Servanthood

Recently I submitted a resume to a church in Tempe, looking for a "Worship/Creative Arts Pastor." Not surprisingly, I've perusing their website trying to learn what I can about them. They have a few sermons online, both audio, and also some video, so I've been listening to sermons while doing my paperwork.

Today, I was listening to a sermon preached on their "Team Sunday." You can view it here. One thing stood out to me. It's one of those statements that was just sort of nestled in to the rest of the sermon, but it jumped out at me...

The pastor was talking about how Christ came to serve, not to be served, and how He called us to follow His example. I'm not sure what it was, but the truth of that just hit me hard. We live in a culture built on consumerism. Every day we are bombarded with advertisements, people trying to sell us their products, and we are daily put in the position of having to ask the purveyors of these products, "What is your product going to do for me? Why is it worth buying?" Or, "What service will you provide that is worth purchasing?" We are fixated day-in, and day-out on what others will do for us, what will benefit us. As Christians, we are called to have a different attitude - what is it that I can do for YOU? What service can I provide to you, to bless you, to make your life better/easier?

Jesus didn't come to "get," but to "give." He didn't come to sell a product either, but to give away what was rightfully his to keep - out of love.

This is our duty, our job, every day of our lives: to look for ways to serve, to give, to bless. To ignore the ways in which we can "get" from people. Jesus even said that this attitude extends to our enemies as well. "Bless those who curse you." We are to live a life with an outward flow, so to speak.

Here's the challenge: let's do something, ANYTHING for someone else today. Let's bless someone, whether they deserve it or not. Whether we feel like it or not.

A non-Calvinists view of Calvinism - part 2

This is part two of my "series," A Non-Calvinists view of Calvinism. Technically it's part three, because I did a "part 2," to "part 1," though really "part 2," was more like "part 1b" or something, which makes this the REAL "part 2" of the series.

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Unconditional Election

Again from www.Reformed.com:

Unconditional Election is the doctrine which states that God chose those whom he was pleased to bring to a knowledge of himself, not based upon any merit shown by the object of his grace and not based upon his looking forward to discover who would "accept" the offer of the gospel. God has elected, based solely upon the counsel of his own will, some for glory and others for damnation (Romans 9:15,21). He has done this act before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 1:4-8).

This doctrine does not rule out, however, man's responsibility to believe in the redeeming work of God the Son (John 3:16-18). Scripture presents a tension between God's sovereignty in salvation, and man's responsibility to believe which it does not try to resolve. Both are true -- to deny man's responsibility is to affirm an unbiblical hyper-calvinism; to deny God's sovereignty is to affirm an unbiblical Arminianism.

Pardon my sarcasm, but the idea that God is in heaven, playing a cosmic and catastrophic game of divine "eeny, meeny, miney, mo," really is impossible for me to accept. The above doctrine insists upon arbitrary selection (since God cannot take into account the 'merit' of any person). Let's hang out for a while on this concept of "arbitrary." The idea of an 'arbitrary' selection is something like this: you go to the grocery store to pick up a bag of tortilla chips. You get to the aisle, and there are somewhere around 20 bags of each particular variety of torilla chip. You personally don't have any preferences as to which brand you buy, so you arbitrarily choose Tostitos. Furthermore, you decide to pick out one bag of Tostitos out of the twenty on the shelf. This selection, too, is arbitrary. There is no rhyme or reason to your selection. You might have picked a different brand of tortilla chips, or you might have selected a different bag of Tostitos, say, the one directly to the left. It doesn't matter. The choice was arbitrary.

The doctrine of Unconditional Election insists that God's foreordination of people for salvation work the same way. He might have picked the kid next door, but he picked me. Some will protest this idea by saying, "His selection isn't arbitrary! He chooses people as He wills His choices are according to what pleases Him." However, this is frankly a non-answer. The child who calls out, "Goose," instead of "Duck," did so "according to his will," but the choice was nevertheless arbitrary.

