God Loves… Himself

In the last post we looked at God’s motives in salvation from Ephesians 1:5-6. We saw that God predestines through Christ to Himself and He does that in accordance with His primary motive of His own pleasure. I asserted without trying to prove from the text that the translation of “according to the kind intention of His will” should actually be translated “according to the good pleasure of His will.” A good commentary that includes comments on the Greek text should suffice on this. The cause of salvation is His own pleasure and the goal of salvation is the praise of the glory of His grace. We are entering into the very eternal pleasures of God and we must ask for grace to understand and enjoy Him in the midst of it.

Ephesians 1:5 – “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

Let us step back for a moment and admire the glory of our great God in sheer delight and pleasure. The beauty of predestination is seen in that God takes helpless and ungodly sinners and adopts them as sons. God takes the worst of sinners (His enemies who hate Him) and makes them His sons. Why does He do that? He does it according to His good pleasure. He adopts them as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. This is to say that He takes sinners and makes them His sons by the life and works of Jesus Christ on earth and brings them into a union with Himself. He does not do this according to the goodness, works, worth, or merit of the sinner, but He does this according to His own pleasure and that pleasure is seen in why He does this. He does this to the praise of the glory of His grace.

In light of our whole discussion on the freedom of the will and the historical differences between Arminianism and Calvinism, we must see how this shines light on that whole subject. God tells us right here in this text that He does not save according to any good or act of the will that He finds in human beings. He saves in accordance to what pleases Him or according to His pleasure. His stated purpose is to the praise of the glory of His grace. He then states the cause of why He bestowed grace on sinners in the Beloved. God Himself tells us in this text that “He freely bestows” grace and adoption as sons on sinners in Christ. Once again, when we think of what the word “freely” means, we have to wrestle to get at the meaning. In one sense the word means without cost and yet it means far more than that. It must be free of any causation within human beings in order to be truly free, and yet the root of the word translated in this text is from the same root word as grace. We have the idea in this text of God giving grace by grace or graciously. There is no reason within man that God gives grace. It is given according to His grace and according to His good pleasure. There is not the slightest mention in this text of God meeting the free act of man with grace. It is all of grace and so all of God. There is no other reason at all.

It is natural for fallen man to reserve something for himself to do in terms of salvation or anything else. But the Gospel leaves nothing for man to do in terms of earning or being a cause for God to save sinners. There is nothing left for man to do if God saves by Christ alone through grace alone. What act of the will did man do in eternity past to cause God to predestinate him to salvation? What act of the will did man do to cause God to predestine him to adoption in Christ? What act of the will did man do to move God to send His Son to save sinners? What act of the will did man do that has anything to do with God saving sinners according to His own good pleasure? What act of the will did man do that would be to the praise of the glory of God’s grace? After all, the text explicitly tells us that the real cause of salvation is the pleasure of God and the goal of salvation is the praise of His glory. What we must begin to see is that by trying to teach that man must come up with an act of the free-will in order to be saved is to fight the grace of the Gospel. It is also to remove true hope from the sinner who must look to himself for something apart from grace in order to be saved.

Arminian theology in this sense is devastating to the Gospel and to the true hope of sinners. It should be fought with the sword of the Spirit for what it is. To repeat myself once again this is not saying that all Arminian people are unconverted. It is to say that the teaching of free-will which is necessary to be an Arminian destroys the teaching of the true Gospel of grace alone and all true hope of the sinner. Sinners must learn to give up all hope in themselves so that they may have faith and hope in the grace of God alone as found in Christ alone. Instead we present them with facts in our day and look to them to come up with faith themselves. Even professing Reformed people do not teach people to give up all hope in themselves and look to grace alone. The giving of grace and its application must always be left in the hands of God or it becomes something other than grace.

In the last post we looked at God’s motive in justification in an effort to see why justification is by faith alone. We tried to show that justification is by the work of God alone and it is moved by motives from within God and man can contribute nothing to his own salvation. The thought of this was based on Obadiah Grew whose original work that was published in 1669 was re-published in 2005 by Soli Deo Gloria as The Lord Our Righteousness. In this post we want to continue to look at how the grace of God is moved by God Himself and not by anything found in a sinner or sinners. God is moved by and from within Himself to justify sinners, which is what grace alone really means. Salvation by grace alone is a salvation that has not motive in God other than God Himself.

