How do you view God

I’m a Christian and I’ve found that different sections of Protestant Christianity view God very differently based on their interpretations of scripture. I attend a Presbyterian Church with a strong Calvinist tradition.

Whereas I am a Baptist with weak Wesleyan tradition. Where the Calvinist views salvation through the TULIP acronym. Total Depravity; Unconditional Election; Limited Atonement; Irresistible Grace; Perseverance of the Saints.

That’s Total Depravity, where the sinner is totally depraved and cannot choose to accept the gospel; Unconditional Election, where the sinner is chosen by God and has no choice; Limited Atonement, where the Blood of the Lamb is specific to the remnant chosen by God; Irresistible Grace, where the sinner cannot refuse Grace and is chosen without choice; Perseverance of the Saints, where the chosen one cannot reject salvation and walk away.
 
I would counter TULIP with the PCURL acronym. Partial Depravity; Conditional Election; Unlimited Atonement; Resistible Grace; Limited Perseverance.

Partial Depravity, where the person is not born into sin but commits sins leading to depravity. Conditional Election, which is  based on the condition that the sinner believes on Jesus Christ; Unlimited Atonement, where the gospel is for all mankind but only those who believe on Jesus Christ receive the Blood of the Lamb; Resistible Grace, where the sinner has freedom of choice to accept or reject the gospel; Limited Perseverance, where the person who backslides or walks away from Christ may loose their salvation.

So, having laid down the challenge to my Calvinist brethren obviously I have enormous scriptural resources to back my position? Obviously, they’re going to come at me about a scholar of the fifth century Church named Pelagious who believed among other things that man was not depraved at all and had complete freedom of choice? It becomes a giant chess game where we move our players until we reach a conclusion or more likely end in a stalemate.

This is what usually happens but it’s not the reason that I disagree with Calvinism, Christian Liberalism or Adventism and the positions they hold. I disagree because I know God. The Holy Spirit lives in my heart and I can tell you God is magnificent. He doesn’t save a chosen remnant and send the rest to hell without a choice. He didn’t create a partial universe in six days and allow the rest to evolve over billions of years. He didn’t sacrifice and angel and provide a partial salvation and add codicils to the agreement that limit salvation to a very few. He provided a Saviour with the ability and the power to save the World. He created the universe in six days. The only codicil to salvation is to believe on Jesus Christ. My God is a mighty God and no one nor anything can compare to Him. All glory to God in the Highest.

Don’t get me wrong I know there are many lovely Christian folk in all of these sects of Christianity. This is personal if you want to fight over theology but that’s not what I’m wanting to do here. I want to ask a question. How do you view God and is your view affecting the way you live your Christianity?
Can you say definitively that you are going to heaven or do you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to have any chance of getting there. I mean as a liberal Christian it might seem more likely that God is deistic and has finished with creation deciding to leave humanity and the other species to find their way through life. Who knows if there is an afterlife? If you’re a Calvinist can you be 100 percent sure that God has chosen you or, are you going to have to wait until the resurrection to find out if you made the cut? Kind of the same deal with the Adventists. Have you kept the Sabbath faithfully, obeyed the Ten Commandments enough, done enough good works toward the Investigative Judgement. Is there room in heaven for you to make the cut? Was Jesus able to pay for you or did you miss out?

What you believe about God is absolutely central to how you view your right to salvation. Which is why I believe PCURL and not TULIP for instance. I believe that I’m partially depraved because of the sins that I have toted up in my lifetime. But I believe that God knew that from the beginning that I and multitudes of others are broken people subject to sin. That God so loved me / us that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, to bear my /our sins on the Cross. That when I / you believe on Him we shall not perish but inherit eternal life.

There is no doubt! If you believe on Jesus Christ you have salvation. God gave unlimited atonement value to Christ’s work on the Cross so that all who believe might be saved. He made Grace resistible that those who want no part in Christ Jesus won’t have to have one. He made perseverance limited so that those who decide to walk away can and those who refuse to repent and still think they’re going to heaven can guess again. You can’t trample the Cross of Christ.

I have always believed that freedom of choice is guaranteed in the gospel of Jesus Christ and that Jehovah wants a people for His own possession. A people who freely choose to follow Him. Striding confidently into eternity with their Lord and Saviour.

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Finally, I have some interesting questions about the verse above. Notice the Eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord is free. If it’s free doesn’t that mean that it’s available to anyone? Doesn’t it imply that all of mankind have access to eternal life? And doesn’t it state that there is one limitation, that you must believe on Jesus Christ? It does say that eternal life is in Jesus Christ which is just another way of saying it. I’ll leave that to you to work out the details then. 

