your need of salvation. You’re face down in the water and there is no hope for you. But Jesus comes out to you on the water, lifts your face up and gives you something special—choice.

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If you say yes, he’ll pull you up out of the water, throw you on his back and take you back to the boat of salvation.

Wesley studied arminianism, and Wesley started the Methodist Church.

Ellen White was a Methodist before she helped found the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And that’s where we’ll have to leave the story for this week. Next week we’ll lay out the Bible’s simple doctrine of salvation that I hope you’ll be able to describe to your neighbor in a few sentences. It’s going to be coherent, and it’s going to satisfy the Bible’s teaching from the beginning of the Bible to the end of it. And it happens to be the teaching of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

The Chains Fall Off

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I mentioned last time that the subject of salvation is so important because it shows us who God is, who we are, and how God relates to us. The big question in any theology of Salvation is who is God. So, I want to end our teaching today with another picture of God.

Last time I showed you the God who gave up all of heaven so that you could be God’s children—his heirs.

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Today I’d like you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 8:28-34 and consider the picture of God that we see when two madmen confront Jesus on the shores near the town of Gergesa.

You likely know the story well.

Jesus has just calmed the storm after the disciples had to wake him up and shout above the wind, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” He stood up and calmed the storm and one gospel writers says that immediately they were on the other side of the lake. The shore they were “immediately” delivered to had a number of tombs carved out of the hillside nearby. Above them was a grassy knoll where local villagers were grazing a drove of pigs. Two or three of the disciples jumped out into the water to drag the front of the boat up on shore so the rest could get out in shallow water. The wind and the surf must have driven back the noise, and the work of tying off the boat kept them from seeing with their eyes, but there was something happening over by the cliffs with the tombs and caves in it. A couple madmen who had been imprisoned and then driven about by the town were living among the caves and tombs. They were wild looking. Naked and unkempt. They came to the edge of the cave and looked out, then climbed down to the rocky beach. Then they broke into a full-on sprint and they began to shout.

By the time the disciples heard the outcry Jesus was already on the shore facing the wild men as they ran at him. The disciples untied the boat and began to push it back out to sea, calling for Jesus to get back in the boat for his own safety. But the God who calmed the storm at sea saw another storm raging in these men. He knew they wanted help just as badly as the disciples had wanted help when they felt their boat was sinking.

Even though the legion of demons inside them called out “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come to torment us before the time?” (Matt 8:29) What Jesus saw and heard were two men who wanted healing and salvation. He dismissed the demons who then caused trouble with the pigs, but He embraced the men on the beach. The disciples calmed down and helped Jesus dress and care for the men and they all sat down to talk and fellowship.

I would love to know what they talked about. It must have been an hour or two—maybe more—that Jesus drew these two men into his closest circle and lingered with them. Finally, the villagers broke into their conversation and demanded that Jesus leave because of what the demons had done to their pigs.

You can read more of the story in Luke 8:26-39. The men begged Jesus to go with Him and the disciples, but Jesus had a job for them to do. [next slide] He said, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Luke 8:39 Can you imagine what their families must have felt like to see them in their right minds, and telling stories about Jesus’ amazing compassion and power to heal? They did a work in sharing the gospel with their community that Jesus couldn’t do because of the people’s prejudice against him.

Do you see the picture of God in this story?

Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 when he said,

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Luke 4:18 ESV

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

This is not the God of the wealthy—the God who gets close to the powerful.

This is not an authoritarian God who brings down His will wether we like it or not.

This is the God of compassion and patience; the God of kindness and mercy.

He frees those in bondage.

He spends time with the outcast.

He repatriates the exile.

He gives responsibility to the weak.

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When others saw violent criminals possessed by demons chasing after them to do them harm, Jesus saw men who had been brutalized by Satan and who were running to Him for help. So He freed them and spent time them and gave their lives meaning and purpose.

Have you ever felt like an outcast without value? Jesus sees you as the most valuable treasure and he gave everything to buy you back from sin.

Do you feel bound by sin? Jesus can break the chains.

Do you wonder if your life has purpose? Jesus has a work for you that only you can do.

We can sometimes get lost in the details and philosophies of theology, but when Jesus tells us a story like this one, the picture is as simple as the child’s song—Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong.

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Let’s stand together and sing our closing song — Hymn 368, Watchman, Blow the Gospel Trumpet