Ephesians 1:5 – “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

Ephesians 1:9 – “He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,”

Ephesians 1:12 – “to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation– having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”

In this post I want to start focusing on three sets of verses from Ephesians 1. In reality all of these verses were originally part of one long paragraph in which the apostle Paul waxed glorious in setting the stage for the glory of God in salvation. The divisions I am setting out are rather artificial, but we simply don’t have the room to deal with all of these verses and show the connections that flow between them. Let us look at Ephesians 1:5-6 first. Instead of thinking like human beings locked in time and space and a chronological view of time, we have to get beyond those things and think in terms of eternity. Ephesians 1:5-6 gives us an eternal view of salvation in which we look to all the causes and reasons of salvation as being from within God.

Verse 5 tells us that God predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. The truth of the matter is that we will never fully understand predestination. But when the text tells us that this happened and it is brought about through Jesus Christ, we know that the Gospel is of Christ and Christ alone. We cannot over state the issue that all happens through Jesus Christ and the rest of the chapter shows that. The next part is utterly vital. It tells us that the ultimate cause of predestination and the Gospel is in accordance with “the kind intention of His will.” The literal translation of that is “in accordance with the good pleasure of His will.” In other words, this is the God of Psalm 115:3 who does as He pleases. The true God is by definition one that does as He pleases. Predestination is to save sinners according the pleasure of God which is to say that sinners are saved in accordance with the pleasure of God. God is moved to save sinners because it pleases Him to do so. In one sense we are simply back to the foundation of all things.

There is, however, one more step to be taken. We must ask what it means to please God since God is triune. When God does something to please Himself, we know it must mean that it is something pleasing to all three Persons within the Trinity. Another way to state this is to say that what the Father does He does to please the Son and what the Son does He does to please the Father and what the Spirit does He is the pleasure of God that flows between the Father and the Son. While we cannot understand these things fully, if hardly at all, we know that in some way the triune God functions as one God in three Persons and so all are pleased in some way. The goal set out by Ephesians 1:5-6 is that God does all “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” In context of our discussion, we can see without much effort at all that the God who predestines in accordance with His own pleasure (and that in order that salvation would be all to the praise of the glory of His grace) does not save according to anyone or anything other than Himself. The Gospel of the glory of God erupts in glory when we see that the purpose of the Gospel is to shine forth the glory of His grace and is to the praise of that glory. There is little to do at this point but to bow in worship of this great God of grace and join the Trinity in the pleasure of what He does by grace.

In the last post we looked at God’s motive in justification which helped us to see the biblical reason for why justification is by faith alone. We tried to show that justification is by the work of God alone and man can contribute nothing to his own salvation. The thought of this was based on Obadiah Grew whose original work that was published in 1669 was re-published in 2005 by Soli Deo Gloria as The Lord Our Righteousness. In this post we want to look at the grace of God as being moved by God Himself and not by anything found in a sinner or sinners. God is moved by Himself to justify sinners, which is simply to say that He saves by grace alone. Salvation by grace alone is a salvation that is moved from within God alone.

Deuteronomy 7:7 – “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

Romans 3:24 – “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;”

Romans 5:6 – “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Ephesians 1:5 – “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

Ephesians 1:9 – “He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him”

Ephesians 1:12 – “to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation– having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”

From Deuteronomy 7:7-8 we can see the reason that God loved the Israelites. It was because the LORD loved them. Boiled down, the thought of those verses is to say that God loves you because He loves you. In other words, God’s motive for loving and for blessing the Israelites was not what was found within them, but it was found from within God Himself. This was hard for the Israelites to accept as they continually wanted to do works and keep the Law as ways to move God to love them. The same is true today. We want to be sufficient in and of ourselves to give God reasons and motives to love us and we don’t want to be totally dependent on grace. The natural man does not receive the grace of God because the demand of grace is that it be alone and have no help at all. It is impossible for the natural man to bend his pride and bow his heart to receive a salvation that is not moved by anything within man or done by the work of man. But that is exactly what the Gospel of grace demands. For the Gospel to be all of grace it must be by the grace of God alone and with the motive found within God alone.

Romans 5:6-8 sets this truth out for us. It was while sinners were helpless that Christ died for the ungodly. They were not almost helpless, but they were helpless. In other words, there was nothing that they could do. To be helpless is to have an inability to help self. Christ came for helpless people and not for those with just a little ability. He came for those who were helpless and ungodly. What would move God to save those like that? It could only be from within Himself. All of His motives and motivations must be from Himself. In other words, sinners are saved by grace alone which is to say that God saves according to His own motives and reasons and nothing from within the sinner. This is a truth that is worth waking up and getting excited about. This is utterly glorious. Why, it is almost as if God saves sinners apart from anything they can do which means that there is hope for the worst of sinners! God saves sinners who give up on themselves and look to Him alone because He saves sinners based on Himself and nothing in the sinner. This delivers sinners from having to look to themselves for anything and that includes even the smallest act of the will. It tells them to give up all hope in self and look to God who saves based on Himself and expects nothing from sinners other than what He gives. This is the Gospel of hope.

