Calvary Distinctives – Striking the Balance
Servant
School
June
3, 2021
Introduction
This lesson
comes from chapter 11 of the Calvary Chapel Distinctives. The title of the lesson is “Striking the
Balance”.
The point of
the chapter was to deal with a couple of divisive theological issues where
churches tend to take one side or another.
Let me clarify one thing that Chuck said several times. He stated, “If you don’t take a balanced
approach, you’ll lose half of your church”.
Let me say that
we don’t strike the balance out of fear of losing people.
We take the
“balance” because Scripture seems to indicate that there’s truth to both sides.
Chuck talked
about the subject of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, whether or
not the Holy Spirit even gives gifts today, and how the gifts are
operated.
I think we’ve covered that fairly well in previous
lessons.
The other topic Chuck dealt with was …
Sovereignty vs.
Free Will
Forgive me, but let me give a simplistic understanding
of the arguments.
In reality there is nothing simplistic about the
theological positions of either side.
One side of the
argument might refer to themselves as “Calvinist”. This is the “Sovereignty” side of the argument.
This name comes
from the theologian John Calvin. They look
at the subject of
salvation being connected to being predestined.
They will say that only those whom God has predestined to be saved will be
saved.
There are several Scriptures that give a hint of this, such as:
(Romans 8:29–30 NKJV) —29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to
the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these
He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
Those with an
exaggerated view of this will say that man has no say whatsoever in whether he
is saved.
They will say
that God chooses men, and though we are saved by God’s grace, God’s grace is
“irresistible”, and those who are chosen will one day find that salvation.
They have to.
God chose them.
As you can guess, these churches often don’t place much of an emphasis on
evangelism. Why bother? If a person’s going to be saved, God will
take care of it.
Those with an
even stronger view will say that those who are going to hell are also
predestined to go to hell, and they can do nothing about it.
Chuck used the
phrase “limited atonement”, which is a view held by some Calvinists, and means
that Jesus’ blood didn’t pay for the sins of the entire world, but only for
those God chose to be saved.
Those who hold
a Calvinist view of Scripture would also hold a strong view of “eternal
security” – to the point that there’s nothing a saved person can do to lose
their salvation, nothing at all.
Another term
for “Calvinist” is “reformed theology”, again a term that comes from John
Calvin.
Forgive me for painting with a broadbrush and oversimplifying views that
can be way more complex and nuanced.
The “Free Will”
argument is often called “Arminian”, after the theologian Jacobus Arminius.
This view tends to ignore the concept of God’s sovereignty,
and believe
that salvation is the responsibility of man – that man has the free will to
choose.
They might point to a verse like this:
(John 3:16 NKJV) For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should
not perish but have everlasting life.
The “whoever” would seem to indicate that anybody can make the choice to
believe, and not just a select few.
Those who hold an Arminian view of theology will not talk about eternal security, but will point to man’s
responsibility to continue in the faith.
Chuck used the phrase “perseverance of the saints”, which is a doctrine
that teaches that if you are truly saved, then you will “persevere” and
continue to trust in Jesus right up until the end.
This comes from Scriptures like:
(Matthew 24:13 NKJV) But he who
endures to the end shall be saved.
This leads to
the possibility that a person might not “endure”, and that it may be possible
for a person to lose their salvation.
The writer of
Hebrews has a disturbing passage where he talks about a person having tasted of
the heavenly gift and “falls away”, and that it’s impossible for that person to
repent. (Heb. 6:4-6)
(Hebrews 6:4–6 NKJV) —4 For it is impossible for those who
were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become
partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to
come, 6 if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they
crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open
shame.
Some churches
will take this to such a degree that they will give you the idea that if you’ve
sinned at all during the week, that you need to come forward and accept Jesus
as your Savior again because you’ve lost your salvation. One wicked thought and you’re out!
You’ll hear people talk about how they had to get saved every week!
When a person
takes one of these theological viewpoints, they will need to take the verses
that the other side uses, and twist them just a little
so that it fits their theology.
For example: A Calvinist would look at John 3:16 and think
to himself that the phrase “whoever
believes” is simply a description of those who have been predestined to
believe. And voila, they have no
contradiction.
Both sides can
at times be pretty contentious towards the other side.
I came across
an article from the “Babylon Bee” that illustrates this point. The Babylon Bee is not real news, it’s
sarcasm aimed at poking a little fun at various things in Christianity.
The title of
the article was “Calvinist Comes Forward During Altar Call to Correct Pastor’s
Theology”.
It tells a fictitious story about a young man who visits his parents’
church, and when the pastor gave an altar call to accept Christ, he reluctantly
came forward, but only so he could lecture the pastor about why he was wrong to
be giving people a choice in accepting Christ.
Hilarious. Yet this is sometimes the
way one side treats the other.
I’ve often
compared theology to those fishnets
that you would find hanging on the walls of old seafood restaurants. They would have various glass floats hanging on those nets, and
those glass floats are like the views you hold about God and the doctrines of
Christianity.
We all come with our own grid, our own idea about who God is and what He’s
like.
As we grow in
the Lord, as we learn to read and study the entire Bible, we ought to be open
to changing where we hang some of those glass floats.
When I went to seminary, much of the faculty held to a fairly
strong Calvinist view, and so that was the theological grid that I started
off with.
But after seminary, I became personally dissatisfied with having to
“explain” passages that don’t seem to fit that grid.
The more I read
the entire Bible, I began to see that BOTH sides have valid points.
I began to see the wisdom of Chuck’s position that God is bigger than we
are, and even though both views seem to contradict each other, the Scriptures
seem to teach both, and so even though we might not understand how they
reconcile with each other, in God’s mind they do.
I’ve always loved how that Calvinist Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon
handled these issues.
Charles Spurgeon used to explain it
something like this:
“When we get to heaven, we’ll see those great big
pearly gates, with a huge sign overhead that reads, “Whosoever will, come”.
And as we pass through the gates into heaven, if we would
care to look over our shoulder, we’d see that there’s another message on the other side of the
sign. It reads, “Predestined before the foundation of the world”.
From the earthly side of heaven, all we
can really understand is that we have a choice. God offers us salvation and we have to choose to accept it and receive it. Yet when we get
to heaven, we’ll look back and see that somehow we
were chosen by God from the very beginning.
Now, no longer I
don’t try to reconcile these two positions because both positions can be found
in the Bible.
I don’t have a
problem because I’m pretty sure that God is WAY bigger than my ability to
understand Him.
I like Chuck’s
analogy of train tracks and parallel lines.
Just because two lines of thought never seem to intersect with each other
doesn’t mean that they won’t intersect some place that’s beyond what I can see.
I don’t feel like I have to understand everything
about God.
I’m glad that God is bigger than my ability to understand Him.
By
the way, what do we believe about eternal security and losing
your salvation?
I do think it’s
possible for a person to lose their salvation.
The Scriptures seem to allow for that possibility.
I don’t think
it’s an easy thing to do.
I don’t think you lose it with one sin.
I believe it’s
something that takes a long time of falling away from God, continually
rejecting the work the Spirit wants to do, and finally getting a heart so hard
that you no longer care about the things of Christ.
That’s the person I’d be concerned about.
And yet I also believe
that a major step in your maturity as a believer is learning to find the
security that comes from simply knowing you are saved.
God wants you to KNOW you are saved.
(1 John 5:13 NKJV) These things
I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know
that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the
name of the Son of God.
Lastly, let me say
that there is another advantage of a pastor teaching through the entire Bible
and not just speaking about his favorite passages.
When the church
learns to see the entire Bible, they gain the proper balance of these various
doctrines.
Hope that helps