Differing Faith Perspectives - My Opinion ???

We live in an interesting time. As I say this I am thinking that maybe I’m reflecting my age and stage in life. It seemed when I was a teenager that most Christians that I knew thought the same way about the main theological issues. I’m talking Protestant Christians when I say this.

Today it seems that Christians are much more aware of the theological position of the Church they belong too. I sense that many will disagree with me here. What I mean to say is that the folk who attend Liberal Mainline churches do so because they have a more secular world view mingled with Christianity. I tend to think that in the end they will become steadily more Catholic and then fall away completely into paganism. Just my opinion here and it may be unique.

The Adventist Churches are becoming steadily more mainstream despite their in insistence on reducing the person of Jesus Christ by claiming that he is Michael the Archangel and the need for a life of good works to ensure entrance into heaven. Their adherence to the Seventh Day Sabbath and to the idea that it is the seal of God without which no one can be saved is also somewhat of an anathema to accepted theology. Which would say that belief on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ is all that is needed to be saved and in fact there is no other name under the heavens by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). And then there is equating the writings of Ellen White to the Holy Scriptures in the case of the SDA. If this is not an attack on the Word of God and the deity of Jesus Christ what is? Is this not a cult? Again, just my thoughts here.

The Calvinist Churches are doing very well in this environment taking the mantle of Conservative Protestantism. They have slipped into the space vacated by the Wesleyan styled churches of yesteryear which either closed their doors or became Charismatic. Despite the fact that they believe that a remnant of humanity is chosen by God to salvation from the beginning while the rest are destined to damnation by the same God. They seem to cling to the idea that by nature God is moody, unpredictable and completely arbitrary in His decision making. Like the Greek God’s, basically a man with God like abilities. Absolutely the opposite to Jesus Christ who is loving, caring and desires nothing but the best for all who will believe on Him. This belief structure is as variance with everything that I was brought up to cherish and believe about the God Head as a youth. Yet again just my opinion.

The Pentecostal / Charismatic folks have a center on the speaking in tongues gifting and tend toward the seeker movement where you don’t necessarily have to change much to come to church. The music, the dress code, the preaching are geared to allow people to settle into the routine of church without changing much. Gradually this sect is becoming more worldly and less concerned with the truth. Sermons are often based very loosely on a scripture but more often than not are just some rambling personal narrative of the Pastor concerned. The issue of greatest concern here though is the potential for dabbling in spiritism. There is a very real possibility that this doctrine of the Holy Spirit is in fact a false teaching and something which derives its power from Catholicism and the Catholic Charismatic movement of the 1960's. It is an attack on the Church which has been tremendously successful and has greatly diminished the Protestant Church to a shadow of it’s former self in combination with the secular agenda of course. Yes, just my somewhat extreme opinion once again.

As a result there is for the most part a lack of conservative churches that simply believe in a gospel based theology. What I’m talking about here is a focus on John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” A theology that believes that the gospel is for all people and that believing that Christ Jesus bore your sin on the Cross will ensure that you have justification and eternal life. A simple theology that says Christ Jesus is all you need and nothing else.

A theology which encourages new believers to follow the guidance of Acts 2:38 “Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Baptism into the death of Jesus Christ and into the newness of life in His resurrection followed by the gift of the Holy Spirit and sanctification in the New Covenant.

This is the theology of most of the Protestant Churches in the New Zealand that I grew up with and I believe it is lacking from the religious environment of 2023. An issue that I find to be difficult to make inroads into because it seems that most Christians don’t agree with a Gospel is for All based theology anymore. Most denominations would say that they do but they actually don’t.

The liberals don’t believe in a raft of fundamentals like the virgin birth, the literal creation week or even the literal resurrection. The Tongues Movement place more emphasis on speaking in tongues and healing than the need to be genuinely converted, repentant and believing on Jesus Christ and his redemptive work. The Calvinists are caught up in there being only a remnant predestined to salvation. So they don’t really place much emphasis on winning souls, preaching the gospel or even believe in the possibility of actually influencing a person to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

In the end I am reminded of an event during the ministry of Jesus. Matthew 19:14 “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The Christian life is a simple thing. We believe the gospel that Christ Jesus bore our sins on the Cross and resurrected on the third day. That we might have eternal life and a hope of salvation. We get baptised in obedience and receive the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirt who leads us to Christ and sees to our justification and over time our sanctification. The key to the Christian life is to have child like faith in Jesus Christ. Almost a blind faith that God has you safe in the palm of His hand and you need fear neither man nor beast for nothing can separate you from the love of God.

II Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”