God Loves… Himself

In this BLOG we will deal with the question whether Protestantism in our day has become more like Erasmus than Luther. What that means is that we try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of peace within the denomination or Christendom as a whole. We have seen this between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics. We have seen this in the Evangelical Catholics Together documents. The doctrinal differences are minimized and glossed over for the sake of peace. However, Scripture does not charge us to find peace at the cost of truth. In reality there is only true peace where there is truth. Without truth, there is no true love.

Within the SBC there are differing groups. There are those who are at least moderately liberal and those who are conservative. Others are fundamentalists, charismatic, and then those who are Reformed. While that does not necessarily describe everybody, it does give a broad idea of the situation. How are all of these people to exist peacefully within the SBC? Frankly, it appears that at least some of the effort going on now is to gloss over the differences. That may work for some time, but it is not a permanent peace. For there to be true peace within the SBC, the positions of each party must be stated. There must be true debate on the issue rather than a simple dialogue as such. Dialogue is aimed at fostering understanding and respect between the parties. Debate should be aimed at a love for the truth and a desire for the truth to be made known and to be understood. Debate sharpens the differences in terms of its precision and sets out the differences exactly where they are and are not.

Erasmus was a man that wanted peace and unity apart from theological precision and bold statements of truth. He was a scholar and preferred peace and simple morality to the truth. The spirit of Erasmus lives today in many areas. What we need are men like Luther who will point out the differences with biblical fidelity, a sharp logic, theological precision, and then to take a stand on the truth without concern about what men say about them. We need men who are willing to have men mad at them in order to please the living God. We need men who are willing to humbly stand for the truth even if it is offensive to the modern mind. The worst thing that can happen is for men to be more afraid of offending men than they are of offending God. Erasmus was a man that was willing to speak out on issues but did not want to offend men with them. We must be very careful not to be an Erasmus.

What is the problem with being like Luther? We have all seen those who are willing to stand up for what they believe and yet they appear to like offending men because it makes them exalted in their own eyes. It is almost like they are looking for ways to offend people or to say things that offend for the sake of appearing like a Luther or a prophet. But Luther’s words for the most part were not meant to offend for the sake of offending. He was blood earnest in standing for the truth of the Gospel. Whenever we stand we want to be sure that we are standing on the truth of God out of love for His glory and the souls of other human being. Our offense must be the Gospel itself and the cross itself. When men are offended at us rather than the Gospel, we have sinned. It is true that men will think they are offended at us rather than the Gospel and especially those that think they have it themselves. But let us not deceive ourselves; the Gospel will not go forward in this day without many being offended. There will be no revival and no reformation in or out of the SBC or anywhere else without many people being offended by the truth of the Gospel and of the cross. We are simply kidding ourselves if we think anything else.

If the Bondage of the Will does in fact set out what the pioneer Reformers believed about the Gospel, then we have to conclude that modern Protestantism has tragically sold its birthright since the day of Luther. We must never think that we are Reformed in the historical sense if we have slipped to the point of teaching in essence the same Gospel as Rome does. At that point we would no longer be protesting at all. In writer after writer and speaker after speaker we hear that Arminians are inconsistent but are still brothers. We hear that we are to be gracious and dialogue with them in an effort to convince them. What we must understand, however, is that if they truly hold to the Arminian system and we truly hold to the historical Protestant position, then we cannot call them Christian brothers. That sounds so strange in the modern day, but it is still at least logically correct. Let us look at it from this view. The historical Protestant (Reformers) view says that salvation is wholly of God and wholly of grace. A person is dead in sin and cannot come to God apart from God’s grace in making that person alive and giving that person the gift of faith. The Roman Catholic view, apart from some of the sacramental issues, is that a person has the ability to make a step toward God and cooperate with grace. That is also the Arminian view.

Can we see that both of these views cannot be the same view of Scripture? Romans 4:16 sets out why salvation is by faith: “For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.” It is by faith in order that it will be in accordance with grace. Justification is not by faith alone in order that it may be easier for people to be saved so that they don’t have to keep a law of some sort. It is by faith alone in order that it may be by grace alone and it is by grace alone so that salvation will be completely by Christ and that is to the glory of God alone. If we make faith out to be a human work that is not completely and utterly of grace, but instead depends on the human choice and will, then we have a Gospel that is not wholly of Christ and wholly of grace. It is, therefore, a huge difference. It is the difference between Roman Catholicism and the pioneer Reformers. It is the difference between true Arminianism and the Gospel.

Let us go back and try to clarify a few things. Is this saying that all people who call themselves Arminians are truly unconverted? No, I am not saying that. I am simply saying that the system of Arminianism does not teach the Gospel and is opposed to it. It is only when the systems are set out for what they truly teach can one deal with individuals. I am sure there are those that go under the banner of Arminian that are converted. I am also sure that there are those that are under the banner of Reformed that are not. It is not the creed that one holds since people on different sides of an aisle can call the same thing something different. It is the true belief of the heart. A hyper-Calvinist thinks of a Calvinist as an Arminian while an Arminian might think of a Calvinist as a hyper-Calvinist.

The doctrine of justification by faith alone was important to the Reformers because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace. We must look at that principle and know that it is taught without fail in Ephesians 2:1-10. In order for the grace of God in salvation to be truly grace, it cannot have anything in man that makes man worthy of it or it is not grace. God must save according to His character and not anything man works up in himself or it is not a grace that is truly grace. While the differences appear small in the eyes of modern niceness, they are not small in the light of the glory of God. The two systems are not even close and one is not the Gospel.

The article that I have been dealing with (the June 07 Banner of Truth magazine) is saying that Calvinists are guilty of pride if they think of other theologies as inferior and perhaps non-Christian. However, I have been saying that the Reformers themselves saw Arminianism as a false Gospel, though indeed they referred to it as Semi-Pelagianism. In the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will the writers say this: “These things need to be pondered by Protestants to-day. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism to-day become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? Or do we now, with Erasmus, prefer a deceptive appearance of unity as of more importance than truth?”

The chilling quote from above was published in 1957. It is now fifty years later and we have to ask if the writers were correct at that point or not. We then have to ask if things are better or worse if they were correct. Without questioning things are worse and perhaps even much worse. What would the Reformers think of modern Protestantism? While we have no way of knowing these things exactly, we can have a good idea from what they wrote and the positions they wrote against. It is my belief that Packer and Johnson were right in 1957 when they say that “modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers.”

Why wouldn’t modern Protestantism be recognized by the Reformers? What the authors of that statement were saying, I think, is that the pioneer Reformers would not have recognized modern Protestantism as anything like what they fought for and were willing to die for. I know this is going to sound rude and harsh, but at some point the Emperor needs to be told that he has no clothes on. Modern Protestantism does not have any clothes on that would identify it as the Protestantism that God sent forth during the time of the Reformation. Even more, it appears that what is known as Reformed theology in our day is not what the pioneer Reformers taught. In the modern day Reformed people also have followed the path down and out of the sight of the pioneer Reformers. Some of them hold to the five points of Calvinism, but a type the Reformers might not have recognized. Some of them hold to justification by faith alone, but again a type that the Reformers would not have recognized as what they taught.

What we must say, and perhaps at the top of our literal and literary lungs, is that all presentations of justification by faith alone are not even close to being the same thing. Again, to quote from the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the will, “Justification by faith only is a truth that needs interpretation. The principle of sola fide is not rightly understood till it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia. What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it man’s own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God, or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves?” (p. 59). This is a vital point. The quote then goes on to show that if God is not the source of faith and it does not depend totally on God, then that is a return to Reformed Catholicism’s way of salvation in principle.

We have got to get our heads and souls clear of the modern muddled way of looking at this. We are so afraid of offending people that we will not take the time and effort in prayer and the study of Scripture in prayer to notice that the Gospel has virtually been lost in our generation. Let us ask another question that gets to the point of the issue. If true grace is not understood apart from the teaching of the bondage of the will, then what does that say about today’s versions of the doctrine of justification? Again, the pioneer Reformers taught that we cannot understand the teaching of justification alone apart from the biblical understanding of grace alone. Luther was so emphatic in writing that one cannot understand grace apart from understanding man’s bondage of the will in sin. What Luther taught and what modern Arminianism teaches, even if it is under the guise of Reformed theology, are biblically and logically contradictory. Surely it is evident that our nice little teachings on justification by faith alone would have been condemned by the Reformers. After all, they were fighting Rome over the Gospel and the glory of God in the Gospel. It is not just some little difference between two differing camps. These are issues that are utterly vital concerning the Gospel and today some think others are proud for pointing out the differences.

