My Choice or God's?

 

Hypothesis. To focus on the process of election in exclusion to the process of salvation causes a massive distortion in how the scriptures relating to each process are interpreted. The result being the Calvinist versus Arminian debate of the last several centuries. If you understand the believing on Christ Jesus is catalyst for either process and that God credits your belief to you as faith, then the scriptures relating these processes become unified and the debate is settled.

When I first became a Christian as a child. I was four years old. It happened because of a conversation between my father and an older brother. I confessed my belief on Jesus Christ and have been a faithful believer ever since that day.

Over those first years, I believed that Christ Jesus bore my sins on the Cross and shed his blood to pay the price of my sins and the sins all who believe on him. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in  Jesus Christ our Lord. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him (Romans 6:23; John 3:17).

I believed in a loving God who gave myself and all believers the choice to believe on Jesus Christ His Son and to gain salvation. However, when I was ten years old and attending Southwell School in Hamilton. Canon Sergel, the principal and chaplain of the school preached on the Doctrine of Election. He quoted John 6:44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” And, the parable of the Wedding Feast, notably Matthew 22:14 “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

I remember that I was very disturbed by that teaching. Up until that time I had thought that the onus was on the unbeliever to believe on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ at Calvary. That it was imperative that as men we hear the gospel and act on it to be saved. This teaching implied clearly that rather than being my decision to believe on Jesus it was God’s decision to choose me that made me one of the elect?

I didn’t know what to do with this knowledge, at the time, so I disregarded it as being too difficult to understand and moved on adhering to my first belief. I couldn’t accept that it was the Father’s choice that I believe on Jesus Christ and that I had no part in the process. It didn’t seem right, and it still doesn’t to this day.

The years past and about seven years ago I began attending Grace Presbyterian, a Calvinist Church, and so began a stiff introduction to the world of Election, Catechism and Five Point Calvinism. There were times when I tried to accept this somewhat austere world view as the truth. However, in the end I just cannot come to grips with it. To believe that God predestines one to election and the other to reprobation from the beginning when they had done nothing seems unlike the God I know and love. It begs the question is Calvinism a cult?

In my opinion, a Christian cult is any religious group that holds opinions or has doctrines that stand between the believer and Jesus Christ. It can be an idol as with the adherents of the King James version where the KJV is held as being as important to doctrinal truth as the gospel.

 Another example of such idolatry is the Westminster Confession of Faith and other catechisms, such as the Heidelberg Confession. In reformed churches believers often consign more of the catechism to memory than they do bible verses.

With Adventism and Calvinism, a person can be the barrier that stands before the believer and their Savior. In the first case that person is Ellen White and her writings which are presented as being of equal credibility as the Holy Bible itself. Those teachings have spawned several highly suspect doctrines, for example, the Doctrine of the Investigative Judgement which holds that Christ Jesus entered the Inner Sanctury in Heaven and has been investigating to see who has sufficient works to get them into the Kingdom of God.

 Calvin is the barrier in Calvinism and his writings have resulted in the fanaticism of hyper Calvinism and ultimately underpin Five Point Calvinism. The result being that adherents state that the believer can only be predestined by the sovereign will of God and has no choice in believing that Jesus bore our sin on the Cross. This besmirching the character of God with the doctrine of double predestination where God predestines the elect to eternal life and the lost to eternal damnation from the foundation of the world. This when they had done no wrong. Impugning God with responsibility for their eventual sin.

As to what I believe about election and salvation. I believe that what the bible says about Election and Salvation is that both are true. We are foreseen and predestined to be the elect from the foundation of the world, and we have the choice to believe on the only begotten Son of God that we might not perish and have eternal life.

If you follow the Calvinist approach to election and salvation you will find a considerable emphasis on election. They tend to believe that the Christian is elected in an act of the sovereign will of God and that there is no individual choice that the Christian can make to enact this process. All that is needed by the lost person is to be elected by God and then empowered by God’s grace.

This is fundamentally true but there is more to it. For a start a human being is a creation of Yahweh, and we have His breath in us, so we live. We are created in His image, so we are creative as Yahweh is creative. We think about things, and we make decisions and choices about what we will create and what we will do as we live the lives, He has given us. This is what Yahweh has intended for us as His creations.

One of the biggest choices that any man or woman will make is whether to believe in the creator God, Yahweh. It was paramount under the Old Covenant with Yahweh and it is paramount under the New Covenant with Yahweh and His only begotten Son, Yeshua. To believe is the greatest decision we will ever make and the greatest privilege we will ever know.

In fact, it is this decision that we make that God foresees from the foundation of the world and that causes Him to choose us to join the faithful, the elect, the Bride of Christ. When He sees, we would choose to believe on Him and to believe that He so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that we might not perish but inherit eternal life. He chooses us to become the Elect ones, the Faithful and a people for His own possession. There is an element of the corporate in this election, but it is also a deeply personal decision for both God and the believer.

Hebrews chapter eleven verse six “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” The glue that ties the idea of election together with the idea of free choice to believe on the Savior, Jesus Christ is in one word consistently used in scripture, to believe. For without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must BELIEVE that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

When, we read in John chapter six verse forty-four “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” We see one of the key scriptures of Calvinism which seems to be saying you cannot receive salvation through Christ Jesus and ultimately election with out sovereign input from the Father to bring you near to Jesus.

To understand what Jesus was saying in this passage to the Pharisees, his followers and the disciples. We can add John chapter 6 verses fifty-two to fifty-four “The Jews therefore quarrelled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Jesus knowing what that he was going to be crucified and become a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind, shared a concept that we accept as a part of normal Christian routine in our time. That of the sacrament in which we take the bread and wine as the symbols of his body and blood in the knowledge that His body was broken and He shed His blood for us on the cross.

Finally, to bring this passage into perspective I quote from John chapter six verses sixty through to sixty-five “Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”

 So, to conclude with the meaning of this passage. Jesus tells the Pharisees and his followers that to become his followers the Father must draw them near to Him. He elaborates that to gain eternal life they must not just believe in him but eat His flesh and drink His blood.

Then He explains to the disciples that he is speaking of the Spirit not of the flesh. That it is the Spirit who gives life and that His words are Spirit, and they are life. For, Jesus knew from the beginning who did not believe and conversely who did believe on Him and He restated that no one could come to Him unless it is granted by the Father.

My point here is that Christ Jesus says that the Father must draw us to Him but also underlines the fact the belief is crucial to salvation and that the Holy Spirit is how believers receive life. This mention of the function of the Holy Spirit in relation to giving life connects the process of election to the process of salvation.

Jesus relates that process to Nicodemus in John chapter three verses five through eight “Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Jesus elaborates in John chapter three verses sixteen and seventeen “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

Ephesians chapter one verse thirteen puts it like this “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”

So, to conclude by restating my hypothesis. To focus on the process of election in exclusion to the process of salvation causes a massive distortion in how the scriptures relating to each process are interpreted. The result being the Calvinist versus Arminian debate of the last several centuries. If you understand the believing on Christ Jesus is catalyst for either process and that God credits your belief to you as faith, then the scriptures relating these processes become unified and the debate is settled.