What Is Faith?

What Is Faith? | The Gift We Are Commanded to Receive

Primary References

Joshua c. 24 v. 14-15; Joel c. 2 v. 32; Mark c. 1 v. 14-15, c. 9 v. 23-25; Luke c. 24 v. 11, v. 36-43; John c. 1 v. 11-13, c. 3 v. 8, c. 6 v. 24-65, c. 12 v. 32, v. 35-36, c. 14 v. 6, c. 20 v. 11-19, v. 24-28; Acts c. 2 v. 21, v. 38-39, c. 17 v. 30-31; Romans c. 1 v. 18-21, c. 2 v. 12-16, c. 3 v. 19-31, c. 4 v. 1-11, c. 10 v. 8-17, v. 21, c. 11 v. 6, v. 33; 1 Corinthians c. 1 v. 28-31, c. 15 v. 58; 2 Corinthians c. 3 v. 4-6; Galatians c. 3 v. 26-29, c. 5 v. 6, c. 6 v. 14-15; Ephesians c. 1 v. 3-14, c. 2 v. 8–10; 1 Timothy c. 2 v. 3-4; 2 Timothy c. 2 v. 13, v. 24-26; Hebrews c. 2 v. 2-4; James c. 2 v. 14-26; 1 Peter c. 2 v. 6–10; 2 Peter c. 1 v. 5-8

Supporting Cross-References

Genesis c. 12, 28, 32, 35; Deuteronomy c. 7 v. 6–12; Proverbs c. 22 v. 6; Isaiah c. 6 v. 8, c. 55 v. 8-9; Malachi c. 3 v. 6; Matthew c. 17 v. 5, c. 18 v. 4, c. 22 v. 1-14; c. 25 v. 31-46, c. 28 v. 18-20; Mark c. 9 v. 7, c. 10 v. 15, c. 12 v. 30; Luke c. 9 v. 35, c. 12 v. 47-48, c. 18 v. 17; Acts c. 9; Romans c. 6 v. 23; Galatians c. 5 v. 22-23; 1 Thessalonians c. 1 v. 3; Hebrews c. 6 v. 18; James c. 2 v. 19, c. 4 v. 12; 2 Peter c. 3 v. 9

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/are-there-two-wills-in-god?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-providence-of-god-session-8?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07452b.htm

INTRO & HOOK

Greetings, and welcome to — The Wisdom Crucible with Jakob McClain — where you and I engage in the ongoing practice of applying biblical thinking to deepen our understanding of biblical truth.

Faith is often reduced to one of three inadequate definitions: wishful thinking, intellectual agreement, or moral effort. However, what Scripture actually gives us is better in every way: more believable, rational, and meaningful. Faith is not pretending without evidence, merely acknowledging facts, or earning through religious effort.

Each of those erroneous interpretations can distort more than merely the doctrine of Faith. They can distort our understanding of the God who calls us to Faith, because if his Faith is irrational then it’s not wise; if it’s transactional then it’s not gracious, and if it’s coercive then it’s not loving.

Faith is the unbreakable adhesive that fixes the spirit of a true believer to the Spirit of God — permanently!

If you’re in agreement with that already, great — but if you came to examine the weeds with me, more than just to prove yourself or someone else right or wrong, but to refine your belief under the heat of Scripture, then you should appreciate the following deep dive into the concept of faith. By the end, after we’ve worked through those weeds step-by-step, I’ll cut back through them with a parable and final exhortation meant to bring the whole discussion back to a simple, actionable center: believe, repent, trust, and follow Christ.

Beyond just the doctrine of faith, I am considering this episode a theology of faith. What I mean by that contrast is that while I do intend to use Scripture to define the doctrine, that being the definition according to biblical belief, I am also going to trace the implications of doctrine to consider how it relates to our theology — our study and understanding of God, his Word, and our relationship with Him.

I could say that there are at least a few reasonable angles of approach for this topic, but since my purpose is to facilitate a well-rounded understanding of biblical faith, I am going to focus on what Scripture affirms and support the completion of that understanding by addressing what seem to me to be the most common misunderstandings that we may encounter. While I will mention some specific arguments from certain theologians and teachers such as John Piper, my focus is not on taking sides with people, but with Scripture. I believe that while a consensus against you should cause you concern that you may need to re-evaluate your position, we must also be willing to side with God against any consensus of man. With that in mind, I will be more focused on the arguments of Scripture than the arguments of others.

Of course, I won’t be able to cover every question that one might ask, so if you still have a burning question that you can’t answer or let go of by the end of this discussion then I invite you to pose that question in any way that you prefer, whether that’s through the podcast or YouTube comment section, an email to [email protected], or a direct message on X. In addition to the plain preaching and soapbox moments that you might expect from a talking head online, I will also be using a plethora of Scripture to demonstrate how I’ve developed my doctrinal and theological statements regarding the Christian Faith. That said, let’s dig in together.

THE CENTRAL TENSION

My understanding of biblical faith has evolved substantially as I’ve progressed beyond the simple children's church lessons to ask the obvious questions that arise from a close examination of the Scriptures pertaining to the nature of faith. That’s not to complain about the way I was taught as a child, but merely to point out that a childish understanding of faith is not enough to answer the kinds of questions that a more mature mind may consider, such as when trying to reconcile human will and responsibility with the doctrine of grace-enabled and God-dependent faith.

In case you feel that by saying that I should be rebuked along with the disciples for rejecting child-like faith, let me first remind you that in Matthew 18:4, Jesus is responding to a question that probably stemmed from their sinful human pride. What He said was, “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.” I believe that the key word in that verse reveals to us the value that He is teaching in this passage, which may help to clarify Luke 18:17 and Mark 10:15 as well.

How do we receive the gift of faith, the blood of Christ, and the Kingdom of Heaven? Humbly, because we have done nothing to earn it.

A newborn has done nothing to earn its mother’s love by the time of birth. In fact, the baby has spent months making her miserable to some degree and adding nothing tangibly helpful to the mother’s daily life. I don’t love my children because they have somehow earned it. As parents, we love our children because God loves his children, and He designed us to love our children.

So, barely past the introduction, the theology of Faith has already taught us something about God’s fatherly nature and our relationship to Him as children to a parent: He offers out of love what we could not earn yet so desperately require for our very survival into eternity.

Furthermore, God also tells us in Proverbs c. 22 v. 6 to train up a child in the way they should go, and in Mark c. 12 v. 30 to love God with all our strength, soul, heart, and mind. I can try to support a variety of opinions from any one of these verses, but the synthesis of Scripture is that I receive the Gospel with child-like humility and dependence and reach to grasp its meaning and implications so that I am not only loving God emotionally or religiously but with my mind also through the pursuit of understanding and wisdom.

Now, as I step off of my first soapbox of this episode, let us refocus on the task at hand. For the purpose of this episode, I’m going to define the central tension through the following questions: Does Scripture teach that faith itself is a gift, and if so, why and how does it teach us to believe and receive faith?

Often when I’ve heard faith discussed in a sermon or conversation, the emphasis is on our need to be faithful. While I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, it does allow the inference of some people that faith is dependent solely on us; as though it’s our side of the bargain, the thing that we bring into our relationship with God. In contrast, when reading carefully crafted doctrinal statements of faith, what I have also often seen is the emphasis instead being on the gifting of grace and our dependence on God for it.

In fact, for many professing the Christian faith, this is not only a matter of emphasis but a genuine difference in doctrine with far-reaching implications for other aspects of theology such as salvation and the unchanging attributes of God.

While there are innumerable nuanced perspectives that could be considered, I believe that the three most common understandings of faith within Christianity are as follows: faith as man’s contribution faith as a grace-enabled response and faith as the inevitable result of irresistible grace.

I am going to propose the following as a summary of my conclusion after studying Scripture and considering my own personal experience with God. Without God’s initiative to reach out to us, we would not be able to acquire faith independently, and through God’s gracious initiative to create us and to provide the faculties and call necessary for the opportunity and ability to perceive and respond to his self-revelation, He enables us to participate in relationship with Him through faith.

That means that faith is impossible to acquire apart from God’s grace, but He still holds each individual accountable for their response to the Gospel through their God-given gift of free will.

Furthermore, knowing that faith is given in the context of God's foreknowledge of our response, I consider the nature of faith as a gift to be further revelation of His mercy rather than evidence for determinism because foreknowledge by itself does not require the conclusion that God coerces or effectively forces our decision. While He could rightfully do that, acknowledging God’s foreknowledge only really requires the conclusion that He has always known what choice will be made even before we have the chance to make that choice.

This would lend support to a theory that some hold to that his desire to save people from suffering could be a potential motive for what the Bible describes as God hardening the hearts of those who ultimately reject the Faith since greater revelation imparts greater responsibility, which in turn requires greater consequence for rebellion. I won’t be building a case for that in this discussion. Although, for now, I consider it reasonable speculation because it seems plausible to infer from the text, but it is also not explicitly stated and does not seem to me as of yet obviously implied as a comprehensive answer to the question regarding hardened hearts.

Returning to the topic of Faith itself, I also want to point out before I present the primary evidence that the tension between the gifting and command to receive is not due to contradiction, but I think, most likely, it is due to the difficulty that some people have with either accepting or understanding that they are responsible for their choice to receive and participate with that gift. If all of that seems at first overly convoluted, I think the examination of relevant Scriptures one at a time followed by an examination of the metanarrative of the Bible will make it clear enough by the end of this study.

NOT BLIND BELIEF, BUT APPROPRIATE RESPONSE

As we examine Scriptures pertaining to the nature of Faith, I want to begin with those that differentiate biblical Faith from what I refer to as blind belief. The reason being that one who has blind belief without good reason can also be led astray to blind disbelief without good reason.

Some people use the term “blind faith” to describe this same concept, but biblical Faith is by definition not blind, so instead I prefer the term “blind belief” which doesn’t necessarily imply evidence or reasoning. A belief can be reasoned or whimsical, whereas genuine Faith requires genuine reason.

Faith does not require walking through life in darkness imposed by religious blindfolding. It is letting go of the blindfold of the enemy that keeps us in darkness so that we can walk in the light of God’s glory. In this way, the Faith that we are called to reflects the mind of a God who is not threatened by honest examination, evidence, or reasoning, because He is Himself the source of truth.

General revelation in creation provides enough evidence to leave us with no excuse to disbelieve the reality of our Creator, special revelation through the Scriptures and incarnation of Christ has brought us the Gospel, and the work of God in every believer’s spirit is the final nail in the coffin of our once-destined death. Except that while the grave is destined to hold the old nature of sin and death forever, it has no hold on the reborn spirit of the Church that is made new by the Holy Spirit!

Faith does not manufacture truth. Faith receives truth from the God who originates and reveals it. Listen to what Scripture has to say about this, beginning with Romans c. 1 v. 18-21.

