Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - 3 Views of Salvation
Some teachings sound airtight until they collide with the full weight of Scripture and real life. Jeremy opens the hood on three major ways Christians explain salvation—Arminianism, Calvinism, and a Free Grace alternative—and ask hard questions about election, atonement, grace, and assurance without hiding behind labels.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.
SPEAKER_01:You can see that this point does cause some turmoil for people because it doesn't sound fair. And it it seems to be saying something about God that doesn't resonate with us. Like, is that really how God is?
SPEAKER_00:Humans love to categorize things. It helps us make sense of the world. Is that a chair or a couch? If it's a couch, is it a Davenport? A love suite? Does it recline or not? You see, we need patterns and categories in our lives so that we can move through life easily without having to spend a lot of time thinking about something. And generally, this way that we categorize works out very, very well. But there are areas that categorizing like this is wholly insufficient. Are you an immuniist? A Calvinist? You hold the free grace position. There are aspects of each of these that I agree with, and there are aspects I disagree with because they are incomplete. Because you cannot explain the Bible in five points. God is far more complex than that. And our limited ability to categorize the Bible's doctrines on salvation are insufficient. And yet we do it. And sometimes we actually do it quite well. Today Jeremy's going to look at Armenianism, Calvinism, and free grace. And understand that in each of these viewpoints, these systems of theology have changed over time. But it is still worthwhile for us to have a good understanding of each one so that we can get past some big decisions and then have a good conversation with someone else that's a Christian. And so we can understand God, the doctrine of God, our own viewpoints, and help us to come to decisions that help us live our lives in faith. So today, three views.
SPEAKER_01:Because what I'm doing today is trying to give you the historical background. Next week, what I'll do is spend time looking at the verses and things that people use to support their various viewpoints. Is everybody familiar with some of these words up here like Arminianism, Calvinism, and maybe free grace, maybe not. Yes? Okay, good. Okay, we've heard these. Um actually before we before we go to this, let's just say a little bit about the Reformation. That would only be fitting. Before the the Reformation is is basically centering in the 1500s, right? The early 1500s, when you've got names like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Savonarola, Zwingli, names like that, Melanthon, others. Before then, there were there were people who in church history were challenging the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. So people like Jan Huss and his followers, the Hussites. And then later you have, I mean, there's a lot of people, but later you have someone like Wycliffe, John Wycliffe, who in 1488 made an English translation of the Bible, but not from the original languages. Uh but he's known as the the morning star of the Reformation because he came so early. And then of course you've got people like Martin Luther in 1517, he's nailing his 95 theses to the the door at Wittenberg, which was essentially all he's trying to do is round up a debate about the 95 theses that he formulated. In other words, he had problems with the Roman Catholic Church doctrine, and he wanted reform. So really all he wanted to do was have a debate about those 95 theses, and a lot of them had to do with the idea of indulgences, and you'd have to go in and you can read about all this. But he he wasn't really trying to break with the Roman Catholic Church, see? He just wanted to reform it. But as we know, um this hope for reform turned into a protest against the Roman Catholic Church. And that's why it's known now historically as the Protestant or Protestant Reformation. Um and most of us here probably uh are now, you know, what we would term Protestants. So in those early years, you've got Martin Luther, then in Germany you've got uh the big names are John Calvin, right, and then others, of course. But all this gave rise to basically a what I would call a back to the Bible movement. You know, at the Reformation, one of the key ideas we all think of is justification by faith, that this doctrine was recovered, that we don't need to get salvation through the Roman Catholic Church by means of keeping the seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church, but rather it's just by faith alone, in Christ alone. And that's what we we tend to think a lot about with the Reformation. But the reason we we came to this conclusion of justification by faith alone is because of a return to the Bible. And so what you have with people like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale and Martin Luther is people who live in Europe who have a passion for their people, whether it's the German people or the English people. And the problem is that nobody who would go to the Catholic churches had ever read the Bible for themselves. Because it was in Latin. And by this time in history, Latin was a scholarly language. So the only people who studied Latin were, you know, academic. And so you were basically, you know, at the uh the mercy of the priest or whoever was telling you this is what God said. And so what these guys wanted to do, uh, like William Tyndale and Martin Luther, and I went to the school I went to when for my training was known as Tyndale Theological Seminaries. It was named after uh William Tyndale. He they wanted the Bible to be written in the language of their people, so their people could hear God's word for themselves and read it for themselves. And so it was really a back-to-the-bible movement. And that's what resulted in the concepts of like justification by faith, you know, as as as Luther is reading Romans in the or and he was reading in the original languages. He was a he was a genius, we would say. Really mentally, he was a genius. Um he wasn't a super hard worker. Calvin was a very hard worker, like an academic, a scholar, but he wasn't a genius like Luther, uh, we would say. But, you know, as he's reading Romans, as Luther's reading Romans, and he says it's it sprung upon him, you know, and he felt like a bird, you know, left let out of a cage, you know, when he realized that you could be right with God uh by believing in Jesus Christ. And at that point you are counted righteous or right with God. Because his problem was what? His problem was like we we've got this God who is so powerful and so righteous. I mean, how can we ever, you know, get right with God? And so, you know, he went to great lengths to get right with God. He went into