“... doesn’t every command in the Bible pre-suppose free will?”

Question: “Doesn’t every command in the Bible pre-suppose free will?”

Response: If the natural man has a free will to believe the gospel, then why does he need grace? If his will is naturally free then it would do away with the need for grace altogether. The need for grace in salvation demonstrates that free will is simply the the extra-biblical unaided logic of man.

“Also, doesn’t every command in the Bible pre-suppose free will?”

If you read Romans 3:19, 20 it declares that the purpose of the divine law is NOT to show man’s ability but his inability.

“Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being[a] will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

So any Christian who says they believe in free will and not the bondage of the will is simply being inconsistent. Can a person come to faith in Jesus Christ apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. If you say “no” then you acknowledge that fallen man has no free will. Grace is needed to believe. Jesus himself says “…no one can come to me unless God grants it.” (John 6:65).

For a more detailed answer, see this post which quotes Luther's Bondage of the Will

Why Arminian Conditional Election Makes God a Respecter of Persons

I often hear the charge against those who hold to a Reformed understanding of unconditional election and effectual grace that it cannot be true because it makes God a respecter of persons.

I think it is important to face up to this charge to see if it has any validity. To do this we need to understand how the Bible uses the concept "respecter of persons" and then let it interpret itself as to what it actually means, and then determine whether or not God would be guilty of it if unconditional election were true. Below is a wide sampling of its occurrence in the Scripture:

"Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour." (Leviticus 19: 15 KJV)

"Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous." (Deuteronomy 16: 19 KJV)

"For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means,
that his banished be not expelled from him." (II Samuel 14: 14 KJV)

"Wherefore now let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts." (II Chronicles 19: 7 KJV)

"These things also belong to the wise. It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment." (Proverbs 24: 23 KJV)

"To have respect of persons is not good: for for a piece of bread that man will transgress." (Proverbs 28: 21 KJV)

"And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear." (I Peter 1: 17 KJV)

"God is no respecter of persons." (Acts 10: 34)

"For there is no respect of persons with God." (Romans 2: 11)

"My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called? If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors." (James 2: 1-9 KJV)

Here we have multiple instances of this phrase in both the Old and New Testament. So what are these passages talking about? They are clearly warning the believer against showing favoritism or partiality, because they declare that God Himself does not show partiality or favoritism. And. most importantly, in each of these instances it means neither we nor God give special treatment to a person because of his position, merit, wealth, influence, social standing, authority or popularity. Thus 'respecter of persons' means we are not to favor one person over the other because of ANY superior personal trait in the one favored, and likewise we are not to show prejudice toward those who lack these characteristics.

So when God unconditionally elects a person in Christ does he first determine who he will choose based on their position, wealth, good looks, influence etc? No. By definition unconditional election means unconditional. It is not conditioned on ANYTHING in us or potentially in us. God does not stand to gain from currying anyone's favor ... even those who are in high positions ... because God gave them that position, wealth, authority or social standing to begin with. The Bible unambiguously teaches, therefore, that God is no respecter of persons in election. Those who are chosen are chosen "in Christ" not because God is thinking about what he has to gain by helping them over others.. God has no need for such things, so, by definition, his choosing us cannot be tainted with such a motive.

Continue reading "Why Arminian Conditional Election Makes God a Respecter of Persons" »

James and John

VIDEO INTERVIEW
Dr. James White and I (lurking somewhere behind the microphone stands) had a great time yesterday discussing my new eBook and Reformed Theology on James' "Radio Free Geneva" Dividing Line Broadcast. Here's the youtube video of the interview segment.

FULL LENGTH AUDIO
Dr. James White writes: Today on a Mega Radio Free Geneva: John Samson and Emir Caner

"I bet John never expected to see himself mentioned quite like that before. But, we did have John Samson in studio today to talk about his new book from Monergism.com, Twelve What Abouts, which you can find here. We then went back to reviewing Emir Caner's sermon against Reformed theology, and then took calls on the topic for the last half hour." Here's the full 2 hour program.

10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)

I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. - Psalm 34:1

Matt Redman explains how he plays the song on his guitar:

Here is a live version, with lyrics added:

Resources on Apostasy & Hebrews 6

Question: I'm just wondering if you have any e books, or articles on the subject of eternal security which is able to strongly refute the extremely difficult passages in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 which is clearly understandable as I have had some particular issues and opposition from people who hold to the erroneous doctrine of losing salvation of which I oppose. Can you help or advise.

Response: Thank you for your email. People who erroneously affirm that one can lose their salvation are in danger of denying the gospel and more precisely, denying Jesus Christ. They are in essence, declaring there is something we (not Christ) can do to either attain or maintain our just standing before God. Such a belief completely is contrary to Christ and misapprehends the intent of the gospel. We have a God who saves us freely in Christ, who does not base His salvation or acceptance of his people if they only meet certain conditions or jump through certain hoops.

