What we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about two terms here, grace and predestination. And as I mentioned before, these are infrastructure key, key, key words that we have to understand these words in order to be able to read Scripture rightly. And unfortunately, for most of us, probably our heads are contaminated with all kinds of bad teaching that we've heard over the years from who knows where on these ideas.
And it takes some work to get our mind in the right place so that we can rightly read Scripture. So we're going to do these two terms and then we're going to do a lot more of applying everything from the first session where we talked about the sovereignty of God and free will, as well as grace and predestination to a wide variety of passages. So the first caution I want to make is beware of being reactionary. So this is a car that is turned off into a ditch. And it's a common metaphor that we use, right?
There's a ditch on different sides. Well, one of the things that I have seen so much, and the older I get, the more I see it, people say that group over there, they're wrong. They're just wrong. And to show them how wrong they are, we're going to drive clear into the opposite ditch and make ourselves just really, really extreme so that they see how wrong and messed up they are. This happens all the time in all different groups of all different stripes.
And one of the common reactions that happens in response to Calvinism is people swing to a totally opposite ditch where they start saying things that they shouldn't say and it becomes, as we'll see, concepts like grace and very, very important concepts fall by the wayside. And we don't want to do that. It is the mark of maturity to not out of spite drive into the other ditch, but to hold fast to a biblical center. And don't worry about what other people are doing. Like, yeah, sure, we want to try to correct people.
But I'm convinced that a lot of things you see happening in Mennonite churches and evangelical churches, it's very reactionary. And people are responding to errors on one side, and they don't realize that they're making it worse for themselves. Okay, so we've talked about this irresistible grace. Of course, that's the eye in tulip. There's a vastly superior option. So we love grace. Grace is a very important word, and that's a word that we want to own and that we badly need to understand.
So the word grace, there's a great CD if you haven't heard it. I believe it's on our historic Christianity platform by David Bercot on Grace, the most misunderstood word in the Bible. How many people have heard that message? Only a few of you. If you haven't heard it, you've got to listen to that. It's on our platform, and you should subscribe to it and listen to it. He's got some amazing messages on this topic. So grace is a word that is horribly, horribly, horribly misunderstood, horribly abused.
And you got to listen to his message where he's going to go in a lot more detail on what grace really means. But I'm going to just do a tiny fraction, not even do justice to the topic here of the fullness of what grace is. But I often like to substitute in the word favor. Certain words, they get just so muddled because people overuse them. You know The word gospel. A lot of people don't even know gospel means good news.
And there's a lot of people who treat grace as this kind of magical word that gives them the warm fuzzies, but they don't really know what it means. And I will say that if you substitute in favor here, you do pretty well, just as a quick check. Does this make sense? But specifically with the favor or the grace of God's initiation to save us, there is a term that is even older than irresistible grace. So when did irresistible grace and this whole concept get developed? I mentioned that in the first session.
Yeah, Reformation. So Calvin was the author of it. And when did and he brought some of it from Augustine. When did it get codified into the Five Points? Anybody remember what year? What? 1619. 1619, yeah. The Synod of Dort. Good. So this became a very important word, and it's still a very important word in Calvinist and Reformed Circles. Does anyone know what the term that the other side uses? I haven't mentioned it yet, and I'm guessing you probably don't, but does anybody know what it is?
It's a really important word. So we're going to spend quite a bit of time talking about this. The word is prevenient grace, and sometimes called enabling grace. But let's talk about this word prevenient grace and what the word prevenient means. So prevenient grace. Grace. Okay, so prevenient grace. Actually, let's talk about etymology. I like etymology here. So does anybody know enough Latin or have any etymological affinities that might be able to tell us what the word prevenient means without looking it up?
So there's a famous line where Julius Caesar is speaking and he says, Veni Vidi Vici. So that's I came, I saw, I conquered. Veni is I came. Vidi, I saw, like video. Vici, I conquered. So anytime you see that Ven in a word, it's in English. It's probably from that Veni idea. So prevenient and pre is before. So it's the grace that comes before. So Veni, I came. So here, pre is before. So it comes before grace. And as I said, it's also called enabling grace, which is maybe an easier way to understand the concept.
