John 3:16 Should Unite, Not Divide
. In it John quotes Jesus as saying,
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Many people today want to use this verse to prove something it does not speak to. They take the words “whoever believes” and says that means people have free will to chose God or to reject him. It means that Christ’s death atones for the whole world because it says “For God so loved the world.” On the flip side the reaction is “the world” can’t mean the world and it has to mean the world of the elect. Or it has to mean this or that. In my doctrine class on Monday, the professor did just that. He said that it has to mean Calvinism is wrong.
I want to call attention to both sides some very important issues. First, the world that God “so loved” is a world full of sinners that God has condemned. He put a curse upon that planet and the fact that Jesus could say love in the same sentence should take us aback. The word “For” at the beginning of the verse connects the statement back to 3:14-15 where Jesus references Numbers 21 and Moses lifting up the snake. There the Israelites had incurred upon themselves the wrath of God through poisonous snakes. The fact that God was faithful to those people when he didn’t have to be should astound us. God sending Jesus for any person because of his love should be the focus, not is it the world of the elect or the whole world.
The text does say “whoever believes” and it should mean that. If anyone believes upon the Lord Jesus Christ, he will be saved. Anyone who tries to tinker with that must be out of ther exegeting minds! Now note what this text does not say. It does not say “whoever believes because of free will” or “whoever believes because of God’s effectual call of sovereign grace.” It doesn’t say that. In fact this verse does not tell us how the person believes. It is only saying that if the person believes they will receive salvation and justification.
Christians should unite around this one verse. This is not a proof for any doctrine other than the sufficiency of the love, grace, and mercy of God to save all who come to him in faith. It should be the reason why all witness because of one comes, that person is saved. We need not try to turn this text on its head with a meaning that simply isn’t there. It absolutely drives me nuts when, as a calvinist, people try to take this text away from me because of my views of predestination and unconditional election and effectual call. I still believe that if you come to Jesus in faith, you will be saved. The disagreement is in the how the believing occurs.
As much fun as I have in debating calvinism v. arminiansim, I feel there is too much at stake to let such a secondary issue divide the church. In that same class, one student was saying that there was an “underground calvinist” movement. Who cares if there is a disagreement on that issue. Are those calvinists teach correct, biblically based teachings? Do their people lead holy lives? Do their congregations witness for Christ by sending or going into the mission fields of the world? The same goes with the arminian teaches as well. Do we see their congregations growing in Christ?
Let us unite in our passion to spread that love found in John 3:16 to those who will believe it. It is not so much how that we should be debating, but if they are coming. If the church isn’t preaching, they aren’t hearing. If they aren’t hearing, they aren’t believing. If they aren’t believing, they aren’t calling. If they aren’t calling, they aren’t being saved! The gospel does not change if you are calvinist or arminian. Let us unite in our common goal: “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called (Eph. 4:1).
Cross posted at Theology for the Masses.
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Why I am a Calvinist
Yesterday in my doctrine class, we were finishing up a discussion on the Scripture. We were discussing its necessity and sufficiency. The prof. said that the gospel was needed for salvation. The only place that we find the gospel is the Bible. Thus the Bible is needed for salvation. He then went into a biblical discussion, using texts, to show how this is to be true. He came to Ephesians 2:8-10 and said that faith is a gift. He qualified that by saying that the ability to chose to believe is a gift. One student, bored with talking about the Bible itself, asked for the prof. to explain his position and verify it with more Scripture. The prof. said he couldn’t. This entered into a forty-five minute to an hour long discussion on Calvinism. I believe there are three calvinists in my class, one being me. We lost most of our lecture time because to illustrate the sufficiency of Scripture to give us contentment in what it says, he had an exercise that took the last half-hour of class time. He divided the class up into two sections, going right down the middle. On one side was free will, on the otherside was predestination/unconditional election. I was on the predestination side, the other two calvinsits were on the free will side. The exercise was simple, write on the board as many verses as our group could find defending our position. When the smoke cleared, they had about seven or eight verses to defend their position, or rather to refute predestination and reprobation–many of their verses had little to do with man’s will to chose faith or not to. We had almost half of the marker board covered with verses defending predestination for salvation or tasks. However it is good to point out that in the cases of Paul and Jeremiah, the need to fulfill God’s task in them required their salvation. When the class got back together, we looked at some of the verses. Two particular passages caused the prof. struggled with in trying to interpret them in a non-calvinistic manner.
I say all of this by way of saying first, no one can say that the Bible does not affirm both sides of the coin. Secondly, I began to reflect, especially in light of 9/11, of why I became a calvinist. So tomorrow I am going to unveil my struggle with the doctrines of Grace.
For right now, let me say this. Up until April of 2005, I was a non-calvinist. I believed in maybe two of the points. But my journey began when I began to actually read arguments for calvinism by authors who are calvinists, not non-calvinists. My parents began going to a church which is calvinist. I read their arguments as well. I began to wonder, do their arguments really work? Is this what the Bible teaches? I didn’t know. So this was my plan, I was going to study all of the calvinist texts and see if they are really reading them right. My goal was actually to try and to defeat calvinism. I wanted desperately to not be a calvinist. More next time on my actual process of becoming one.
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