Today we will be looking at God’s motive in justification, which should help us to see the biblical reason for why justification is by faith alone. In this we will see why justification is by the work of God alone and man can contribute nothing to his own salvation. We will be helped in this by Obadiah Grew whose original work that was published in 1669 was re-published in 2005 by Soli Deo Gloria as The Lord Our Righteousness. Why did God justify sinners? If He did so to manifest His glory through His grace, then we can see that His motive in saving sinners was not the faith of the sinner and did not need or want any help from the sinner. In fact, if God’s motive in saving sinners was to display His grace in Christ Jesus, then an act of the sinner apart from His grace would be opposed to the motives and purposes of God in justification.

Deuteronomy 7:7 – “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

Romans 3:24 – “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;”

Romans 4:5 – “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,”

Romans 5:8 – “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Ephesians 1:5 – “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

Ephesians 2:8 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

With just a brief sampling of verses from Holy Scripture, we can see the motive of God in saving sinners. It was to manifest and demonstrate His glory and grace. There can be no real doubt if we look at the text listed above that the grand motive of God is to manifest His own glory through His grace. In other words, there is nothing that man can do to provide God with a motive to save him. The act of faith, then, from a free-will that is not something that God would meet with favor, but in direct opposition. For the act of the will to be free, it must be free from any constraint or help from God and the grace of God would certainly be considered a help. This is a point that must not be neglected or overlooked. For the will to be truly free it must be free from the grace of God if it is to be free at all. But if God saves to the glory of His grace, then anything that man does must be as moved and empowered by grace. A free act of the will, therefore, is an act of man that is opposed to the Gospel of grace.

When we see texts like Romans 3:24, we can know that we are on the right track. Justification is not because man has made a choice by an act of his will, but the only cause given is that of the grace of God. To be justified freely or as a gift by grace is to say that it is grace alone that is the cause or motive of justification. For God to be truly free in this matter and to justify apart from any obligation on Him by a human being means that He is moved to save sinners apart from anything positive that the sinner can do. The cause of justification is from within God and His desire to glorify Himself by saving by grace alone. Any act of man that is thought to contribute to justification by grace alone would actually be contrary to the purposes of God and even to war against the purposes of God in justification. Ephesians 1:5-6 shows us that the cause of salvation is to the praise of the glory of His grace and nothing within man. Ephesians 2:8-9 shows that it is not of works in any way or that would leave man that little bit of room to boast. We know that when the pride of man is given just a bit of room to boast, it will take a mile and boast and boast even if it is under the guise of humility. The motive of God in justification should be clear. He justifies for His own purposes and not for anything that is found within man or that which can be done by man. Human beings are saved by the grace of God apart from any goodness or act of the will that man can do. This is so that God’s motive in salvation may be fulfilled without any help from man at all. It is the Gospel of grace alone.

For several blogs we have been looking at A.A. Hodge’s statements of the three main historical positions regarding man’s inability and therefore of the ability of God’s grace. While these points (as stated by Hodge or even the recognition of the positions) are ignored in our modern day in our rush to civility and unity, there is simply no excuse for ignoring these main points. These are vital issues in any day as they relate to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His ability to save sinners. We must always remember in our rush to unity and civility that the Gospel of peace will bring the hatred of very religious people who hate Christ in reality. Some of those religious people are conservative and evangelical in name. In light of that, we need to travel back a few centuries in order to hear what people who were more concerned with the truth and the glory of God than anything else used to think.

In 1625 William Pemble published a work entitled A Treatise on Justification. This has been reprinted in our day by Soli Deo Gloria under the title of The Justification of A Sinner. In chapter five he refutes what he terms the Arminian error. By that he is meaning the Arminian position that the act of faith is what is counted as righteousness. While that is the traditional Arminian position, I am sure there are many modern Arminians that might dispute that position and adamantly assert that they do not hold that. However, if one holds to the freedom of the will and therefore that the final choice in salvation is at least part of the human choice and will, the conclusion is inevitable. The sinner is either counted righteous by the work of Christ alone or not. While it may sound honoring to Christ and orthodox in many ways, the “alone” part of the Gospel simply means Christ apart from any works at all. Many stumble at the “alone” part of justification and the Arminian position is a logical denial of it.