By the way, to prevent something is to stop something from coming. That's the origin of that word. So let's talk about prevenient grace. Because it doesn't sound like people here are familiar with it. What might you imagine? What does this term communicate to you? Enabling grace or prevenient grace? Just give me your gut feel when you heard this. When you heard this term that irresistible grace, it's clearly not biblical. What strikes you when you hear this, the grace that comes before or enabling grace?
It enables you to do what's right. Good. Nice and simple. What else? I like that. Stan? Absolutely. Without God's grace going before us, we have no hope. We really do have no hope. And I want you actually, let's do an exercise now. What passages can you think of in the Bible that speak of this grace? Because, as I said, there are people who react against Calvinism, and they become almost like anti-grace, and it's a horrible place to be. It's like almost as bad as the ditch that they were fighting.
So what passages can you think of that speak of, and there's a lot, but that speak of a grace that comes before, that opens our eyes, it turns the lights on, it helps us to obey, it helps us to repent. Are there some passages that you can think of that speak to this? Titus 2. Very good. So who said that? Stan said that. Titus 2. That was actually the first one that I put down too. So this is like a classic passage for Prevenient Grace. So let's read this together. So Titus 2 verses 11 to 14.
" For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.
" So did you notice here that the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared, past tense, it's appeared to all of us. And it does all these great things. It teaches us to deny ungodliness. It teaches us to live righteously. It teaches us to look for Jesus ' return. And it talks about what Jesus did, how He redeemed us from every lawless deed. So can everyone see here that the grace of God is something that's spoken of in the past tense that came to do all of these wonderful things.
There's one other subtle point in this, which is to whom was the grace given? All men. All men. Why is that important? And why does that also really kind of a slap on Calvinism? Exactly. So the whole idea in Calvinism is irresistible grace is given to just a small number of people. And it's a minority of people because Jesus said, most people go down the broad way that leads to destruction. A few people go down the narrow way. It's very clear here. This grace, and it's clearly talking about salvation, right?
There is a grace. There's another favor or grace, which is so-called common grace, which is the rain, and food, and water, and all those things that just everyone who's a human gets to enjoy. But this is clearly talking about salvation. There's no doubt about that, redeeming us and purifying us for good works, and teaching us to be waiting for Jesus. Okay, so this is a great passage. What are some other ones that come to your mind that teach the idea of Prevenient Grace?
And there's a bunch, so I only have a handful on my sheet here. Just expressing the idea that God before comes to us and rescues us, turns the lights on, shows us the way. It was because of his mercy, or some of it is because of his mercy that we're not consumed. Yeah. Yeah. No, hey, I would take that. That's in Lamentations. Yeah, I think it's Lamentations 3, I believe. Others? What is that verse? OK, so that's an interesting passage.
We're going to come to Ephesians 1 because that was one that we looked at before. I would agree with that. Calvinists wouldn't, but I would agree with that. Are there others that are just really, really clear where God is giving grace, giving favor to people who aren't Christians, drawing them, bringing them to himself? In heaven, of which you've heard before in the word truth of the gospel, which I come to you in the whole world. Yeah, that's good.
So you know one of the aspects of the favor of God, there's many, many steps to it, but one of them is the delivery of the Word of God and the gospel coming to you. I mean, it's as simple as that, right? We didn't invent the Gospel out of our head. Somebody came and preached the Word of God, preached the Gospel to us. So there's a whole bunch of passages that speak to that. Oh wow, we're running short on time. Okay, I'm going to go quickly here. So John 1:9, here's one.
The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. I love this verse, because the true light, which is Jesus, obviously, if you know John 1, was coming to give light to everyone. It's like, lights go on. Beautiful picture. John 12:32, " And when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. " So the lifting up is obviously the crucifixion. And Jesus is saying here, " I'm going to draw lots of people. " And that's obviously before they're Christians, right?
