New.Demonstration

The Gospel of Calvinism as was just described is not: “Well, maybe God doesn’t love you.”

You see the apostolic proclamation was “repent and believe.” It wasn’t “this is what God has done for you.”

Maybe the problem here is that we’re judging the Gospel by our emotions and experiences rather than by the infallible, unchanging, inspired Word of God.

I’ve heard no response to John 6, Ephesians 1, Romans 8 and 9, 1 Timothy 2. I’ve heard no replies. I’ve heard no exegesis. “It says, no, it does not actually say that God elects unconditionally.” All I’ve heard is, “Well, if we believe this then we can’t evangelize the way I evangelize.”

Maybe that tells us something.

Maybe we need to stop proclaiming the Gospel, “What will you do with Jesus?” And proclaim it the way the Bible presents it, “What will Christ do with you?” He is the Sovereign King.

And that picture of Jesus standing outside the knob-less door, from Revelation 3:20, knocking . . . First of all Revelation 3:20 is about the Church . . . And secondly there was no knob on the outside of Lazarus’ tomb either, that did not stop Jesus.

I’m sorry my friends but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar, He is a powerful Savior. And the Gospel is not a suggestion it is a command.

We need to present the Gospel the way the Apostles did. They turned the world upside down. For some reason the world’s turning the Church upside down, now maybe that’s why.

The same text of the Bible that says John 3:16 also says this in Joshua 11:20, “For it is the Lord’s doing to harden the Hivitte’s hearts that they should come against Israel in battle in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed just as the Lord commanded Moses.”

That same text of Scripture, Isaiah 63:17 says, “Oh, Lord why do you make us wander from Your ways and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?”

That’s the same inspired text that utters those words in John 3. I point out that the very same John wrote John chapter 6 and John chapter 10, but I would like to address John chapter 3 (verse 16) for a moment.

Because you see so many of us have heard it repeated so often within a traditional context that sometimes we forget what the text actually says.

Remember the two verses before that? It was talking about Moses, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.

The contrast with the world is that for Israel you have the serpent lifted up and you need to look at that serpent, and not all Israel did. And those who didn’t perished. But you see God shows a greater love, it’s not just for Israel. He shows a love for the whole world and that He gives His Son.

But notice something, so many people just read this solely out of tradition and they hear that phrase “whosoever” and goes “See? No election!”

But many of you know that’s not what John 3:16 says. It literally says, “God gave His Son so that everyone believing. Every believing one. Every one believing in Christ would have eternal life.” Does everyone do that? Have you ever noticed that there is particularity in John 3:16?

If this is just some sort of general love that there is no special salvific love, that God’s heart is going to be broken for all of eternity because He loves that person who is standing at the parapet of Hell screaming out in hatred at Him just as much as He does to those who bow in adoration before Him, if God’s going to be unhappy through all eternity then why is it that the passage itself says that the reason of the giving was so that the believing one’s would have eternal life?

You see John 3 is consistent with John 6, and John 6 is consistent with John 10, and John 10 is consistent with John 17, and in John 17 in the high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus said “I do not pray for the world. I pray for those you have given me out of the world.”

The very night of His betrayal as He’s going to give His sacrifice, He says, “I don’t pray for the world.”

You say, “But I don’t like to hear that. I don’t like to hear what it says in John 10 when He says to the Pharisees, ‘My sheep hear my voice.’ The reason you don’t hear Me is because you are not of My sheep.”

And we want to turn that upside down. We want to take it and make it backwards and go, “Oh no, no, no. I can choose to be His sheep anytime I want to.”

Can you imagine a shepherd never knows who his flock is because the sheep sorta go, “Well I’m not so sure I’m gonna have him as my shepherd today or not. Maybe I’ll go join that flock.” The Shepherd chooses his sheep. And he then lays down his life in behalf of his sheep.

This is a vital issue. It is a vital issue.

When I debate a Mormon scholar this coming Friday in Salt Lake City, it’s going to be on the nature of sin. Mormons don’t have a Biblical doctrine of sin. That’s why they don’t have a Biblical doctrine of grace.

Grace to be grace must be free.

It cannot be demanded.

You cannot say, “Well, God has to show the exact kind of grace to every single person.” Then, that’s not grace.

If the governor of the state exercises the governor’s sovereign power to pardon a person on death row, that governor is not then under any moral obligation to pardon everybody on death row.

Grace, to be God’s grace, must be absolutely free. It must be based upon God’s good purpose and not on any thing in us.

That is why when you read that Golden Chain of Redemption in Romans Chapter 8, every verb there is something God does. God foreknows. That doesn’t mean He looks down the corridors of time. That’s an active verb. It means He chooses to enter into a relationship in love. He foreknows. He predestines. He calls. He justifies. He glorifies. You can’t break that chain. And that is a gospel of power. That is a gospel that honors God.

My friends, I cannot cause any one of you to lay aside emotions and tradition and simply come to the scriptures. But I can try to model it for you.

If you can hear yourself saying the words in Romans 9, after God says, “I will mercy whom I desire and I will harden whom I desire.” You have a choice to make. You can either go, “I don’t like that.”

I’ve had many a person, when I’ve read that passage say, “I would never worship a God like that.” My response is, “I know. Until God changes your heart, takes out a heart of stone, gives you a heart of flesh, you never will. You never will.”

My friend, if you are a believer and God has taken out your heart of stone and given you a heart of flesh, I hope you can’t hear your own-echoed words in what follows after that one. You will say to me, “Then who still finds fault, for who can resist His will?” Who are you – O man­ – to answer back to God—and there is the answer to tonight’s debate.

“God is God and I am not,” as Steven Curtis Chapman is saying these days. I love that. “God is God and I am not”. “God is God and I am man” and that is the most fundamental observation we can have this evening.

God is sovereign. I am not.

I have been formed by His sovereign power.

He has the right over me, and the amazing thing, folks, is not that He ever chooses to show His wrath because if you know your heart, you deserve it.

The amazing thing about election is that He took a sinner like me and He saved me.

That is the glory of the gospel. Thank you.

—Dr. James R. White, Closing Statement: Debate on Calvinism v. George Bryson held at the Anaheim Vineyard in Southern California.^[i]

Footnotes

1. The full debate is available from www.aomin.org. Thank you to Holly Dye of Refocusing Our Eyes for helping me to transcribe this video clip. [↩]