The fact that individual merit cannot be factored into the equation, insists that God be arbitrary in His selection. But this causes us to define "merit." The above definition of the doctrine includes this statement, "...not based upon his looking forward to discover who would 'accept' the offer of the gospel." Later in the definition, the author stresses the importance of personal faith, saying that this is the 'responsibility' of the believer. I commend the author for conceding this point, but can't help but to see a significant contradiction here. If God does not select people by looking ahead to see who will 'accept' the Gospel (a.k.a. believe the Gospel), why is it the responsibility of the individual to believe, since without that initial, arbitrary election from God, they would never believe in the first place (and though we haven't gotten there yet, Calvinism also says that everyone who is elected, WILL believe). So, according to Calvinism, individual faith is the believer's responsibility, and also the necessary evntuality of election. The author used the word "tension," to describe the tenuous relationship between God's sovereignty, and man's responsibility. I actually do acknowledge this tension, but I think in this particular instance, it is being used as a cover for inherent contradiction, not tension.

Lastly, the Bible is very clear that faith is non-meritorious. For a Calvinist to say that God takes no merit into account when He predestines a person for salvation, not even looking forward to see who will believe, they are saying that somehow faith itself constitutes merit on the part of the individual. But over and over, Paul says, "You are saved by grace through faith." If faith can be reckoned as meritorious, then this frequent statement of Paul is nonsense. If we are saved by God's unmerited favor, through the meritorious act of faith, then we're not really saved by grace at all! But instead, Paul clearly says, "It is of faith, that it might be by grace..." God chose to save people through faith, so that no merit could be ascribed to the saved individual. Why? Because when we believe, we aren't actually doing anything - we are embracing what was already done by Christ for us.

And for good measure, the Bible is also clear that God predestines "according to His foreknowledge." See 1 Peter 1:1-2, and Romans 8:29. This means He chooses based on what He knows.

Total Depravity - part 2

It is fascinating to me how passionate people are about this particular theological subject. Within twenty-four hours of my last post, I had two comments from people I don't even know! I thought it might be good to clarify, and answer some of the points brought up in those comments, before moving on to the other points of Calvinism.

First of all, I was not attempting to be exhaustive in the previous post about Total Depravity. I was attempting simply to deal with the aspects of that particular doctrine that I found somewhat fallacious, or maybe just incomplete. "aworthydiscussion" said,

"Saying that man doesnt need divine intervention to respond to God puts you in the pelagian camp which says man has the ability to respond to God in and of himself."

First of all, allow me to reiterate a point from my previous post. I never said that we don't need divine intervention from God to respond to Him, exactly the opposite. My point was that God provided that divine intervention for everyone in Jesus Christ, and now we need to look to Him to be saved. Thus the divine intervention we need is part of the finished work of Christ. We don't need further intervention beyond what Jesus did. To say that we do, diminishes the perfect and complete work of Christ. Furthermore, I did concede the point that we need the Holy Spirit to draw us to God. However, I would also emphasize the point that the Holy Spirit draws all men to God, but some don't listen. This is part of His present ministry in the world.

I believe in the basic premise of Total Depravity, that all men are completely wicked, enemies of God, hostile to God, dead in trespasses and sins, etc. I disagree, however, with the conclusion that this depravity precludes our ability to hear, understand, and believe the Gospel when it is preached. I believe that all people (not just the 'elect') have the ability to respond to God, but only the 'elect' actually do respond. And again, I don't believe that man "has the ability to respond to God in and of himself," because I believe that man has nothing in and of himself! Even his ability to reject God, is a gift from God!!

And in response to Stan - I hope I can be as magnanimous in my response as you were in yours - whether talking about a 'revelation from God' or 'spiritual life,' the question still remains: when is this 'spiritual life' given, and through what means?

I think we are essentially dealing with an equivocation of terms here, Stan. Calvinism still essentially says that there must be a moment of 'divine intervention' where God imparts that life (I agree up to this point), but that this life comes as an act of immediate, supreme sovereignty, that requires nothing of the recipient (not even faith), and which the recipient is powerless to resist (now we're into Irresistible Grace and Unconditional Election). What I say, and what I believe the Bible clearly teaches, is that it is the faith of the individual that releases the immediate grace of God - faith in the message preached. This ascribes no merit to the person, per Ephesians 2:8, 9 & Romans 11:6. I have heard Calvinists insist that if it were required for a person to believe in order to be saved, than that would mean that we somehow earned God's favor. Yet Paul is VERY clear that individual faith is the means by which we receive grace. 'Faith' and 'works' are mutually exclusive. "It is by faith, and not by works," how then can we call faith a work???