Let us work through this part with the help of William Pemble. The believer is justified by Christ alone or he is not. The believer is declared righteous by the righteousness of Christ alone or he is not. Remember, the word “alone” means that there can be utterly nothing else but the righteousness of Christ counted to the sinner’s righteousness if justification is to be by Christ alone. If the will of man acts in any way that is free from the grace of God in making a choice in salvation, then that is a righteous act apart from Christ and the Gospel is not by grace alone and a sinner is justified by one righteous act and by the righteousness of Christ. We simply cannot allow any view that allows for the act of a sinner as being necessary for salvation apart from grace alone. It matters not whether a person claims to be Reformed or Arminian or some sort of hybrid position, any act of the will that is not moved completely by grace is an act of the will that destroys justification by faith alone which depends on the imputed righteousness of Christ alone.

Pemble notes that we cannot be justified by “two righteousnesses existing in two various subjects.” If we are justified on account of our faith in any way then we are justified by the righteousness of Christ and of something in ourselves. This is the logical position of all who hold that the will is free and must make some movement apart from the grace of God in order to be saved. That is the heart of the Arminian position. Any move away from the righteousness of Christ alone is a denial of Christ alone, faith alone, and grace alone. In other words, the Arminian position is utterly fatal to the Gospel. This is not to say that all Arminians themselves are not converted, but it is simply to say that the position is a denial of the Gospel as it came forth from the Reformation. The Reformers and the Puritans either taught the biblical Gospel or they did not. If they did, then let us hold to the biblical Gospel no matter how unpopular it is. If it is not, then let us show where the Reformers and the Puritans erred and set out where they erred at. But we cannot claim to follow the Reformers and the Puritans if we do not preach and teach the same Gospel that they did.

Pemble points out that God can only count that as perfect righteousness which is so in deed and truth. But faith is not the perfect fulfilling of the law and is not a perfect act. It cannot, therefore, be judged by God as righteousness and so cannot be counted as righteous in the court of a judge that is perfectly righteous Himself. The assertion of the Arminian of an act of the will that is free from the grace of God is an assault on the Gospel of grace alone by Christ alone. If we think back through the positions as Hodge set them out, we immediately see that these things are true. The Arminian position rests on an act of the will that is free from grace and that God meets with grace. This may sound ungracious to many, but in fact it is simply holding forth the teaching of grace alone that is found in the Bible. When Romans 3:24-25 and Ephesians 2:4-9 teach that God justifies by the cause of grace and that is not caused by an act of the human will or work, it is teaching grace alone apart from the human act. Grace alone, which denies acts of the human will can be free from grace at any point and so righteous, is the Gospel and nothing else.

3rd. Augustinian.-Which was adopted by all the original Protestant Churches, Lutheran and Reformed. (a.) Man is by nature so entirely depraved in his moral nature as to be totally unable to do any thing spiritually good, or in any degree to begin or dispose himself thereto. (b.) That even under the exciting and suasory influences of divine grace the will of man is totally unable to act aright in co-operation with grace, until after the will itself is by the energy of grace radically and permanently renewed. (c.) Even after the renewal of the will it ever continues dependent upon divine grace, to prompt, direct, and enable it in the performance of every good work.

We have been looking at what historical thinking has been regarding the depravity of human nature. The last two posts have looked at this in terms of evangelism. We will now move to position (c) and look at the ramifications this has for sanctification. After all, a Gospel that is by grace alone must be followed by some form of sanctification by grace alone if salvation as a whole is going to be by grace alone.

Let me restate position (c) above in an attempt to get at the heart of the meaning: For the performance of any and every good work even the renewed will is totally dependent on divine grace to prompt, direct, and enable it. To restate it in more of a negative way: the renewed will cannot perform any good work apart from the grace of God to prompt, direct, and enable it to do the good work. Surely the complete and total contradiction between this position and that of the Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian can be seen. The will is not free in the sense that it is able to do what it wants to do (Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian), but it is free from the bondage of sin so that it now has the nature that can respond to the divine grace of God by the grace of God. When God moves upon the unregenerate person, that person responds according to their nature. When God moves upon and within a regenerate person, that person responds according to their nature in one sense though they are responding to grace in reality.