the monastery, you know, and you know, he would, you know, beat himself and do all sorts of terrible things to try to stop sinning. Because he's thinking I I've got to somehow appease this God. But it he it came to his attention at reading the original languages that Jesus Christ had done that. Jesus Christ had pleased the Father. And we can access Christ's righteousness just by believing in him. And he says, I'm like a bird set free from a cage. See, he realized I'm right with God. And anybody who doesn't understand that, of course, this is what we call good news, right? That you can be right with God right now. You don't have to perform until the end of your life to try to please God. That's why Christ came. Christ came and he pleased God. And now what we do is we believe in him, and Christ credits his righteousness to us. And so, but this was all growing out of a back to the Bible movement. So, in the, and this was a good, I think, a good thing, right? This was a great thing. So, what ends up happening then is of course you you develop different schools of thought and leading ideas that come out of the Reformation. Uh, Lutheranism, by the way, was just kind of a thing on its own. And even to this day, it was not a part of the Reformed or Calvinistic churches. They were separate and distinct. Um, so you've got different branches that grow out of the Reformation. Um, but by the time you get to the next century, the 1600s, um, Calvin's already passed away, and his successor, Biza, Theodore Biza, was on the stage, and you've got people like Jacobus Arminius. And these are the two big names that, you know, Arminianism and Calvinism are named after. So Arminianism is from the man named Jacobus Arminius, and Calvinism, of course, from John Calvin. Both those guys, by the way, were dead when these systems came out. They got named after them. So we we couldn't exactly say they they formulate them, although their ideas were definitely involved in the process of formulating these. And those two have become, I would just say, the predominant ways of thinking that have trended all the way into our own day. And um, so I want to talk a little bit about what they are, and uh because I'm I'm sure you've confronted them or heard them at times. A lot of times people will just say, uh, because we like to classify or where a person's coming from very quickly without asking 10,000 questions. So we say, Are you a Calvinist? you know, and if and if they say no, then then a Calvinist will say, Well, then you're Arminian, you know, and that's that's the way that it's basically thought of. Um I I hope to kind of discount that idea. I've got books by Samuel Fisk, like Calvin is he's got a book. I I would love, I think you should all read Samuel Fisk for the insights, you know. Um he quotes hundreds and hundreds of pastors that were neither Calvinist or Armenian. And they're just not the leading voices that control church history, right? So there's a number of of other views of the and understandings of scripture. It's just you know, they don't always get a lot of the spotlight. So um, but let's talk a little bit about these. There's a third word on there, free grace. I'll talk some about that too. I hadn't really intended to, but there was a book published this year um that relates to the free grace on the five points that we'll look at, and so it's important I think to bring it up. So Arminianism, again, Jacobus Arminius, his followers, there was a gathering called the Remonstrance in 1610. So that's what, 414 years ago. Um but understand these things are still with us. So his followers gathered to protest the strict Calvinism that they found in the north of Europe, what we call the Netherlands, right? And this view, these viewpoints are held today among Methodists. If you have family members, I had family members that were Methodists. Um in my background, my great-grandfather was a circuit preacher in northeast Texas uh for most of his uh cler life as a clergy, and he was Methodist. Uh Wesleans, which are closely related to them, but named after you know John and Charles Wesley, Wesleyan brothers. Um but Methodism is close to that. They developed the method actually. Okay, that's why it's called Methodism. It was a specific method of studying the Bible. Uh holiness movements, uh, many charismatics, and free will, free will Baptists are all Arminian. So what is Arminianism? Well, it let's just put it into five points. Now, I don't have a nice acronym like tulip for you. Calvinism is the tulip, right? But there are still five counterpoints. Now, this came first, okay. Later is when Calvinism came out, and the Calvinists were upset about these five points, and so they were trying to, they saw some dangers in these five points, and they were basically trying to put a lid on it and stop this, okay? So the first point is natural inability. The followers of Arminius said that man is unable to save himself. Could we agree with that? I think we could agree with that 100%. Man can't save himself because he inherited a corrupt human nature. Now, they didn't believe in the imputation of sin that we talk about, like in Romans 5, but they did believe that somehow man had inherited a corrupt human nature. And therefore, of course, because of this, the Holy Spirit has to effect a new birth. He has to give new life, which, again, that's something we would agree with, of course. The Holy Spirit's the only one who can give us new life, new birth, the regenerating work. But there are some questions in there about natural inability. Um, second point was conditional election. This was the idea that God elects those whom he foreknew would believe of their own free will. Now we'll get to free will more when you get to prevenient grace down in verse 4 or point four. But this is the idea that God, foreknowledge is the idea that God looked down through the corridors of time from eternity, and he saw who would believe, and those are the ones he elected. So it's a conditional election, okay, because it is based on him or conditioned on him knowing who would believe and who would not. And so those whom he foreknew are the quote-unquote elect, and and everyone else is not the elect, and they'll spend eternity in the lake of fire, right? So that's his division point. Their division point was seeing or God's foreknowing who would believe of their own free will. Now you say, well, how do they get free will at verse point one? You know, they're unable to say themselves, okay, well, we'll get they have an explanation for that. Uh the third point, which is the main one we would really want to focus on in this series, is they held to unlimited atonement. And their concept of this was that what happened on the cross is that Christ provided an atonement for all people, but it's applied only to those who believe and are thereby saved. So that's also pretty common. You probably have heard that. You