Because He's drawing them to the cross. This might be one of my favorite ones. In fact, I think this is my favorite one. This is Acts 16:14. And I specifically put it from the ESV, because again, this fits even in the more Calvinistic translations. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.
It's a little detail you can just read over quickly if you're not thinking about this concept of prevenient grace. But do you see it here? How it says the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was going to say. She's not a Christian yet. She's just hearing the gospel for the first time. But God comes before and just opens up her heart in some way. I personally can think of a very distinct experience I had when I was 16 years old where something like this happened. And you get this sense.
I had this sense that it was prevenient grace. And some of you not everyone will necessarily feel it consciously, but some of you will have these experiences where you know something and it just like hits you like a ton of bricks and it comes out of nowhere and you're like, wow, what is this? That's Prevenient Grace. This is another one.
For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so they are without excuse. So again, God is revealing the truth of his existence. It's pretty clear here in Romans 1, through creation to everybody. And he's saying like, " Hey, I'm here, I'm out there. " Okay, this might be too hard of a question. I'm going to ask it anyway.
So is it possible, and you're probably going to answer the wrong, I'm going to discourage you and say you're probably going to give the wrong answer here, but is it possible to hold both total depravity and prevenient grace? David is nodding his head, yes, and you're right. Why is that possible? And in fact, Arminius himself, Jacob Arminius, held a total depravity, and he held Prevenient grace. Why is that possible, David?
Because in total depravity that's unable to respond, but there are many of you, it enables people to have it. Right. Exactly. So I want everyone to get this. So I've said before, the vowels of Calvinism are kind of where the worst blasphemous part are. The total depravity piece, if you had to say, " I'm going to take one of them. " If somebody made me, and I actually don't agree with total depravity, and you'll hear why, because I think there's some flaws with that as well.
But if somebody said, " You got to believe one of these. Pick one. Pick one of the five to believe. I'm going to say I'm going to believe total depravity, even though I don't. But that's the least egregious one. And it's actually compatible with prevenient grace. Because you can imagine, this was an Arminius taught. He said, " We are totally dead in our sins. We have no hope. We have no ability to respond to God. And then God sends us this prevenient grace. The lights come on. Now we can respond.
We're unable to respond. That's actually not a crazy view. And what Arminius said was that that came in some sense to everyone. That everyone was totally depraved and everyone had this enabling grace as we just read in Titus 2 given to them. So at least in that sense, there's some compatibility there. I'm going to give you an alternate acronym. This has not caught on because non-Calvinists are just so small percentage-wise. And tulip is the dominant teaching out there. But I'll give it out there anyway.
I kind of like it. I'm not wed to it, but it's at least somewhat helpful as a counter to Tulip. So it's called FACTS, FACTS. And the F is freed by grace in parentheses to believe. So this is prevenient grace. This is enabling grace. So it's the counter to irresistible grace. And then A, atonement for all. So that is the counter to limited atonement where Jesus just dies for the elect. C, conditional election. What's that the counter to? Unconditional election, right?
And so in basically every other scheme of salvation, there is conditional election. It's conditioned on faith. Total depravity, and it depends what you mean by this one. Like I said, this is the most complicated one in some sense, and it depends on how you define it. But at least the people who put together facts liked it, so they put it in there. I probably wouldn't have chosen that, but that's fine. And then security in Christ.
So what they mean is that you are safe, you will be saved so long as you remain in Christ. And if you leave Christ, which you can do, you will be damned at the end. So for what it's worth, here's an acronym that hasn't caught on that people have tried to propose as a counter to tulip. I'm going to go just a couple minutes over. Wow, this time went really fast. I can't even believe how fast it went. All right, next slide. What about humility?
So one of the accusations that especially Calvinists make is that they say, " Ugh, you Arminians are just such proud people, " or, " You non-Calvinists are such proud people. " Because it's been your response to God, and you're the ones that you're going to be able to point to and give yourself credit for on the last day. We rebutted that in the last session, and I gave you some analogies there. The Calvinist notion of humility, though, is very bizarre, I think.