This teaches us to flee from any form of works for sanctification. It is true that a new heart will perform works, but we are not sanctified by the works. The works are a product of the grace and life of God in the soul and not the product of a soul that is doing the works in order to be made more holy. We are taught by Paul in Philippians 4:13 that we or “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” It is God in us who can do all things through us. John 15:4-5 show us the teachings of Christ on this: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Apart from the grace and life we receive from God in Christ, we can do nothing spiritually good.

Colossians 1:11 teaches us how we are to grow: “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.” Paul then applies that to himself later in the same chapter of Colossians when he speaks of the power which works in him: “28 We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. 29 For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.” We are taught in Ephesians 2 that salvation is totally of grace, not of works in the slightest, yet we are created for the good works which God has prepared beforehand: “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

As can be seen from the verses given above, position (c) is not just some dream that some over zealous Augustinians or Calvinists came up with. Even the believer with a renewed heart is still totally dependent on the grace of God to do anything good at all. It is the grace of God that must prompt and move the will to do good works because the works are those He has prepared the believer for even from before the foundations of the world. The believer is to live by what s/he receives from Christ by faith each moment of his or her life. The believer is to walk by faith and what does faith do but receive grace. The believer is to live by the wisdom of God which is Christ and so receive that wisdom of God which is more of His grace to His people. We can receive nothing but what is given to us above and surely that can be seen as all of grace to His people. It is only when sinners are chosen by grace, salvation accomplished by grace and then applied by grace, and then they are all sanctified by that same grace can salvation be said to be by grace alone. Underlying the positions above (a. b. c.) is the teaching of the grace and sovereignty of God. Sanctification also must be by grace through faith or it is by works.

3rd. Augustinian.-Which was adopted by all the original Protestant Churches, Lutheran and Reformed. (a.) Man is by nature so entirely depraved in his moral nature as to be totally unable to do any thing spiritually good, or in any degree to begin or dispose himself thereto. (b.) That even under the exciting and suasory influences of divine grace the will of man is totally unable to act aright in co-operation with grace, until after the will itself is by the energy of grace radically and permanently renewed. (c.) Even after the renewal of the will it ever continues dependent upon divine grace, to prompt, direct, and enable it in the performance of every good work.

Last time we continued looking at the ramifications of the Augustinian view on evangelism. We looked at a couple of positions on evangelism and how those were really Semi-Pelagian if not Pelagian in practice. We began to look at position (b.) above. We will now continue to look at some more ramifications of position (b.), even some that are quite uncomfortable for Reformed people today.

Notice that position (b.) above teaches us that even with all the influences of divine grace upon the soul and will of man, no one can act “aright in co-operation with grace, until after the will itself is by the energy of grace radically and permanently renewed.” This position, which is the historical position of the Reformed, totally destroys a lot of modern day methods of evangelism. Underlying this teaching, however, one can see the stress on the sovereignty of God and a salvation that is totally of grace. It is in direct conflict with any teaching that requires man’s will to be able to cooperate with the grace of God. It is in direct conflict with one who teaches that God draws all men and it is up to the person to respond or not to respond. This position stresses without equivocation that there is nothing in man that will respond even to the grace of God until that will is renewed and regenerated. Man hates God until God gives the person a new heart and the person loves God from that new heart.

We are told that there are means of grace and that is correct. However, nothing has grace in and of itself so that by a mere act of the will grace is given. The unbeliever is not cooperating with the grace of God when s/he reads the Scriptures and offers something called a prayer. No, that person is simply doing those things that God uses to save souls. God uses His Word as a means of grace, but the grace is still in His hand to show and not the sinner’s. By definition grace is that which is caused by God alone and not the sinner at all. Sinners are to hear the preaching of the Word because God saves through the Word, but this is not to be seen as cooperating with the grace of God. God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and have compassion on whom He will have compassion. He never promises to save those who hear His Word, though it is by the Word that He saves as He pleases.

We must shout to the skies the truth of position (b.) above that God saves by grace alone and not in accordance with the cooperation of man! This should teach us to preach to ourselves to always look to grace rather than what is going on. This should teach us in evangelism to teach unbelievers to seek the Lord for a new heart rather than to cooperate with the grace of God. Until a person has a new heart, there is nothing that a person can do to respond to the grace of God aright. Until a person has a new heart, there is nothing that a person can do that is spiritually good or will please God. Even when God is showing some form of “grace” to a person in many ways, that person cannot respond unless and until God gives them a new heart and new will.

