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.
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