The passages in Hebrews, you must remember, are written in the context... a context which declares that Jesus Christ is better than the Sacrifice, the Temple, Moses, and the Levitical Priesthood. These are warnings for people who have heard the gospel against going back to the shadows and signs which merely pointed to Christ (the fulfillment of these signs). A severe warning against embracing the shadows rather than the substance, which is Christ. It is not saying that if you stumble and commit some particular sin in your Christian life that you have lost your salvation. On the contrary, those who think you can lose salvation because they sin are committing the very error these passages warn against because they are trusting in something other than Jesus Christ, like their own ability to keep or maintain their just standing before God with their works or perseverance. God alone "is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." (1 cor 1:28-31)

I would recommend the following articles and books:

On Apostasy

on Perseverance

An Exposition of Hebrews (eBook) Arthur W. Pink

Assured by God by Burk Parsons

Run to Win the Prize: Perseverance in the New Testament by Thomas R. Schreiner

From the Foreword...

Excerpt from the foreword to John Samson's new book “Twelve What Abouts – Answering Common Objections Concerning God’s Sovereignty in Election,” John Hendryx writes:

John 3:19-20 states that natural men love darkness and will not come into the light. Left to themselves men will always choose to stay in darkness. Whether or not someone believes or rejects Christ, it depends completely on the disposition of the heart. Apart from a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, the Bible says our disposition is, by nature, hostile to God and we cannot understand spiritual truth (Rom 8:7 & 1 Cor 2:14). But thanks be to God, the new birth or regeneration, is where God, the Holy Spirit applies the redemptive blessings of Christ, which give us the spiritual life that empowers us to do what we must do (repent and believe the gospel), but cannot do (while in the flesh), because of our bondage to sin (John 6:63, 65).

It seems that Jesus believes it is critical to remind Peter of this truth as of first importance in Peter's "follow-up". Many in this day and age are reluctant to speak to a new Christian about God's sovereign grace in salvation for fear it is a hard truth. Yet when Peter makes his first confession of Christ, Jesus puts it first before all other truths.

The entire eBook is available for $4 at this link.

New Book Published

The long awaited eBook is now published and available. My prayer is that God will use this to change many hearts and minds and cause His people to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of His all conquering grace. - JS

Full details can be found here.

Wordsmithy Douglas Wilson | Review by: John Starke

Douglas Wilson. Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life. Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2011. 120 pages. $11.20 @Monergism Books.

In C. S. Lewis’s fantasy world Perelandra, a place with no sin or evil, repetition is like “asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.” Perfection has the concept of “enough,” where pleasure is complete and repetition is vulgar. For those of us who read and re-read writing how-to books like Harry Potter novels, we look for that sense of “enough,” where the formula works and we’re satisfied.

Douglas Wilson’s Wordsmithy offers no such promise, since it’s not his to give. Besides, it probably doesn’t exist outside the world of Forms. But Wilson provides a guide to the “writing life” that doesn’t simply excerpt good writing from classic literature to illustrate his principles but attempts to be the model of good writing itself.

For example, Wilson offers a real gem when warning against “writing by rules” for fear coming up with something “like verbal tapioca pudding made with skim milk. Our world already has too much verbiage in it that comes off like it was written by a committee or a computer—or maybe a committee of computers.” Or when mocking aspiring writers who quote the right people so they can be known as someone who quotes the right people. “They quote Austen like Mary quoted her 18th-century bromides, and were Austen here to see them do it, she’d slap them right into her next book, and it wouldn’t be pretty.”

To be clear, Wilson doesn't live in Greenwich Village and boast a contract with a New York publishing house. He’s a pastor in Moscow, Idaho, who started his own classical education movement and a college to follow. His periodical, Credenda Agenda, stirs up no small wrangles among Presbyterians. None of this slights Wilson. He has lived his own counsel: “Live an actual life, a full life, the kind that generates a surplus of stories.” He types with dirt under his fingernails.

Bad Form

Though Wilson never says so, writers quickly realize there is such a thing as bad style. But to perfect your style, you don’t spend all your time reading manuals. Wilson doesn’t include sections on brevity, unity, or usage. Rather he instructs us to get a life, read until our brains creak, get to know how language works by reading dictionaries, and learn a foreign language. In other words, Wordsmithy isn’t a manual on how to write a great novel so you can go home and write it this afternoon. Rather, if you want to be a writer, Wilson offers tips for what you do for the next 30 years.

The mindful reader will realize that to follow Wilson all the way will make you a certain kind of writer. He does not dispense generic tips. To be sure, any writer who wants to improve would need to follow the spirit of Wilson’s tips, but to be a Wilson-kind-of-writer means to value a certain rhetorical style. Maybe there’s a label for this school of writing, but if there is, I don’t know its name. I only have a sense of it, a rhythmic prose that follows the Austen-Chesterton-Wodehouse-Lewis line of quick wit and belly-laughs. You probably know the kind.

If an author is going to give us tips for a writing life, he only knows one kind of life, his own. He only knows to suggest certain books, the ones he's read. So we need to choose our writing manuals wisely, just like we need to choose our teachers wisely.

