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Grace Yields a Higher Standard Than Pharisees
The following recent articles and in this chronological order relate to this post. One Two Three Four Five
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The Pharisees
“The Pharisees” are those historical and biblical characters with whom Jesus interacted in the Gospels. Pharisees are those taking up the mantel of “the Pharisees” since then. The Pharisees inundated the Israel into which Jesus came.
I like to say, “The inside of a barrel looks like the barrel.” If you live inside the barrel, your whole world looks like the barrel. The Pharisees so saturated the thinking of Israel during the life of Jesus that Israel looked like the Pharisees. The world of the audience to whom Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount also looked like or literally was the Pharisees.
The most common viewpoint of the Pharisees is that they added a whole bunch of strict standards to the preexisting rules of scripture. This popular notion says the Pharisees multiplied an immense number of added regulations that burdened down the Israelite people. This idea leaves the impression that Jesus came to relieve people of standards. He came to save them from the imposition of written rules. This is a deadly lie about Jesus and what He did and taught that generation.
Jesus and Matthew 5
I return to Matthew 5 to see what Jesus said at the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount. He said in verse 17:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
The Pharisees and thus the people of that audience suspected Jesus would destroy the law or the prophets. He debunked that speculation and added, “I am come to fulfill the law or the prophets.” “The law or the prophets” in 5:17 is all of the Old Testament scripture.
“To fulfill” the Old Testament at least was keeping the Old Testament, but further transcending it. Jesus’ standard was not the minimized, reduced standard of the Pharisees. It went above theirs; it transcended theirs. His righteousness exceeded theirs. In no way, as He says in verse 19, was He teaching people not to keep everything in the Old Testament. No, just the opposite. Then Jesus illustrates that in six different sections between 5:21 and 5:48.
The purpose of Jesus was showing the sinfulness of the Pharisees and the audience they spawned. Their viewpoint was not God’s. They did not represent God. This would take someone back to the first thing He said in the sermon in verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” His audience needed to understand their spiritual poverty to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Saving Grace
Saving grace as an outcome of conversion, which proceeds from God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, does not lower the standard for righteousness of the Pharisees. It exceeds it. As a first illustration, Jesus uses one of the ten commandments, “Thou shalt not kill,” in verse 21. Pharisaical thinking justified itself by saying it had not physically killed anyone. That still occurs today. People still think they’re fine because of something they haven’t done. This indicates they lack spiritual poverty.
Using four different examples in verse 21 to verse 26, Jesus shows that His or God’s standard exceeds or transcends the letter of scripture. It is more than just physically killing someone. They’ve murdered someone in their hearts if they even showed contempt toward them. Jesus goes so far to say that they’ve murdered the person with whom they would not initiate reconciliation. Not reconciling is showing contempt. God would not accept their worship as long as they would not try to reconcile.
The Pharisees were not about strict standards. They were about diminishing God’s standards with their own, designed to be more easily kept. They tried to keep these on their own without the grace of God. Jesus was not following their example or trajectory. He taught a different way than theirs.
Evangelicals and Jesus and the Pharisees and Grace
Most evangelicals today take an opposite message from Jesus than the one He told in His sermon. They teach that Jesus came to relieve the people of standards. I use the word “standards,” but you could use laws, regulations, or the like. Jesus kept everything and in verse 19, He said that the greatest in His kingdom would teach others to do the same.
Jesus went further with adultery too. It wasn’t just the physical act, but looking at a woman to lust after her in your heart (verse 28). Jesus is explaining what He meant by fulfilling the law or the prophets. Keeping the standards was never the means of salvation. Yes, the addition of works was a burden on the people reckoned by the Pharisees. People could not escape whatever shortcomings they had with the Pharisee approach.
If salvation came by keeping the rules, no one could do that. This is why the Pharisees minimized or reduced the law or the prophets. They tried to concoct a way of salvation through works. The Pharisees developed their own handbook of sorts to accompany scripture to explain the procedures for keeping scripture. This was not internalizing what God said out of love and obeying it from the heart. Again, this is the burden they created.
The Pharisees made doing suitable good works impossible. This was an exhausting, never ceasing burden. Their system complicated the obedience to actual scripture. It put them, the Pharisees, ahead of God, while claiming credit for God.
