Grounding Faith: Embracing Grace and Understanding Sovereignty

Roger Nicole, a Swiss theologian, once observed that we all are by nature Arminian or semi-Pelagian. And it takes a tremendous amount of exposure to the Word of God to overcome that natural bias against the doctrines of grace. We’ve been indoctrinated in this country, from… particularly in America from a very early age to a humanistic understanding of anthropology, and particularly with respect to our understanding of freedom. [00:02:29]

But we have that idea that we have the ability, the moral ability, unaided, unaided by the vanquishing power of grace to bring us to saving faith, and so it takes a lot to overcome that, and so I think that the first thing a person who is excited about their discovery of the doctrines of grace that they learn quickly to be patient with their friends and with their family, and when you remember how long it took them to get past the difficulties that are there. [00:03:44]

And when you see that paganism, the spiritual one-ism as I like to call it, is fundamentally Arminian in the sense that the Gnostics believed that they were – this is a fancy word – abasileutos. That’s the privative “a” and basileutos, which is king, that they were without a king. In other words, that the essence of this kind of spirituality that is taking over the world today is the notion that you are a free spirit and that you have the inner divine in your heart, and thus nobody can dominate over you. [00:04:59]

One thing that I think everybody at least in Reformed circles would agree on is that we don’t have our verses and Arminians have their verses. They’re all God’s verses. We have to… We have to not cancel one set of passages because these passages are really, really true or vice versa. Some… Whatever we come up with has to make sense of all of the passages. [00:07:04]

You hear this all the time that God’s sovereignty ends where human freedom begins. Have you heard that? If that’s true, that’s not just the end of Reformed theology, that’s the end of Christianity because if God’s sovereignty ends where my freedom begins, then obviously the one who is sovereign would be me, not God. No, I have freedom. God gave us freedom, and it’s real freedom. [00:12:02]

And there is no ultimate explanation of how you put them together. They are just sitting there in Scripture. And it’s part of our faith to believe those two things at the same time. Now, I don’t think that that is a refusal to be thoughtful. If indeed the God whom we worship is so far beyond us that we can never understand Him in His deep mystery, I’m not surprised frankly that we have these kinds of intractable, logical problems in Scripture. [00:15:38]

I think we Christians should be known as folks who really know the issues. How can we bring truth to this world unless we’ve wrestled with these issues? And I don’t think it’s that complicated. That’s why I’ve been slipping in these two terms of one-ism and two-ism. I’ve been using them now for a time, and I’ve just tried to be as simple as possible because I’m good at that – simple things. [00:20:06]

I am struck how many of my friends’ children are no longer walking with the Lord. I don’t know your experiences about this, but when I grew up that wasn’t the case. And I’m seeing in this generation so many of the children of Christian people are no longer walking with the Lord. And I’m just wondering if we prepared them for the kind of world in which they now find themselves, or if the power and the intimidation of the world I was trying to describe is so great that they can’t stand up against it. [00:22:03]

John Piper says it well when he says that we not only have to believe the truth, and it’s not enough even to defend the truth, but we must contend for the truth. That doesn’t mean that we are to be by nature contentious people, but if you don’t, then these mouths will stay forever quiet. [00:23:09]

You know, what does the Psalmist say at the beginning, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord”… or in the Word of the Lord really. “And in that law doth he meditate day and night.” Not 15 minutes a day, but the whole idea of the man who will be like a tree planted by rivers of living water, bringing forth his fruit in his season, that differs from the chaff, which the wind drives away, is that the godly person is grounded and rooted deeply in the Word of God. [00:44:24]

The Word of God was given by God for our instruction, for our edification, for our improvement in righteousness, and it was meant to be understood. And we are called to be babes in evil, but in understanding we are called to be men, to be mature. And the early Christians were rebuked and admonished by the apostle for being satisfied with milk. And that’s all you can digest in 15 minutes a week. You don’t really get to the meat of the Word of God in that little bit of time. It just can’t be done. [00:45:42]

Our Lord said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and everything else will be added on to… that this is a priority to come to an understanding of the things of God, and that means in His Word deeply, regularly. [00:46:59]