For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

End quote.

In Scripture, we find that no one has an excuse. There is a general revelation of, at the bare minimum, the power and divinity of God through the witness of creation. It is futile and foolish thinking that prevents people from recognizing God in creation, even without hearing the Gospel of Christ.

The foolishness is in the rejection of reality. The futility is in the inability to change that reality through disbelief. The Creator doesn’t stop existing just because the creation pretends that He isn’t real.

Let’s next consider Romans c. 2 v. 12-16.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my Gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

End quote.

In this letter to the Romans, God reveals that not only do we have the external witness of creation to direct our attention to God, but we also have his law written on our hearts, which we experience through what is called the conscience. The obvious evidence is in the substantial overlap of moral laws across the ages and cultures of the world.

A man’s conscience must be dulled by his own self-deception to believe that something such as murder is acceptable because God granted us the law written into our beings to afford us a guide to show us how to combat our sin nature. By understanding this, we can also understand that the truth of God’s nature and presence is not hidden by the lack of evidence. Rather, human perception is obscured by the darkness of sin.

Next, we will consider Romans c. 10 v. 14–17.

How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

End quote.

This passage teaches us that Faith in Christ comes from hearing the Gospel of Christ. Without some form of exposure to the Gospel of Christ, you would not know who Christ is and have the opportunity to have Faith in Him. From this we can also know that Faith is not a blind self-generated belief, but a response to the revelation of God.

As with the divine attributes apparent from general revelation, reading the Bible and listening to preachers are not the only ways to receive revelation of the Gospel of Christ either.

Paul knew of the Gospel. Although I can’t define the limits of what he knew prior to his conversion, I do know what Acts c. 9 tells us, which is that he was still breathing threats of murder against the followers of Jesus Christ right up until the moment that Jesus revealed Himself personally to Paul on the road to Damascus. I’ve heard of numerous other stories of people having dreams, visions, or other types of encounters with God since then; some long ago and some in the modern day.

My point is that Romans c. 10 is not saying that people who aren’t evangelized by conventional natural methods are simply out of luck. That still doesn’t remove the urgency for evangelism, because even though God can evangelize supernaturally, He also gave us the Great Commission in Matthew 28; commanding that we go out and make disciples.

One truth that we must remember is that our commission doesn’t shift the responsibility for saving people from God to us. What it does do is provide yet more miraculous evidence for God in the form of sinners transformed by the Holy Spirit proclaiming their death and resurrection in Christ!

Next, consider with me Hebrews c. 2 v. 2-4.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

End quote.

Why did the writer of Hebrews imply that there is a great offer of salvation that they can’t neglect? Because the message declared by the angels proved to be reliable. Not, because they had a hunch, or a gut feeling, or they felt at peace about it all, but because it was proven to them.

God the Son brought the Gospel, God the Father testified to the legitimacy of the Son through the miracles culminating with the resurrection, and God the Spirit confirms the fruit of salvation through spiritual gifts. The first generation of Jesus’s disciples did not have a blind faith.

The Gospel of John tells us in c. 20 v. 11-14 that Mary Magdalene was weeping outside of the tomb when Jesus first appeared to her. He asked why she was weeping. In response, she claimed that her Lord’s body had been stolen from the tomb!

Despite the fact that Jesus had predicted his death and resurrection to his disciples prior to the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene did not presume that Jesus had risen from the dead at that time; probably because, like most people, she understood that the dead aren’t known for walking out of their tombs. He had to say her name and draw her full attention to Himself for her to recognize Him. Yet, she was so thoroughly convinced from a close inspection of Him that she immediately obeyed his command to go to the other disciples and proclaim the resurrection!

The related passage in Luke c. 24 notes in v. 11 that after Mary and the other women with her proclaimed the resurrection to the apostles, they considered it no more than idle chatter! This is the kind of embarrassing detail that you wouldn’t add to your story if you were giving a false witness or trying to start a baseless religion. The apostles, of whom several later went on to die a martyr’s death for the Gospel of Christ, did not believe the Gospel when they first heard it.

Even when Jesus appeared before them later in v. 36 and spoke to them face-to-face, the text informs us that they initially thought they saw a spirit. To their credit, John c. 20 v. 19 notes that the doors were locked when Jesus appeared before them, seeming to imply that Jesus entered the room miraculously without opening the door.

In their shoes I probably would have thought He were a spirit as well, or that I was out of my mind, which is probably why Jesus appeared at least 11 times before his ascension to people individually, in small groups, and also to over 500 people at once. There’s no logical foundation for rationalizing that historical account as hundreds of people all sharing the same hallucination of the same risen Savior, especially since they were initially convinced that He was dead and were evidently more prone to believe in the appearance of a ghost than a bodily resurrection.

John c. 20 v. 24-28 tells us that Thomas refused to believe in the Gospel until 8 days after people had begun to report the resurrection when Jesus again appeared suddenly within a locked room and told Thomas to place his fingers in the scars of his Savior. The apostles did not have a blind faith. They responded, finally, and appropriately, when their resurrected Lord appeared before them and proved Himself to them, personally. Despite their initial disbelief, He still pursued them to the depths of their confusion and despair to change everything.

Is that not also the testimony of most Christians today? Nearly every time that I have heard someone explain why they believe Christ is Lord, it boils down to the fact that they genuinely believe that God has revealed Himself to them and renewed their spirit, changing their very identity.

We do not have a blind faith. Our Faith is an appropriate response to the revelation of God in our lives. You will not believe in God because I tell you to. You will believe in God because He is revealed in creation and active in your life.

GRACE — WHAT & WHEREFORE ART THOU?

Having established that Faith is not blind, we now need to confirm why revelation alone is not enough. Therefore, the next step in this theology of Faith requires us to understand the necessity of grace and its function in the process of redemption for mankind.

This requires much more than simply agreeing that God covers our sins with his grace, because while that is enough for children’s church or elevator-speech evangelism, it doesn’t explain what grace is and why it’s necessary. So, let’s consider the shape of our need and how God’s grace immaculately fills that desperate need. To state it simply, for mankind, the ministry of grace is necessary for life because the ministry of law provides us only death.

Consider 2 Corinthians c. 3 v. 4-6.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

End quote.

The Scripture’s meaning here is clear: If all that we had was the law, we would remain dead in our sins — destined for an eternity separated from our just Creator. But why is it that the law requires our death? Because as is plainly stated in Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death.”

Some might wonder who that applies to. Who has sinned and earned death? The answer is quite simple — all who fall short of the glory of God — so, who has fallen short of the glory of God? The answer, yet again, is quite simple and quite unfortunate: all have fallen short of the glory of God.

Consider Romans c. 3 v. 19-31.

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 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. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one — who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

End quote.

So, because all have sinned and fallen short of the standard of righteousness, we are dependent on the redemptive love of God for salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ by the sacrifice of his blood to pay for our sin. In this way, God has satisfied his law’s requirement of righteousness and justice through Jesus. In other words, grace does not mean that God ignores justice, but that He fulfills it in Himself for the sake of sinners.

He provides the means for Faith in Christ on our behalf and calls us to join in this faith — which is offered to us by grace because we cannot earn it. This idea comes straight from the writings of Paul in Romans c. 11 v. 6.

If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise, grace would no longer be grace.

End quote.

Anyone who earns their way into Heaven by upholding the perfect standard of righteousness doesn’t need grace. Grace is by definition something that is not earned, and according to Scripture our Faith for salvation is dependent on grace.

Thus, the act of believing, which we do in obedient response to God’s call, is not a work. It is merely our humble open-handed response to accept the gift of salvation.

For faith to be a work, it would have to earn salvation, but consider this: you don’t treat gifts that way when given by someone other than God, do you? If someone gives you a birthday gift, do you negate the gifting and earn that gift by willingly receiving it? No, of course not.

Furthermore, any good work that we do accomplish is too late to save us, because from the earliest days that we can be held accountable for, we all have sinned. God’s standard is perfection — not being perfect for a moment, but endless, eternal perfection.

From the first sin of your life, you earned separation from God according to his justice as taught through the law, so you should repent and believe earnestly in the Gospel of Christ — the gift of grace that allows you to participate in a redeemed relationship with God — because the Christ is the only man to ever live a sinless life by perfectly upholding the standard of righteousness. It is because He upheld the law that He was able to suffer on our behalf the consequences of sin and offer to us saving grace.

Humanity’s deepest problem has never been lacking information as to how to obtain salvation. Humanity’s deepest problem is the spiritual corruption of the sinful nature of the flesh. We are easily inclined to suppress the light of truth to preserve the ignorance afforded by the darkness that we cling to.

This leads to moral failure, which further incentivizes us to cling to the dark rather than risk the discomfort of exposure and disinfection in the light. This destructive cycle produces exactly one fruit in our lives — death, as we already know from Romans 6:23.

In John c. 6 Jesus talks about the bread of life. He reminds the Jews that after the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites in the wilderness ate the manna from Heaven, but they all still died at the eventual end of their mortality. Christians eat the bread of life and are sustained by it for eternity.

This parallels the reality of human works failing to save us from the death required by the law, whereas the gift of Faith is the means by which God provides for completed salvation in us. This passage teaches us many things, one of which is the dependence of the Christian Faith on God’s grace.

In the interest of understanding the context that informs the interpretive work that comes next, I’m going to read John c. 6 v. 24-65.

When the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on Him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to Him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” So they said to Him, “Then what sign do You do, that we may see and believe You? What work do You perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to Him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” So the Jews grumbled about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me — not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as He taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in Himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him.) And He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

End quote.

Now that we’ve examined the entire scene, let’s take a closer look at a few theological statements that Jesus made through this passage, starting with v. 27-29. This exchange is composed of a theological statement, followed by a question, followed by a clarifying statement regarding the original statement.

First, in v. 27, Jesus tells the people that instead of working for food that perishes, they should work for the food that sustains eternal life. In v. 28, the people ask Jesus to clarify what work is considered the work of God which leads to eternal life. Finally, in v. 29, Jesus reveals that “work” in his metaphor is not meritorious labor, but believing in the Gospel that Jesus is bringing to them.

It’s important to follow the flow of ideas throughout the whole conversation rather than just interpreting one verse at a time, because if you read v. 29 out of context then you could adopt one of a couple easy misinterpretations.

Due to the translated wording “the work of God”, which was the same in all 4 common translations that I checked, you might think that Jesus is saying that God is the one doing the work of believing. Another possible and more serious error, I think, would be to interpret Jesus to be teaching that belief in Him is a meritorious work, meaning that it actually contributes to you meriting or earning grace from God for salvation.

Jesus is not using the word for work in this discussion the way that theologians typically do in soteriological discussions — those pertaining to the topic of salvation. You would have a hard time justifying that interpretation of John 6:29 in light of all of the other Scriptures that describe grace as a gift that we cannot earn for ourselves, but as earned entirely by the salvific work of Jesus through the cross.