know, Christ died for everybody without exception. Um, he provided that for them, but only those who believe enjoy the benefits, right? Probably all heard that. And that does have some problems, okay? Just so you know. Did he just provide an atonement, or has all sin actually been atoned for? Okay. Good. We have to be careful when we use the word Christ provide an atonement. That makes it sound like it's available, but he didn't really accomplish it, see? And that's a little bit different, and this is important in the whole discussion. Because the Calvinists are going to come back and say, well, if he just provided it, then none no sin is atoned for. And those who don't believe, they have to pay for their own sin debt, and that means the sin has been paid for twice, and that can't be. So you see, there are some problems with stating it that way, at least biblically. The Bible never says Christ provided an atonement for sin. Um, it says he paid for the sin of the whole world, you know, things like that. Never that he just provided this payment. So we have to be careful. Uh now, prevenient grace is their fourth point, and this is how they solve the natural inability problem. Okay, if man is naturally unable to save himself because we've got this corrupt human nature, well, how do men get saved? Well, they would say, well, prevenient grace. So what the Spirit does is he aids all men by bestowing grace upon them that removes the natural ability. So we can basically mark off point one now. Okay, that's what point four does. It basically marks off point one. No longer are we in a situation where we can't cooperate with God. What's happened in point four, and this is a common grace bestowed to the whole human race, is now man is restored to a condition in which he has free will and can cooperate with God in his salvation. Can cooperate with God in salvation. Now, does that sound right to you that we cooperate with God in our salvation? That God along with us results in salvation. As long as the believer does his part, God does his part, and together the result is salvation. Does that sound right? Or is salvation of God alone? So again, see, you're dealing with people who are struggling with the Bible and trying to make sense of many, many hundreds and hundreds of passages, right? Um the last one, of course, Arminianism is loss of salvation. I don't think that Jacobus Arminius actually believed this, but his followers did. And this is the idea that a believer can turn from grace and lose their salvation. And of course, uh many people who are not Armenian struggle greatly with this one, as well as some of the other points. Um, but you know, that would be an Arminian viewpoint, okay, that you could lose, once you have truly been saved, you could lose your salvation either due to apostasy, uh prolonged sin patterns, or something like that. So you you actually would have had salvation as an Arminian, but you would lose it, okay, at some point, or you could lose it. So that's Arminianism. And again, 1610, and these ideas were in the air in Europe, northern Europe especially, and there were strict Calvinists in the area too, and what did they do? Well, they didn't like this at all. And so they came up with the they they had a synod called the Synod of Dort, and they developed what has become known now as Calvinism. Again, Calvin died in 1564, so this is 1619, so what, 50 or 55 years later, right? Um actually, you know, when I got into this 20 years ago, a little more than about 23, 24 years ago, um, reading on this topic, there were at the time only two, he wrote in French. Okay, Calvin wrote in French. There were only two living scholars who were theologians and could read French and were of scholastic level to be able to determine if Calvin actually believed these five things. And those two guys disagreed. Um, Roger Nicole was one. I'm trying to remember the name of the other guy. But they um see, here's the thing about your life as well as every every Christian's life. You have a set of beliefs, but they change over time. I mean, nobody the day they became a believer holds the same theology now as they did the day they were a believer, became a believer. So your your theology is going to change. Now just think if we wrote down every little jot and tittle of what you believed along the way. See, I mean, it would it would change, and we'd have to say, well, what did so-and-so believe on this date in their life, okay, versus what they believe at this date in their life. And sometimes this is very hard to evaluate someone like Calvin because these writings are, well, five centuries ago, right? So, you know, he had 27 different uh versions of his institutes of the Christian religion. 27. So you if you have 27 different editions of one book that you wrote, it's probably changing. And that's why you're re-releasing it, right? So when he first wrote it, he was, I think, 26 years old when he wrote his first version. It was very small. Now it's two-volume, right? The final product in 1564 is two volume. So some of the evaluation of these guys' beliefs, it's difficult. Um, there are definitely places in Calvin's writing where he sounds like he believes that the atonement was for every person. And there are other places where it sounds like he believed that Christ only died for a subset of the human race. Now listen carefully. If you read the Bible, it sounds exactly like that. I'll show you next week. There are passages that say he died for his sheep. They came for his people, his church. And then there are other passages that say he died for the whole world. So what you read in Calvin is actually quite reflective of what you find in the Bible. But nailing him down on this particular question is difficult, again, because his writings are changing, you're not sure exactly where he is. But his followers certainly believe the things that we're going to put up today. And these things are held by uh Presbyterians, Reformed churches, some Reformed Baptists and uh and uh independent churches. You just have to find out. It's always important to find out what people believe. Um here's the acronym, they came up with an acronym TULIP that came out of that sinna. Total depravity is the tea in tulip, right? Now, what they said was man is entirely affected by sin. He cannot respond positively to God or produce any work meriting salvation. Now, some of those things I think we can agree with, right? Can we do any work that merits salvation, for example? Well, no. Uh that's quite clear from the Bible. Um, is man entirely what they meant by man is entirely affected by sin was they meant that man was not fallen just from the neck down, that he was fallen from the very tip of his head down. Now, what did they mean by that? What's the difference? Well, uh Armenians like to think that the mental capacity was restored so that people could reason perfectly, basically. Um, and and and thereby their mind was not fallen. Okay. Mental capacity was left in check. It was okay by prevenient grace. But the Calvinists said, no, man's entirely affected from the top down. Every part of us is affected by sin. Um, I would agree with that. Every part of us is affected by sin. It's not like one part got left out and somehow isn't affected by sin. So we're all affected by sin. And then they also said we cannot respond positively to God. Now that's a big question. We certainly see people respond positively to God in the Bible. I mean, when Adam sinned, he went and hid, but God said, Hey, where are you? And Adam, okay, he comes out of hiding, so to speak, right? He responds to God. You know, God called Abraham. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. We see people respond to God all the time through the Bible. Paul's preaching the gospel, and Lydia, he's hearing and she receives this and she believes. So you see a lot of people responding positively in the Bible. In fact, at one point in your life, what did you do? You responded positively to the gospel. Um, so we do see men respond positively to the gospel message. The question becomes like, why? You know, is it what's going on there? How does this work? So we won't place any kind of judgment on that statement yet. Um, but total depravity is the first point. Second point is unconditional election. Now, this is different from what we saw before, which was conditional election, right? God foreknew, he saw down through the corridors of time who would believe, and then he chose those. In this view, in the Arminian view, see, what Calvinists are thinking you're saying, and it sounds like this is what they're saying, is that these people are going to believe, and God responds by electing them. In other words, man makes the first move toward God. This is the way it's viewed. Um the Calvinists didn't like that. They said, no, no, no, man, man doesn't make the first move toward God. God makes the first move to man. And I think that would be the case in Genesis, right? I mean, every picture we see in the Bible, not just Genesis, but every picture we see God is in the initiator. He initiates with fallen man. I mean, Adam wasn't like, where's God now that I sinned? Where can I find him? And I need to figure this out. No, he said, I'll figure it out myself. He made fig leaves, and then when he heard the sound of the Lord of God, he went and hid. So it's not like man is just looking for God, so to speak. It's more that it seems that God is the one looking for men. And Romans 3, Acts 17 both confirm this this type of point of view. So I've but this still has some questions because sometimes we see people interested in the things of God in the Bible. And and that that so we need to think about that too. But um, so for the Calvinists, unconditional election, not like the Arminian view, they just said God has chosen certain individuals to be saved from before the foundation of the world. Okay. In other words, God was not conditioned by anything inside of creation. He didn't look down here and see who you were or what you decisions you would make or whether you would believe in his son or not. That was totally irrelevant. God just chose certain individuals to be saved, and the others he either passed over or chose them to go to hell. You know, which would be called double predestination, right? Which is a concept in some of the writings of John Calvin and others, of course. So that's the idea of unconditional election. Now, most of you, maybe not all, but a lot of you are probably thinking, well, that doesn't sound fair. I mean, before the foundation of the world, he selected certain people to be saved, and the rest he selected to go to hell, or he just passed over. Either way, it it sounds like there's no human response that would be even considered. Right? If you're elect, you'll be saved. If you're not, you won't. And that's just the way it is. And God set that up before the foundation of the world, and that's just the way it is. So a lot of people have struggled with that point, right? Nat naturally, I think. I I mean a Calvinist would say, well, your thinking is natural, it's fallen. You need to get straight and think right with God. But you you can see that this point does cause some turmoil for people because it doesn't sound fair. And it it seems to be saying something about God that doesn't resonate with us. Like, is that really how God is? See? Is that does he just pick and choose who's gonna be saved and that's it? Okay. Uh third point. Now I I'm gonna a as we go through this, notice these are all logically connected. If you read any five-point Calvinist who's worth his salt, they will tell you that these five points all go together or they all fall apart. You cannot pick and choose which ones you believe and which ones you don't, they will say because it's a logical and coherent system. And I agree with that. After twenty something years of studying this, I agree that this is a logical system. And um most people who hold to this um are what I would call analytical, minded, uh logically minded people. Um it doesn't make it right because I hold to different, you know, there's different ideas of logic. There's logic. We know God created logic, it's it's built into human language, which God didn't created and he first taught us to speak. So we have no problem with the concept of there's human logic, right? But there's also a meta logic, there's a logic that's perfect in who God is, and he's perfectly logical within himself, and everything he does or writes in the scripture is perfectly logical. The question is finding out what is the logic, what it what is the Bible teaching as a whole? What what how do we put all the passages together? It takes a lot of work, right? But um, so there's this a logical system, growing out of total depravity, if you're just entirely dead, you can't respond to God. But God chose certain people to be saved, then limited atonement, right? The ones that God chose to be saved are the only ones Christ died for. So this is really the point that I wanted to get to in our study, right? But you can see that in this view, he did not die for each and every individual. He only died for those who he chose before the foundation of the world. So the atonement that Christ offered in their viewpoint is not for everybody.
unknown:In other