To sum up:

1. I believe that all men are completely wicked by nature, by choice, and by divine declaration.
2. I do not believe that our wickedness means that we are unable to understand and accept the basic Gospel message (the "natural man" can understand nothing more of God than this, but he can understand the Gospel, cf. 1 Cor. 2, distinction of "the mature" - what did he preach to the others? 1Cor. 2:2).
3. I believe that the person of Jesus Christ, and His completed work on the cross is the 'divine intervention' from God that allows all men to be saved.
4. I believe that faith is the means of receiving God's grace - and that faith is ultimately a choice.

A non-Calvinists view of Calvinism

In the interest of being forthright, I confess that these next few blogs will be a refutation of the 5 points of Calvinism. The five points of Calvinism are easily remembered by the acrostic TULIP: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints.

That being said, let me introduce Point 1: Total Depravity.

Taken from www.Reformed.org...

The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without a knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God's making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 1:2-5).

Basically this doctrine teaches that man is so wicked, so thoroughly depraved, that were the Gospel to be presented to him clearly and intelligently, his depraved mind would be unable to comprehend it, and thus would be utterly unable to be saved. The caveat is (in Calvinistic thinking), that the only way, then, to be saved is to hear the gospel while simultaneously receiving divine revelation from God as to it's meaning. Only with this intervention of Divine wisdom can any person truly hear, understand and accept the gospel message and be saved. Conversely, without this revelation from God, one will never understand the gospel message, and thus never be saved.

What makes this doctrine difficult to utterly reject, is that there are strands of truth running through it. After Peter made his famous confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," Jesus immediately responded with, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven" (Matt. 16:13-17). Clearly, Jesus connected Peter's confession with revelation from God. The simple truth is that revelation from God is necessary for us to acknowledge Christ's identity. Another passage says, "...no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit" (1Cor. 12:3).

Here is the problem. Calvinism insists that what man needs is an immediate revelation from God at the time that the individual hears the Gospel. The concept that is far more consistent with scripture is that Christ's teachings, example of life, and sacrificial and atoning death are themselves God's revelation to man. We don't need some sort of supernatural and immediate revelation from God to embrace the message of Christ's atoning death, we just need to hear the message and believe it.

In Romans 10, Paul talks about the Christian's duty to preach the gospel because, "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard, and how can they hear without a preacher?" According to this verse the only thing necessary for salvation is to believe in the message preached, not an immediate, direct revelation from God.

Conclusion: though our minds may be depraved, and though revelation may be necessary in order to believe the gospel and be saved, that revelation has already been given and is available to all who will believe.

Practical application: everything God has revealed is yours. You don't need some fantastical revelatory experience in order to own it. God has already given it. Furthermore, everyone of your friends, family members, loved ones, acquaintances can be saved if they hear the truth and believe. Shouldn't you be telling them the truth?

Church was GOOD

So I went to church last night. As is to be expected, there was a much smaller crowd than usual, but still a great fervency in worship. According to a few different people at the church, that fervent worship is sort of a growing thing - apparently the church has not always been so passionate in their worship, but of late has sort of grown into it. It's a very encouraging thought!

But I digress...

The worship was good, but the sermon was fantastic! The pastor preached a sermon called "Jesus the Baptizer." His sermon was about the "Promise of the Holy Spirit/Baptism into the Holy Spirit." Now this church is unapologetically Pentecostal, so a sermon of this topic is to be expected from time to time. But unlike many Pentecostal churches, he didn't preach a sermon about tongues. Thank God! He preached the true message of the Holy Spirit, took us to more scriptures than I really had time to follow, and made an argument for the doctrine of the subsequent filling of the Holy Spirit that few classically trained theologians would have been able to argue.

Here's the basics of what he preached:

1. We receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at the time of salvation. 1Cor. 12:13. From this time the Holy Spirit is in us, abiding with us.

2. The baptism into the Holy Spirit is a separate event in the believer's life where the Holy Spirit comes upon them. Luke 24:49. It is through this experience that the recipient receives power to live for God, to do the work of God, etc. The early Pentecostal slogan was "Power for service."

He took us to several scriptures in the Old Testament in which we observe Holy Spirit coming upon someone, and they immediately begin prophesying. The sheer volume of scriptures he was able to produce to show this was staggering. The basic point he was making, is that the Holy Spirit doesn't come quietly upon a person. When all the power, all the holiness, all the virtue of God in the Spirit falls upon a person, somethings gotta' give!