It's grounded in this notion that you were arbitrarily, and this was Jonathan Edwards ' word. It's not an outsider's word, chosen by God, and you played no role in your salvation. So it's basically, the humility that we're supposed to have is like, we're out of 100 people, and then I'm one of the lucky ones that got picked by this unconditional election. And so I get to be really humble because I guess they weren't picked, and I was. I mean, it's a kind of a crazy notion of humility, right?
So I like how Leighton Flowers says that a great singer, for example, is given a rare gift from birth and can often become proud or boastful do that unique gift. But if everyone was born able to sing equally well, then boasting in that ability would not make any sense. Thus, Calvinism leaves more room for boasting than does our soteriological perspective. Because you're one of the lucky few, because you got this irresistible grace, and wow, that's amazing. But in Prevenient Grace, everybody gets it.
So you don't have this special claim to boast that others don't have. Humiliation and brokenness is not considered better or praiseworthy, and is certainly not inherently valuable. In fact, one can argue that it was weak and pitiful of the son, the prodigal son, to return home and beg his daddy for a job instead of working his own way out of that pigsty. The only thing that makes this quality desirable is that God has chosen to grace those who humble themselves. Something he is in no way obligated to do.
God gives grace to the humble, not because a humble response deserves salvation, but because he is gracious. A little bit more on humility. It's a powerful idea. It's kind of a long quote, but it's worth it. Calvinists argue, " If a person becomes humble enough to submit to God, it is because the Holy Spirit has given that person a new humble nature. " In other words, Calvinists believe that humility is an effectual result of regeneration.
Therefore, one has to be regenerate in order to even recognize and admit their need for regeneration. But is humility the result of an effectual work of God? Effectual means if God starts it, it's going to happen. If so, clearly the opposite must be true. Prideful sin must be the result of an equally effectual work of God, namely His eternal decree to seal all man over into a state of moral inability from birth due to the sin of another, which makes one morally incapable of humbling himself.
It may surprise some, listen to this, to hear that I do believe God effectually humbles some people. I just do not believe those people will be saved. If you wait on God to effectually humble you, it will be too late. This is one of the dangers of the Calvinistic worldview. If taken consistently, it removes the responsibility that Scripture clearly places on man and puts it onto God. Look at what Jesus taught in Matthew 23:12. " Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
" Let's consider the first phrase of Christ's teaching, " Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled. " This is effectual humility. God will effectually humble those who exalt themselves and notice that everyone that these effectually humbled people will be eternally separated from God. God does not effectually humble everyone. He only effectually humbles those who refuse to humble themselves. Powerful idea, right? Do you get this?
OK, I'm going to try to do this in like five minutes here, and then we'll have to carry on tomorrow because I know we're short on time. So defining predestination. So this is a big idea, a big word that people have made way too complicated and over-complicated something that should be extremely simple. So let's talk about predestination. So there's a writer named Ben Witherington who says, " It means just as the word said, that the destiny has already been set and the destiny is the final transformation of reality.
" So the Word itself kind of gives it away. Predestination. God has decided the destination ahead of time. Now he hasn't decided who is going to who is going to accept destination A versus B, heaven or hell. But the destination has already been set. The destination has been decided. So for example, let's say there's an airplane. Let's say there's two airplanes that are leaving Boston Logan Airport. One of them is going to fly to LA, one of them is going to fly to Miami. Those airplanes are predestined.
They are predestinated to go to one location versus another location. But guess what's not predestined in that, which is who's going to be on this plane versus that plane? So predestination people think it's God's making the decision for you. That's not what it's about. Predestination is in fact God deciding the destination of the elect and God deciding the destination of the reprobate.
It's a really simple idea, but I'm guessing you probably haven't heard it explained that way because, again, it's just taught in this really complicated, confusing way. So predestination, the destination of the set, God hasn't decided for you, but He has decided what are the destinations of the elect and reprobate. God has, by His favor, His grace predestined the elect to eternal life. And the Bible says it in a bunch of different ways. It'll say adoption to eternal life to the New Kingdom.
This is no arbitrary decision for no apparent reason. By the way, no apparent reason, it's again not pejorative. No apparent reason means we don't know the reason. It's not apparent to us. That's what Calvinists believe how God decides for no apparent reason. One becomes among the elect by faith. And to understand predestination, we should start in Romans 8. So Romans 8 is a famous passage. I think most of you know it.
" For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those who justified, he also glorified. It's sometimes called the golden chain. What is first in the chain here? There's a set of verbs here that are laid out. We're going to wrap up in a couple minutes, but I want to make sure we get this. What is first in this chain?
Foreknew. That's first. Foreknew. And then what's next? Predestined. Predestined. And then? Called. Called. And then... Justified. Justified. And then glorified. Okay, so I wanted to spend more time on this. We won't. But I will say just focusing in on the first two here, foreknew and predestined, that I'm going to give you an explanation from Origen, who lived in the second century, who I mentioned in his commentary the other day.
His aim is to show that those who are foreknown by God are those upon whom he had placed his love and affection because he knew what sort of persons they were. So what God does in this scheme is he foreknows who is going to have faith. And he looks forward for who's going to have faith, and those are the ones that are chosen for eternal life. And those who are not the ones who have faith don't have eternal life. God foreknows that. So I mentioned this yesterday to a couple of people after the class.
Foreknowledge does not imply causation. So right now I'm holding this pen, this black pen in front of you. And if I let go of this pen, what's going to happen? It's going to drop. So you foreknew that it was going to drop. Did you cause it to drop? No, you didn't. Foreknowledge does not imply that you are causing it. So this is the big difference between Calvinism and the biblical system. So in the biblical system, guess what's first? I'm sorry, in Calvinism, guess what's first? Yeah, the predestination is first.
The decisions are all made ahead of time. And it's not just the destination. It's all who goes to the destinations, right? And then the foreknowledge follows the predestination. Paul is very, very different in his thinking. He says God's foreknowledge is first, and then out of that foreknowledge comes those who go to the different destinations. So again, I know I'm hitting really big ideas way too quickly here, but unfortunately, we're short on time. So does God's foreknowledge imply that God causes something?
No, it doesn't. Unfortunately, we're going to have to go over Ephesians 1 later. I wanted to go through it more carefully, but unfortunately, we're not going to do that. And I've got a lot of great quotes, which I'm going to also skip over. And in fact, what we're going to do is, did anybody pick out the controversial or the pieces that were maybe disturbing in John 6? There's like three verses in John 6 each had read and said, like, huh, I wonder about that. This is the work of God that you believe in him.
That one bothered you? OK. Because work and believe were put together? OK. There's three other verses that are even more difficult. Yeah, that's right. So did you say 53? Yeah. OK, which one is that? The ones that I put down were 37, 39, and 44. " All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all He has given me, I should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. " We're not going to get to talk about these today, but can you see how some of these might be a little like sound a little bit like an eternal, secure state, and some of them might sound like they fit more with a determinism? This is my last slide here is homework. So what I want you to do, and we'll try to allocate enough time for this, is to reread Ephesians 1 and 6, in light of what we did today.
Because we did a lot of terms today. We covered a lot of heavy ground, big terms here. And add one more. Add John 10:1 to 30. So just go over the same passage again, but now with our understanding of libertarian free will, compatibilism, predestination, grace, all those concepts. And there's an article by John Piper I'd like you to read. It's called For Whom Did Christ Died. And it's located on this website. So it's an easy name to remember. Monergism.com. So you can guess that's produced by Calvinism.
And it's not that long. It'll take you maybe 10, 15 minutes to read it. But if you can do that, my ambition for next time will be to go over a lot of these verses and try to answer them. I told you that I want you to always not make straw men and create these fake opponents. We're reading now in this article from the father figure of the movement here. And so you'll get to see how he represents, in this case, limited atonement, which is something that I want to talk about.
So come prepared tomorrow to discuss how you agree or disagree with his points.