Jesus is simply being consistent with the metaphorical language that He had been using from the start of that discussion when He told the people not to work for food that perishes, but for that which leads to eternal life. The point was not that belief is a work, but that they should stop focusing their labor on things that would not be beneficial for eternity.

Furthermore, if you examine the Greek in v. 29, you’ll find that it uses a form of the same Greek word for ‘work’ as is used in 1 Corinthians 15:58, which says the following:

My beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

End quote.

How could the work of the Lord refer to something God Himself is doing rather than godly work that we are doing when in the very same breath it says to not let “your labor” be in vain? That’s obviously not referring to God’s labor, but our own human labor. The point is not that we work for our salvation, but that because of our salvation we should do good works.

Acquiring salvation isn’t a business-like transaction where we simply and justly acquire something for a payment of our own means. You cannot be genuinely indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God that brings the fruits discussed in Galatians 5 and converts doubters to martyrs without being transformed into a new being that is more inclined to godliness.

That increased inclination to godliness that the Spirit of God develops in us as we experience ongoing sanctification to become more like God should result in us doing more godly works, not to merit salvation for the sake of self-preservation, but for the sake of being obedient to God and becoming more like God so that you can bring glory to his name and serve as salt and light in this cursed world!

Doing good works may benefit you, but that should not be your focus. Your focus should be on blessing God and others. That is a sign of the eternal gift of the Spirit, which is love.

I have more to discuss regarding that in a later section of this episode in which we’ll consider the fruitfulness of Faith. For now, the primary point is that belief or faith in the Gospel is not a meritorious work that earns salvation.

Let’s return to John c. 6 to consider carefully Jesus’s statement in v. 44. He says, “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him”.

This is the verse in this passage that I think is most likely to be used by a Reformed or Calvinist theologian to support a doctrine of deterministic irresistible grace.

That doctrine asserts that because humans are so completely spiritually depraved God must save us by effectively calling those who are predestined according to his unconditional election which I would argue necessarily implies that it functionally disregards our individual wills since it requires grace to either ignore or bypass our wills or forcibly or effectually change our wills such that it removes the genuine possibility of ultimately rejecting the Gospel.

This also seems to necessarily imply that those who are destined for Hell have effectively been prevented from ever having a genuine opportunity to receive salvation since they are not provided the irresistible grace that is necessary to overcome total depravity.

In essence, the punch line is this: If the total depravity of humanity means that no one can receive salvation without irresistible grace, and God withholds that necessary irresistible grace from the non-elect, then the non-elect never have a genuine possibility of receiving salvation.

One such as myself who does not conform to Reformed theology and does not affirm this doctrine of irresistible grace might argue that such a doctrine effectively removes our personal responsibility for the reception of Faith since we are apparently not able to make a decision one way or the other of our own wills. Genuine responsibility requires genuine choice, which seems functionally removed under the doctrine of irresistible grace.

Of course, a Reformed theologian will not likely appreciate the way that I’ve described the irresistible grace doctrine because my description emphasizes what I understand to be an obviously unbiblical implication which seems necessarily derivative of that doctrine. I wouldn’t break fellowship with someone over this disagreement, but I still consider it a serious doctrinal disagreement that can impact the way that we represent God to the world as his image bearers, as well as our broader theological beliefs such as the nature of our relationship with God and the urgent purpose of evangelism.

That said, let’s consider the key question that leads us to the doctrine of Faith that is truly taught in John 6:44. That question is this: What does Jesus mean when He says that the Father draws people to Him? Does the draw of the Father coerce or force our compliance, or does it still allow and require the response of our individual wills to accept the call that leads to belief and Faith?

A Reformed or Calvinist theologian may propose the argument that the second half of v. 44, where Jesus says, “and I will raise him up on the last day”, indicates that everyone drawn by the Father must be saved. The problem with this claim is that it requires the assumption that Jesus is defining every person whom God ever draws rather than describing just those who actually respond to Him.

The one who comes to Jesus in Faith will certainly be raised, but this does not prove that God draws to Himself in such a way as to prevent the possibility of resistance — especially when John c. 12 v. 32 says that Christ will draw all people to Himself and Scripture plainly teaches that not all people will be saved.

It’s easy enough to simply contest isolated verses that seem to imply an irresistible election by pointing to those that seem to require a free will choice, but first, I want to show the interpretive extent and limitation of the Greek in this passage and a related verse that comes shortly thereafter.

The reason that I think this can be helpful is that while having English translations is great for people who can’t read Greek, the syntax of a translation is not necessarily inspired in the same way that the original writing of the Scripture was inspired by the Holy Spirit. I say that because I know that people sometimes hinge entire doctrines on the wording of a particular translation of a particular verse that doesn’t always fit very well with the original text. This is why I try to remember to check multiple translations and occasionally perform word studies for key words that could change the development of entire doctrines.

So, let’s consider a little Greek and Jesus’s use of the word translated “draw” in multiple contexts. John 12:32 records Jesus saying that He “will draw all people to” Himself.

In this case, Strong’s definition for helko, the Greek word translated to “draw” in this text, indicates that it can be used in a literal or figurative sense. I would also like to note that the Greek uses the term pantas, a form of pas rendered in this text as “all people”, which, like the term for “draw”, is also not a special term that can decide this issue by its definition alone. In short, from researching these terms, I have found no indication that the definitions of these terms alone require narrowing the scope from including all individuals, whether elect or not.

In both cases, according to the normal semantic range, there is room for interpretation. That being true, it’s clear that we must look beyond these isolated terms to their greater context to interpret the intended meaning of this Scripture.

To that end, consider that for the word “draw” to indicate an irresistible summons, one of two things must be true. Either all people who have ever lived must be saved, which would be universalism, or the “all people” in this text must only refer to all who will receive Christ.

First, I will note that universalism directly contradicts the passages of Scripture that refer to those who will not be allowed into the Kingdom of God. Second, I will also note that the narrow application of this statement to Christians or the elect exclusively is not apparent in the text of John.

The best evidence that I have found for supporting that interpretation says that because Jesus was speaking to Jews at the time, and Greeks were mentioned earlier in the text, perhaps He meant to explain that Gentiles would be included in the drawing along with Jews.

That proposition might allow one to still affirm the possibility of irresistible grace, but only if the context requires such a narrowed reading, and the weight of that “if” seems concerning to me since the purpose of this speculation is to reconcile a doctrine of grace with biblical principles that I would say preclude any definition of grace that functionally excludes the genuine possibility of individual choice to receive the gift of Faith. A point of inclusion for Gentiles and Jews together in the Faith can be true without proving that “all people” means only “all who receive Christ”.

So, consider this: Do you believe that all people who have ever lived will be ultimately saved unto eternity, as universalism affirms? If so, who then are the goats whom Jesus will separate from the sheep to be sent to the eternal fire according to his parable in Matthew c. 25 v. 31-46; they to whom Jesus will say, “I was hungry and you gave me no food”? Who then are the invited guests found unworthy in the parable of the wedding feast between Christ and his Church in Matthew c. 22 v. 1-14?

My point regarding the text of John c. 12 is that it seems to plainly refer to literally all people with no apparent qualifier to narrow the scope. This leaves me with the conclusion that the text genuinely says what it appears to say: that God will draw everyone to Himself.

My next question is, does this fit with the character of God as revealed throughout Scripture? Indeed, it fits quite well, as is evidenced through numerous other passages such as 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9.

1 Timothy 2:4 says that “God our Savior… desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 2 Peter 3:9 says that “the Lord… is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

As a minor point of critique, I find it interesting that some seem to suggest the terms “draw” and “grant repentance” in the texts are proof of unconditional election, yet it seems to me that this case is no more convincing than if one were to say that 2 Peter must imply human sufficiency since it reveals God’s desire that “all reach repentance”.

If drawing and granting must imply human passivity by definition or connotation, then perhaps one could also say that to “reach” conversely must imply only human initiative. To avoid any confusion regarding this point, that is not my actual argument.

I’m only suggesting that to argue from the position that God’s drawing and granting must necessarily imply only God’s action, which therefore excludes functionally meaningful individual agency to accept or reject the Gospel, is just as faulty as arguing from the position that human reaching must necessarily imply only human action. which therefore excludes the necessity of God’s initiation.

Thus, yet again, I must insist that we cannot hinge our understanding of this doctrine on isolated terms, but on the synthesis of all Scripture. That being said, if God desires for all to be saved, draws all to Himself, and yet not all are saved, then the idea of the chosen being drawn to God cannot be flattened and distorted into irresistible coercion.

At this point, insisting on another interpretation of John 6 seems less likely to me to be a result of responsible exegesis, drawing the natural meaning of the text, and more likely eisegesis, reading an unnatural interpretation into the text, motivated by the need to satisfy a theological agenda that must interpret v. 44 as irresistible grace that effectively forces faith upon us regardless of our wills. I know that those holding to truly irresistible grace probably wouldn’t like that description, but I haven’t been able to find or figure a better explanation that doesn’t blatantly contradict other plain statements of Scripture in all of my time studying this issue, so I think my description is fair.

If you interpret Jesus in John 6 to mean that everyone whom God will draw must respond with Faith, then I suggest that you should also interpret the same connotation for “draw” in c. 12 to be consistent, as there is no apparent indication in the text to convey a different meaning. Let’s consider what Jesus says in v. 63-65.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” And He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

End quote.

With that last statement in v. 65, Jesus reveals the explanation for why no one can come to Him without the Father granting it. The theological basis came just prior in v. 63: “the Spirit gives life, the flesh is no help at all.” This shouldn’t be surprising at this point, because we’ve already established that only the Spirit of God is the source of life and the one who renews our spirits.

Furthermore, only God can reveal Himself according to his will. If He did not desire and act to reveal Himself, then we would have no ability to seek and find Him. That’s the contrast between the inability of the flesh and the necessity of God to reach out with the offer of grace.

This is why no one can come to Jesus without the Father granting it: without the call of God to direct us we are like the blind searching for a light. More than merely lost, we are genuinely incapable of overcoming the corrupted flesh without God’s grace. As with physical blindness, the blind in this simile can be both totally dependent on a helper and yet also responsible for accepting or rejecting the necessary offer of guidance from a helper.

Regarding this discussion of grace and Faith, the conclusion that I’m left with is that God enables our Faith through his gracious call to believe in Jesus. This is where grace fits in.

While it is according to God’s justice that He condemns evil, it is according to his grace that He also offers the gift of Faith through the call to believe and respond to the Gospel of Christ. If He did not freely offer it, we could not choose to receive it.