This should teach us to always stress the absolute sovereignty of God in His showing of grace rather than depending on means of grace in salvation. The means of grace are to be taught, but they are means and nothing more while grace itself is a sovereign act of God. Grace can only be moved from within God or it is not grace at all. In the Reformed community there has been much stress on the means of grace. But, strangely enough, that has become a position where the means of grace has now become an agent of grace that a person may apply to him or herself. Baptism may be seen as a means of grace, yet that is still a far different thing than thinking that it confers grace of itself when applied. The Word of God is to be seen as a means of grace, but that is far different than thinking that the will of man may apply grace to himself by reading the Bible. All are to be done in accordance with the preaching of the Word of God and in complete submission to the sovereignty of God who shows grace as He pleases or it is not grace at all. If human beings can do something to earn or cause God to show grace, then grace is no longer grace at all. Instead, as position (b.) teaches, we are entirely in the hand of grace and not even grace itself will move the will of man to spiritually do anything until grace renews the soul and will. It is sovereign grace or it is not grace at all (Rom 4:16; 11:6). Grace never comes on the basis of a human work.

3rd. Augustinian.-Which was adopted by all the original Protestant Churches, Lutheran and Reformed. (a.) Man is by nature so entirely depraved in his moral nature as to be totally unable to do any thing spiritually good, or in any degree to begin or dispose himself thereto. (b.) That even under the exciting and suasory influences of divine grace the will of man is totally unable to act aright in co-operation with grace, until after the will itself is by the energy of grace radically and permanently renewed. (c.) Even after the renewal of the will it ever continues dependent upon divine grace, to prompt, direct, and enable it in the performance of every good work.

In the last post we looked at evangelism in light of position (a.) above. We will look at this again with some of the different styles of evangelism in our day in mind. For example, there is the basic method of The Four Spiritual Laws. It begins by telling people that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. It then tells them that there is a chasm between them and God and that is because of their sin. However, they are told, Jesus has bridged this gap and can take us to God. All we have to do is pray a prayer and we will be saved.

There is FAITH evangelism as well. In it we are told to get people to admit that they are sinners and also that they need to pray a prayer or make a commitment of some kind. Regardless of the content involved, the issue comes down to the sinner’s choice, prayer or commitment. In many ways the Four Spiritual Laws and FAITH evangelism have a lot in common. The issues involved have people admitting to the fact that they are sinners, admit to the facts of the Gospel, and then to pray a prayer or make a commitment.

Regardless of the name and of the professed theological adherence, modern evangelism practice is based on passing information to a person, getting that person to admit to something and pray a prayer or make a choice. All of it is at a bare minimum an implicit denial of position (a.) above. If we truly believe that human beings are entirely depraved in their moral nature and so much so that they are totally unable to do anything spiritually good, and even to the point that they cannot in any degree begin or dispose themselves to spiritual things, then it is utterly self-evident that the above practices of evangelism are entirely insufficient and are in error. Any thing that is based on simply giving information to a person and then expecting that person to make a choice is error.

We can also look at ways of evangelism that focus on the Law. Now it is certainly biblical to focus on the Law in evangelism, but the way it is focused on is important as well. If we use the Law to show men that they are sinners, then that is well and good. But if we only show them that they are sinners, we have not gone far enough. What we must do is to use the Law to show them their utter inability to do anything morally good. It is not that we convince them that they are sinners and then they will see their need of Christ for a Savior, but they need to see their inability so that Christ will save them from their inability as well by becoming their ability or their power. If we use the Law just enough for people to see their need for a Savior, then we have done no more than convince them that they need a little help. What they need to see is their utter inability in the spiritual realm so that they will look entirely to God for grace and a salvation that is entirely by grace.

We see an entirely different focus between the views above and what position (a.) requires. The evangelistic views above focus on getting sinners to see things about themselves and then to pray a prayer. Position (a.) would require us to teach the sinner that nothing that comes from him or herself will help him or her at all and that the sinner needs a new nature in order to receive something from God and then do something. Jesus taught very clearly that a person must be born from above before he could see or enter the kingdom. It has been stated that the new birth logically precedes faith though they happen at the same time. However, we must state unequivocally that the new birth must be stated as necessary for faith in evangelism or sinners will think that believing is something they have the power to do. They will mistake it with an intellectual act.

The paragraph immediately preceding this one is looking to position (b.) above. Even under the work of divine grace no one can act in cooperation with grace until the soul is renewed. The ways of modern evangelism lead people to despair and deceive them about conversion because they do not tell them that they cannot do what they are commanded to do apart from the grace of God which renews the soul. The vast majority of professing Reformed people today do not practice evangelism in accordance with the doctrine of depravity. They practice evangelism in a way that is more in line with Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism.