God saves sinners! (part 1)

One of the things I appreciate about the technical aspects of blogging is that you can keep editing and revising already existing posts. I really envy those folks who seem to effortlessly get it right on the first attempt, but I’ll never be one of them. Therefore, expect that I may continue to revise posts that are a week (or several) old!

God saves sinners … but what does “save” mean?

I had said at the end of the previous post that I would try to unpack some of the items that I had listed as “crucial truths.” I think the one I want to start with is the first on the list (though I may not follow the listed order in future posts). I hesitate to prioritize these items in terms of importance, but the first one is definitely near the top, and at the beginning of my Reformed “conversion,” it was the one that really began the process of turning my poor evangelically-muddled brain inside out. It is that God does not merely provide an opportunity for sinners to be saved, but He actually saves sinners, the three Persons of the Godhead concurring in the work of salvation--the Father electing, the Son redeeming, and the Holy Spirit applying redemption to the elect.

God saves sinners! Now the fact that God saves sinners would hardly be a controversial notion among evangelical Christians, but once we get down to articulating exactly what we mean by this, and what is the precise nature of that salvation whereby God saves sinners, we find ourselves right smack in the middle of one of the most important doctrinal controversies that ever shook the Protestant church, the Arminian controversy of the seventeenth century. The controversy arose over the question of whether salvation was entirely a sovereign work of God acting to rescue spiritually dead sinners who couldn’t lift a finger to help themselves--or whether God in Christ merely made salvation a possibility contingent upon whether a sinner would employ his freewill and choose to believe. (The followers of a minister named Jacob Arminius argued for the latter position.)

In other words, the debate was over the question: What exactly does “save” mean? One way to get a handle on the issue at stake is by asking yourself the following question: If you have trusted in Christ for your salvation, can you attribute your faith to the fact that you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (and nothing else)? Or did God “choose” you on the basis of His foreknowledge that when confronted with the gospel, you would exercise your own free will and “decide for Jesus”? Does your faith flow from your election? Or your election from your faith? (Though it may appear to be, this is not simply a "chicken or the egg" type of question!)

To put it another way (and here I’m stealing a very helpful illustration used by R.C. Sproul in his excellent article, On the Pelagian Captivity of the Church): Can we best compare God’s saving of sinners to someone rescuing a drowning man by throwing him a life preserver and helping him to grab hold of it? Or is it more like someone diving to the bottom of the ocean to rescue a stone cold corpse, bring it to the surface, and then breath life into it? It has often amazed me that many (most?) Christians, in my experience, don’t consider this to be an important question. As you've probably figured out, I have become convinced that it is crucial, and I want to argue vehemently for the latter option!

(In order to keep this post “bite-sized,” I’ll continue the discussion in the next one …)

truths I have gleaned from the treasure trove of Reformed theology

Some of the many crucial truths I have gleaned from the vast treasure trove of Reformed theology (to mix metaphors) are:

1. that God does not merely provide an opportunity for sinners to be saved, but He actually saves sinners, the three Persons of the Godhead concurring in the work of salvation - the Father electing, the Son redeeming, and the Holy Spirit applying redemption to the elect,

2. that nevertheless, the offer of the gospel is designed by God to be extended to sinners as sinners (without regard to whether or not they are elect), and that therefore all human beings without exception have a warrant to trust in Christ for their salvation.

3. that our justification is by sovereign grace alone, appropriated by faith alone, and judicially grounded on the finished work of Christ alone,

4. that God's revelation is covenantally structured, and that there are two types of covenants: law covenants and promise covenants,

5. that Christ not only endured the curse of God's wrath for our sins, but also merited our entitlement to heaven through His perfect obedience to God's Law,

6. that Christ reigns over the eternal Kingdom of God by His word and Spirit, but over the temporal kingdom of man by His providence,

7. that the nation of Israel was both a "republication" of the works-based economy that God had established with our first parents in the garden of Eden, and a typological prefiguration of the eternal Kingdom of Christ,

8. that Christ, as our federal Head who was "born under the Law" and perfectly fulfilled it, is both the Second Adam and the true Israel,

9. that the Old Testament account of Israel's exile and the prophetic promises of restoration typologically prefigure the sufferings and glory of Christ,

10. that while the substance of the covenant of grace extends to the elect only (the invisible church), its historical administration embraces all who profess the true religion and their children (the visible church), and that therefore, all these ought to receive the covenant sign (circumcision from Abraham to Christ; baptism after).

11. that biblical eschatology has an "already/not yet" structure,

12. that the Christian life is lived "in exile" and "in the wilderness" - in anticipation of our full possession of the promised heavenly inheritance,

13. that God's Kingdom is built and extended through the ministry of word and sacrament, not through any sort of attempt to "Christianize society,"

14. that in this age of inaugurated eschatology (between Christ's two advents), Christians ought to cooperate with unbelievers to build the temporal city of man, and

15. that only when Christ returns to judge the city of man and deliver His own will His Kingdom take on a geopolitical dimension (like Old Testament Israel) and extend over the whole (new) earth.

I could go on, but perhaps this list has grown long enough for the time being ... I may attempt to unpack some of this in future posts.

"about me"

Following is my facebook bio (mentioned in the initial post) that I couldn't reduce enough to fit the facebook word count. I will copy and paste it "as is," and then revise and expand it some (if I can figure out how) since I now have apparently endless freedom to do so. I am breaking it up into two posts, the second of which is essentially a list of some of the many really important things I have learned from Reformed thinkers.

My heritage is Jewish; my upbringing was liberal Jewish, but I was a practical atheist until I experienced a radical conversion to Christianity at the age of 27. A strong influence had been the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I spent the next 15 years as basically your garden variety crypto-Arminian, anti-creedal, pietistic, baptistic, legalistic, individualistic, biblicist, activist, dispensationlist, culture warring American evangelical (and now I have to catch my breath ...).

Roughly four years ago, I experienced another radical conversion - to Reformed Christianity. I had been influenced by the likes of J.I. Packer, John Piper, and Francis Schaeffer - but the real revolution occurred for me through reading John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (which is far and away the most pastoral and helpful work on the Christian life I have ever read). I followed this with readings from Martin Luther (On the Bondage of the Will), Jonathan Edwards (The Freedom of the Will, etc.), the Puritans and Reformed scholastics, the Reformed confessions, and contemporary Reformed thinkers.

Years ago, I aspired to be an illustrator, and I have a BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design. I work with a Christian non-profit organization (which I will refrain from naming here for the time being out of respect for the possibility that my co-workers may not want to be associated with some of the ideas expressed on this blog) that I have been involved with almost since becoming a Christian. Along the way, I got an MA in Intercultural Studies (missiology) from the Fuller School of World Mission. I am a member of an Orthodox Presbyterian church.

initial post ...

This blog is resulting from the fact that I exceeded the word limitations on facebook in the "about me" section. I got all excited about discussing my "conversion" from broad evangelicalism to the Reformed faith. Also, some friends encouraged me (so if this doesn't work out, I have people I can blame!). I have strong convictions and hope I can be forthright and yet not offend (no doubt a naive hope). I must say I am a bit embarrassed, and fear that this will turn out to be a feeble (and failed?) attempt to add to the world of Reformed blogdom. I'm not sure yet whether I'm ready for this, and am experiencing some fear and trepidation, but we shall see ...