When working on digging up Scripture references for use with a local ministry’s confessional statement today, I came across the chapter on “Free Will” in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), which is adopted from the same chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith. I’m going to quote the WCF chapter in its entirety below, but first let me share a couple of observations.
Most people I talk with about God’s sovereignty and human free will assume that we all have free will. This is a huge assumption. Yes God created us with free will. But doesn’t the Scripture say we, before being born again, were “slaves to sin”?
Romans 6:17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed…
Romans 6:20 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
Hmmm. We were slaves to sin. That means we were not free. Since when? It must be since Sin. When did Sin come along? At the Fall of Adam. So we all were slaves to sin since Adam’s time. What did we do when we were slaves to sin? We sinned. Did we sin because someone forced us to? No. We sinned because we wanted to. It was our “will” that was enslaved to sin, to “want” only what Sin wanted. Before we were born again, we did not have free will to want righteousness. God changed all that. That’s why Paul begins Romans 6:17 with the words, “…thanks be to God”!
Here’s the Westminster Confession of Faith on “Free Will”.
9.1 God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined, to good or evil.(1) (1)Matt. 17:12; James 1:14; Deut. 30:19.
9.2 Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God;(1) but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.(2) (1)Eccl. 7:29; Gen. 1:26. (2)Gen. 2:16,17; Gen. 3:6.
9.3 Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation;(1) so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good,(2) and dead in sin,(3) is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.(4) (1)Rom. 5:6; Rom. 8:7; John 15:5. (2)Rom. 3:10,12. (3)Eph. 2:1,5; Col. 2:13. (4)John 6:44,65; Eph. 2:2,3,4,5; 1 Cor. 2:14; Tit. 3:3,4,5.
9.4 When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin,(1) and by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good;(2) yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.(3) (1)Col. 1:13; John 8:34,36. (2)Phil. 2:13; Rom. 6:18,22. (3)Gal. 5:17; Rom. 7:15,18,19,21,23.
9.5 The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.(1) (1)Eph. 4:13; Heb. 12:23; 1 John 3:2; Jude 24.
Many of you have been following the AP story about Matt Chandler’s battle with brain cancer and his story of faith in God through it all. Geoff Ashley, writing at the Village Church blog, “Merely Theological”, posted his thoughts, back in December, on John 9:1-3, and what Jesus says in response to the question of God’s sovereignty over suffering.
Here’s the Bible passage:
John 9:1-3 ESV John 9:1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3 Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Now there are lots of well-meaning Christian brothers and sisters who, not having taken into account the whole teaching of Scripture, default in favour of the superficial sense of verses that seem to imply that God only intends nice things to happen to His children and that He therefore never intends suffering to happen to His children. And there are verses (like Mat 7:11 or John 10:10) that can be misunderstood to suggest that God would never ordain suffering in the life of one of His children.
Yet such a shallow reading of Scripture needs to be balanced by an understanding of the teaching of the whole Bible, not just a verse here and a verse there. If we zoom out from the single verse and take in more of the context of Scripture we can see that there is more to the picture.
In John 10:10, for example, some like to quote Jesus saying, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly”, as if that’s the sole reason Jesus came into this world and as if it’s that simple. But 12 verses earlier, in John 9:39, Jesus said, “For judgement I came into this world…”
Similarly, in Matthew 7:11, Jesus is often quoted as saying, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” But a few verses later, Jesus continued with these words,
Matthew 7:21-23 21 "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
So the statement Jesus gave in John 10:10 which at first glance seems to declare His whole reason for coming is complicated by His statement in John 9:39. And His teaching in Matthew 7:11 which at first glance seems to mean that the Father would never give anything but good things to those who ask is complicated by Jesus’ own teaching in Matthew 7:21-23, when some people who ask God for good things actually get Judgement instead.
Back to John 9:1-3. Notice, in verse 2, in the disciples’ question, that they assume the man’s blindness was ordained by God (since they assume that someone’s sin was the reason for the ordained punishment of blindness). And notice that Jesus does not correct them or rebuke their assumption of God’s sovereignty over this particular instance of suffering by saying something like, “You ask this because you do not understand your Father in heaven! He is not responsible for things like blindness; He would never cause someone to suffer!” No. So much the opposite in fact. The answer that Jesus gives assumes that God did ordain this man’s suffering, but not because of this man’s sin or because of anyone else’s sin. Rather it was so that “the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). In other words, God made this man blind so that He could provide grace and display His own glory through what Jesus was about to do for him.
I’m pretty sure that some people will jump up and down at that last statement and recoil at the thought of God actually causing suffering in order to display His glory. The problem is that this is a clear teaching of Jesus that says exactly that. This teaching is not contradicted by the context. It is not refuted simply by quoting another verse like John 10:10. After all, if God’s glory was displayed through the healing of the blind man, and if God planned exactly that when He made the man to be born blind, and if through this healing and this account in Scripture, people come to put their trust in the Sovereign God who gives grace to sinners though they deserve His wrath, has not Jesus done what He said He came to do in John 10:10, “that they might have life and have it abundantly”?