The Repercussions of Botching the Pharisees
People like the idea of not having to keep moral standards. This is a very popular view of grace today. This mirrors the Pharisees in that it minimizes or reduces scripture. Pharisees did it to make a way for salvation by works. Evangelicals do it in a way to change the nature of the grace of God. I say that they treat grace as a garbage can, when scripture treats it as a cleansing agent. Grace instead enables the keeping of the standards, rules, or laws of scripture. Unlike the perversion of grace, grace saves from the violations of the law and the salvation changes the life.
You probably notice that churches have gone downhill. They have changed in nature. Part of it is this very interpretation of the Pharisees. Evangelicals use the Pharisees as a reason to reduce standards. They don’t get rid of all of them, which should send up a red flag. If the Pharisees were all about having standards, then why don’t we eliminate all of them? Quite commonly evangelical keep the ones still convenient, very much like the Pharisees did. With this system, you still get credit for doing good works without obedience to everything that God said.
Scripture shows God wants everything He said kept. It’s not grace not to keep what God said. That’s an impostor grace. It claims grace, but it’s a placebo or a poser of grace. God does not accept not believing and not doing what He said, even in the so-called non-essentials. Man’s adaptations, innovations, and modifications do not please God. They are not of faith.
In scripture, God killed people for changing the recipe for the incense at the altar of incense. He killed tens of thousands when David numbered the people against His will. Grace tends toward keeping what God said, not squirming out of it. Grace yields a higher standard than the Pharisees, not a lesser one.
The Law Enhances, Does Not Conflict, With Grace
Relationship Between the Law and Grace or Faith
In Galatians, the Apostle Paul argues for salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He opposes the alternative, adding even one work to grace. Paul provides several arguments in Galatians 3 for the churches of Galatia to combat corruption of a true gospel.
To understand the right relationship of the law to grace and faith, Paul gives a great clue with a question in Galatians 3:21.
Is the law then against the promises of God?
This is a rhetorical question as seen in his answer in verse 21: “God forbid.” The law is not against the promises of God. It does not conflict with the promises of God. In saying the law does not conflict with the promises of God, he says that the law does not conflict with grace and faith.
Just as a reminder, “God forbid” is the strongest negative in the Greek language. “God forbid” in a technical sense is idiomatic. An idiom is “a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase.” The translators decided a literal translation could not convey the original Greek, so they used the idiomatic expression, “God forbid.” In the context of Galatians 3:21, Paul says no way the law conflicts with the promises of God.
The Law Must Not Conflict with Grace and Faith
For someone to take the correct position on the law, it must not conflict with grace and faith. What position will create a conflict? In the second half of verse 21, Paul says that it is the one that makes the law necessary for life or righteousness. The law does not give life. Neither does it make someone righteous. Only grace or faith does that.
Number one, if the law gives life and righteousness, then grace does not. Number two, if grace gives life and righteousness, then the law does not. If the law and grace or faith do not conflict, then one must take choice number two.
Paul gives several other related arguments for grace alone and faith alone. (1) The salvation of Abraham came by grace alone through faith alone 430 years before the Mosaic law came. (2) When the Mosaic law came, it did not replace (“disannul,” verse 17) grace alone through faith alone, but enhanced it. (3) When the seed (Jesus) arrived 1500 years after the Mosaic law in fulfillment of the promises, He superseded the law. Jesus wouldn’t supersede the law if it was necessary for life and righteousness. It wasn’t.
How Does Jesus Supersede the Law?
Superseding is not abolishing or destroying. I like the word as a description. One might use fulfilled or transcended. The law continues enhancing the promises even with the arrival of the seed. How?
Galatians 3:22 says. The law concludes all under sin, so that they will believe in Jesus Christ for life and righteousness. Galatians 3:23 says that faith does not come to someone until the law locks him up. The law still concludes a person under sin. It still locks up a sinner, so that he looks to Jesus Christ as His only possible deliverance, and believes in Him. Christ comes into the prison of sin and redeems the prisoner who believes in Him.
Unconditional and Unilateral Promises
As you’re reading, you might be asking, what are these “promises” of which I write? They are the promises of the seed made by God that would bring blessing to Abraham’s descendants and all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3, cf. Genesis 3:15). Also, God will impute righteousness to those who believe the promises (Genesis 15:6).
The promises of God of which Paul speaks are unconditional and unilateral. Abraham was asleep (unconscious) when God made that contract, agreement, or covenant with Abraham. Abraham did nothing, no works. This is the point of Galatians that the promises were superior to the law in that they required no mediator. Angels and Moses were mediators of the law. The promises involved only one — God.