SPEAKER_01:Words, you could not really go out onto the streets of Spokane and say to someone, Christ died for you. Why? Because you don't know if Christ died for them. Because you can't tell if they're elect or not, they don't have a little sign that says elect or not. And people have joked over the years, if I knew, you know, Calvinists themselves have said, if I knew who the non-elect were elect were, I wouldn't even mind preaching to them.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So again, this one sometimes also really bothers people because they're thinking things like John 3.16, for God so loved the world, and they're thinking, how can you say that's not everybody? Right? Or 1 John 2.2, he is a propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. Again, how do you, how do how exactly are you fitting that verse into this concept, see? So again, another place where people struggle there, limited atonement. Um that one has been challenged since around 1635, Mois Amirat, uh, who gave rise to the concept of Amiraldianism. But we're not doing Amiraldianism today, we're just doing Arminianism and Calvinism. But just know there's a lot of other ideas, okay? These are just the leading ideas. The fourth one is and the eye in tulip is irresistible grace. And this is the idea that God will draw the ones that he has elected to himself irresistibly, and the way that he does that is by regenerating them. You'll sometimes hear in these circles, if you read, you'll see it all the time, that regeneration precedes faith. Have you ever heard that? In Calvinism, regeneration precedes faith. This is the idea that God makes you alive before you've even believed. Because you're so dead, point one, total depravity, that you can't believe. And so God has to make you alive first, regenerate you, then you can believe. And you say, no, wait a minute. Again, most of you who are just familiar with the Bible, you think, Did I ever read that anywhere? Um, does the Bible say be saved and believe, or does it say believe and be saved? Which is the order. Acts 16, 31, the Philippian jailer said, What must I do to be saved? What did Paul and Silas say? Did they say, well, be saved and believe? And, you know, no, they said, believe and you will be saved. See, so always in the Bible, the believing comes before the being saved, or in this case, being regenerated. Right? But they have verses, you know, they'll quote John 3.5, Nicodemus, Jesus said you must be born again. Well, they would say, well, that means that God's got to make you born again first, then you can believe. But that doesn't seem to fit. John 3.16, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Or Acts 16, 31. Uh, why not why why is a person under the wrath of God? Because they haven't believed. John 16. I'm sorry, John 3 also, same chapter. So believing is talked about in John 3. You can't just say, well, it's just be regenerated, and then you'll uh be believe after that. So there seems to be, again, be like, eh, what's going on here? And then um perseverance of the saints. This is the last, this is the P in Tulip. This is the idea that those who are the elect, the subset of the human race that God chose before the foundation of the world, will persevere in faith and obedience. They will persevere to what? They will persevere to the end of their life in faith and obedience. Can they have lapses? They'd say, yeah, you can have some lapses. But you'll always come back, you'll always be, you know, persevering in faith and obedience to the end. And this is how you prove that you really are what? Saved. That you really are elect. Because you can't really know, can you? I mean, how would you know? Do you have a sign again that says you're elect? No, you don't. Um the Puritans, who basically were the strength of our nation in the early, you know, when you have Jamestown and all that in the 1600s and up to the up to the uh declaration and finally the Constitution in 1789, these people were the strength of America, okay? They were hard workers, they put in a lot of work, and their ethic, their work ethic was strong. These were biblical people in many, many ways. But one of their areas that, if you read them, is very interesting, is the introspective nature of uh the Puritans. They're very introspective in their writings. They're always looking inside to see whether they have the right, right stuff, the right fruit in their life. Um, because it was very important for them to have the right fruit, because if they didn't, they weren't really elect. See, because you could always measure whether you were elect or not by the fruit that is being produced, that's coming out of you. And so they were very introspective type of people. And um the reason was they weren't sure that they were saved, because if you really are saved, you really are elect, you'll persevere to the end of your life in faith and good work. And and that's the same thing today among Calvinists, you'll see that there really is no 100% assurance. They don't, you can't say that because if you're not at the end of your life, you're not at the place where you could say, I've made it to the end and persevered, see. And so there's always questions in if you're a Calvinist, whether you're really saved or not. Um, but you know what? That's very similar to the loss of salvation. So while they would say, No, you can't lose your salvation. If you're really saved, you're you're saved. Um, the Arminian would say, Well, you're saved, but then you could lose it. But both of them are in a precarious situation, right? Can you really know that you're going to be saved in the end for either view? No, you can't. Because in law in Arminianism, maybe you won't persevere, maybe you'll turn from grace and then lose it. When you're 78 years old, you know, I don't know. You know, but that's you get the point. Um, but if you're if you're Calvinist, then what? Well, you may not really be saved. It really depends on if you persevere to the end. So that's a very introspective outlook. You're always kind of checking to make sure you have the right fruit. You're doing the same thing in Arminianism. You're just always checking, make sure you have the right fruit. So I really don't um believe either one of these views is accurately depicting what the scriptures teach. I think they're both rationalistic systems, uh, ideas that were born in the 1600s, one out of a response to strict Calvinism, the other as a response to the Arminianism. And what views when someone erects a counter view, what they tend to do is overstep. They tend to go too far. And that's what has has happened. I mean, we're watching this right now in some other areas in theology, but um you have to be very careful to do what? Just keep your eyes on this, okay? Viewpoint, not viewpoint, it doesn't really matter. What God says is the final authority. So we want to make sure we understand every verse in its original book context within Bible context, the whole Bible context. That's basically the goal. I mean, of a humble person. A humble person just wants to know what God says. He's not interested about winning an argument. If I sit down with you and you hold to some of these views in Calvinism or Arminianism, is the goal of that conversation for you to win and me to lose, or me to win and you to lose, or is the is the is the conversation supposed to be about what does the Bible say? What does God think? See, only one of those positions