The article that I have been dealing with is saying that Calvinists are guilty of pride if they think of other theologies as inferior and perhaps non-Christian. However, I have been saying that the Reformers themselves saw Arminianism as a false Gospel, though indeed they referred to it as Semi-Pelagianism. In the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will the writers say this: “These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism to-day become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? Or do we now, with Erasmus, prefer a deceptive appearance of unity as of more importance than truth?”

We need to consider where the Church is at in these things and we need to ransack our own hearts on this. We have no right to betray the biblical Gospel of Jesus Christ in an effort to appear humble rather than proud. It is true humility before God that will stand up for the Gospel when even conservative people or Reformed people attack the Gospel by making it too broad. Indeed we must take stock of where we are today. What does it mean to be Reformed or has that term lost its significance too? What right do we have call ourselves “Reformed” today if we cast aside the Gospel as was taught during the Reformation? Again, if the Reformers were wrong let us denounce them as having a false Gospel. But if they were and are right, let us be willing to die for the same Gospel they preached and were willing to die for. The Gospel has been and always will be the same.

We must always be concerned when the Church begins to be more like the world than Jesus. The Church today has swallowed large portions of worldly attitudes in its drive for tolerance. True humility has been lost and has been replaced by versions of tolerance and graciousness. True boldness and humility is thought of as pride by many. Are we more like the world or the Reformers and Scripture when it comes to standing for the Gospel as the one and only way of salvation? Are we more like the world or the Reformers and Scripture in being willing to proclaim to men that they are dead in sin and their wills are in bondage to sin? Are we more like the world or like the Reformers and Scripture in being willing to stand up to friends and those who say they are on our side to tell them that they have deviated from the Gospel? Are we more like the world or the Reformers and Scripture when it comes to what we will tolerate and what we think of as true humility?

Taking this to another question of the modern mentality, are we more like the world or the Reformers and Scripture in our fear of offending others? We are to tell people something of the Gospel and discuss differences with other religions or denomination and do all of that knowing that the cardinal sin is to offend the other person. Should we take care not to unnecessarily offend others? Of course we should. But we must never forget that our message is centered on the cross and the cross and the Gospel itself are offensive. We should be concerned when all people like us and no one hates us. Jesus told His disciples that they would be hated because He was hated and “woe to you when all men speak well of you” (Luke 6:26). Are we any different? Has the Gospel changed in the modern day where it is no longer offensive? If we have taken the offensiveness out of the message of the cross and of the Gospel we no longer preach the cross and the Gospel. This issue is that serious and that vital.

We must set our inner selves to examine our hearts and churches. If people thought in 1957 that we had lost sight of what the Reformers taught, what are things like now? We are living in a day when the most important thing appears to be for people to be tolerant, gracious, inoffensive, and accepting of others. Frankly, as the world defines and uses those words, if the Church or any person adopts them, that person has betrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its necessary offense. In that case we have offended God and grieved the Spirit in order not to offend man.

In the last BLOG I gave a quote from Solano Portela: “Also even though we perceive inconsistencies in their theological structure; even though they may be proclaiming that salvation is the result of the supposed ‘free-will’ of man; in spite of all that, when they are on their knees to pray, when they are truly troubled and seeking for God, they forget their theology and pray to a sovereign Almighty God, who accomplishes his will; they pray to a God who is everything, acknowledging that they themselves are nothing.”

I gave another quote with my own comment before and then after that quote. It will be reproduced here: “We are at a huge divide here in terms of theology and of history. Let me give you a quote from the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will. “Arminianism [semi-Pelagianism] was, indeed, in Reformed eyes a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favour of New Testament Judaism; for to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other” (p. 59). Do we see this point at all? In the eyes of the Reformers semi-Pelagianism (we call it Arminianism) was not even Christian. It was simply a return to a form of works for salvation that came from self even if it was less works than the Pelagians called for. This was Luther’s view and we should not apply the whitewash to it.”

People today are willing to give up what Luther and the Reformers taught in order to have unity. But what a price for that unity. If Luther and the Reformers taught the Gospel as set out in Scripture, then were they prideful in teaching it in contrast to the whole world and even the religious leaders of the world? Is it possible that many people that go under the title “Reformed” have actually jettisoned the birthright of the Reformed doctrine and settled for a bowl of doctrinal stew? The heart of the biblical Gospel as taught by the Reformers was the denial of free-will and to recognize that we are in bondage to sin. It is only then that we can repent of any form of self-reliance and works in order to trust in grace with a faith that is given by grace. Can Solano Portela really be Reformed in the Reformation sense of the word and write what he wrote? Mr. Portela wants to set out that it is prideful for people to think that Arminians cannot be saved. Luther would say it is prideful to say that people can be saved when they deny the Gospel. The Reformers said that free-will was a return to Judaism, but Mr. Portela says that these people can be saved. Again, this is not an attack on Mr. Portela but is an effort to show the difference between what the Reformers taught and what people who call themselves Reformed write today.