When denominations say, “No, you’re involved, people,” they conflict with grace and faith. Now their adherents are required to continue “in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10, cf. Deuteronomy 27-28). They add a mediator to the promises, when there are no mediators for the promises. This brings conflict between the law and grace, to which Paul writes, “God forbid.”
A Right Understanding of the Law
What you hear from me is not a rejection of the law, but a right understanding of it. The law continues. Christ superseded it, but it still enhances the promises of God. The rest of Galatians 3 and into chapter four lays that out. Everyone still needs and should want the moral law of God and the spirit of the ceremonial and judicial laws.
Galatians 3:19 says the law “was added because of transgressions.” John Gill wrote that the law
was over and above added unto [the promises], for the sake of restraining transgressions; which had there been no law, men would not have been accountable for them; and they would have gone into them without fear, and with impunity; but the law was given, to lay a restraint on men, by forbidding such and such things, on pain of death; and also for the detecting, discovering, and making known transgressions, what they are, their nature and consequences; these the law charges men with, sets them before them, in their true light and proper colours; and convicts them of them, stops their mouths, and pronounces them guilty before God.
Saved men, those who received the promises of God, are not under the law. That means they are not under the condemnation of the law. It does not mean they are free to disobey the law. Grace frees us from the condemnation of the law, not the law. Unsaved men still abide under the condemnation of the law. Since the law does not give life and righteousness, they must receive the promises. In other words, they must by grace alone believe alone in Christ alone.
God’s Grace As An Attitude Adjuster
James wrote that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). God keeps giving and giving and giving. People do not deserve these good gifts. They deserve the opposite. People getting good things that they don’t deserve is God’s grace.
For a professing believer, what causes a bad attitude? I contend the biggest contributor is his thinking that he deserves what he doesn’t or that he doesn’t deserve what he really does. This is an unmet expectation. He expects what he doesn’t deserve and then he doesn’t get it.
It is difficult to expect what I really do deserve. I want better treatment, better consequences, better circumstances, or even better reactions. Yet, I don’t deserve them.
When I think I got better than I deserve, that affects my attitude. If I change my thinking to this thinking, based on what I know scripture says, it also changes my attitude.
God’s grace can adjust an attitude. The professing believer must think God’s grace. The attitude is the resultant emotion, either a good feeling or a bad one.
A bad attitude is an emotion that can turn to something deeper, like a kind of depression or discouragement. This can become deep settled and change the trajectory of a person’s life. He digs himself or even buries himself into a rut or hole. He doesn’t make his way out.
The grace of God must adjust the attitude. This adjustment occurs through the mind. The professing believer thinks he deserves worse. He keeps thinking he gets better than he deserves. God does give him more than he deserves.
Sometime in Christian history, someone defined grace as “undeserved favor.” Christians overall have agreed with this definition for centuries. God gives us better and more than what we deserve. This is God’s grace. If we allow that thinking to permeate our mind, it will adjust our attitude.
The world makes it difficult to keep a good attitude. This is why right attitudes very often are commanded, like “rejoice evermore” (Philippians 4:4). They are commanded, because we might not have them. His commands also mean we can have them, that we are able to have them. God won’t command what He won’t also enable. He wouldn’t command you if He didn’t also provide the power to keep the command.
When I write that the world system and its father, Satan, make for a tougher environment to have a good attitude, I am saying that it will still be a struggle. When you hit your thumb with a hammer, you say, “Ouch.” This is a kind of point Job mentions when he’s criticized by his friends. When I talk about God’s grace adjusting the attitude of a professing Christian, I speak of the struggle. This will help the believer not to sink into long term or permanent bad attitudes and struggle against short term wrong ones.
God’s grace can and will keep attitude struggles short term or win those struggles. This is God’s will, but it is also important for the thriving and well being of the professing believer. Believers will do better in ministry to and with others with a good attitude. Even if people have a bad attitude themselves, they want you to have a good one when you are with them.
If you say, “God is good,” and then your attitude says, “God hasn’t been good,” it hurts the efforts for God with others. Maybe you don’t even believe God is good. God knows whether you think He is, but your attitude might be saying that you think He is not. All of us should consider this.
What in the world could spur a bad attitude? You know. You are mistreated by several others. The people around you are not grateful for what you do. You work hard without notice or credit. One thing after another breaks. People gossip about you. You don’t have many friends. Friends betray you. You can’t get ahead with your finances. School is a struggle. Others are promoted ahead of you unfairly. People don’t laugh at your jokes, and you think you’re funny.
