Just for the elect. This truth is hard for some people for what seems like a good reason- It shows God treating people unequally. If Christ’s atoning work covers only some people, doesn’t this somehow make God unfair, treating one group of people one way, and another group of people another way? If people end up in different places, some in heaven and some in hell, then we can either attribute the difference to how God acts in our lives, or in how we act in ourselves. The latter choice has a great deal going for it. It absolves God of the charge of treating people differently. And no one in hell, of course, can complain about being there. They are there by their own doing.
The first choice, however, has three things going better for it. First, it means some people will actually go to heaven. Given the scope of our sinfulness, were God merely to make our salvation possible, (which is itself a limitation of the atonement) and then dependent upon our natural obedience to His call, none would come. Dead people do not respond to the call to repentance, unless they are first made alive.
The second advantage is that this is what the Bible teaches. Consider, for instance, Jesus’ High Priestly prayer. If it is incumbent upon God to treat all men the same, would it not be incumbent on Jesus to pray for all men the same way? What, then, are we to make of this- “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours” (John 17:9). Here Jesus explicitly denies praying for those who are not His, while affirming that He prays for those who are His. Now if Jesus is unwilling to pray for those who were not chosen, on what grounds can we claim that He suffered the wrath of the Father for the sins of those for whom He would not pray? Remember that God explicitly affirms His liberty to treat some people differently than others- “For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion’” (Romans 9:15). What we try to free God from, the accusation that He treats some people one way and others another God proudly affirms.
There is a third serious problem with the notion that Jesus died for all sins of all people. Hell. If Jesus atoned for all sins, for what are the sinners in hell suffering? Those who seek to “protect” God’s integrity by arguing He must treat us all the same end up, accidentally, affirming that God punishes the same sins twice, once on Calvary and again in hell. Some might object in turn that the sinners in hell are being punished for their unbelief. But that too is a sin, and thus would have already been punished. If all sins have been atoned for, they can’t be punished.
God owes man nothing save damnation. What He chooses to give, outside of damnation, is all of grace. Which means in turn that He treats His elect one way, and the reprobate another. All to the everlasting praise of His glory.
So Luther responded when queried about his love for God. He was honest enough to admit that while God is altogether lovely, Luther was a sinner, and his response to God showed it. We can have a love/hate relationship with that which matters to us for one of two reasons, or a combination thereof. In Luther’s case God doesn’t change, but Luther does. Sometimes, however, the object of our love changes while we don’t. Sometimes that which we love behaves in an unlovely way, and our love flees. Still worse, sometimes that which we loved changes so radically that love is difficult if not impossible.
I love my country, for at least two reasons. First, it is my country. It is good and right and proper that we should have an affection for that which is closest to us, even if that thing is not the best. Though it pains me to say so truth dictates I confess that this year at least the Pittsburgh Steelers are not the best team. This doesn’t mean, however, that my commitment and affection ought to transfer to the Rams. I love the Steelers because they are mine, and I love my country because it is mine.
Second, my country began as an experiment in liberty. The founding principles of limited government, of freedom of religion, of self-sufficiency, these resonate with me. Many of our founding fathers were true heroes, seeking sagely to apply God’s wisdom to the question of proper government. I still believe in those principles.
Which in turn drives part of why I often don’t love my country. Too often, naïve Christians see modern America through the lens of our history, and miss the hard truth that our nation, both its government and its citizens, have turned their backs on those founding principles. We have become a nation with intrusive government, officially endorsed secularism, and a cradle to grave welfare state. Our money has become debt, and our debts are being repudiated. Our culture has become a moral cesspool, and our children spend their days in state institutions where the state’s instructors may not mention Jesus’ name.
All of which pales in comparison to our great evil. We live in a country where nine justices, chosen by presidents of both parties, approved by Senators from both parties, have determined that mothers may kill their unborn children at will. That, of course, is bad, wicked, Nazi-like government. The government, however, does not kill any of those children. My country is not just its government, but its people. Those people, a million of them every year, kill their unborn children. The rest of us know all about it. We know it happens in our neighborhoods, every day. Yet we go to bed each night wondering about this sale at the mall, that big game over the weekend, the latest release from this band. We honestly don’t care. Is this a country worthy of being loved? Apart from the fact that it is ours?