If faith is a gift of God that comes from a heart that no longer trusts in itself and anything that it can do, then we can see how a faith that self must work up would be contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If I am working up faith from myself and my will that is not completely in bondage to sin, then assuredly I am relying on at least one work that I can do. People can go around saying that they are saved by grace, then, and yet be trusting in an act of their will which is to make them out to be saved by at least one work. If one work contributes to salvation, then salvation is not all of grace. If one work contributes to salvation, then why not go on to two works, three works, or perhaps even more? Is the Gospel all of grace or not? In theory Arminianism is a return to New Testament Judaism and is really reliance upon self for the act of closing with Christ. No truly Reformed person (believing in the Gospel of grace as taught at the Reformation) can go along with that.

I am not disagreeing that the real issue is over what Scripture teaches. That is precisely where the real Gospel is set out. That is also what Luther’s Bondage of the Will is all about. It is a long treatment of what the Bible teaches on the issue. It is not sufficient, then, to simply say that it is pride or that it is not being gracious or tolerant to say that asserting free-will as historically taught by Arminian teachers is a denial of the biblical Gospel. It is, however, standing in line with the Reformers and what was considered to be Christian orthodoxy for a long time after that. The acceptance of free-will in that sense would have been considered by the Reformers as being intolerant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Anytime we tolerate one belief, we become intolerant of other beliefs. We are either tolerant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ or we refer to it as pride. We are either tolerant of the Reformers or we spit them out of our theological food. But both free-will and the Reformers cannot be tolerated at the same time.

I am responding to an article in the June 07 Banner of Truth magazine. It was written by Solano Portela and is entitled “A Sin That Threatens Calvinists-Spiritual Pride“. In reality, while I am responding to his article, I am also responding to Reformed theology as set out and practiced today and Evangelicalism as a whole.

The author of the article mentioned above has a very telling paragraph in his article. “Why can we have genuine fellowship with those who are not Calvinists? For one thing, if they are truly saved, we are brothers, children of the same sovereign God. Also even though we perceive inconsistencies in their theological structure; even though they may be proclaiming that salvation is the result of the supposed ‘free-will’ of man; in spite of all that, when they are on their knees to pray, when they are truly troubled and seeking for God, they forget their theology and pray to a sovereign Almighty God, who accomplishes his will; they pray to a God who is everything, acknowledging that they themselves are nothing.”

There are many problems with the above paragraph, but we don’t have the space to deal with them at length. We must ask what genuine fellowship is. Indeed fellowship in the biblical sense can only happen with true believers. But again the issue is over what the Gospel is and can one be a true believer apart from the one and true Gospel. There is a narrow gate and a narrow road if we are to believe what Jesus taught. Since I believe what Jesus taught I believe that the Gospel is a narrow gate and it is not love for God or man to make it appear wider than it really is.

I would like to get at one issue here before I go to the main one. The author seems to believe that a person will forget his theology when he goes to his knees to pray. I disagree totally. It is when a person is troubled and praying that the person’s real theology comes out. Perhaps some who wish to assert ‘free-will’ turn aside from their theology when they pray, but prayer is not possible apart from theology. It is not possible to pray apart from the deepest held beliefs of a person. If a person has bad theology, that person is not praying to the true God. We cannot pray to God unless we know who that God is. To pray through Christ is to pray to the revealed God in Christ.

The author then goes on to state something very amazing in light of historical theology. While I do not wish to appear bombastic, though I realize that this will sound like it, it appears that the author is willing to set aside what the Reformers thought was essential to the Gospel in order to be gracious and tolerant. While Luther thought that the denial of ‘free-will’ was essential to the Gospel, Mr. Portela does not. We are again back to the issue of what it means to be Reformed and what the heart of the Gospel really is. Again, I am not accusing Mr. Portela of being non-Reformed and non-Christian. I am simply going by what he has written. I am saying that Luther thought that one had to deny his own ‘free-will’ in order to be saved. It has been written several times that the Reformers were in step on this issue. The denial of free-will was at the heart of the Reformation and is at the heart of the Gospel.