No one is a victim of a bad attitude. Someone else doesn’t cause it. Your parents didn’t cause it. Neither did your husband or wife. You choose what attitude you will have. Victimization is just an excuse. It’s lying to yourself.
The joy of the Lord is our strength. His grace will fuel that joy. Like Paul wrote in Philippians 4:8, think on this thing.
Postmodern “Grace”
The author of Hebrews in 12:15-17 warns:
Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
C. H. Spurgeon wrote concerning the failing of the grace of God:
Under the means of grace, there are many who do “fall short of the grace of God.” They get something that they think is like grace, but it is not the true grace of God, and they ultimately fall from it, and perish. . . . [I]n church fellowship we ought to be very watchful lest the church as a whole should fail through lack of the true grace of God, and especially lest any root of bitterness springing up among us should trouble us, and thereby many be defiled. We must remember that though we are saved by grace, yet grace does not stupefy us, but rather quickens us into action. Though salvation depends upon the merits of Christ, yet those who receive those merits receive with them a faith that produces holiness.
Spurgeon explains that this “failing” is “falling short,” and then “falling short” is not getting “the true grace of God” but “something that they think is like grace.” He says the true grace of God “does not stupefy us, but rather quickens us into action.” The placebo for the true grace of God does not produce holiness.
The true grace of God saves us. Most people want salvation, but they also don’t want the holiness true grace produces. Hebrews uses Esau as an example. He allowed his fleshly desire to keep him from true grace, replacing it with something short of it. God’s grace produces holiness.
Root of Bitterness
Through the years, I’ve read many different opinions about the “root of bitterness.” In the context, it causes a failing of the grace of God. Some say that the root of bitterness is an apostate in the church, like Esau, who then brings about further apostasy from others. Others say that it is sin, which is bitter and defiling. Rick Renner writes:
“It” pictures a person who is continually troubled, harassed, and annoyed by thoughts of how someone else wronged him. The offended person is now so troubled that he is almost emotionally immobilized. Instead of moving on in life, he gets stuck in the muck of that experience, where he wallows day after day in the memories of what happened to him. If that person doesn’t quickly get a grip on himself, he will eventually fulfill the next part of the verse.
Tozer explained it the same way:
The sad and depressing bitter soul will compile a list of slights at which it takes offense and will watch over itself like a mother bear over her cubs. And the figure is apt, for the resentful heart is always surly and suspicious like a she-bear!
Perhaps the preceding verse, verse 14, gives a clue:
Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
Esau lacked peace between he and his father, Isaac, and his brother, Jacob. So many especially today allow the slights, real and otherwise, and even actual sins against them to keep them from the grace of God. They also often use these temporal affronts to justify their lusts, incongruous with the true grace of God. It ultimately reflects on their view of God and His goodness to them.
Postmodern Grace
Spurgeon assessed failing of true grace comes by replacing it with something short of the grace of God. I’m titling what I believe is the most common contemporary replacement for true grace, “postmodern grace” (Jesus Loves Me with postmodern lyrics). It isn’t the grace of God, because it is short of the grace of God.
Postmodern truth is your truth. Postmodern grace is your grace. It doesn’t follow peace, because it allows a grudge and resentment to keep it from that. It doesn’t follow holiness, because it sells holiness for temporal, carnal appetites, like the morsel of Esau. Adherents though count this as the grace of God. They remain bitter with those who reject their failing of the grace of God. The bitterness fuels further rejection of true grace, accompanied, like Esau, by tears of grudge-filled resentment.
Postmodern grace isn’t about pleasing God, but about pleasing self. Postmodern grace self-identifies as grace, which is in fact moral relativism. It doesn’t follow after holiness, but after its own lust.
Sleepy Habits
In the early 17th century, Puritan Richard Sibbes preaches a sermon entitled, “The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax,” published in 1630 in a book with the same name, The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax, in which he said:
Keep grace in exercise; it is not sleepy habits but grace in exercise that preserveth us. Whilst the soul is in some civil or sacred employment, corruptions within us are much suppressed, and Satan’s passages stopped, and the Spirit bath a way open to enlarge itself in us, and likewise the guard of angels then most nearly attend us; which course often prevails more against our spiritual enemies, than direct opposition. It stands upon Christ’s honour to maintain those that are employed in his works.