We live in what once was a great country, which has now embraced a great evil. We love it for its being ours, while we mourn what it has become. We seek a better country.
Well, it’s not so new anymore for one thing. It is, however, a perspective on Paul’s writings on justification that suggests that Luther, and Protestantism following him, made the mistake of reading Paul through the lens of a legal mind. It argues that Paul, in relating to Judaism in the first century, doesn’t draw a clear line between a works righteousness legalism of Judaism on the one hand and faith alone Christianity on the other hand. New insights into the Judaism of the day suggested they weren’t the wooden boasters of self-righteousness we’ve been painting them out to be. Instead it suggests that Paul’s principle concern dealt with seeking to understand what it meant to be “in,” to be a part of God’s people, and how that question related to God’s law. I trust such a definition would be deemed reasonably fair if not especially expansive to those who embrace or embraced this view.
It is, however, one of those scholarly debates that a decade or so ago filtered down into educated layperson debates. It became a topic of conversation among the pipe-smoking bearded ones. On the scholar side there was some dots connecting Sanders and Dunn, the two big names in NPP and NT Wright who was, (and is) reaching a broad band of theologically curious laymen. Dr. Wright, in turn, had a significant impact on the thinking of many who came to embrace what came to be known as Federal Vision or Auburn Avenue theology.
The connections, I suspect, ran something like this. Federal visionists, as one can tell by their self-chosen name, were eager to affirm the corporate nature of God’s people. Rejecting crisis decisionism led to embracing varying levels paedo-faith from successional optimism to what some would call sacerdotalism. That is, the movement moved between pilsner to Oatmeal Stout, from a view that suggests we have reason to hope the children of believers are believers, though we can’t know for sure, to the baptized literally are all made believers but must labor to remain so and can fall away. Yikes. Thus the question of seeking to discern who is in and who is not, overlaps the New Perspective and Federal Vision.
Secondly, Federal Visionists and Dr. Wright shared a zeal for the kingdom of God. Both rejected an ideology that suggested that the Christian life consists of getting as many souls on to the lifeboat as possible before the Good Ship Earth sinks into Davy Jones’ end-times locker. If one is a committed justification by faith alone person like me, you can see why this would be troubling. If, however, you are a sawdust trail, the busses will wait, revivalist dispensationalist, you can see why this looks like the fifth plague. In short, there are genuine things to be concerned about from Dunn and Sanders to Wright to pilsener to Oatmeal Stout, though the farther down the road you go the worse it gets.
The good news is that this is generally old news. What drove its spread into the pews, I suspect, was theological pride. When we stopped arguing over reconstructionism a void was left in our puffed up hearts. So we found something novel either to embrace to show how smart we are, or to topple to show how faithful we are. But then I can’t see into people’s hearts of course. I can, however, say this. The sinner who beat his breast and cried out, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner” went home justified. Be that guy.
Imagine, if you will, that you find yourself in the midst of the greatest storm ever to hit the world. The wind is blowing at gale force. The ground is trembling, splitting at the seams. Lightning crashes and lights up a sky overflowing with the blackest of clouds. Rain is falling all around you in drops the size of swimming pools, while geysers erupt in every direction. You hear the screams of your terror-stricken neighbors above the thunder. Imagine you are on a boat being tossed this way and that. Imagine the screeches, the howls and brays of a menagerie of animals threatening a stampede.
There are eight people who have no need to imagine such a circumstance. Instead, they remember it. Noah and his family survived that storm. They didn’t, however, survive by their wits. They didn’t survive by their wills. They didn’t even survive by their faith. They survived by the grace of the same God who created the storm in the first place. Which means they didn’t merely survive, but were absolutely and utterly safe for every moment of their journey. Their emotional experience matched, no doubt, their physical experience. Neither, however, matched the true reality.