Because of this, Faith is a gift, fully dependent on God, but only released from his hand into our lives to be experienced after our willing reception that requires, as God decrees through Scripture, that we repent and believe. This is not because God couldn’t force it upon us, but because it is his expressed will that we participate with Him in a genuinely loving relationship.

As we know from Scripture’s handling of godly love, the difference between genuine love and robotic or coerced servitude is the genuine ability and option to receive Him, or reject Him. This is why, despite Faith being a gift dependent on God’s grace, we are still each held personally accountable for our response to receive it.

THE EMPHASIS ON RECEPTION

So, now that we understand that Faith which leads to salvation is a gift, we can move on to the next most obvious question regarding the nature of Faith. I don’t think this is a particularly perplexing question, but its mere presence is enough for some people to claim that there’s a contradiction between the prior idea and what I’ll present as the biblical answer to that question.

Furthermore, how this question is answered is one of the most notable differences between the original primary branches of the Protestant tradition that broke away from Catholicism in the 16th century with the intent to return to the apostolic roots and re-align the Church with Scripture first. In my own words, the question that I’m referring to is this: If Faith is a gift freely given, how do we interpret the frequent command throughout Scripture to believe, to have faith, to be faithful?

I’ve spent a lot of time thus far in this episode emphasizing the gifted nature of Faith, but I can easily show a larger sample size of verses commanding people to be faithful in a way that gives some people the impression that it’s something that we provide independently from within ourselves.

That said, you may have heard that context is king when it comes to interpreting Scripture. Regarding this discussion at the least, I think that doesn’t quite sufficiently express the necessary caution, because when we are trying to draw implications for a whole theological system from single verses, we need much more than just the immediate context of that sentence, paragraph, or even chapter.

We need to consider the entire book and how that book fits within the greater context of Scripture as a whole. We need to consider the purpose and implications of that isolated text in the grand metanarrative, or over-arching story, that God has authored through creation.

First and foremost, we must acknowledge that Scripture interprets Scripture, and the writers of Scripture were not a collection of isolated ancient imbeciles making up a religion as they went along. They were spiritually inspired disciples of the one true all-knowing God.

What that means for us in this circumstance is that when two small snippets of Scripture seem like they could contradict each other, or at least don’t seem to be painting quite the same picture, we need to expand our perspective and consider the greater framework of our great God to understand how they fit together.

There are no contradictions in the inspired truth claims of Scripture. There are recordings of people whose words contradict claims of Scripture, but those are descriptive rather than prescriptive: records of others’ errors discussed within the inerrant Word of God.

If describing faith as a gift and as something that we are responsible for taking hold of still seems contradictory to you, then carefully considering both of these perspectives as they are offered throughout Scripture and how they can complement each other should reveal the missing piece. Let’s do that by considering now the emphasis of Scripture on our reception and personal responsibility, beginning with the beautifully grace-revealing analogy in John c. 12 v. 35-36. In that passage, Jesus is recorded saying this to the people:

The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.

End quote.

In this analogy, Jesus explains to us that God gives light, but people are also commanded to respond to it. How can people be responsible for belief if it is enabled by grace? By the same means that we are responsible with the choices that we make based on what we can see even though we need an external source of light in order to see.

The very physiological mechanism of sight teaches us something profound about God! Our eyes can’t directly perceive anything in this world without light coming into them and providing a picture on the retina for our brain to interpret.

Thus, while you have the light, believe what you have seen. There will come a day when that light will no longer be available, and you will be lost in darkness if you didn’t walk the narrow road when you had the chance.

This is one of many examples throughout the Bible where we are taught not merely to take hold of one aspect of God’s nature at a time, but to hold together in our understanding all aspects of his nature at all times. Theology must not be haphazardly crafted from fragmented doctrines, but drawn out of Scripture with open-minded submission to the Holy Spirit’s inspired complementary explanations found within Scripture itself.

God’s grace does not exist in isolation. It exists in the light of his justice, mercy, and love.

Next, let’s re-examine John c. 6 v. 47. Only a few sentences after Jesus’s comment regarding the Father drawing people to Jesus, He then says the following in v. 47 pertaining to belief in Himself: “whoever believes has eternal life”, implying that whoever does not believe will not have eternal life.

This moves the emphasis from the giver to the receiver — from the gifted nature of Faith to the responsibility of choosing to receive it. Nevertheless, that shift of emphasis is not due to contradiction, but seemingly in order to communicate an urgent exhortation for proper response.

If we have a responsibility to respond with belief, then it seems safe to say that it’s more important for us to understand and accept that fact than it is for us to understand how Faith mechanistically functions as a gift. While both concepts are necessary for a completed and perfect theology of Faith, it is not actually our first priority to achieve the full wisdom of God to understand all things perfectly.

His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, his mind as unknowable as the vastness of creation! Our need is not perfected understanding of all things, as only God has, but sufficient understanding to repent and believe.

If all one hears is that Faith is a gift and they are not told that they need to respond and believe in the Gospel, then they might just respond with something like, “oh, that’s neat”, and then shelve it in the back of their mind where they will do nothing with it, at least not anytime soon. Our responsibility for response is the reason for the urgency in the frequent command to believe.

When Jesus says, “whoever believes has eternal life”, He is not describing bare mental assent. The context makes that clear. This belief is connected with coming to Christ, receiving life from Christ, feeding upon Christ as the bread of life, and being raised by Christ on the last day. So, the belief Jesus calls for is not mere acknowledgment of a fact, but trusting reception of Him.

The distinction between faithful belief and mere mental assent is critically important because, as it says in James 2:19, “even the demons believe — and shudder!” Obviously, not all categories of belief lead to saving Faith. Otherwise, the demons who shudder in fear of God would be saved as well, and we know that this is not the case because their destiny is the lake of fire.

The difference between the one described in John 6:47 and the demons described in James 2:19 is this: Belief that merely causes you to shudder in fear merely acknowledges the reality of a coming punishment. Belief that results in one entrusting their spirit to Christ leads to saving Faith.

This interpretation of “belief” is consistent with its use in other Scriptures as well. One particularly interesting reference for this topic, I think, is Mark c. 9 v. 23 where Jesus said to the father of a boy possessed by an evil spirit that “all things are possible for one who believes”.

The Greek text in that passage that the ESV translates to “for one who believes” contains the same Greek verb and very similar grammatical construction that is present in John 6:47. Yet, what else do we read in v. 24 about the belief of the boy’s father just before Jesus cleanses the boy: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

This should be a great comfort to everyone who ever struggles with doubt after coming to Jesus, which seems to be quite a common experience. While the boy’s father still had doubt, he committed to trust in the Lord, and Jesus’s response shows us that this kind of belief is enough for Him to act upon, even if it doesn’t demonstrate the full confidence that God deserves.

While this text isn’t explicitly about spiritual salvation in the same sense as John 6:47, it’s still using the same Greek to talk about belief that leads to miraculous intervention from Jesus to cleanse an unclean spirit. With this passage in particular, it would not make sense to interpret belief as coerced since the father of the boy expressed doubt even in the act of committing to trust Jesus to save his son.

He believed because Jesus revealed Himself as the Lord, capable and worthy of Faith, and Jesus vindicated that belief with a miracle, despite the obvious presence of doubt. The only way to support an interpretation of coerced belief from this passage would be to say that God forced the man to believe and doubt simultaneously.

While we could say that God is capable of such a thing, I cannot fathom a justification for thinking that this is consistent with God’s revealed character and the greater narrative of Scripture, or even the plethora of anecdotal evidence that is available from the personal testimonies that I’ve witnessed. Let’s briefly consider a few more examples.

Mark c. 1 v. 14-15 says:

Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel of God, and saying “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.”

End quote.

This is Christ’s simple repeated command: repent and believe in the Gospel — meaning turn away from your sins and have faith in God for salvation through the death and resurrection of the Son of Man: Jesus Christ!

Acts c. 17 v. 30-31 says:

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed; and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.

End quote.

God has proven the identity of Christ through the resurrection as the one who will judge the world, and calls us to repent before the coming Day of the Lord. Once again, we wouldn’t have the Gospel without grace paving the way for Faith, but we can’t avoid the responsibility implicit in the command to repent and believe!

In Acts c. 2 v. 38 during Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, he said to the crowd:

Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

End quote.

Again, we see that when people learn who Jesus is and what He has done for them, and they ask what they should do, the answer is to take action — to respond appropriately, which is to repent, believe, and receive the Holy Spirit of God — to proclaim to the world through baptism in the name of Jesus Christ that you will be found in Him on the day of resurrection because his life is now your life!

Notice that in the next verse Peter said that the promise of God for salvation is for “everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself”, and earlier in v. 21 he quoted Joel 2:32 from the OT, which says,

it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

That dynamic describes a call and response that doesn’t fit well with the idea of an irresistible draw that some are granted while others are inexplicably left to perish for lack of. That assessment is further strengthened by Joshua c. 24 v. 14-15, which says:

Now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

End quote.

How could we choose what master we will serve if God’s call is selective and irresistible? How could we serve God with sincerity if it is effectively forced? This verse affirms the free choice of will to choose what master we will serve, and implicitly refers to the type of relationship that God wants with his people: one of sincere love rather than puppeteer reaction or robotic servitude.

That doesn’t negate our reliance on God for providing the call. It acknowledges the reality that He illuminates the narrow road and awaits our choice to walk it with Him, though He already knows what choice each of us will make.

At this time, I’d like to acknowledge that I can’t consider this a thorough discussion of the nature of Faith without addressing what some may consider one of the most critical load-bearing pillars for the Reformed doctrine of irresistible grace, that being a particular idea often plucked out of 2 Timothy c. 2 v. 25. However, rather than diving straight into that verse and presenting a contrary conclusion to my Reformed brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to first examine two earlier passages of Scripture that I believe clearly establish the framework for how that later passage would have been and should also now be interpreted.

The first of those passages is Romans c. 10 v. 8-17. I’ve already some of those verses, but we now need to consider them with expanded contextual perspective. The Scripture says,

… what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on Him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

End quote.

I could walk through that passage phrase-by-phrase to explain it, but that’s not particularly necessary in this instance because v. 17 interprets what is needed for us, and as we should acknowledge, the ultimate interpretation of Scripture is that which is found in Scripture itself since all Scripture is the inspired Word of God. V. 17 says that Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

This is why the Gospel must be preached, because the reality is that if no one preaches it then no one hears it; and if no one hears it, then no one believes it. You can dismiss that if you want by saying that God can preach just fine on his own. He can call directly and effectively anyone that He chooses, to which I’ll concur. Yes, indeed. He can call out directly to anyone whom He chooses, effectively replacing the need for human preaching.

He can speak with a voice like thunder or call to us in our dreams and all the world could hear the Gospel of Christ without a preacher ever taking the stage. The problem is, that’s not what God tells us to presume He will do, and it contradicts what He has commanded us to do.