If a man is willing to take the child he loves, hold him down on a table in a doctor’s office, and allow a stranger to plunge a sharp needle into the flesh of his own beloved son, in spite of the child’s cries of protest and pleas for mercy, in order to do some greater good for the child in the long run (such as protect him from a deadly disease), though the child may be too young to possibly understand such a reason at the time, how much more is our heavenly Father willing and able to lead His children through suffering He intended when it will lead to their greatest good and eternal joy?
WDJS? (What did Jesus say?)
Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. (John 9:3)
When it comes to preaching I feel like I’m definitely still wet behind the ears. So it alarms me a little when even younger preachers than myself (and sometimes even much more experienced preachers) ask me for advice on preaching or to describe how I go about preparing a sermon. This morning when I saw a week old blog post by Kevin DeYoung, co-author of Why We’re Not Emergent By Two Guys Who Should Be, containing some advice for preachers like me, I thought it would be a good idea to share it with the one or two readers of this blog. The original post is found here.
This has helped me. I pass it along to any young preachers out there looking for free advice.
When you come to a passage there are four things you can do: illustrate, defend, explain, apply. I rearranged the order from seminary class so the four points make a convenient acronym: IDEA. Most young preachers, and probably most preachers in general, gravitate toward "explain." We do best at studying the text and communicating what we learned to others. If the passage is especially obscure or controversial, it makes sense to land heavy on the E. But sometimes the passage is relatively simple. In this case, don’t spin your wheels on endless word studies that basically repeat with synonyms what everyone can see immediately in the text.
Most preachers, myself included, need to incorporate the I, D, and A more often. One note on the D while I’m at it: it is rarely wise to spend a lot of time defending what your people don’t need defended. For example, in most churches you can probably skip the 15 minute intro on the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. Likewise, don’t waste time defending your interpretation against esoteric objections in the commentaries that no one in your church would ever think of.
"Illustrate" and "apply" are the hardest to do well. It requires a different part of your brain. You need to think creatively. You need to imagine what your people are or might be going through. You need to avoid the temptation to offer quick sermony points of application like "Don’t let money be your idol" or "Some of you need to trust God with your time." Probe deeper. Use one good, personal illustration or one concrete point of application rather than firing application-buckshot with little imagination.
So remember, for every text and every point you can illustrate, defend, explain, or apply. It’s an IDEA whose time has come.
“…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6)
I was glad to hear that Matt Chandler is back home with his family and resuming some responsibilities at The Village Church. But I was also saddened to hear of the serious prognosis regarding the tumor that was removed from his head. Thankful, but still praying. Praying that his wife and children, any siblings, parents, other family; his friends, church leadership and congregation will also “not be anxious… but in everything” pray, supplicate and give thanks… letting their requests be known to God.
The Village Church website has a section of their pastors’ blog set aside to updates and info regarding Matt’s health. Click here to go there.
P.S. – Merry Christmas! Jesus is the reason for all the seasons, for all weather (even snow), for all that exists and happens in Creation, for every man, woman and child, and for every angel or spiritual being God has made: Jesus is the Reason for All.
As many of you already know, Matt Chandler, whose sermon at Southern I posted yesterday, is in the hospital for brain surgery to remove a tumor discovered in his frontal lobe. As of this post, the latest news is from a letter from the elders at Village Church, dated December 1, 2009. Click here to go to the Village Church website and to check for updates on Matt’s condition.
Please join in praying for Matt and for his wife, Lauren, and their three children.
On November 12, 2009, Matt Chandler, Pastor of the Village Church in Texas, spoke to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary chapel on Hebrews 11. Through his message, the Word of God laid me bare, convicted me of sin in my heart and raised my eyes to the perfections of my Saviour once again. I hope, especially if you work full time in ministry, that God will do that for you as you sit under the Word of God through this video.
Don Carson currently teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is co-founder of the Gospel Coalition. He was raised in Canada, used to teach at Northwest Baptist College & Seminary in Vancouver (where I attended seminary but many years after he left there for greener pastures) and has served as a pastor before serving for many years since as a teacher and scholar. He is considered by many to be one of the leading evangelical scholars in the world.
“It was that obedience [of Christ], brought to its consummate fruition on the cross, that constituted him an all-sufficient and perfect Saviour.” ~ John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 1955), p.23.
Murray here is commenting on Hebrews 2:10-18 & 5:8-9. Jesus was not “perfected” through His suffering (Heb 2:10) in the sense that He had sin that had to be dealt with, or in the sense that He was impure in any way. He did not “learn obedience” in the sense that at one time previously He was disobedient having not yet been taught to obey. When the Bible says He was “perfected” and “learned” it means that as His life moved along, leading Him eventually to the cross, every day brought with it more from God the Father that Jesus needed to obey.
