Paul's Passing Thoughts

Some years ago, Susan and I did a lot of marriage counseling. She was doing some reorganizing in our basement and stumbled upon this letter written to a counselee. The man was a pastor amid a divorce, and Susan and I were trying to save the marriage. The letter is lengthy, but well worth revisiting. Authority has no place in a marriage, and particularly an authority based on a false gospel.

John,

This is a summary statement of the 30-minute video you have pulled down since you posted it the other day and is indicative of how you ended up where you are right now. This is why I cannot support Sarah in coming back to you because you still don’t get it. This gets back to the pastor’s retreat I went to that you hosted in 2015. At that conference I confronted the 15-20 pastors who were there; and confused about the gospel. Dismiss this out of hand if you will, and read on if you dare, but your very words, not mine, and the same words we hear often in the Baptist church, bring up very troublesome questions regarding what evangelicals believe about the new birth and using the Bible to love God and others.

Presently, in case you and others have been away on the moon for a while, even leading evangelicals such as Albert Mohler and the heir apparent to the SBC throne are admitting the church is in serious trouble and on the verge of full-scale collapse. Their reasons for this are errant; the real reason follows, we are seeing the fruits of a false gospel that is easily demonstrable by your very words in the aforementioned video. Let us examine them, that is, your words, not mine.

“On my own I am full of fear, on my own I am full of weakness, on my own I am full of pride, on my own I am completely lost.”

But in you oh God I trust! In You I surrender my life and my will again this morning. Then and only then you take my fear and give me courage. You take my weakness and give me power. You take my pride and give me faith. You take all the chaos that they cause and give me perfect peace!

You take these ashes and bring beauty!

Thank you, Father, that when the chaos of my mind is overwhelming there is perfect clarity that will guide me through!

In the midst of all of the struggles let your still small voice be heard all the louder today in my heart and mind Lord Jesus! Do the same for all those who will read these words today. In Jesus name I pray. Amen!

1 Kings 19:11-13″

Your statement here, one that plays well and often in the church, is a fundamental denial of the new birth. So, am I saying that everyone in the church believes a false gospel? Not exactly. For certain, many are lost, but many also function according to this false gospel while denying the unavoidable conclusions of the premise intellectually. In other words, they have not thought out the logical conclusions of the truisms, but unfortunately, function by them resulting in anemic Christian living.

Come now fellow pastors, let’s be honest; the church’s inability to get it together has baffled you for years. Come now, let’s face it; you wonder where the power for Christian living is and why churches go for years without seeing anybody get saved, and even when they do, they fall away at some point. By our very own admission, “10% of the people do 100% of the work.” We have gone from conference to conference, trend to trend, gimmick to gimmick, desperately looking for answers and to no avail. In fact, the church is worse now than it has ever been.

And unfortunately, all any pastor would need to do is merely start articulating  justification by new birth from the Scriptures without any hyper-drama about where the church has been wrong all of these years. Don’t make a big public spectacle of your realization, just start teaching justification by new birth and the people won’t know anything is different other than things they haven’t heard before, but make perfect biblical sense. And, revival WILL happen because the Spirit only uses truth to sanctify…period, end of sentence.

Oh, and by the way, the who’s who of evangelicalism themselves state unequivocally that the church is in the middle of a “resurgence” that is returning the church to the true gospel. Their words, NOT mine! Unfortunately, the so-called errant gospel they speak of was much closer to the truth than the present-day return to authentic Protestantism. In a recent article by Albert Mohler himself, he states that the present-day resurgence (think about the implications; what’s a resurgence?) is amid collapse. Yes, a collapsing resurgence. Again, HIS words, NOT mine!

Dear pastors, umpteen years later, there is debate about what the gospel is among the top scholars. This should trouble you and set you on your own journey for the truth. A belief that Protestants are not susceptible to mass deception like ALL other religions and cultures of the world just because you are a Protestant might be a little arrogant.

When it is all said and done, a tree is known by its fruit…period.

Now, to the main point. What is the new birth? Here is the crux: true Christians are not merely “declared righteous,” THEY ARE RIGHTEOUS…as a state of being. Secondly, justification is NOT a “legal declaration,” it is the believers state of being. Please note: while Protestants deny justification by law, they define justification as a “legal declaration.” Excuse me? Confused much?

