I received a question from someone who had been talking to a believer who along the human responsibility/divine sovereignty continuum was very much to the side of God electing a handful to salvation and electing the rest to "damnation." I was asked essentially how this was fair or how to process this. So here is a rough attempt to express my convicitions.
I jokingly call myself a Calvminian (Calvinist and Arminian). This is one of the areas that we get into trouble if we try to unravel the mysteries of God. From scripture we know that God is beyond time and space. There is no sequence in God . . . no past, no future but rather eternal now. Scripture uses terminology to accomodate to our limitations. The scripture speaks of God's "foreknowledge," predestination, God choosing us AND it speaks of human responsibility, human choice.
There are good godly scholars along the spectrum of human responsibility and divine sovereignty. I personally have put this particular issue in the category of mystery. A couple of thoughts:
1. God as God knows all that can be actually known.
2. What God knows regarding human history and action must take place.
3. God has granted freedom of choice morally/spiritually and that freedom is a legitimate freedom. There is amazing beauty and goodness that come from human choice and capability and there is horrific evil that comes from human choices.
4. Although all human beings are fallen spiritually by birth and by choice, the biblical belief of the depravity of humanity does not mean that human beings are as bad as they can be but rather means that in and of themselves, they are incapable of leading God pleasing lives and of redeeming themslves.
5. People are actually free to make choices that impact their lives and others and God knows their choices in advance. God is never mistaken and so they must choose what he knows they will choose. Somehow divine sovereignty AND human choice are preserved in the mystery of God.
6. I believe that Christ's completed work on the cross, authenticated in the resurrection was for all humankind. There was not a limitation placed on Christ's work such that it is only available to a handful of select people.
7. There is a legitimate offer of salvation to all people. II Peter 3:8 says that God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish.
8. God so honors the choices of human beings that he doesn't force anyone against his/her will to choose him. Forced love is not love. God honors the choices of human beings. This is human responsibility.
9. People only come to faith through the convicting, convincing work of the Spirit of God; only through the purposes of the Father and the redemptive work of the Son. Salvation from start to finish is God's.
Humanly speaking these things seem to be in conflict. Either one way or the other but the scripture speaks so naturally of both human responsibility and the selecting, foreknowledge, redemptive, tranforming work of Father, Son and Spirit that both must be true even though we can't make sense of it.
So in terms of living one's life. Our good Father invites us into a relationship with him through the Son and lives in us/empowers us by the Spirit. There are instructions God has given us to living in this beautiful relationship with him and then there is enormous freedom within, let's call it a boundary, a circle of godliness. God as a creative God has endowed each of us with amazing creativity and capacity to do good. Living out the gopel can take many forms in our lives and includes our work, play, relationships.
I am not one who believes that each and every major decision of life has one and only one choice that pleases God. There are times for the specific leading of God but God has granted us the dignity and joy of choice and then living with the benefits and the downsides of those choices. He delights in us and the ways each of us can express his image in life, love and laughter.
It is not our responsibility to "determine" who is in and who is not, who the elect are and who are not. Christians throughout the centuries have proven that the standards/issues they are willing to divide over are not necessarily the issues on which we should be most focused. There is one Judge to whom we all will be accountable one day and we are all commanded to speak the gospel with our lives and lips.
Post new comment