I was drawn to his words, “sleepy habits,” recently, their meaning and their historic usage. Sibbes preached, believing that some of the church members were not really saved, or some that he thought were saved, but really were not. Even though God keeps all of His own, the ones God kept would also endure or overcome. They would not endure with “sleepy habits,” but “grace in exercise.”
Another Puritan, Thomas Brooks, used the same language in a book published in 1670, entitled (you’ll like this one), London’s Lamentations Or, A Serious Discourse Concerning that Late Fiery Dispensation that Turned Our (once Renowned) City Into a Ruinous Heap. Also the Several Lessons that are Incumbent Upon Those Whose Houses Have Escaped the Consuming Flames. He wrote:
Secondly, God by severe Providences and by fiery trials designs a further exercise of his childrens graces; sleepy habits bring him no glory. nor do us no good. All the honour he has, and all the advantage we have in this world, is from the active part of grace.
On another page, he wrote:
Sleepy habits will do you no good, nor bring God no glory; all the honour he hath, and all the comfort and advantage you have, is from the active part of grace.
Another Puritan, Thomas Manton (1620-1677), wrote:
A man is not to keep grace to himself, but to exercise it for the glory of God and the good of others. Therefore is the presence of the Holy Ghost necessary, that the grace which he hath wrought may not lie dead in sleepy habits, but be continually acted and drawn forth, in such lively operations as may demonstrate the cause whence they do proceed.
He also wrote in his Sermons on the Twenty-Fifth Chapter of Matthew:
All Grace is stirring, and would fain break out into action; for ’tis not a dead and sleepy habit, but seeketh to break forth, and is called by the Apostle, “The Lustings of the Spirit,” Gal. 5.17.
Later in the same book, he wrote:
‘Tis not a naked and empty Profession, ’tis not sleepy habits, or a little Grace, but when Grace hath a deep power and sovereignty over our Hearts and Lives, that bringeth God into request, and commendeth him to the Consciences of men. The Knowledge of Christ is reproached as a low Institution by carnal men; but to the truly wise, no such excellent and noble Spirits, as they that are bred up under him.
Sleepy habits seem to be those when we are going through the motions, what we might call, “punching the time clock.” We are sleepwalking our way like a kind of mindless zombie with the aspects of our life. These writers call this something that does not resemble the grace of God or could not be fueled or energized by the grace of God.
Good habits sound good and bad habits sound bad. They are. What would be so bad about having habits in the Christian life? In a true relationship with God, the Christian life must be more than just a habit. “Sleepy habits” is a good way of describing when its only a habit. Habits aren’t bad, but there’s more to it when it’s a relationship. It’s not just doing what you’re supposed to do.
If the Christian life for you is a sleepy habit, maybe you’re not saved. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5).
John 1:9-13 Say That Faith Precedes Regeneration
Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9), meaning that it is not by works (Titus 3:5-6) It is by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is a gift of God (Romans 6:23).
Faith is not a work. The following are my two favorite places that teach that:
Philippians 1:29, “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.”
2 Peter 1:1, “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
First, it is given unto you to believe on Christ. Second, people obtain like precious faith. Salvation is by faith, not by works. If faith was a work, that wouldn’t make any sense.
How does someone obtain faith from God? It starts with revelation. What is to be known of God is manifest in people (Romans 1:19) and then clearly seen in creation (Romans 1:20), which is general revelation (Psalm 19:1-6). Next comes special revelation, the Word of God (Psalm 19:7-11). As Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” This fulfills the message of Titus 2:11, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” What I’m describing in this paragraph is what precedes faith. Much more could be said on this. The revelation of God is the grace that appears to everyone that gives faith that people obtain to be saved.
With all that said, here is John 1:9-13:
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Becoming a child of God and regeneration are essentially the same thing. Look at verse 12. Which comes first? Receiving Jesus Christ or becoming a son of God? It’s plain. What comes before receiving Him? Look at verse 9. “The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” I know that Calvinists or the Reformed, not all of them, but many, say that regeneration precedes faith.
The idea that regeneration precedes faith does not come from scripture. Why is that doctrine taught and believed then? In my opinion, it is a man-centered reaction to salvation by works. A metaphor for this is a pendulum swing. We’re not saved by works like Roman Catholicism and other religion teaches. The light coming, revelation producing faith, that isn’t good enough. They’ve got to go one step further to show how salvation does not depend on man. They are men and they have invented this doctrine though. The doctrine depends on them.