removes ego from the equation. And it's it's the position that you're interested in what the Bible says. Um I remember C. Gordon Olsen wrote something years ago in a book. He said, the number one problem in every discussion between Christians about things in the Bible is they don't have the Bible open. And I agree with that. I agree with that. Um the other thing that I agree with is the idea that a verse can be taken out of context, but that's not a proof text. That's just a pretext. It's been said by atheists themselves that you can make the Bible say anything you want. Sure, you can if you can take verses out of context. It's like Psalm 14.1, the Bible says there's no God. Don't forget to preface that with the previous part in the verse which says the fool says in his heart there is no God. See, you you can pull verses or words out of context. You can do it with our Constitution. People have done it with the 14th Amendment and abortion. Okay, this this is this is called lawyering up or, you know, uh reinterpreting according to one's own viewpoint in order to what? Win an argument. It's about the person's ego. It's not about the original intent of our founding fathers or the original intent of the biblical authors. That's what it should be about. But humans are fallen, point one, and they like to distort things so that they can win arguments, uh, be in positions of power, feel better about themselves, et cetera, et cetera. I don't care personally, I really I really don't care. Um, you can disagree with me, that that's fine, you know, but it's not gonna be an uproar for me. I'm not gonna get upset. Uh because we're just, hey, I mean, whatever God says, that's what it is. And I mean, I'm I'm willing to go with that. So I spend my life doing this. Okay, so let's go to a third view that um, and now this is called this is growing out of a group that has developed, it's known as free grace. Now, free grace has been around for a long time, but the term has actually changed. If you look up this word, you'll find that there's a history to this that goes back way long back in history, okay? So the meaning of the this term has changed, so just understand that. Like most words, they change over time. You couldn't, you could say gay all the time in the 1920s, you can't say it today. Oh my goodness. So, you know, words change meaning. So just understand that about this term. But this is a this is came out in 2024. There's a group of free grace pastors and theologians who wrote a book to protest Calvinism's tulip. And with their own flower, they call the LOTUS. Okay, so they came up with an acronym to play off the flower uh acronym. Um one of the guys, I I just got this book because it came out in January. Uh one of the guys, the one that wrote the chapter on Total Atonement was a student mine, a student of mine, J. Morgan Arnold, actually. So um I'm skimming the book pretty quickly right now. But anyway, um, this is but this is not the first time this has happened, okay? There has been an ongoing movement since uh 80s and 90s against a reaction against Calvinism, people who are trying to straighten out some of these points. Really, you could trace this back further. I mentioned Samuel Fisk. He's got a book called Calvinistic Paths Retraced, which I really think that book is important, and I don't think enough people read it. He wrote another one called Election and Predestination. So he's pretty early in this whole modern challenge to the Calvinism uh movement. But also, um, and I wouldn't say I agree with everything, I'm just saying there are other people who've written to challenge this and trying to get back, you know, let's get the Bible straightened out, right? Um we've also got uh Vance wrote a book called The Other Side of Calvinism in 1999. Really good book. Okay. Um Dave Hunt, who's no longer with us, but he has a book, What Love Is This? I don't agree, and I don't agree with everything in Dave Hunt's book, but anyway, he he he challenged some of the points of Calvinism. And then Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism by Olson, C. Gordon Olson, who I mentioned earlier. So there's I'm just pointing out there's been a series of people who are writing in this area, and there's other books too. But basically I'm using the lotus thing because it helps with the tulip, right? And it just helps show that hey, look, there's still gems to be mined in this year. No, that's this year, yes, it's correct. This book came out in January, so literally a month ago. So no, that's that's correct. Okay, so they uh this uh a number of people hold this in a number of groups, independent Bible churches and so forth. And but what do they hold? Okay, same five points, right? Ideas about man's condition, how you know what God's uh God's election, what is that all about, who Christ died for, what about grace, and then some concept of security or assurance, perseverance, and the last point. So the first point, and we'll just finish with these, and and hopefully this is stimulated some thought. And then next week we're gonna go to a lot of Bible, okay? Liable depravity is their first uh term to describe man's condition, and it's the L and Lotus, right? Liable depravity. They're saying that individuals are corrupt and cannot do anything to gain eternal life. Do we agree with that? Yeah, we agree with that. Um people are responsible for the sin they perform. People are responsible for responding to the revelation of how to cure the sinful condition by faith in Christ. In other words, people are responsible to believe. Now, not everybody would agree with that because some people would say faith is the gift of God. God gives people faith, right? They usually quote something like Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So they say, well, what is the gift of God in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9? Well, they would say it's faith. God gave people faith. There are a lot of grammatical problems with that. Um, like it's it is impossible grammatically, unless language doesn't mean anything and we want to throw the Bible away. But grammatically, that, the gift, which is neuter, cannot refer to faith, which is feminine. It just can't. They don't agree. And uh we won't go through all the grammar right now, but some people would say that faith is a gift of God, man can't believe. This position is saying they they can believe, right? Um, if they give the right revelation of the gospel, they're responsible to believe. Otherwise, they'll die in their sins. Okay. So that's the first point, liable depravity. Liable just means it's the concept of responsibility, right? In insurance, if you're liable, that means you are responsible for whatever it is, neglect or whatever. So it's a word for responsible, but they put liable so we could have lotus. Um this is the idea that believers, not unbelievers, but believers are elected to some service