Election, Grace and Blessed Assurance – Part three

In Calvinism these are all related, as any regular user of the NIV Study Bible will have observed from the notes. Comprehensively, they have been, and are being currently, promoted as “sovereignty theology” in seminaries and so-called “Christian” book shops worldwide. A large “Christian” (read Calvinist) book shop, the size of a small department store, has recently been opened in George Town, Cayman Islands: divine election, grace and blessed assurance fill the shelves — books, cards, videos, cassette tapes. It is like a typical Mormon bookstore in Utah, only much more subtle because it uses the warmth and comfort of scripture as a veneer for its heresies.

The drum beat is constant: yield to God’s unmerited grace, accept Jesus as your personal savior, and you are the elect. You are a saved person. You can look down with disdain upon the “unsaved.” In fact, your salvation has been already assured by the “finished work” of Jesus on Calvary. You can join your fellow-elect in singing the “wonderful old hymn:” Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine…

For the past half century the Billy Graham crusades have kept Calvinist theology on the front burner, as North Americans will know, right up to the White House, where Graham has reigned as supreme counselor to the most powerful man on earth. It is seductive in the extreme.

We have been influenced

It is blind to deny that this thinking has not influenced the Christadelphian brotherhood. This is from a poem in a Christadelphian periodical, a poem which was actually read aloud at one of the first fraternal gatherings ever held, in 1865:

Thus God Omnipotent, the Master of all power and ministry, Gives charge unto His angels who rejoice to serve; by them upheld

We cannot dash our feet against the stones, we cannot fall. And this is from a major Christadelphian periodical in 1996:

“God intervened in human affairs through Jesus to save men and women who were utterly without hope. God [is] working in them, making them will and work according to His blessed will. The knowledge that God [has] chosen them to be His people [is] a factor of incalculable importance… God’s chosen ones can never be guilty of lukewarmness because that would mean indifference to the God who called them for service.” The italicized words are Calvinist, not biblical. God will never make a man serve and love Him, all the more so if that man is unwilling or hard of heart. Real love cannot be made to order. It is a freely offered expression of humble gratitude on our part.

And what about a couple of old Christadelphian hymns from the 19th century?

Come, 0 Lord, whose grace hath saved us,

Give thy saints the vict’ry gained (i.e. as if the work of salvation is finished and there is nothing for us to do.)

Our prayers and our praises God’s grace will command.

(i.e. by expressing devotion, we can command God to be gracious to us.)

While it is true we are to importune God, we are to do so with a sense of great need and humility! Calvinists think that by their prayers they can order God around, and God is indebted to their holy praises. But surely Scriptural examples suggest a far humbler spirit.

The danger of arrogance

The idea of being called and chosen leads to a typically Calvinist feeling of self-assurance. Our self appraisal readily takes on the form:

“God, we thank you that we are not like other men — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like those who, unlike us, do not understand your truth. We support all the ecclesial meetings. We give generously to all the collections. We humbly give you thanks for choosing us out of the world to show us your marvelous light. And, if it be your will, bring us to your glorious Kingdom.”

In fact, rarely do we see in our own midst the model of the man who, Jesus tells us, “went home justified before God:” “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Lk. 18:13).

It is a salutary experience to study — and imitate — the prayers of great men and women of faith:

Abraham, the friend of God: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes…” (Gen. 18:23-32).

Ezra, faithful elder: “O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God.. .O LORD, God of Israel, you are righteous! Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence” (Ezra 9:6-15).

Nehemiah, guide nonpareil: “Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise,” he begins. And as he gets down to the business at hand: “Now therefore, 0 our God, the great, mighty and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes — the hardship that has come upon us…” (Neh. 9:7-37).

And so we could go on, from Genesis to Revelation. Real (not false) humility, a recognition of inadequacy, a dependence, a passionate love of God, an appreciation of God’s mercy, an identification with the failings of God’s people, and a desire to share with others the rich blessings we experience: all these are evident in the worship of all the heroes of the faith.

Our Attitude to the Unconverted

Calvinists say: “God has no interest in mankind in the aggregate, in the mass of heathen. Their lot is to perish (or go to hell) and God is quite unconcerned about them. When God says that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all might come to repentance, the ‘all’ there means all whom God wants to call, and really just means a few people selected according to the principle of sovereign election. If we find ourselves among the favored few whom God picks for salvation, then we can thank Him for showing mercy on us, but we need not feel particularly sorry for the unconverted: they are the unregenerate ‘objects of God’s wrath’ (Rom. 9:22). We have no commission to preach; that was confined to the apostles.”

I would guess that there is hardly a single brother or sister who has decided to dedicate some part (or all) of their lives (and money) to missionary work who has not been scorned and dissuaded by brothers and sisters — sometimes whole ecclesias — using these very same Calvinist arguments. I myself have been harangued in this way times without number. How many ecclesias in the world are sponsoring preachers in the way that Antioch in Syria did in the first century? Only the other day, a brother wrote me at length rebuking me for encouraging concern with “the environment” (God’s wonderful world). God’s only interest, I was told, is in His saints. What interest does God have in genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, pollution in Los Angeles, terrorist bombings in Manchester (unless believers are directly involved)?

Did not Jesus say, “Let the dead bury their own dead”?

My only answer can be: listen to Abraham pleading for Sodom; read the book of Jonah; notice Jeremiah’s tears; watch the Lord Jesus weep over Jerusalem; hear his words to the women beside the road to Golgotha; stand with our Savior as he appeals to Pontius Pilate; learn the long suffering and compassion’s of the LORD with Hosea; and stand beside Moses as God proclaims His Name…Yes, just read His Word and learn about the true and living God — the God of mercy, loving kindness and truth, the God of whom we are told, as He looked upon the corrupt world before the Flood: “The LORD was grieved and His heart was filled with pain” (Gen. 6:6).

Did not Paul reflect just a little of God’s heart when he “was greatly distressed to see that the city [of Athens] was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). And when he reached desperately immoral Corinth, the apostle, we learn, was “pressed in the spirit,” and testified that Jesus was Christ (Acts 18:5). We have grand examples there; what a wonderful difference it would make to our community if that spirit flowed everywhere.

We truly believe such a right spirit is being shown in our community at this moment all over the world. More than ever before, we are pressing forward to spread the gospel. Let us beware, however, the lingering effects of Calvinist theology that would dampen our enthusiasm for taking the gospel to all people.