I’m writing on this because I read the article by Andy Naselli, published in the Master’s Seminary Journal, entitled, “Chosen, Born Again, and Believing: How Election, Regeneration, and Faith Relate to Each Other in the Gospel According to John.” Long title. Does Naselli get his position from the passages or does he come to the passages with his presupposition? You can read his section on John 1:9-13, the first one. He comes to the text with assumptions and forces the text into them. Naselli says that this text does not say that faith causes the new birth. He says “being born of God [is] logically prior to receiving Jesus.” Is that what you read?
If faith comes from the light, that means it comes from God. If faith comes from the Word of God, then it comes from God. If faith comes after the knowledge that manifests in people, then it comes from God. Faith does not require or need regeneration in order to be from or of God. Faith does not come by blood, by the will of the flesh, or by the will of man, because faith is given by God and obtained from God. It is not a work.
Naselli doesn’t say it, but I’ve read enough elsewhere to know. Many Calvinists cannot say that faith precedes regeneration, because they see faith as a decision or a choice. You can read that in his article. He says, “The basis of the new birth is not . . . what you desired.” He is equating faith with the “act of a human.” He is saying that faith is our will and since the new birth or regeneration does not come “by the will of man,” then it also cannot come by faith. The problem is that isn’t what the passage point-blank says.
Is the teaching of Naselli and others like him enough to mess up the doctrine of salvation? It is perverting what the passage says. What kind of damage is this teaching doing? It can lead to an extreme where someone does not want to receive Christ, delays receiving Christ, because he is waiting for regeneration. I’ve seen that many times through the years. I’m saying I’ve seen it personally over twenty times with individuals with whom I’ve talked.
I agree with some that this doctrine from Naselli affects what people think of the love of God. God must regenerate to believe. If someone does not believe, then God did not regenerate. This person did not apparently receive irresistible grace, Christ did not atone for him. God foreordained him to Hell. If scripture taught this was the love of God, I would happily believe it. It isn’t what the Bible says is the love of God. It also isn’t what grace is. The grace that saves appears to all men.
Yes, there is a mystery as to why some are saved and some are not. The mystery for the Calvinist is why God chooses some and He rejects others before they were ever born. The mystery for others, like myself, is why some receive Christ and others don’t. The latter at least has some teaching about that. Jesus says that it’s the condition of the soil in Matthew 13. Paul says that the god of this world blinds men’s minds (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Naselli teaches at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minnesota, John Piper’s school. I’ve read John Piper’s explanation of the five points of Calvin. The word “decisive” is a very important word to him. What I’m saying, Piper would say is the sinner, assisted by God, providing the decisive impulse. He would say, I’m saying, that “the decisive cause of faith is self-determination.” Scripture says nothing about “decisive cause.”
As I’ve written about this subject in the past, I’ve said that God is sovereign about His own sovereignty. We can’t make God more sovereign than what He says He is. John 1:9-13 as it reads in its plain meaning does not contradict a scriptural understanding of the sovereignty of God. It does not make salvation by works. Piper adds this layer of “decisive cause,” and in that sense is adding to the teaching of scripture. He speaks where scripture is silent. He reads into the text. This is also what Naselli is doing. Naselli fills in the blank by quoting Calvin, writing:
Faith is not produced by us but is the fruit of spiritual new birth.
Then Naselli fills in this silence even more by quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
The act of regeneration, being God’s act, is something that is outside consciousness.
Do you understand what he’s saying? He’s saying that a person becomes a child of God outside of his own consciousness. Is that what John 1:9-13 say? Of course not.
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I was fine with the ending of this post, especially time-wise. However, since I wrote it, other thoughts came, especially as it related to regeneration outside consciousness. You go evangelizing in obedience to the command of Jesus Christ. You do your best. No one is saved. Why? None of the preaching audience was regenerated outside of their consciousness. Obviously, if God had regenerated any of them outside of their consciousness, they would have believed.
I read a book about evangelizing Mormons, entitled I Love Mormons, and the PhD evangelical who wrote it gives a lot of strategy related to success with Mormons, understanding their culture, knowing their doctrine, taking a proper approach, etc. I’m not saying I even agree with him on all of it, but isn’t the key for success that God arbitrarily regenerates outside of their consciousness? If God does, your Mormon evangelism can’t but succeed. Automatic success. How does loving Mormons affect unconscious regeneration? Not at all, because that would make man a decisive cause of faith. I’m sure many passages come to your mind that do not fit this thinking.