within the body of Christ that involves bringing a blessing to others in God's plan. In other words, they're invoking the concept that once you've believed, God has elected you for some service in the body of Christ. In other words, election isn't to become a believer, election is for those who are believers, and it's for service inside the body of Christ or in Israel in the Old Testament, such as the kings, the priests, the prophets, people who were chosen for an occupational service, some task in the nation. So maybe you've never heard of occupational elections. People called it election to service, but to keep lotus, you have to come up with an O-word. So, occupational. Okay, but that's that's that's probably a fairly different idea than what you usually heard. But hey, these ideas are out there, so I'm sharing them with you. And then what? Well, what the litmus test is the Bible. Uh the third point is total atonement, the one my student wrote. Um, and I'm hoping this guy moves up to Washington. He may take a church on the other side of the state, somewhere around Tacoma area. Um, I'm still not familiar enough to know all the little places over there. But I'm hoping he'll take a church over there. Total atonement. The idea that Christ's atonement is for everyone, meaning every individual, and the sin problem has been dealt with. Okay, so it's not just a provision. The Armenians would say, well, he provided it. Uh this view is saying, no, the sin problem's done. It's not just provided, it is finished. And then a person must believe Christ died for them in order to have eternal life. So what's barring a person from being with God forever or being saved? Well, they haven't believed. That's what this view is saying. But Christ has paid the penalty for their sin, but they need to believe in order to have eternal life. And then they'll be saved. So not everybody is saved in this view. Even though it's a total atonement and it's for everyone, not everyone is saved. That's universalism, right? Unitarians. Unitarianism is basically they don't believe in the Trinity, right? Because they're Unitarian, they're not Trinitarian. And they're typically universalists. They believe that everybody will be saved in the end somehow. Uh and they would they would go on this concept. Well, Christ died for everybody, so everybody will be saved. Well, we'll undermine that logic next week biblically, show why biblically it's wrong. Um, but anyway, um, in the total atonement, everybody is paid for, but what lacks is a person's belief. And if they don't believe, then they will perish. Right? John 3.16. So um that's this idea. Uh, unlimited grace. Um, what does this mean? Well, it means God's love is for all men, providing a means of grace for all to believe and be saved. I think you'd have to add a whole lot to this to fill out this concept. And this is where, you know, I may not agree with every little single point here, but you know, we've got passages like Matthew 11 where Jesus says, uh, if the miracles had been done in you, or I'm sorry, in Tyre and Sidon, the cities of Tyran Sidon that were done in Capernaum and Beth Sida, he says they would have believed. And one of the logical questions you should ask at that point is, well, why didn't you go up there and do the miracles in Tyrand Sidon, Jesus? And because he never did. He didn't go do them, did he? But he says he knows what their response would have been if they'd seen the miracles. So what am I saying here about this unlimited grace? I'm saying that it seems like if you are honest to history, the amount of revelation that people get is not the same everywhere. I mean, everybody gets creation, we know that. Romans 1. Everybody has the exact same creation, the stars, themselves, nature, and it's obvious, you know, God created it all, right? But as far as verbal revelation, not every people group has had the same amount, even right now. I mean, there have to be tribes around the world who still don't have any of the Bible translated into their language, wouldn't you say? That's why we have a group today called Wycliffe Bibles Translators and others, right? Missions groups that want to reach these people who don't have the kind of access to verbal revelation that we have. So they're just like the reformers who first wanted their people to hear the Bible in their own language. I mean, can you imagine if we didn't have a Bible? Here we are in America. You couldn't go home, you couldn't, you know, get it on your phone, you couldn't, you couldn't pick one up and read it off the next your bedside table or whatever. Can you imagine not ever having read the Bible or having that kind of access? Well, there's people like that in the world right now. So that's why I say when you have a point like unlimited grace, yes, God does love all men, and he does provide a means of grace for all to believe and be saved, but see, you've got to put something in there here at this point because it doesn't line up totally with reality. Reality is some people don't ever hear the gospel in their whole lifetime. You may not be very comfortable with that idea. I don't like it. But here's the thing what does the end of Matthew 9 say? Very interesting. Let's look at Matthew 9 and kind of finish with this in the last point. Matthew 9. The last few verses. Verse 36, 7, and 8. This is uh Jesus, right? During the earlier portion of his ministry. It says he felt compassion for them. For the Jewish people, why? Because they were distressed and dispirited. They were like sheep without a shepherd. Can you imagine? Sheep without a shepherd. I mean, sheep are dumb, right? Um, they need a shepherd to guide them to green pastures, right? Cool waters, streams of water. And uh this is how Jesus is classifying Israel. He's like, I mean, they're like sheep that don't have any shepherd over them. And then he said to his disciples, okay, this is the application. This is what Jesus was thinking when he saw people out that looked dispirited and confused about the world. Do we have any people like that today? I mean, is there anybody out there that's confused in Spokane? Lost that look like a sheep without a shepherd. Oh, they're everywhere. You you can't get away from them, honestly. They're everywhere. This is what he said. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Now he's getting to missions, right? He's talking about a mission. He's saying if he was here in Spokane, he'd say, hey, look, the harvest is plentiful. There are tons of people out there that are dispirited and in chaos and confusion and don't have any clue about how to live life or what's going on in the world. He says, but the harvest out there is plentiful. He says, but the workers are few. The people to go out there, right, to these people. They're few, he says. Therefore, he says, Beseech the Lord of the harvest. Okay, that's the prayer, right? And God is the harvester. And he says, Hey, you need to go to the Lord in prayer because he's the one who's over this harvest and spoke in, is what he would say. If we apply it here. Beseech him to do what? Send out workers in the harvest. You know, why is it that people in this world right now have never heard the gospel in their language? Because the workers are few. Because the workers are few. Because we're not doing what? We're not beseeching the Lord of the harvest to send workers into that harvest. At least not enough. I mean, there's workers that go out. It's just not enough. Even today, there's not enough, right? I mean, I don't know who you are or where you are as a young person. You know, here. I mean, you can do it as an older person too, but if God ever lays it on your heart to reach these people, I mean, it's okay. But if He if He tugs on your heart, how are you going to respond to that? See, somebody right now is praying to the Lord to raise up heart words to go into that harvest. It could be you. You say it can't be me. I uh no, I'm scared. I don't even know what food they eat over there. Well, that's why it says in Timothy that you pray over all your meals, right? Because you may be sitting down to eat tarantula one day, and you're gonna have to give thanks and ask the Lord to set apart this food so you don't get some disease. But this is it's okay to be a little bit afraid, but if he's if he's tugging on you in that direction, it's because somebody's praying. So this point, again, you have to be a little careful. Um I agree with unlimited grace, but at the same time, you I think you have to put some other ideas in there to make this all work. The last point there, it's better than some of the other views, but the security of the saints. So this is not um the idea of persevering. Persevering is the idea that you will keep doing good works and obey all the way to the end, and that will prove you are really saved. Okay, nor is it the loss of salvation view, right? This is the opposite of the loss of salvation. Loss of salvation says you can do some sin or turn from grace, and therefore you lose your salvation. This view says, no, God secures the eternal destiny of those who believe by his promises to keep us. So the security comes by his promise. He promised to keep us. What did Jesus say? Truly, truly, he who believes in me has eternal life. As or will get. As now or will get in the future. As, has now. Okay, John 5.24, John 6.47. He who's believed in me has passed out of death and into life. Now, once you pass into life, can you pass back into death? That'd be the Arminian view, right? You pass back into death if you do something egregious. The Calvinists will say, Well, you've passed into the light, but only if you finish the race and run to the end, keep doing good works, obey, live by faith, whatever. So you can't really know if you're in the light or not. You're like, well, maybe I maybe I'm not. I don't know. Today didn't go so well. You know, I had a bad day. I sinned, you know, I did this, I did that. Okay. So that's the introspective part. See, that that creates introspection. So I've just so but that's Lotus, okay? And that's a free grace view. It doesn't mean everything has to be perfect. The perfect thing is this. But for five centuries, people have been trying to sort out these ideas. The first idea about man's condition, the second idea about what is the doctrine of election. I mean, this this word is used in the Bible. Eclectomy, eclecta uh, eclectae. This word is used in the Bible. And other related words, okay, are used. Tasso, for example, in Acts 13, 48. But so there are words related to this. Okay, porno is used, right? Progonosco. Okay, so there are there are words that we have to deal with when we study the Bible, but what is the idea of election? Um, atonement, obviously, again, we have to deal with that. Is it for everyone or is it just for a select group? Okay. Grace, is this something that can be resisted or not? What about Acts 754, where Stephen says to the Pharisees, you're always resisting his spirit? Well, what about that? I mean, how does that fit with free grace? I mean, with uh Calvinism says you can't resist his grace, it's irresistible, he just regenerates you. How do verses like that fit with verses where God says, Israel, I stretched out to you all day long and you weren't willing? Why do you fit a verse in there that says something like this? God desires all men to be saved. 1 Timothy 2. How does that fit in the picture? See, we all know these verses. I think this discussion is about how do all these verses go together best so that our mind is aligned with his mind. And the last one is security. Can we really know if we're saved or not? Is that an important question? Can I know if I'm saved? Or do I have to constantly live on the edge wondering if I really am or not? You know, when you become a believer, we'll just finish with some good news. When you become a believer, you are the child of God. It uses a family metaphor, right? Do you think that God would then work with us in salvation and deal with us as if we couldn't know if we're a child of God? How would that feel if you didn't even know if you were a legitimate child in your own family, biological family, at home? What if you weren't sure if you were really accepted with your mother and father as a family member? That might have some radical psychological repercussions for that child, you think? And what kind of psychological repercussions would there be for a believer who's not sure they're really in God's family or not? See, because you're constantly then focused on yourself and whether you're doing what's right. But it doesn't have anything to do with us and what is right. It has to do with did Jesus Christ do it or not. We don't look in, we're supposed to look where? Out. Out at who? Christ. Because Christ is our righteousness. The moment we're looking at ourselves, the introspective side, I can guarantee you the perfectionist mentality, number one, the perfectionist mentality that I've got to perform, which will wear you down as a believer, it will exhaust you. And you won't be looking in the right. Right place because Christ is our righteousness, He is the one who gives us the assurance. Because the promises of God say, if you believe in me, you have everlasting life. And if it's everlasting, question, can you lose it? If you had something everlasting and you could lose it, it wasn't everlasting to begin with. But Jesus didn't promise temporal life, He promised everlasting. So if you believe, do you have it? Yes. How do I know I have it? Because I believe the promises of God and God tells the truth 100% of the time. He cannot lie, Hebrews 6, right? By which two unchangeable things, his own nature and the oath he made to Abraham, he cannot lie.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spoke and Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.