Get the "L" Out Of Here

Of the five points, "L", the central column upon which the other four depend, is the most hated, the most attacked, and really where the war will be won or lost.

This has been the attack point for those of the J316C. As we approach Christmas, the who and why for what to whom, is a question we should look into when contemplating the incarnation.

Follow John's links for some insight-filled listening and reading.

Remember the Arminian/4 Pointers Motto: Just Believe. The Gospel will become real, you are the power behind it, you make it efficacious. As long as you try, you always find it was worth it. Just believe...



Then again, the demons believe.

Some Things that TULIP Doesn't Mean

I'd like to address some things that I've seen as common misunderstandings of the Calvinistic TULIP doctrines. I'm approaching this negatively, in terms of what it doesnt' mean. Hope no one is confused by that.

Total depravity: We don’t believe that

1. TD means that humans are incapable of performing any “good works.” But we’d say that even those are tainted with sin and thus unacceptable on their own; and they certainly will never be enough to purchase salvation.

2. TD means that all people are as bad as they could possibly be. They are as bad as God allows them to be. There is always room for deprovement, as John Gerstner said.

3. TD is contradicted at all by the human being’s ability to hear the gospel with his ears. Yes, you could say that the dead man hears. But that is a non sequitor. We’ve never posited that TD means a natural inability to process sound waves impinging on the ear drum: we’ve said it means that the gospel is rejected.

4. TD means that God forces people to choose evil and will not allow them to choose good. Rather, TD means that men always choose what they love, and reject what they hate. God is not holding a gun to anyone’s head; but the sinner will not choose that which violates his own nature. He will choose what he loves, which is darkness.

Unconditional election: We don’t believe that

1. UE means that salvation is random. That is how UE is often mockingly portrayed, as if God simply goes down a line, pointing at people and saying, “Heaven, hell, heaven, hell, heaven…no wait, hell, hell, hell, heaven.” In fact, there is a condition to election; there is a reason why one is chosen and one is not--but the rub is that that reason does not lie in the person chosen. The reason lies in the mind and will of God, and He hasn’t decided to let us in on those particular thoughts of His. Election is not random. He has chosen in accordance with His own good pleasure. I can’t answer farther than that.

Limited atonement: I don’t believe it means

1. That God is stingy with salvation. I believe with Spurgeon that on the last day it will be manifest that there are overwhelmingly more that are saved than not saved. The tiny remnant will be in hell. LA does not have to mean that few are saved.

2. That anyone is barred from heaven by the Limitations of the Atonement. Meaning, some mock the doctrine by speculating that there will be people who believed in Jesus who will be damned to hell because they were not part of the group chosen for salvation. This is not LA at all. If you believe, then you are one of those to whom the Atonement of Christ is limited. No one goes to hell because they fell outside the limits of LA: they go to hell for their willful sins. Big, big difference there.

3. That there is less grace available in the Calvinistic view than in the Arminian view. I’m convinced that a lot of the hatred of LA is nothing more than an emotional reaction against the terminology itself. It strikes natural ears as somehow curmudgeonly. Rather, we revel in the belief that our Limited Atonement actually accomplishes more for the believer than the Arminian’s supposedly Unlimited version. Specifically, our LA actually saves people, while ULA saves no one, apart from assistance from the sinner.

Irresistable Grace, does not mean

1. That God forces people to be saved. Those who are saved are saved in accordance with their wills, not contrary to them. Nobody’s in heaven now murmuring, “Dang! Y’know, this is really not what I wanted.” Nobody goes to heaven kicking and screaming.

Having said that, it also doesn’t necessarily mean that

2. IG is a quick work, or that resistance is not offered by the sinner. We do often kick and scream. Sometimes we kick and scream for years. But in the end, God wins and we are glad that He does. Some people try to disprove IG by pointing to places in the Scripture where the Gospel is rejected. This misses the point. We are not saying IG means no resistance is offered. We are saying that for the elect, no amount of resistance is ultimately successful. It is a war of attrition: at some point, you give in if you’re elect. And you give in, or surrender, not because your will has been forced somehow or overwhelmed; but because it has been graciously changed. You give in because you begin to love what you once hated.

Star Trek’s villainous monsters, The Borg, have the catch-phrase: “Resistance is futile.”

Okay, that’s not what we’re saying when we speak of IG. For the Borg, they were saying, Resist all you like: we are bigger and badder than you and we will dominate you regardless. For the elect, while it is true that resistance to grace really is ultimately futile, the reason is not overwhelming force. The reason is miraculous mercy, which sweetly and softly changes our affections.

3. That we are fatalistically doomed to whatever has been chosen for us. We don’t believe in fatalism, where it doesn’t matter what you do: your fate will happen anyway. We are determinists, not fatalists: so that your actions matter. Just because we believe in IG does not mean that the human will is unimportant, or that his choices do not matter. You still must repent and believe in order to be saved. If you choose not to, and persist in that decision, your own choice will confirm your unelect status forever. If you want to come to Jesus, then by all means, come to Jesus! Heaven forbid that anything you hear us say should prevent that!!

Perseverance of the Saints, does not mean

1. That once you’re saved, you can live like the devil and be assured of heaven. Without holiness, none will see the Lord. Salvation is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card that you simply put in your back pocket and whip out when necessary. If, since you’ve been “saved,” your relation to sin has not changed, then your relation to God has not changed either, as Paul Washer has said.

2. That your salvation is dependant upon your faithfulness. I know, darkened minds will think I’ve just contradicted what I wrote in the above paragraph. They’ve got root and fruit mixed up. Your perseverance is not what gets you in the pearly gates. Your perseverance is the result of the saving graces of God being genuinely present in your life. If you are faithful unto death, it is 100 percent a work of God’s free grace, and you get no credit. Sorry.

3. That you can’t really know if you’re saved while you’re alive. Some try to say that the Calvinistic doctrine of perseverance destroys the Assurance of salvation, by tossing it all “up in the air” until the time of death. After all, they say, until it’s all over, the possibility of apostasy is real, so you can just never know…

But we believe that real, genuine assurance is in fact possible in this life (though not guaranteed) as the elect exercise genuine, saving faith in the promises of God, and cling to them in all joy and confidence.

I hope this helps.
Gordan