When He was five years old, His obedience was flawless. When He was 15 years old, His obedience was flawless (imagine!). When He was 25 years old, His obedience was flawless. But it was not until one day in His 34th year, as He uttered the words, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46), that Jesus’ obedience was finally completed. The act of giving up His spirit in death was the final step of obedience for the incarnate Son of God. His “learning” of obedience was not finished until, with the last “lesson” He could say, “It is finished!” (John 19:30).
It is this “finished” and “perfected” obedience that Christ accomplished which became the perfect righteousness that God credits to every believer through faith:
“Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:11)
… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23-26)
Over at Challies.com, blogger Tim Challies is leading his audience in a read through John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 1955). This week’s portion was chapter 1.
The last time I read this book was as a teenager when an older camp counsellor gave me his copy and suggested that if I read it, and work to understand it, God would bless me with rare insights into His Word. He was right! I don’t remember the name of that seminary student who spent part of his summer counselling at Camp Qwanoes, but I owe him a debt of thanks. Reading this book again now, along with Challies’ following, I’m finding it much easier to understand than I did the first time (though I did have to sit up straight and actually pay close attention to the author’s train of thought).
This morning I tweeted a sentence from chapter 1 that really stood out to me: “Grace indeed reigns but a grace reigning apart from righteousness is not only not actual; it is inconceivable” (p. 16).
Because many people will read right over that without stopping and considering the meaning, I want to break that down: why does grace depend on righteousness? Or, to put it negatively, why can grace not exist without righteousness?
What is grace? Webster defines “grace” as “1 a: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification”. I think the word, “assistance” in Webster’s definition is just awful. It brings to mind a synergistic idea of God’s working in salvation. But the first part of the definition emphasizes that grace is “unmerited”. This is because basic to the idea of the Greek word, “charis” from which we get the word “grace” is the idea of a gift that cannot be earned. So “grace” is unmerited.
What is “merit” then? Again Webster helps us with a definition (though it is now an obsolete one), “reward or punishment due”. Grace is “un-merited”. Which means that grace is a gift to someone who has no reward “due”. In other words, it is no violation of justice to NOT give someone grace. Justice does not require grace. But we could say that grace does require justice in order to be grace.
Now when I looked up “justice” on Webster.com, I found this definition: “: the maintenance or administration of what is just…the assignment of merited rewards or punishments”. Justice is handing out merited rewards; grace is handing out unmerited gifts. In the same entry at Webster, for “justice” I also found this: “(1): the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2): conformity to this principle or ideal :righteousness“. So of course, next I looked up “righteousness”.
Webster defines “righteousness” as, “1: acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin”. Righteousness is what we call it when someone perfectly deserves reward–righteousness is complete merit. That’s on the part of the one who has acted “in accord” with divine law. What about the Divine Law-Giver? Webster kind of covers that too: “righteousness” is also, “: morally right or justifiable <a righteous decision>”.
So God, the Divine Law-Giver, is “righteous” to give people the punishment they merit, or deserve. Grace is giving people the reward that they don’t merit or deserve. If there was no such thing as “righteousness”, how would these last two sentences even make sense?
Psalm 25:8 says, “Good and upright is the LORD”. Verse 10 describes God similarly: the LORD’s ways are “steadfast love and faithfulness”, or “grace and truth” (see the Hebrew, “chesed” and “emeth”). Following Murray’s train of thought in chapter 1, God did not have to save any sinners from the punishment due. He could have still been “gracious” or “good” without demonstrating that grace through the salvation of sinners, right? Of course. Because merely withholding that grace would not have violated his righteousness.
But having decided out of His grace to redeem sinners, His plan of salvation had to meet the demands of His own justice. This meant that God could not wink at a lie or unjustly tolerate unrighteousness in those whom He intended to save. They had to be justified. But Murray gets to that later.
Back to Psalm 25:10… “All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.” To “keep” God’s covenant, the unilateral covenant He made with Abraham, the covenant of grace He ratified in the cross of Christ, is to hold on to and cling to God in belief that He will do what He said He would do. To “keep” His “testimonies” is to hang on to His promises of grace to those who believe: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jo 3:16). When Psalm 25:10 talks about those who “keep his covenant and his testimonies” it’s talking about believers who have received God’s grace through His covenant in Christ.
Hebrews 8:6-13 6 But as it is, Christ1 has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 8 For he finds fault with them when he says:1 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” 13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
And what about those believers, those covenant-keepers in the words of Psalm 25:10? They will perceive all of God’s “paths” or ways, as “love and faithfulness” (v 10), as ”good and upright” (v 8).
Murray’s theology is not dry; it is devotional. He can help you to know God better, to appreciate God’s character and glory more deeply. Therefore you will be able to worship Him with greater rapture.
Desiring God
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reFocus Canada
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The Gospel Coalition
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