John, in your above statement, you make your “own” characteristics something different than God’s characteristics that are infused into the true believer by the baptism of the Spirit upon salvation’s new birth. You make a dichotomy between what is truly YOU (“my own”) and the literal new creaturehood of the born-again believer. Hence, the so-called “believer” remains fundamentally unchanged (a “sinner [the biblical definition of the unregenerate] saved by grace”) in characteristics and only experiences God’s characteristics when obtained by some church ritual, subjective passivity, or prayer. It’s a denial that a person’s true state of being is transformed by the new birth.

And why must this be denied? Because no person can keep the law perfectly. But wait a minute, I thought true believers are not “under law”? Then someone says, “Oh, but we aren’t, Jesus kept the law perfectly for us.” Question: how is that a righteousness “APART from the law”? The point is NOT who keeps the law, the point is the law period. And, “under grace” doesn’t mean we are not under a law, the question is, what law? We will get to that shortly. The new birth changes our relationship to the law while Protestantism has a singular perspective on law and sin. More on this later.

But John, not only do you deny the infusion of God’s character into the believer and God’s character being your very own character as his child just like any other birth whether natural or supernatural, your statement’s deny the new birth as a onetime finished work. Your mind is not transformed into the very mind of Christ, or the regenerate mind described in Ephesians and Romans 7,  your mind is “chaos” and your state of being is “ashes.” Your state of being, as you describe it, is “completely lost.” Unlike any other gift, the gift of salvation is not something we own once given to us, it is only a gift that enables us to see the depths of our sinfulness lest we have a “righteousness of our own.” Hence, we ONLY EXPERIENCE God’s righteousness through some church ritual or prayer. Christians are not able to actually do good works because we are “chaos,”  “ashes,” and “completely lost,” but can only “hear” about who our Father is via a “still small voice.” Listening to God’s voice in our totally depraved minds keeps us saved lest we have a “righteousness of our own” and fall short of God’s glory and thus falling from grace. And more could be said about “In You I surrender my life and my will again this morning.” Again? Sounds like perpetual re-salvation/justification, which is also an aspect of Protestant soteriology.

This, in fact, is Protestant orthodoxy…and we wonder why churches are so messed up. But it gets worse; there is more bad news and not good news.

If there is only one perspective on the law; if there is only one use of the law by the Spirit, there is no way I can know whether my obedience to the law is an attempt to justify myself or purely from love. Therefore, every act of love we do must entail doubt, suspicion of motives, and morbid introspection. This is why many Christians, when they do an act of love, deny that they did it, but say God did it. Do we not hear this in church constantly? Pray tell, why is there a problem with us doing the good work as a result of being God’s child? When Susan, your daughter, does a good work, does she tell everyone that she didn’t do it, but that you really did it lest she have a righteousness of her own, or is the child’s character a glory to the parent because the child is the offspring?

The point here follows: the new birth changes the believer’s relationship to the law. In the baptism of the Spirit, the old self, what you call, “my own,” literally dies with Christ. According to you, “my own” is still alive, under law, and gets in the way of letting God do everything Himself lest we have a “righteousness of our own.”

In fact, the one who died with Christ is no longer under “the law of sin and death.” However, it sounds like you are because you are “ashes,” “completely lost,” “full of pride,” “full of “fear,” which has to do with condemnation and judgement, and so forth. This is exactly how the Bible describes someone under law. But, this is also a popular description of Christians in our day. Mark Hall, lead singer of one of the most popular Christian music bands of all time, boasts that the church is a “total train wreck.” In addition, it sounds like you must give your life to Christ every day in the spirit of, “We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day.”

The Bible is clear: where there is no law, there is no sin. I didn’t say it, the Spirit did, take it up with Him! Christ didn’t die to cover sin because we are still under law, HE DIED TO END SIN. Say that we sin if you will, that’s fine, but we cannot be condemned by it; fear has to do with condemnation. There is no law to judge us. Fear has to do with judgement. Grace is not a covering for remaining under law.

This doesn’t mean that we are under no other law; it means that we are now sanctified by the Bible, and that it’s our guide for loving God and others. Our sin is not against the law that can condemn, it is a failure to love God and others according to the Bible. This can bring loving chastisement from the Father for those Christians who don’t get it, but not condemnation. This explains Romans 8:1,2. What does this mean? It means that we never have to question our motives if we know there is no law to condemn us. It means that we deem it impossible to please God by obeying the law of sin and death because that law has no jurisdiction over us. All that is left is the “law of the Spirit of life” (Romans 8:2) that informs “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).