Let’s suppose, though, for a moment that you, like Mark Twain, despise writers like Jane Austen. “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone,” Twain said. I can imagine that Twain would be impatient with Wilson as well. Does it follow, then, that we should neglect a book like Wilson’s? There certainly are other books like Stephen King’s On Writing, which gives writing lifestyle instructions without the Anglo-Saxon wit that Twain despised as flighty.

But here’s my case for Wilson’s Wordsmithy. Wilson doesn’t give tips for taking command of Lewis or Wodehouse, but he shows us a lifestyle that takes command of the English language. He doesn’t teach us to be mockers but to be deft wordsmiths.

You shouldn’t be as cranky as Twain anyway. Austen will make your nose snort with laughter, and so does Wilson. He’ll spin your head with prose and make you wonder how he did it. He won’t tell you how he did it, but he’ll write five more and then point to authors who do it all the time. He shows young writers still looking for their voice how to find one. You’ll read this book fast and go back to it again. Wilson has wisdom only a wise man knows.

John Starke is an editor for The Gospel Coalition and lead pastor of All Souls Church in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. You can follow him on Twitter.

Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life.

Not the full story...

Question: If God is Sovereign, why pray? Answer: It is BECAUSE God is Sovereign that we do pray. He is Lord of all and can change things, even putting it on our hearts to pray that He would do so.

John Wesley said, “God does nothing except in response to believing prayer.” There is some truth there but its not the full story. Creation took place before there ever was a prayer meeting. God made His plans long before anything else ever existed. God gave a people to His Son in eternity past who in time will come to Him (John 6:37) and He did so when no one asked Him to. God is not merely a responder, He is a master planner. He is found even by those who never sought Him (Romans 10:20). Lets always be people of prayer but let us be forever thankful that God is not limited to our prayer life before He can act in this world; otherwise we would be Sovereign and not Him. - JS

Election Ensures the Concept of Salvation by Grace

“So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” Romans 11:5, 6

From an article entitled, “What Difference Does it Make? A Discussion of the Evangelical Utility of the Doctrines of Grace,” Mark Webb writes:

The most casual Bible student admits that scripture indeed employs the language of election when speaking of God’s eternal purposes. Yet most seek to dodge the implications of that language by fleeing to the refuge of “conditional” election (i.e. that God’s choice, or election, of certain men to salvation is “conditioned” by his foreseeing faith in those men). I’ll leave the task of showing that this “time tunnel” hypothesis will not fly to the many excellent works on the subject. Better yet, see it yourself by getting out your Bible and thoroughly studying the many references of scripture concerning this subject. I intend to deal not so much with the proof of the doctrine as with its ramifications.

If “conditional” election is true—if God’s choice of me is determined by my choice of Him—the practical effect of this teaching is no different than if there were no election at all! The proof of this assertion is seen in the fact that the groups who hold this view seldom, if ever, mention the subject. And why should they? To what purpose? Since it’s taught that God has done all He can do to save, and now it’s up to man, the will of man becomes the determining and dominant factor in salvation. Whenever you make God’s choice of men to salvation hinge upon what He foresees in man—be it his work, his faith, or his choice—you have effectively undermined the whole concept of salvation by grace alone! Either salvation depends upon God’s free choice and good pleasure, which is the principle of “grace,” or it depends upon something man himself produces, which is the principle of “works.” It really matters not whether this “thing” which God foresees is something tangible, seen outwardly in the man’s life, or something intangible, seen inwardly only by God. It matters not whether it’s a huge thing, or whether it’s a tiny thing. So long as man’s part is the critical, determinative part, you have a system based upon “works” not grace.

Let me illustrate. Suppose you came to me and said, “Mark, I have a $15,000 car here. If you’ll pay me $15,000, I’ll give you the car.” We’d all agree, that’s not “grace,” that’s “works.” But suppose you said, “Mark, I’ve a $15,000 car here, and I’ll simply give you the car.” We’d all agree, that’s “grace,” not “works.” But now let’s try to mix the two concepts. Suppose you said, “Mark, here’s a $15,000 car. I’ll be $14,999 gracious to you if you’ll simply pay me $1.” Have we succeeded in mixing “grace” and “works?” No! For what’s the practical difference between that last offer and you simply saying, “Mark, here’s a $15,000 car—I’ll sell it for $1?”

Do you see? You’re still coming to me on the basis of “selling,” not “giving.” You’ve not changed your principle, you’ve simply lowered your price! This is precisely Paul’s point in Romans 11:5-6. An “unconditional” election is the only concept of election consistent with salvation by free grace!

Election Excludes Man’s Boasting

Scripture tells us in passages like Rom. 3:27, I Cor. 1:26-31, and Eph. 2:8-10, that God intentionally designed salvation so that no man could boast of it. He didn’t merely arrange it so that boasting would be discouraged or kept to a minimum—He planned it so that boasting would be absolutely excluded! Election does precisely that.