People need to hear the Gospel, and God wants us to do his will by witnessing to them on his behalf. You don’t have to understand why this is true in order to act on it. You just have to believe his Word and obey.

In some instances, He may directly intervene and reveal Himself miraculously, even by name to those who have not heard the Gospel from human lips, similarly to his known prior miraculous revelations throughout human history, but we can’t use that as an excuse to neglect the command to be his hands and feet — to neglect the desperate need of those who are not ready for the second coming because they haven’t heard the good news yet.

V. 8-17 are supported shortly thereafter by v. 21, in which God says of Israel:

All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.

I appreciate this verse because it follows right after emphasizing our responsibility to preach the Gospel so that people can receive the knowledge of truth to remind us that God’s hand is never removed from his people. While He commands us to preach, He Himself continues to reach out his hands towards a people that are disobedient and contrary to Him.

The second verse that I want to examine prior to Paul’s message in 2 Timothy is from Paul’s message in 1 Timothy c. 2 v. 3-4, which says, “God our Savior… desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Again, the message is plain and simple, so that none of us should miss it. God desires that everyone learns the truth that leads to salvation, and as we just read from Paul’s earlier letter to Rome, that requires the preaching of the Gospel according to the will of God.

Now, finally, let’s consider the later passage in 2 Timothy c. 2 v. 25. First, I’ll read just the particular phrase within v. 25 that Reformed theologians are likely to lean on so that it’s clear how easily one can arrive at their typical conclusion. Following that, I want to explain the potential issues with allowing that phrase in isolation to settle the doctrinal question, measure our expectations for remaining mystery, and finally, consider the greater context of the verse itself.

This will require that we consider not only the immediate context of the statement in v. 24-26, but also that we direct our attention to the apparent purpose of the entire passage so that we can allow the immediate context to help clarify the bounds of our interpretive liberty with the isolated phrase in question. The key phrase is the following excerpt from v. 25 which says, “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.”

It’s easy to see how this verse could lead one to the conclusion that God effectively grants repentance directly to people rather than allowing it to happen functionally of their own free will. The primary issue that I and others hold against this interpretation is that it is functionally equivalent to God forcibly overriding human will in a matter that He also seems to clearly affirm the responsibility of our own will to make a decision.

A Reformed theologian may say that even if God does grant repentance directly through effectually willing it, that wouldn’t contradict free will because they find both the responsibility of creaturely will and the effectual will of God in Scripture. Essentially, because they see both concepts decreed by God, they must both be true.

The risk with accepting this reasoning too quickly is that by that method of arguing one could hypothetically try to justify practically any manner of false doctrine while evading critique by simply claiming that it is derived from Scripture, so even if it seems to contradict something else that one also claims to derive from Scripture, they’re both true anyway.

I have great respect for the apparent humility of a person to say that even if it makes no sense to them, they will believe what God decrees. That said, prior to that humble acceptance, I think the reasoning of the conclusion in question is insufficient, so any humble bowing out of further consideration seems an acceptance of more troubling mystery than Scripture genuinely enforces on us in this case.

God doesn’t owe us the answer to every question, but He has provided his Word to read, his Spirit to guide, and our minds to consider as we reason through the evidence. Furthermore, as I said near the beginning of this episode, Mark 12:30 tells us to love God not only with our strength, soul, and heart, but also with our God-given mind.

Therefore, I propose that to love God with all of our mind indicates that we should strive to ensure that we have achieved our best reasonable understanding of what He has provided prior to holding seemingly contradictory statements together through premature acceptance of mystery when a shift in perspective may reveal the greater fullness of truth that was missing.

In my view, Reformed thought, among others, regarding Faith and grace stops just short of that. That’s not to say that Reformed theologians lack intelligence or sincerity, just that even careful human argumentation can be influenced by the fallibility of humanity.

I’ll discuss later in this episode the degree of mystery that seems truly unavoidable, and to that I will absolutely commend humility as our response to God’s unfathomable wisdom — but first, let’s consider whether we can derive any further clarity in Scripture.

I will admit that the danger of human pride in such circumstances is that I might wrongly think myself to have the superior reasoning, and so wrongly believe that my argument must be the correct one. Thus, I might discard whatever doesn’t seem to be explained by my reasoning, or just consider it part of the remaining mystery that can’t be explained within the bounds of human limitations of knowledge and comprehension.

That is why I did my best in preparing for this episode, to ensure that my presuppositions did not pre-determine my conclusions rather than allowing the reasoning of Scripture itself to guide my understanding — and in consideration of that, I am all the more grateful to God that my salvation has never hinged on my perfect understanding of all things, but only on Faith in Christ through which I repent and believe in the Gospel.

All that said, my issue with conclusions that inform a soteriology, or theology of salvation, that require an effectual will which results in irresistible grace selectively offered is that I think it causes more apparent mystery and confusion in regards to the interpretation of Scripture and the character of God than the alternative that I’m presenting in this exploration of the theology of Faith.

That is because the Reformed doctrine seems to require contradictions in the inerrant Word of God, whereas my current understanding of the apparently more biblically sound alternative seems to not require any such contradictions. I don’t want to accidentally affirm false doctrines through appeals to mystery. I would rather say confidently that I can reconcile the evidence without apparently necessary remaining contradiction, or else simply say that I don’t understand it yet, if I ever will.

To those who have witnessed it, I’ve proven in the past that I’m willing to change my mind with sufficient evidence, and I’m also willing to accept whatever degree of mystery that God requires of me. In fact, I’ve even refined my position regarding this very doctrine in the not so recent past in such a way that I would not now describe Faith the way that I might have in the past.

I recall a memory that I believe to be from my time in graduate school in which I described faith to a friend summarily as our contribution to the equation for salvation. While I’m confident that I can qualify that in a way that makes it true in a sense, I think that the conclusion that it seemed to affirm for my friend at that time was human sufficiency in contradiction to the gifted nature of biblical Faith.

With that methodological caution in mind, let’s return to Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy, c. 2 and consider v. 24-26 now. The Scripture says:

… the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

End quote.

What is the purpose of this passage? Paul is explaining from the beginning of v. 24 through beginning of v. 25 how a servant of God must fulfill his role. Consider the following paraphrase of those verses in my own words which I think conveys the point clearly.

The Lord’s servant must be a good teacher who corrects people gently. God may blaze a trail to repentance by which they may escape the snare of the Devil and receive the knowledge of truth.

This entire chapter of 2 Timothy is focused on how to identify or be a leader in the Church, so why would Paul say in v. 25 right after explaining that the Lord’s servants should be good teachers that God may grant people repentance leading to knowledge of truth? This is why I wanted to consider the earlier passages in Romans 10 and 1 Timothy prior to 2 Timothy.

1 Timothy 2:4 reveals that God desires for all people to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy 2:25 comments that God may grant repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.

Therefore, God’s granting of repentance must be considered and understood in harmonious conjunction with His revealed desire that all be saved so that our interpretation doesn’t contradict his message, and Romans c. 10 shows us how this works out practically: God provides grace through Christ. Christ lives out the Gospel. The Gospel is preached to sinners. Sinners hear the truth, and some repent and believe, leading to salvation. By this way, Faith comes by hearing, and God grants repentance.

For the sake of those who might find themselves stuck on what I would consider an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of God’s granting, allow me to paint a clear metaphorical picture to explain my understanding of granting in general. I could fairly say that a parent grants their child ice-cream, even if the child retrieves the ice-cream themselves from the freezer, as long as the parent had to allow the child the opportunity such as by purchasing it from the store, producing it from scratch, or even just telling the child where to find it.

My confidence in the interpretation of God’s granting of Faith that I’ve presented comes not just from how well it explains each proof-text individually, but more importantly how it allows them to speak not just as individuals, but as a choir proclaiming a unified Gospel of truth. That unity of purpose and message is precisely what I would expect from an omniscient, sovereign God, and that’s what I find in Scripture.

Furthermore, I propose that this understanding explains why God emphasizes throughout the Scriptures that we receive the gift of Faith rather than accept that we may or may not be effectually willed to receive it. God grants what He commands by means of his gracious initiative to provide a path to salvation and light the way for us.

Since I’ve been addressing ideas and theological camps without naming any specific instances of an individual’s actual defense of them, I’m now going to pivot for a few minutes to address more directly certain names and arguments pertaining to the debate of prevenient grace (grace that precedes and enables a genuine response) versus irresistible grace (grace that effectually secures the desired response). The reason that I ultimately decided this is a worthwhile addition to this episode is that it seemed to me that any thorough theology of Faith necessarily becomes also a theology of God’s will: what He commands, what He desires, what He enables, and what He effectually causes in a direct manner.

Essentially, my methodology for certain apparent issues of clarity in Scripture is, in a sense, to treat it similarly to an algebra problem. I almost can’t believe that I’m actually using algebra right now, let alone in the context of theological methodology. Nevertheless, consider this approach: If the doctrine of Faith is one variable, the doctrine of God’s will is another variable, and the final theological conclusion is the result that Scripture requires us to preserve when combining those variables, then we should use the clearest biblical data pertaining to those variables to help us understand what is less immediately clear.

In this instance, I would propose that the doctrine of Faith and the revealed contours of God’s nature, purposes, and character are more plainly clarified in Scripture than the hidden mechanics of God’s will. Therefore, we should allow the clarity pertaining to Faith and God’s other aspects to enlighten us regarding his will.

Essentially, if Scripture speaks clearly about Faith being commanded and grace-enabled, and also speaks clearly about God’s justice, mercy, love, and sincerity, then those truths must constrain how we understand the more mysterious workings of God’s will. To simplify this methodology, if a+b=c, and I have a greater degree of certainty regarding ‘a’ and ‘c’, then I can use that information to inform my evaluation of ‘b’.

Methodology aside, I will say that I have greatly appreciated most of what I’ve heard and read from Dr. John Piper, but on this particular topic, my conclusions will align more closely to the Arminian soteriology that he was arguing against in the book chapter that I am going to reference for this discussion. That chapter is available in the form of an article on desiringgod.org titled “Are There Two Wills in God?” from 1995.

By the way, I always include lists of primary and secondary references when appropriate in my YT video descriptions, so if you would like to examine those more conveniently for yourself, you can refer to the corresponding YT video’s description for now. At a yet undetermined time in the future, I will have a website where all of my episodes, notes, and references will be more conveniently consolidated.

For now, let’s return to the topic at hand, the aforementioned article pertaining to God’s will. In it, Dr. Piper said the following:

We know it was not the "will of God" that Judas and Pilate and Herod and the Gentile soldiers and the Jewish crowds disobey the moral law of God by sinning in delivering Jesus up to be crucified. But we also know that it is the will of God that this came to pass. Therefore, we know that God in some sense wills what he does not will in another sense.

End quote.