Jesus Made the Cross a Symbol and Paul Took It Further
The word “cross” is found in the New Testament 28 times. The mere expression “cross” doesn’t mean anything without some explanation. Jesus started us off by using it in Matthew 10:28:
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
*1 Corinthians 1:17-18: 17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel:: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. 18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.*Galatians 5:11: And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.*Galatians 6:12-14: 12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. 13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. 14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.*Ephesians 2:16: And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:*Philippians 3:18: (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:Colossians 1:20: And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.Colossians 2:14: Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Romans 6:6: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.1 Corinthians 1:23: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;1 Corinthians 2:2: For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.Galatians 2:20: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.Galatians 3:1: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?Galatians 5:24: And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.Galatians 6:14: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
The Circularity and Wholeness of the Beatitudes As a New Covenant Corollary to God’s Law
God is One and His Law Is One. One could say the Old Covenant is One. The New Covenant doesn’t differ than the Old Covenant. It is a corollary to it, so in the same way the Law is circular and whole, the Beatitudes of Jesus are.
The New Covenant assumes that man has broken the Old Covenant. Is he now hopeless? Is God’s purpose for man now permanently ruined? When God went to find Adam and Eve in the Garden, He introduced the New Covenant to them as the only pathway forward.
While Jesus’ ministered on earth, His audience tried to force the Old Covenant into something it could not do without the New Covenant. Jesus didn’t come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it through the New Covenant. He starts the Sermon on the Mount with the New Covenant enablement of Old Covenant success. Blessing can come as promised in the Old Covenant, but first, poor in spirit.
Just like the first commandment and the tenth commandment mirror each other, the first and the eighth of the Beatitudes do. The first, poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and the eighth, they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The first four and the second four come at the New Covenant from two very important different directions. The first four are the front end of the New Covenant and the second four are the back end of it.
The front end is not works, but grace alone. The back end exposes what the first four were necessary to produce. If someone starts from the back, he is led to the front. If someone starts with the front, he receives the back. If someone is not persecuted for righteousness’ sake, he is not poor in spirit. If someone is poor in spirit, he will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. The truly persecuted are because they are poor in spirit and theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
When someone sees he’s not persecuted, not peacemaking, not pure in heart, and not merciful, he recognizes his poverty of spirit, he mourns over his sin, subjugates his will to God in meekness, and hungers and thirsts after righteousness. The Jewish teachers of Jesus’ day were justifying themselves, unlike the tax collector in Luke 18:13, who didn’t tout his own righteousness, but in poverty of spirit cried out, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. They reasoned that they could justify themselves by ignoring the weightier matters of the law, the ones so heavy, so difficult, that they were impossible to keep. Someone could keep trying to keep them with his heart of stone, but never succeed.
You’re not saved by being merciful, but only those poor in spirit, mourn, meek, and hunger and thirst after righteousness can and will be merciful. Don’t think that you will obtain mercy without being merciful, but don’t think they you’ll be merciful until you take the path through the first four of the beatitudes of Jesus.
To receive the saving knowledge of Christ Jesus His Lord, the Apostle Paul must count all his own law keeping efforts as dung or as loss (Philippians 3). He sees, I’m not merciful, I’m not pure in heart, I’m not peacemaking, and I’m not being persecuted, but I’m a persecutor, so he becomes poor in spirit. He has no confidence in his flesh, so now he rejoices in Christ Jesus. The Old Covenant did its proper job and then the New Covenant did its. You can start at the front or the back, just like with the ten commandments. They are all interrelated, just like God Himself is one.
James said that God gives grace to the humble, those who humbly submit themselves to God. Those who do won’t be praying to consume it upon their own lust and they won’t go presumptiously into a business endeavor, ignoring the good that God wants them to do in His will. In humility they are submitting themselves to the God of grace, who enables them to pray in His will and live in His will.
When you receive the grace to be saved, you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, righteousness that you hungered and thirsted after, because you knew you were without it. You were poor. The pure in heart see God, but that comforting purity will never come to you without you mourning over the impurity, not just external impurity, but the impurity of conscience that true salvation cleanses. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded. The Apostle Paul was impressive before religious leaders before his conversion, but he knew that was not true before God. The Lord Jesus provided that for him, not righteousness obtained by works, but by the faith of Christ.
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