Here is the huge problem: if there is only one law, or one use/single perspective on the Bible which is the standard for justification, then all valid love would have to be defined as perfect law-keeping. This circumvents the ability of any person lost or saved to perform any valid love. This is, in fact, the stated position of Protestant orthodoxy. Hence, any talk from Protestants about loving others is pretense because love is a good work. Full disclosure would state that all true love is strictly vertical (from God only).  

The whole problem with church is its theological position that all love must be performed by God through us as we partake in faith-alone passive rituals. Hence, God is loving Himself through us as we live according to a faith alone Old Covenant Sabbath. This alone explains why the church is a train wreck, and frankly, proud of it.

So, John, you want to deny that the church is under law? In our meeting with that sorry excuse for a pastor in New Lebanon, the bottom line is that God is only glorified by the keeping of covenants. That’s what he said. What’s a covenant? Yes, regardless of anything going on, even if a husband is waterboarding his wife, come hell or high water, God will only be pleased with the maintaining of the marriage covenant. For all practical purposes, that’s what he clearly stated. And despite offending his wife, a partnership in tyranny does not define a good marriage.

Of course, with any under law mentality, authority and hierarchy is central rather than love—love is defined by obeying whatever any given authority says the Bible says. The meeting was saturated with an authority mindset. That comes from under law soteriology.

For too many years Sarah has only received love from God and not you…BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION! In fact, by your own testimony, the only problem with the marriage right now is that you have attempted to love her with your “own” love! Furthermore, your inability to see her as an equal is an hourly revelation. In effect, and for all practical purposes, she is a runaway slave in your mind. Because you do not have slave ownership laws at your disposal like the Puritans did, you will endeavor to rein her in through other means…and over my dead body.

Again, no pastor who may see the light on this has to make a big drama event of it. Just start teaching justification by new birth and see what the Spirit starts doing as the congregation colabors with Him. Andy Young and I have invited pastors on numerous occasions to fellowship with us and to be challenged by this gospel perspective. What is there to lose as the debate regarding a definitive definition of the gospel rages among evangelical scholars?

paul

Originally published October 21, 2013

Though Joni Eareckson Tada has experienced monumental life setbacks, namely, quadriplegia and breast cancer, she has lived a life of experience and accomplishments that others can only dream of. Also, it cannot be denied that she has propagated a gargantuan mass of good works that has benefited much of the world.

And she is a self-proclaimed Calvinist. THEREFORE, her good works and her life testimony have become an endorsement for Calvinism, because that is what she has proclaimed herself to be. Good works are not a pass for who you are, or how you define yourself, they endorse what you believe. And Tada believes Calvinism. She has even proclaimed that all of her good works, even a smile that she might give someone, flows from her Calvinistic beliefs (Crystal Cathedral: Hour of Power ; May 3^rd, 2009).

That’s my point here. Everything Tada is, in turn, sells what she believes—that’s the choice she has made. So, the question/issue becomes the following: is Calvinism true?

The very definition of a Christian is someone who loves the truth (2Thessalonians  2:10).  In reality, and regardless of appearances, only truth sanctifies (John 17:17). The greatest errors are closest to the truth, and every landfill full of the dead is located at the end of a road paved with good works.

Tada has stated that shortly after her tragic diving accident that left her paralyzed, she was looking for answers (Scott Larsen: Indelible Ink ; Waterbrook Press 2003, Joni Eareckson Tada, chapter 1):

That was when Joni asked a friend to help her understand God’s sovereignty. Wisely, he gave her meat to chew on~hers was no simple, slightly uncomfortable situation~and started her on Berkhof’s Systematic Theology and John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Still just a few years out of high school, Joni found Calvin too heavy, so her friend replaced it with Loraine Boettner’s The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination.

“Somewhere in its pages I realized I was reading something mansized. Rather, God-sized. Perhaps it expressed the unspoken desire of my soul: to encounter towering biblical doctrine like the Himalayan peaks that rise to the breathtaking height of Mount Everest. To apprehend a God who was much, much bigger than I ever imagined when I was on my feet.”… “I realized that my suffering was the key to unlocking the hieroglyphics of God’s foreordained will. I was about to embark on the adventure of my life.”