I agree with the observation that God can, in some sense, will that certain things occur while not willing them in another sense. What I disagree with is the conclusion that this logically requires multiple wills in God.

I propose instead that God has a single unified will with ordered priorities by which He may account for and permit what He does not morally delight in because it serves the greater purpose that He truly wills.

To be fair to Dr. Piper, I don’t think that his conclusions at the time that he wrote that article were completely misguided. In fact, I think that he did an excellent job of explaining his case, and I can clearly see how he drew his conclusions.

I also can’t say for certain that Dr. Piper hasn’t changed his position by the time that I’m evaluating this writing from over 30 years ago, but I suspect it wouldn’t still be on his ministry’s website if he had. Even if he hasn’t, I believe that were we to converse together for long enough then we would find that we agreed on far more than we disagreed.

Nevertheless, regarding this matter, it is my opinion that the conclusions presented in the aforementioned article are what I refer to as “almost, but not quite”. I’ll explain why shortly, and it’s not because I think I’m smarter than Dr. Piper.

I don’t think that I’m presenting any new or novel theology or doctrine in this episode. The only novelty that I’m trying to bring to the discussion is my own voice, perspective, and way of explaining the eternal truths of God that have always been and always will be.

Times and cultures may change, but God remains the same. That’s not because He’s stubborn or close-minded, but because He has always been all-knowing and perfectly holy, so there is no reason for Him to change — no better version for Him to become. He already is perfect and sufficient in all regards.

That said, Consider now my reasoning for why Dr. Piper’s ultimate conclusion of the two-will nature of God is “almost, but not quite”.

First, I want to draw attention to the reality that Scripture allows us to distinguish between what God commands, what God permits, and what God brings to pass. However, those distinctions must never be defined in a way that makes God contradict Himself, because as it says in Ephesians c. 1 v. 11, God “works all things according to the counsel of his will”, and as it says in 2 Timothy c. 2 v. 13, “He cannot deny Himself”.

In the aforementioned article, Dr. Piper says the following:

“Affirming the will of God to save all, while also affirming the unconditional election of some, implies that there are at least "two wills" in God, or two ways of willing.”

End quote.

To take this statement as it is by itself would be to start from the presupposition of unconditional election that effects faith through irresistible grace — the theology that he is defending in this excerpt — and use it to determine an aspect of God’s nature. That’s fine if you’ve proven the doctrine of unconditional election from Scripture, but if there’s a more reasonable interpretation of the Scriptures used to support that doctrine, then any inference from that doctrine about the nature of God is suspect.

However, instead of merely deconstructing Dr. Piper’s explanation outright, what we first have to do is affirm what is known about God from the plain reading of Scripture, what is reasonable according to his revelation as we possess it, and then either use that to inform our developing theology, or compare it to our established theology with the intention to throw out any doctrine that doesn’t fit.

I’m not saying that Dr. Piper reversed this process, as I have suspected some other people of doing, but I do think that there is another perspective informed by responsible exegesis that looks beyond the isolated proof texts to the metanarrative of Scripture, as well as reasonable philosophical observations of God’s creation.

As a disclaimer, I would like to say that if terms obviously related to “philosophy” are a concerning sign to you, please understand that what I consider good philosophy is the study of the nature of knowledge, reality, and existence informed by the revelation of God through creation, his Word, and miraculous personal experiences from God, which of course cannot truly contradict his other forms of revelation, due to his unchanging consistency. I’m not talking about anti-religious or pseudo-intellectual so-called philosophy that you may hear from people who try and inevitably fail to wield academia as an eraser against spiritual reality.

Digression aside, the theologians that I’ve read and listened to discuss this topic often use terminology such as revealed versus secret or preceptive versus decretive that seems to suggest that Scripture forces us to one of two conclusions. One of those being that He can desire things that He does not will, which I think is not a careful use of words with consideration for their definitions. The other is that God has a will for what He desires that is functionally distinct or effectively separate from what He actually wills effectually, which seems like competing wills in every way that I’ve seen or considered it explained, although I am well aware that those holding to traditional Reformed theology will disagree on that characterization. I just don’t think that their explanations can avoid adopting that characterization by virtue of their necessary implications.

Nevertheless, this seems to be the two-will theory that Dr. Piper supported in the aforementioned article. Since I’m referring to specific use of certain terms here, I would like to take some time to discuss the use of a certain term within a quotation that I found elsewhere in the article where Dr. Piper referred to a statement by Dr. Ian Howard Marshall from Pinnock’s “Case for Arminianism”.

To be clear, I haven’t read the full original context of the statement in its source material, only its use in the aforementioned article by Dr. Piper. As such, I don’t intend to comment on Dr. Marshall’s intended meaning or argument.

Instead, I’m going to intentionally focus on the wording of the isolated statement as quoted to demonstrate how even fair use of a quotation can provide an opportunity for unintended interpretations that may be plausible due to either suboptimal wording or simply lacking the necessary context of the source material to clarify the intended meaning.

That said, the primary conclusion that I intend to support for the purpose of this episode with the results of my analysis is that we can’t use the excuse that it’s merely a matter of semantics to avoid civil discourse regarding this doctrine. That only works when the difference in semantics doesn’t change the plausible meaningful outcomes or theological implications of the doctrine.

In this case, I think that the quotation from Dr. Marshall, in isolation as presented by Dr. Piper, can be an example of how the semantics of a phrase can accidentally contribute to confusion in discussion, especially when it pertains to the systematic workings of a theological concept where God hasn’t necessarily given us the faculties and/or data to comprehensively comprehend the inner mechanisms of those theological systems — and to be clear, I think that Faith qualifies to be considered within that category.

I would also like to note that despite calling this a critique of the quote as presented in Dr. Piper’s work, I’m not claiming that he unfairly used the quote. I merely think that separated from its context, as quotes often are, the range of plausible interpretation from what little text is given provides an opportunity to make a relevant point.

If this begins to seem an overlong excursus from the main topic of discussion, bear with me until I have the chance to demonstrate how this line of reasoning has informed my approach to developing and presenting this theology of Faith. I’m aware that the following critique might at first seem like nitpicking, but try to consider with me the potential implications of what I’m going to draw attention to under the hypothetical circumstance that the original context did not clarify the quoted statement effectively.

To understand the critique, what I want to draw attention to is Dr. Marshall’s particular way of using the term “will” in the following quotation. It says:

“We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what He actually does will to happen.”

End quote.

I think that the presented use of the term “will” in isolation could be considered not careful enough to prevent a certain plausible misunderstanding. My reasoning is that the way this sentence reads out of context easily fits a careless philosophy of will which might claim that desire with infinite power requires perfected short-term outcomes according to each individual desire.

Not only would that be a logical problem, since desiring two opposing outcomes from the same situation would result in a genuine paradox, it would also be a theological problem, because it would seem to require that God does what He Himself says that He cannot do, which is to contradict Himself. That conclusion would be genuinely required according to the careless philosophy of will that I’m describing, because, as Dr. Piper pointed out in the aforementioned article, we have clear indication in Scripture that God can in some sense will something that He also does not will in another sense — a prime example being the murder of Jesus Christ on the cross.

God does not delight in evil, yet in some sense it was his will, as revealed in Scripture, that Christ die on the cross for the extraordinary redemption arc of humanity. What He had delight in was the good outcome that He had planned from the beginning which accounted for the evil that would occur, which is morally distinct from delighting in evil itself.

In concluding my analysis of Dr. Piper’s two-will method of justifying unconditional election and irresistible grace, I will attempt to support an alternative explanation for why the apparent contradiction of desires can follow logically without implying contradiction within any aspect of God. For now, we have a few remaining steps to work through before we arrive at that conclusion.

My justification for the extent of this excursion is the assertion that the issue in question is not merely regarding the application of a single word, but whether our application of words describes God as self-contradictory.

That said, if one granted according to the aforementioned philosophy of will that God could contradict Himself, then one might say that He does so by one of two means, at least by my thinking, if trying to explain away the apparent contradictions to that conclusion in the Bible. One of those explanations might be that God deceives us through Scripture by claiming that He wills or desires things that He truly doesn’t will in any sense. The alternative explanation would be that He can effectually will an outcome to occur that He also effectually wills to not occur — meaning that He both causes it to happen and simultaneously causes it to not happen.

In that case, I’m not sure how one might try to reconcile the apparent cognitive dissonance if not by seemingly nonsensical conclusions such as a split in reality where one timeline now exists from one outcome and another timeline exists from the other outcome.

That aside, to eliminate the possibility of God lying, which is not the same as saying that He cannot allow or cause a deception to occur, because that can be done easily without actually lying, we can refer to Malachi 3:6, in which God states that He does not change, Hebrews 6:18, in which God states that He cannot lie, and again to 2 Timothy 2:13, in which God states that He cannot deny Himself.

I think it clear that by such statements in Scripture, God has provided guardrails for our understanding, not merely to teach us what his attributes are, but also to teach us how to properly use logical reasoning. In this case, these verses guard against the misunderstanding which is seemingly affirmed by some that because God is sovereign and all-powerful, He can cause outcomes that are so nonsensical by definition that they can’t logically occur, regardless of any miraculous intervention.

While I admire the unquestioning trust in God that seems implied by such a confession, I think that is less attributable to biblical evidence-based Faith but more indicative of unfinished rationale leading to blind belief, and I think that Scripture provides us what we need to better complete that line of reasoning.

To be clear, I do believe in the possibility of miracles that can contradict the apparent natural laws of creation. However, I think that some laws which are not originated in the natural realm, despite being observable in the natural realm, are unchangeable because they seem to be evident in the unchanging God Himself as revealed through Scripture.

Granting that truth, it seems reasonable to say that God cannot cause something that is by its very definition genuinely illogical because He is the source of genuine logic.

To counter the inevitable critique of some who might retort by claiming that God defies logic such as through miracles, I will disagree by means of definition, because the word “logic” can be used a few different ways: What I am referring to as “logic” in this context where I am claiming that God is the source of logic and therefore cannot contradict it, is the mode of reasoning from the principle of validity — meaning that if performed correctly, a truly logical process will inevitably result in a truly necessary conclusion.

By that definition, if God seems to contradict human logic, it is humanity which is at fault, not the abstract concept of logic itself. Also following that line of reasoning, if God says that He cannot do something, then it must be truly illogical in the sense that it contradicts the nature of God to do it.

Even in the case of God promising that He will never again destroy the earth by flood the inability to perform that previously completed action still ultimately terminates in God’s nature because it would require that He change his unchangeable nature — that He lie and deny Himself. This is how one can say that there are some things which God cannot possibly do, despite Him being truly sovereign and all-powerful; and furthermore, that any promise-based impossibility still fits the explanation of logical impossibility that I’ve presented.