We are at a huge divide here in terms of theology and of history. Let me give you a quote from the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will. “Arminianism [semi-Pelagianism] was, indeed, in Reformed eyes a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favour of New Testament Judaism; for to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other” (p. 59). Do we see this point at all? In the eyes of the Reformers semi-Pelagianism (we call it Arminianism) was not even Christian. It was simply a return to a form of works for salvation that came from self even if it was less works than the Pelagians called for. This was Luther’s view and we should not apply the whitewash to it.

The writers then go on to say this: “These things need to be pondered by Protestants to-day. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism to-day become more Erasmusian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? Or do we now, with Erasmus, rater a deceptive appearance of unity as of more importance than truth?” We need to consider where the Church is at in these things. We need to ransack our hearts on this.

We keep dealing with the issue of being gracious in the modern world. Perhaps the real issue is that a worldly defined graciousness and tolerance has replaced biblical humility and love. If we look at the externals of Christianity, then we see that when people are outwardly nice they think it is love. So the reality of it means that being nice has replaced true biblical love within Christianity. This means that a person who is full of self and pride can do externally nice things and still think of himself or herself as practicing love. Earlier we discussed the issue of graciousness not being the same thing as love, but in this BLOG we want to look at graciousness as being a form of pseudo-humility. It seems so humble to say that I may be wrong about this and that the other person may have the truth or some of the truth, but biblical humility operates differently.

Jesus Christ was the most humble person ever to set foot on this planet. Yet He was also bold in what He said and did. He poked the Pharisees in their legalistic and proud eyes on a constant basis. Not one time did Jesus ever “humbly” say something that would give us the idea that another false view might have something to it. Of course no person now is Jesus, but true believers have the life of Christ in them. In fact, humility is not seen in thinking that a person may not know something and going around hanging the head pretending to be a nobody. Humility is the emptiness of the creature before its Creator. That means that the life of humility is the life of Christ in a person. After all, the life of the believer is Christ. Matthew 18:1-4 shows us what true greatness is by telling us that for a person to be converted that person must be turned to become like a child. It then tells us that the greatest is the most humble. In other words, humility is the emptying of the creature of its self-love and self-centeredness. It is to be crucified with Christ and to have its life to be Christ instead of self (Gal 2:20).

It is also true that it is the humble person to whom God reveals Himself and true knowledge (Matthew 11:25-27). If God has not revealed truth to a person, then humility is to say that it might be wrong on various issues. But if God has revealed something as true, then true humility will not admit that what is revealed is wrong. True humility will take its stand for the truth and will boldly declare it. Rather than it being humility to say that what God has revealed might have some allowances, it is actually pride. In reality, then, worldly graciousness and tolerance is nothing more than pride rather than humility. Please read that carefully because it reflects on our theological climate.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is clear from Scripture. There should be no argument as to what the basics of the Gospel really are. What happens is that our pride fuels our desire to be accepted by others we assume a false humility that is displayed in what is called graciousness and tolerance. But the reality of it is that we have compromised the Gospel. Am I saying that Solano Portela has done that? I am not saying that, but I am saying that he seems to have drunk deeply at the wells of modern thinking on what humility is rather than search the Scriptures for what it is. I am saying that based on one article that he wrote and not a personal knowledge of him. But again, I am trying to use his article to respond to modern Reformed thinking and Evangelicalism as a whole.

What happens when we replace love with niceness and then humility with a worldly form of graciousness and tolerance? We compromise the Gospel and the standards of Holy Scripture with a pseudo love and humility. Am I saying that we need to be meaner? No, I am saying that we must practice biblical love and biblical humility. We live in a world that is increasingly liberal and the Church is buying in to liberal thinking on some issues. If we are going to reach the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the glory of God, it is not going to be by compromise in the name of graciousness and tolerance that is really the worldly concept of it though it is thought to be humility and love. It is going to take a real humility and a real love that will stand for the Gospel at all points.

We must realize that true humility before God means that we will not compromise the truth of God for a moment because it is His truth. We must realize that it is never love to compromise the truth of the Gospel for another person even if that person believes that he is a Christian. Love always does what is true to the shining forth of the character of God knowing that is what is best for the other person. Love is willing to make another person angry for the good of that person’s soul. Love is willing to suffer abuse by others that the true Gospel will be heard.