Well, I don't want to recreate the message, but it was great. He did ultimately get around to the tongues issue, which is frankly necessary for good Bible exposition since tongues is an integral part of the experience of receiving the Holy Spirit in the New Testament (cf. Acts 2:4, Acts 10:44-46, Acts 19:6). But his emphasis was on the power issue. We need more of God's power in our lives, and this is how God ordained that we should have it. He concluded the message with a very practical exhortation to the church to 'yeild to the Spirit.' That when the Spirit begins to move, don't resist, but give in. He talked about the importance of Jesus becoming more real in our lives, of God's presence manifested more in our lives. It was profound...

I had a good time at church yesterday...

The Book of Acts

This book has always been one of my favorite books in the Bible. The first time I ever got serious about Bible reading, and the first time I actually made a commitment to read the Bible daily, I was seventeen, and I chose to start with the book of Acts.

I have probably read this book through more times than any other single book in the Bible. Each time I gain new insight. Each time I see a new element of the Gospel conveyed. I think the reason I like it so much, is that it is simply the story of real people living out their faith, and their calling.

I was impressed today by the story of when Barnabas and Paul went to Lystra, preached the gospel, healed a guy, and then the people of the city started saying that they were the gods come down in human form. Barnabas was Zeus, and Paul was Hermes. They almost sacrificed to them!

As weird as it may be, this passage encouraged me. It shows that even our best efforts at serving God, our most valiant attempts to please Him and to make Him known, sometimes go awry. Now, I've never had people try to worship me, but I have felt the frustration and disappointment that come with toiling in ministry, spending hours in prayer, and painstaking preparations, only to feel like it was all in vain, and that nothing worthwhile came out of it...

Of course, you're probably waiting for the silver lining in the story. The sad part is, that there isn't one. The story ends by the Jews convincing this crowd that Paul and Barnabas were bad, so they stoned Paul and left him for dead. What did they do next? They went home. The mission trip was over.

I have experienced what I consider to be some profound failures in my life and ministry. I'd be willing to bet that Paul would chalk this one up as a failure too.

The reality is that serving God isn't always rosy, it isn't always fun, and it doesn't always seem to work out. But Paul didn't quit. Not too much time passed before he decided to go back over all the cities he had previously visited, and see how the churches were doing. He went back to Lystra. He met a young guy named Timothy there. Now for 2,000 years we've been reading the letters that Paul wrote to this young man. Imagine if Paul had given up? Imagine if he had decided to skip Lystra on his second trip. After all, he wasn't very well received the first time.

The point is, don't quit. Failures are inevitable. Hardships are inevitable. But God is bigger than all of it.

Practicing God's Presence

A few simple thoughts...

As I read more of this book, and as I become more enamored with the principles it contains, I have realized a few things. First, as I have attempted to practice God's presence (more often than not, I fail to practice His presence), I have often felt like the annoying pet, constantly at the heels of his Master; or the child who keeps tugging at his father's shirt, ceaselessly seeking an audience. Brother Lawrence talks about remaining in "holy conversation" with God. I realize I don't know how to do that. I feel more like a nuisance than anything (though I know God does not see me as a nuisance). Perhaps on some level, this is part of that command to come to God like little children.

Another thing I've noticed, more negative than positive, is that Lawrence seemed utterly unconcerned for the world around him. He only cared to be in God's presence. This is a noble desire, but I think a greater desire would be to assist others in finding God's presence, specifically those who are currently without access to God through Christ. I guess this is a typical problem when you become a monk. Monks basically remove themselves from the world in order to wholly devote themselves to God. Noble, but misguided, I think. God wants us to be wholly devoted to Him, but to remain in the world, where that devotion could transform others.

So, I believe in the premises of this book: 1) that we are called to total, unceasing devotion to God; 2) that such devotion requires a great deal of grace from God; 3) that remaining in constant fellowship with God is the most efficient means of grace to that end.

I, now, would add that once we have attained that blissful state of "constant abiding," we need to take His presence into the world, to others. We need to take His grace, His power to a world that is desperate for Him. Better yet, we should practice both simultaneously. The one would feed the other. Our inward communion with God would foster a greater concern for the world around us, and give us greater access to the resources in God's storehouse. Conversely, the more we observe God at work in the world around us, the more we experience Him using us to transform others, the more we will be driven to those secret times with Him out of love.