Calvinism might have given Tada answers that invigorated her will to live on, but one searches in vain for her concern that Calvin taught a true gospel. And he didn’t. Calvin’s view of God’s sovereignty was the issue, not his gospel. Is there a difference? Obviously there is. Calvin believed that God is completely sovereign, and also believed that we have to ask for forgiveness of daily sins in order to keep ourselves saved:

Secondly, this passage shows that the gratuitous pardon of sins is given us not only once, but that it is a benefit perpetually residing in the Church, and daily offered to the faithful. For the Apostle here addresses the faithful; as doubtless no man has ever been, nor ever will be, who can otherwise please God, since all are guilty before him; for however strong a desire there may be in us of acting rightly, we always go haltingly to God. Yet what is half done obtains no approval with God. In the meantime, by new sins we continually separate ourselves, as far as we can, from the grace of God. Thus it is, that all the saints have need of the daily forgiveness of sins; for this alone keeps us in the family of God (John Calvin: Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles; The Calvin Translation Society 1855. Editor: John Owen, p. 165 ¶4).

Calvinism is no different than any other Christ + something else false gospel. In the case of Calvinism—keeping ourselves saved by perpetual re-repentance for sins in sanctification that remove us from grace:

In the meantime, by new sins we continually separate ourselves, as far as we can, from the grace of God… Thus it is, that all the saints have need of the daily forgiveness of sins; for this alone keeps us in the family of God.

Oh, and by the way, Calvin said such forgiveness can only be found in the institutional church and administered by ordained pastors (CI 4.1.21,22). This Protestant absolution was exemplified by Tada confidant John Macarthur Jr. during the 2013 Shepherds Conference. During a general session, MacArthur shared that a young Aids victim requested that MacArthur seek forgiveness for sins on his behalf. MacArthur agreed to the request accordingly.

During the aforementioned message at Crystal Cathedral’s Hour of Power, Tada stated that God brought said grievous trials into her life so that she would live by the cross daily:

And so God, bless his heart, forces us down the road to Calvary where we are not humanly inclined to go. It’s not our natural inclination to go to the Cross every day. And so God gives us suffering like a sheep dog. It is a sheep dog snapping at your heels, driving you down the road to the Cross where otherwise you might not normally go. You’re driven there by the overwhelming conviction that you just have nowhere else to go. And so God permits the broken heart. He permits the broken home. He permits, he allows, he ordains, he plans even the broken neck until we become broken… Even Jesus himself said blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Who are the poor in spirit? Those who come to Jesus every day in empty-handed spiritual poverty, asking him to show them the reason for living that day. Because we’re all richer when we recognize our spiritual poverty.

Come now, are born-again Christians spiritually impoverished? We need to seek God’s purpose for our life daily?  Our smiles are not even our own smiles, but we have to get them from God?

“I have no strength for a smile for this woman who’s going to come to the bedroom door in just a moment, and I’ve gotta give her a smile. And Lord, I don’t have a smile… So God, please give me your smile. I have no smile for this woman, but you’ve got a smile. May I please borrow your smile?” And not but a moment goes by and I have a smile. It’s already a miracle. I’ve experienced a miracle before 7:30 a.m. when my girlfriend walks to the door and I can smile, not in spite of my paralysis but because of it. My paralysis has driven me every single morning to the cause of Jesus Christ where I tell him how much desperately I need him. And so that smile is already hard-fought for and hard-won by early morning. That’s the first nugget of wisdom. Begin your day needing Jesus Christ desperately (Ibid).

Is this really the essence of the Christian life? We have to plead and beg God for even a smile? It is, if we also have to go back to the cross daily to beg God for salvific forgiveness. That’s Calvinism; daily resalvation. You have eternal security IF you beg God for smiles every day, and IF you were elected.

You are elected IF you practice a daily application of Christ’s death on the cross. You are elected IF you believe that even the slightest sin in your Christian life separates you from grace.

Tada is sacrificing her stellar life on the altar of Calvinism. Her good works point people to John Calvin who plainly taught a false gospel. What she believes and what she does cannot be separated. There is time to go back to the beginning and once again look for answers.

This time, pick up a Bible, not the Calvin Institutes.

paul