Musings on Doctrine

The Security of Salvation A Safe Danger? Dogs have an amazing sense of smell. They can sniff out drugs hidden in the most ingenious places. That’s how biblical truth is. Biblical truth is like a narco-dog trained to sniff out deceit and error. When it barks, it’s because it has found something illicit. If it barks at you, well, admit it. You must be hiding something erroneous. The problem, then, is not with God’s Word. It’s with you. Don’t shoot the dog. Get rid of whatever you’re hiding that’s illicit and false, and make friends with him. Pat him on the head. Scratch his back. Face it, the truth only barks at falsehood. But don’t feel too bad if he barks at you. He barks loudly at the churches of Christianity too, all of them. And sadly, in most cases they’d rather shoot the dog than admit their errors. Their errors are old family friends. They’ve grown up with them. They love their lies, and give them the place of honor at the Lord’s table. In such company, the truth seems rude and impolite. But it must be told. Predestination and Security Where should we start? Let’s begin with a question on which churches disagree. Can saved persons lose their salvation? Some say yes, some say no. Both sides wave the Bible in the other’s face. If they actually open it, it’s merely to parrot what they were taught, zealously and full of unction. The open Bible in their hand is mostly just a prop to support their posturing. They read with the eyes of their forebears, and impose their received tradition upon the various texts. “We must not deviate from what we’ve been taught. It has already been interpreted correctly by our great past leaders,” each side claims, confidently, full of fervor. But has it? John Calvin was one of those leaders. Among other things, he promoted predestination, the idea that God in his sovereign and independent desire has irrevocably chosen and ordained specific individuals to salvation. And there’s nothing anyone can do to change this predetermined destiny. It’s a done deal, because God is sovereign. His chosen ones will absolutely receive Christ. God himself has decreed it. He ordained it long ago, and his word and will are set in stone. Many proponents of this idea go further and imagine that in his sovereignty God spoke everything to be. He decreed it all. All things will happen the way they were decreed. This notion ties a knot around the neck of human freedom and pulls it tight. God controls the decisions that individuals make. His picks will come to Christ and salvation without fail, for God decreed it. Their choice is God’s choice, made eons ago, and is fixed. And he picks a winner every time. He’s rigged the game. The flip side to this reasoning is that God has decreed all others to scream forever in the eternal fires of hell! What does that say about God? What does it say about Calvinism? Be honest. What does it say about God and Calvinism? In Denial Clearly, such a vile notion calls God’s character into serious question, and sets aside the whole of God’s Word. Would he really consign untold billions of helpless humans to unending torture, eon upon eon, simply because he can? Are hell’s horrendous, unending screams the music of heaven? Predestination coupled with the traditional doctrine of hell portrays God as a monster of enormous, infinite evil, a vengeful fiend offended because people supposedly didn’t do things his way. But if predestination is true, they did do things his way! Is it not blasphemous? This hellish doctrine is regularly preached in many churches, passionately, oblivious to its implications, as if it honors God and shows him to be righteous and just. But blasphemy is never right worship, child. Making God into a vicious fiend does not honor him or please him. Nor does the Bible promote slavery. In chapter after chapter the Bible clearly supposes human freedom. In page after page and verse after verse it calls for individual responsibility, and invites people to make choices, good and intelligent ones. And of course, choices require the freedom to choose. The idea of individual predestination spits at human freedom and then slams the door in its face. It spits at Christ Jesus too. Was he not free? Jesus’ invitation to life in God’s love is not restricted to an elite few, or to just his close friends. He calls to everyone who can hear his voice. It’s for whosoever might believe (Isa. 55:1–3; John 3:16; Rev. 22:17). And whosoever includes you and me, and all our friends and neighbors, and first and second cousins. Heaven’s door is standing wide open. Inside is Christ Jesus, with his arms wide open as well. The gospel is an open call to one and all. Whosoever will, may come. Some will believe, and come. Others won’t. But always, it’s an individual’s decision. The choice can’t be coerced, for then it wouldn’t be a choice. It would be like the army sergeant who points and barks, “We need three volunteers, so I’m volunteering you, you, and you.” Predestination would make the gospel a cheap gimmick, an act of false advertising. If Jesus’ supper is limited to a few pre-selected guests, why does he invite everyone? Didn’t he really mean whosoever? Is the gospel call a lie? Guests who accept his invitation, but who were not ordained unto salvation, will arrive only to be turned away, still hungry. Jesus will ignore their knock. They can ring all they want, but he just won’t answer the doorbell. The hungry can just go away hungry. Thankfully, Christ is not the cheap, uncaring trickster that Calvinism makes him out to be. He promised not to turn anyone away (John 6:37). Jesus invites all who hear his voice to come and dine with him, to feast on choice morsels and tender delicacies. The Lord’s Supper table is not the place for playing the game of musical chairs. There’s room for everyone, and to spare. Choices scampered like squirrels among the trees in Eden, and frolicked everywhere in the well-worn pages of Israel’s history. The Law was all about choices. Morality is about choices. Human destiny itself hangs upon the choice of receiving or rejecting the Son (Rev. 22:17). The gospel presupposes freedom of choice. Freedom floods over the Bible’s pages like the waters of Niagara flow over the falls. Predestination, then, is like a frog trying to swim back up the falls against the mighty torrents of the Spirit. Predestination implies a God of guile, the fraud God. This world becomes a con game. If individual salvation is entirely God’s decree with no chance for change, the gospel and indeed all of God’s dealings with humans are pretense and make-believe. God becomes the Great Pretender. The world becomes unreal. Without individual choice, humans are mere puppets. God becomes the Puppet Master. Reception of Christ becomes a jerk of the string, a joke to make the angels laugh. Trying to support the security of the believer with Calvinist predestination is like a cockroach trying to support the weight of the human who steps on it. Squish.