As we continue thinking through the differences between Arminian theology and Calvinistic theology, we need to look at the issue of faith. Here is a huge difference between the Arminian conception and the Calvinistic one. The Arminian view is again based on free-will and so faith is an exercise of the will. If the will is truly free in this regard, then the will is self-determined and makes its choice on its own power. While that may be disputed, if it is granted that it is grace that moves the will then the person is no longer an Arminian. If a person professes Calvinism and still leaves the sinner to his own devices, at that point the person is a practical Arminian.
What we want to look at in this BLOG is the idea or concept of faith. In a general way all people know what faith is, that is, they know that to have faith is to believe and trust in the object of faith. However, that is usually thought of in more of a man-centered way. The illustrations given are that of having faith in a chair and getting in the wheelbarrow of a man going across a tightrope stretched across Niagra Falls. Yet, what we have in those illustrations is the person deciding to trust based on his own information and then either sitting down or getting in the wheelbarrow. In Scripture men and women are dead and cannot sit in a chair or get in the wheelbarrow. In Scripture a person must be made alive in order to sit down or get in the wheelbarrow.
The Arminian picture is that God has done it all and it now depends on you to make the choice. It is said, at least by some, that God has done all that He can do and it is all up to you now. The sinner is told that s/he must exercise faith and s/he will then be saved. It is true that Scripture tells us that he who believes will be saved. We are told that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Clearly, and without any real question, salvation comes to a person in some way through faith. However, we must be very careful at this point or we will allow or make faith out to be a human work apart from the Gospel itself.
Is true faith the free-will grabbing Christ and His benefits and applying Christ to myself? When Scripture says that salvation comes through faith, does it mean that man has a free-will to exercise that faith and so bring the benefits of the Gospel to himself by his own action? As we saw a few BLOGS ago, that is not in line with Titus 3:4-7 at all. Sinners are justified by grace alone because the Father is the source of salvation and He carried it out through the Son and applied it by the Spirit. We are again left at that same point. Is faith from the human being that which applies salvation or is faith something else?
If we look at John 1:12-13 we see something different: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” In this text receiving Him and believing in Him are synonymous. Unbelief, as seen in verses 10-11, is Christ coming to His physical people and they did not receive Him. Receiving Christ, then, is to believe who He is and what He has done. These are the ones that tell us (as in verse 13) that the new birth happens to human beings because of the will of God. Arminians would agree to this, but what they cannot agree with is that the text tells us about what does not cause the new birth. The new birth is not caused by the blood of a person (physical descent), nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man. In other words, the new birth is decidedly and specifically said to happen because of the will of God and specifically not the will of man.
What then is this receiving Christ if it is not by a free-will? The human person must reach an end of the efforts and abilities of his or her own will and soul if s/he is to trust in Christ alone. Receiving Christ is to reach an end of our own ability and strength and to receive Him based on what He has done and is doing. It is to receive Christ and His promise of the Spirit. It is to trust Him to fulfill and keep His promise in me. Throwing a person on his or her own devices is not the Gospel. Presenting a message to people and telling them they must choose is not the Gospel. The Gospel is that people must be broken from their own effort and then the benefits and blessings of Christ would be applied to them by the Holy Spirit. To believe the promises of Christ is to believe that He will do it all. To believe the promises of Christ is to believe that He will apply it all through and by the Spirit. To believe the promise, therefore, is to flee from anything like the Arminian conception of free-will and to be broken from all of our abilities and powers and to receive Christ according to His grace provided and applied. Faith is never apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. When we see a person that has true faith, the Holy Spirit has already been there and worked it in the person. After all, faith unites to Christ and all faith is in Him as He is in us.
Acts 6:5 – and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,
Acts 11:24 – for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.
Galatians 3:14 – in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Galatians 5:5 – For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness.
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