A particularly approachable example that I’ve heard a few times before used to demonstrate this is the idea that God can’t make a square circle. That’s not to say that God can’t change a shape into any other shape. He could turn a square or a circle of any material into any other shape of any material instantaneously.

That would be a miracle, of course, and it would defy logic to say that a human could accomplish that outcome by ordinary natural means, but I would not say that such a miracle would contradict logic itself. By contrast, a square circle is by definition impossible.

The very idea cannot even be described sufficiently to imagine what it would look like because it requires that a shape be simultaneously two distinct shapes at the same time. We may be able to approximate the words square and circle in a sentence by saying “square circle”, but that doesn’t mean that the idea of a square-shaped circle can be truly reconciled.

I don’t hold to this reasoning because it’s my reasoning, or my favorite theologian’s reasoning. I hold to it because it seems to be God’s reasoning regarding Himself found in Scripture, albeit with an extra-biblical example to make the logic itself more apparent.

By stating that He cannot lie or deny Himself, God is telling us that there are things that He cannot do in a sense. This doesn’t contradict his sovereignty or omnipotence because it’s not a matter of authority or power. It is because of the unchanging quality of God’s nature which is also the source and standard for genuine logic per the definition that I clarified earlier. If God does not change then He cannot deny Himself because it would contradict his unchanging nature.

Therefore, since He is perfect in all his unchanging ways and reasoning, He also cannot contradict the very logic that He applies to Himself. To apply that to the theology of will; since God cannot change, and He cannot deny Himself, He also cannot lie about his will or cause simultaneous outcomes that logically contradict each other by definition.

The very idea of God effectually willing an outcome that He simultaneously effectually wills against is inherently illogical because God is unchanging and cannot contradict or deny Himself — just as with the square circle example. In summary, it seems that God teaches us through Scripture that He can do anything which can logically be done, whereas He can’t do anything that is logically nonsensical in that it contradicts his divine nature’s innate logic itself.

In that case, the seriously consequential question that we need to answer is whether an idea is truly illogical by way of contradicting God’s nature such as revealed by his decree, or if it only seems illogical according to the fallible reasoning of feeble minds — that being all of humanity by comparison to God. That includes all of us, from the humble to the brilliant — from the students to the professors.

One way in which I could demonstrate error by consequence of elevating my own opinion of God beyond the reality of his clear revelation might be to say that God would never punish people for sin because God is kind and punishment is unkind. No matter how convinced a person might be of the validity of that reasoning, they would by wrong.

I don’t have to appeal to personal brilliance to support that claim because the logic is plain as day in Scripture itself. God clearly and unavoidably decrees in his Word that sin requires punishment, which is why Jesus had to bear the weight of our sins on the cross. If sin did not require punishment, then the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as propitiation for our sins would have been completely unnecessary!

The critical difference between arguing from what I think seems good to me and what is apparent in Scripture is that I am fallible while God is not, and because Scripture is the Word of God, it must also be inerrant by nature.

This is why I propose that we must submit to the authority of Scripture not only to provide doctrine pertaining to subjects which are traditionally considered to be religious by nature, but regarding all things, great and small, natural and supernatural, feeling and thinking!

To pretend that we must separate logic from religion is to grant an arrow in the quiver of certain dissenters — those who, as I said earlier, try to wield academia as an ironically blunt instrument against spirituality and theology — those who, sadly, are convinced that science contradicts Christianity! If science is the observation of reality to gather information and draw logical conclusions, then the reality of my God is the most logical scientific conclusion that I can conceivably arrive at!

Let’s return to the context of Dr. Piper’s quote of Dr. Marshall in the referenced article. On that note, I want to further clarify in case any forgot or didn’t notice earlier, that I’m not attempting to present any claims pertaining to Dr. Marshall’s original argument as may be found in its source material.

I only wished to use the isolated quote that I read as an example of how even a fairly used reasonable statement by an intelligent individual can still accidentally support an unreasonable conclusion by way of unintended implication — especially when encountered outside of the original context and without sufficient explanation. This is why we have to be very careful with our words, especially when trying to precisely describe simultaneously critical and complex ideas.

The original real-life consequence that motivated my reasoning for addressing this is that when people spend hours and days and years studying certain minds or texts, then they can begin to adopt unrecognized presuppositions from certain consistent phrasing that lead to unbiblical theological conclusions. Allow me to re-read the quote for you. Dr. Marshall was quoted to say that “we must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what He actually does will to happen”.

With that wording, it could be said that he is implying that God desires some things which are not at all part of his genuine will, but I would assert that such a conclusion doesn’t rationally follow from the nature of will itself since to desire something is to have a will for it, unless what you mean by “will” is exclusively the act of effecting a desire, or actively forcing a desired outcome. I’m not commenting on what Dr. Marshall actually meant to say, but the implication that I’ve presented does seem to me to be a reasonable interpretation of that statement in isolation as quoted by Dr. Piper.

Therefore, to reinforce the point before moving on, I think that we need to be very careful to consider as many reasonable implications of our theological explanations as possible to minimize the opportunity for a careful reader or listener to arrive at confusion rather than clarity.

To return to the multi-will theory of God’s nature, supporting theologians may argue that this is a necessary conclusion due to the reality of Scripture showing us that some of God’s desires do not always line up with what He effectually wills, or as I would propose it clarified to, forcibly wills into reality.

I don’t want to project motive onto anyone in this instance, but I wonder if the reason that I have continually found Reformed thinkers using particular terminology such as “effective” or “effectual” pertaining to the will of God could have started as a conscious or subconscious attempt to avoid what I would say is more intuitive language such as “force” or “coerce” due to the negative connotation of such terms. That’s pure conjecture on my part though.

However, since I will use such terms again for clarity’s sake, I want to be clear about my meaning when I apply the terms “force” or “coerce” in this context. I don’t mean that God is dragging people kicking and screaming against their will, but rather that there is at least an implication that God is forcibly changing their will by what is often referred to as the effectual call which cannot be resisted.

I have yet to find what I could consider a sufficient explanation for why that doesn’t necessarily contradict free will and genuine loving relationship. Any way that you word it, if grace is functionally irresistible, then I think that its label should have a negative connotation because a consistent integration of that idea into my theology seems to degrade the goodness of God by rational necessity.

By that I mean that if God effectively guarantees saving faith in some people and denies it to others then it seems rather unconvincing to argue that this model preserves the goodness of God as revealed through Scripture. We could redefine good to simply equal whatever this alternative moral standard is, but I don’t think that standard fits the model of goodness presented in Scripture any better than a square can fit into a circle.

Functionally overriding human will for a select group would suggest that God inexplicably desires some people to do evil against their will, in which case they wouldn’t really be individuals with genuine choices to be responsible for. I can’t hold rain drops accountable for falling from the sky for the same reason. They don’t have a choice in the matter because gravity forces the outcome.

God certainly has the power and authority to treat us this way, but then it would seem that He were only pretending to want genuine loving relationship with us since love requires the choice to deny God in order to have the choice to deny the self, which is a necessity of biblical love most incredibly demonstrated by Jesus on the cross. I simply don’t think that the justifications that I have examined from Reformed theologians attempting to clarify this issue are sufficient, and perhaps more importantly, I also think that there is another explanation which seems to fit God’s revealed nature, character, and purpose as revealed in Scripture more closely.

I don’t think that we need two different wills. It seems the simpler plain reality to me that the difference between effecting a willed outcome, and desiring but allowing another outcome is simply the order of priorities within the will working for the sake of a third option that allows the most complete fulfillment of God’s will.

I’m going to explain this idea in three different ways because I think it is immensely important, and I want to ensure that it can be fully understood. If the first explanation seems hard to follow, refer to the summary explanation and example that I’ll provide immediately after.

My most thorough explanation of the conclusion that I’m attempting to present is as follows: If effecting a particular willed outcome precludes a more prioritized willed outcome, but allowing the prioritized willed outcome to be effected would not preclude the first willed outcome, then the impeccable wisdom of God will act to pursue the fulfillment of the first priority so that the entire will can be most completely satisfied.

In the life of mankind, impatience may lead to sacrificing a priority for a lesser outcome when we believe that the priority will not be met, but perfect godly wisdom recognizes when acting to force a lesser outcome will effectively prevent a better outcome — or in God’s case, when trying to satisfy one desire of the will prevents the genuine satisfaction of the greater will.

That’s important since God cannot contradict Himself, and He describes his will singularly, as seen in Ephesians c. 1 v. 11 where the text refers to “the counsel of his will” even while other passages refer to God with terms indicating plurality of personhood, such as in Isaiah c. 6 v. 8 where God has said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

I would summarize the main idea as follows: If doing something to cause a desired result prevents a more desired result, then through wisdom, one chooses to do what supports the order of priorities and satisfies the greater will. For example, a parent's will can desire a chore to be done while still choosing to give a child the opportunity to obey.

I think that this explanation works for both of the primary Scriptural examples that Dr. Piper used in the aforementioned article. It seems like Reformed theology doesn't well account for a single unified will to have the ability to either desire for something to occur or desire to force that something to occur.

Reading or listening to explanations of Reformed theology consistently gives me the impression that they are presuming the conclusion that the combination of both sovereign will and unlimited power necessitates that God forces every individual willed outcome. I think that’s an oversimplification of the concept of will that ironically results in the overcomplication of the doctrine of Faith and the nature of our relationship with God.

I believe that God has shown us throughout the plethora of Scriptural evidence that I’ve discussed in this episode already that this is how the counsel of his will operates with his wisdom. He wills different things for different reasons. He wills kindness because it is innately good. He wills the crucifixion of Christ because it brings about good.

The brutal murder of the Son of Man through crucifixion wasn’t innately good in the sense that kindness itself is innately good. Yet God is still using that atrocity to work out all things for good. Therefore, in a sense, it is good that the crucifixion occurred, even though the act itself was performed in hatred by evil people who were actively rebelling against God.

I believe that understanding is key to begin to fathom how a good God can in a sense will or desire something that seems to contradict another thing which He also wills or desires. God’s will to allow evil is not because of the wickedness along the way, but because of the goodness of the final destination.

The final point that I’d like to make before I move on from Dr. Piper’s work on this topic entirely is in regard to a statement that he made in a message also available on desiringgod.org called “The Providence of God Session 8”. In that message, he said the following:

“If you say, ‘I don’t see how God can rule the will and we still be accountable.’ I would simply plead with you to live with that mystery. I do.”

End quote.

This is a prime example of the kind of reasoning that I can’t find reason to agree with. Why would I accept a greater degree of mystery than I actually find present in the text of Scripture?

Shortly after that quote, he said that because his conclusion is found in Scripture that is must be true. Therefore, to think that this conclusion contradicts Scripture is the result of a philosophical assumption rather than a logic issue.