While it is a good thing to always give thanks, the thing we should be thankful for in light of this true account, of Noah and the flood, isn’t that we personally haven’t been called to live through what Noah and his family did. Rather we should give thanks that we are living through the exact same true reality. We too are absolutely and utterly safe in the midst of whatever storms the One who keeps us safe sends our way.
One of the many evangelical errors that has infected the church is the notion that eternal torment is separation from God. No. There is no separation from God. Where, after all, would we go to hide from Him (Psalm 139:8)? God is not only present in hell but His presence is hell. The very fire that burns is the fire of His glory. Which is the very light that lights up heaven. The redeemed and those in their own sins both will for eternity experience the presence of God. The redeemed will experience that presence in the context of blessing, those in their own sins in a context of cursing. Just as He was in the storm and in the ark, so will it be forever.
We who are in Christ are safe. He is our treasure and is beyond the possibility of loss or harm. We are His treasure and one with Him, and therefore just as secure as He is. He calls us, just as He did Noah and His family, just as He did the disciples on the boat in the Sea of Galilee, to trust Him, to faith, to rest. Let the thunder thunder. Let the tempest toss. Let us rest on the Rock, knowing that He protects us so well that apart from His will not a hair can fall from our heads.
Pop culture is a sanitizing force. No, it doesn’t make the world a cleaner place. It just makes us all the more the same. We are a world awash in golden arches, swooshes, and the real thing. Because people in Maine watch the same television shows, listen to the same radio programs, and attend the same movies as folks in Oklahoma, we are losing not only our national distinctives, but our regional distinctives. Our language is becoming homogenized, and our accents are going the way of the dodo bird.
Local cultures, however, fight back from time to time. Consider something as universal, once upon a time, as giving directions. In the Midwest, where the land is flat, you will be told to follow this road this many miles, and then turn east. You’ll turn north again after the next light, and what you’re looking for will be on the south side of the road. For those of us who grew up amidst rivers and mountains, and twisting, turning roads, such is pure gobbledygook. Where I grew up you told people which roads one should turn left or right on, and that was it.
In the south, however, the whole process is different. “You come up on the Kinderhook farm …” (and here we pay close attention, because we think we must turn soon) “…and you go right past that. Not long after you’ll pass Barnrock church. Just keep going. When you get to Nordyke road, you’ll see a log cabin up on the hill. That belongs to the Kisers. Keep going straight.” Directions, to the southerner, aren’t instructions in how to get from place to place, but a travelogue about the journey, and an introduction to all of the neighbors.
My conviction is that this strange reality is an expression of a stranger, more hidden reality. Such people don’t see places as means of travel, but as the setting of their lives. The farms and the rivers and all the other landmarks aren’t places to turn, but places to return to our past, our roots, our broader community. In the south, for all its foibles and shames, it is easier to remember that what we are is bigger than ourselves.
Some cultural patterns make the Gospel easier to grasp; others make it harder. A culture where fathers are largely absent and irresponsible, for instance, is one that will find it hard to understand the love of our heavenly Father. In turn, a culture given to extreme individualism is one in which one man living and dying for another just doesn’t make sense. A culture where one’s identity is more corporate than singular is one that can in turn identify with a substitutionary atonement.
All cultures have weaknesses and strengths. The great thing about southern virtues or midwestern virtues or northern virtues isn’t that they are southern or midwestern or northern, but that they are virtues. The capacity to live in a more covenantal world, a world where we recognize that the world is bigger than just us, is a good thing because this is the world God gave us.
That our culture tends to put up roadblocks to our faith doesn’t mean, however, that we devise detours. That some subcultures lack many loving fathers doesn’t mean we change the message that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. And that His life for ours is a puzzle to our insulated world doesn’t change the fact that He gave His life for ours. We do not contextualize our message, but contextualize the culture. That is, we are about the business of building a culture, a kingdom, where, though it is foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling block to the Jews, the death on the cross is for us the power of God unto salvation. We have a message that creates a new culture, and will change that message for no one.
The cross of Christ is our landmark, our direction, and the very context of our lives. It is where we have come from, where we are heading, and what attends us along the way. Christ died for sinners, both those that can grasp the notion, and ones that find such to be confusing. What never changes is our most sacred faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.