In response, I would assert that the problem with that logic is that it ironically depends on its conclusion, which is essentially what he asserted the complaint of contradiction to be. In essence, the reasoning is circular, because the conclusion must be true for the reasoning to lead to it.

Yet, as I’ve endeavored to demonstrate, I believe that the conclusion is not necessarily derived from Scripture in the presence of an alternative explanation that seemingly better fits the entirety of Scripture when compared to this single Reformed doctrine which only well-fits its supposed proof-texts. If I do not grant the presupposition that his conclusion is true, then by simple reasoning his evidence does not naturally lead to his conclusion.

Maybe I’m missing something here, and Dr. Piper’s actually brilliantly transcended my feeble attempt to work this out. Maybe not.

Either way, I think that at the very least, a valuable lesson that I have learned from my time assessing others’ work on this topic is that if people considered with greater weight the intended implications, the inerrant congruency of the Scriptural metanarrative, the necessary perfection in the logical reasonings of our all-knowing God, and the consistency of God’s character, then they might not disagree so often in their interpretations of Scripture, especially where Scripture explicitly interprets itself, which actually occurs quite often.

At this stage of the discussion, I have one more counterpoint to my current theology as it pertains to how we receive saving grace through Faith that I would like to discuss, and it happens to also be primarily offered by Reformed theologians in support of the effectual call of irresistible grace, as they might say.

That counterpoint is the presence of Scriptures that describe the “elect” or “chosen” people of God in a way that can in isolation allow a reasonable person to find agreement with the Reformed doctrine of predestination by which God is not said to simply foreknow who will respond of their own creaturely will to grace, but that He actually determined who would be effectively called to salvation from before the beginning.

That distinction is essentially what I’ve already been discussing in this section, but from another angle, that being the language of the “elect” or “chosen” people. However, as with the other proposed evidences for irresistible grace, responsible exegesis doesn’t merely assess the text in isolation, but examines the relevant context however far it reaches through Scripture.

In this case, the pattern of describing a people as chosen was established in the early books of the Old Testament, and I believe those examples are relevant because they should inform our understanding of God’s meaning when He inspires this pattern of language later in the New Testament. So, let’s examine this long-standing tradition of covenant language that began with God electing Israel as his chosen people to represent Him to the other nations.

In this case, to avoid spending excessive time in this episode in the weeds of word studies, I’m going to explain my conclusion first with specific examples briefly examined after to demonstrate how I’m interpreting them. To clarify, yet again, that I’m not inventing novel theology, I will affirm that I did not originate this idea.

Other men serving as pastors and theologians in various roles have been teaching this since long prior to my first foray into this thicket of debated interpretations. I’m explaining it in my own words because I’m confident that many educated individuals who may still disagree with my professed theology of Faith in favor of a predetermined effectual call of irresistible grace would bring this exact topic to the table of discussion if I don’t first myself.

That said, the argument that I’m in favor of may be summarized as follows: Election language in Scripture does not necessarily imply deterministic individual selection unto salvation in the sense that God irresistibly overrides the will of the elect people to effectively force the reception of faith.

Much of the biblical background for “election” or “chosen people” language comes from the historical records of God’s covenantal choosing of a people for Himself, which never meant that all individuals who are members of the ethnic people of Israel would be elected to salvation, nor that only those naturally born from the bloodline of Israel could be ultimately incorporated into God’s Kingdom. Therefore, when we read the same God of the Old Testament speaking in the New Testament of believers as elect or chosen people, we should consider the probability that such language is drawing from covenant identity and union with Christ before assuming that it teaches irresistible determinism.

Stated simply, because Israel is the chosen people to whom Christ, the Chosen One, came to offer the ultimate fulfillment of God’s covenant, and believers are found in Christ, we who receive Faith through the grace of Christ are adopted into the chosen people of God — not ethnically transformed into Israelites, but invited into the covenant people of God. Instead of merely taking my word for it, consider the Scriptures themselves.

In Genesis c. 12, we see that God tells Abram, (later renamed Abraham), that from him a great nation will arise. In Genesis c. 28, God tells Abram’s descendant, Jacob, in a dream that through his descendants all people of the world will be blessed. In Genesis c. 32, God calls Jacob by the name Israel for the first time, which is affirmed later in c. 35 where God also affirms that the covenant which God made with Abram would be effected through the line of Jacob, now called Israel.

Deuteronomy c. 7 v. 6-8 explains that God chose Israel not because it was a greater people than the other nations, but by grace because of his love in accordance with the covenant made with their fathers going back to Abram. It also explains in v. 9-12 that because God will not be lenient with those who hate Him, Israel must be careful to follow the commands of God so that through obedience they could partake in the blessings of the covenant of steadfast love which God swore to their fathers.

So, the chronicles of Israel reveal a pattern of election language that pertains not directly to individual salvation, but to covenant relationship with God. Furthermore, the histories also demonstrate that many of the blessings of the covenant are dependent on obedience as God blessed the people when they followed and punished them when they strayed.

Now, if we look to the New Testament, we will see what I consider to be a beautiful continuation of this language that reveals how even a Gentile such as myself can become part of the chosen people, and the reason does not appear to be irresistible determinism.

Luke c. 9 v. 35 in the ESV says, that God the Father names Jesus his Chosen One. I specify that this wording is present in the ESV only because some translations such as the KJV may instead say “beloved son” according to a different textual tradition which occurs because of a variance in some manuscripts.

While I can’t verify the weight of this argument, I’ve read that this textual variance is suspected by some to have occurred due to pressure to harmonize with the “beloved son” language present in other passages such as Matthew 17:5 and Mark 9:7. My argument doesn’t truly hinge on that one phrase, so I don’t really need to settle that debate in this discussion.

Although, I will say that even if the original inscription of Luke meant to say “chosen one”, this would not necessarily be an issue because just before that, even in the same translation of Luke, it also says “this is my son”, a phrase that very closely matches the other two accounts in question. This could indicate that Matthew and Mark simply left out the “chosen one” phrase in their records.

Now, as we progress, let’s slow down for the last 3 passages that I want to read as I close this section. After following the line of covenant promises from Abram to Jacob, to Israel, and ultimately through Jesus, let’s now consider 1 Peter c. 2 v. 6-10 which says:

For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the Word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

End quote.

There’s a lot that can be learned from this passage, but for the sake of this discussion I want to focus on the idea that this is a particularly clear example of covenant election language being applied by Peter in the name of the God of the Old Testament to the believing receivers of the New Testament, and I don’t think that we can narrow the interpretive scope of application to merely ethnic Jews since this statement contrasts those who are or are not chosen with those who do or do not believe, as is clearly stated in v. 7.

Once you were not a people, now you are God’s people. God’s word applies that truth to the people of Israel from its humble beginning under the Old Covenant, and Scripture also applies that truth to all believers according to the New Covenant of the blood of Christ which is the price of adoption for all believers, even the gentiles.

In the end, the people of Israel will be all of mankind who have chosen to believe in God and receive the seal of Christ’s blood to enter into the family and house of God.

Before I move on from 1 Peter c. 2, I would be remiss to ignore what my Reformed fellows might want to draw attention to at this moment, that being the phrase in v. 8 which says, “they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” I’ll deal with the destined/predestined language shortly when I arrive at c. 1 of Ephesians, but for now I’d like to point out that even in the presence of the concept of destiny, Peter’s letter does not frame the contrast between those who stumble due to disobedience and those who believe unto salvation as some being irresistibly caused to believe while others are denied the possibility of faith. Again, the distinction is between those who disobey, and those who believe.

Now, let’s move on to Galatians c. 3 v. 26-29, where the Scripture says:

… for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

End quote.

According to the Gospel of Christ, all who are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection have taken upon themselves in a spiritual manner the identity of Christ and are Abraham’s offspring according to God’s covenant that began with Abram. Therefore, it makes sense that God uses covenantal language to describe those marked by the blood of the Lamb as the people of Israel whom the angel of death will not destroy.

This is a typological echo of the story of God saving his chosen people in Egypt when He commanded them to mark their houses with the blood of a lamb so that they would receive the mercy of being passed over on the night of judgement when death came for the sons of the disobedient. It's parallel stories like this between the Old and New Testaments that reveal the impeccable planning of God’s wisdom.

He knew all along that the story of Israel’s salvation from Egypt would foreshadow the final salvation of the people elected to eternity in the New Jerusalem: those to whom the blood of the Lamb is applied. Though I am ethnically a Gentile, I have been spiritually adopted into the people of Israel with all other true believers because there is no Jew or Gentile in Christ! And to that I say, hallelujah and amen!

Finally, I have but one more supposed kryptonite of prevenient grace to identify so that I can explain why it actually complements my theology better than it may at first seem depending on how you may have been conditioned to understand it.

In Ephesians c. 1 v. 3-14 we have one of the grandest depictions of our grafting into the body of Christ, which is admittedly considered by some to be strong evidence against the model of Faith that I’m ultimately supporting in this episode. After I read it, I’ll explain why I think it’s not the problem for prevenient grace that some people have made it out to be, and that understanding comes largely due to the recurring themes that I discussed regarding the last several biblical references. Consider this especially beautiful passage of Scripture with me:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in Him. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

End quote.

Notice again that Scripture explains exactly how it is that we are chosen by revealing that believers are chosen in Christ. I believe that I’ve already established through the previous examples how that fact reveals the means by which election language is ultimately and finally applied in the fullest sense as God intended.

All people are blessed through Abram, Jacob, and Israel because of God the Son who was incarnated as the God-Man into the bloodline of Abram to offer adoption into the covenant people of God to all people.

Now, I should discuss the obvious word in this translation that I’m sure every proponent of irresistible grace would latch onto, that being the word, “predestined”. What does it mean that God predestined those found in Christ for adoption?

However we interpret that idea, if we choose to do the work of interpretation at all as opposed to simply following God’s clear commands and considering the rest a mystery, we must be consistent with everything else that is revealed in Scripture, because Scripture is the Word of God, and therefore cannot be in contradiction with itself. It would be easy to say that the presence of the word “predestined” must imply effectual will and irresistible grace, but I think yet again there is a simple explanation that fits more reasonably with God’s character and nature as revealed in Scripture.

First, note that in Ephesians, Paul did not speak of predestination as an abstract mechanism detached from Christ. Rather, Paul says that we are chosen in Him, Jesus Christ, and predestined for adoption through Christ so that those who believe in Him would be sealed with the Holy Spirit, as it says in v. 13. Within this divinely inspired text, Paul guarded against a misinterpretation of predestination by providing the condition of belief within the immediate context.

Thus, it seems more probable than plausible that we should understand God’s predestination of all believers as God’s eternal purpose to save those who would, as it says in the very same passage, believe in Christ from hearing the Gospel, and be adopted into the chosen people — the New Jerusalem — the body of Christ. The fact that God describes his choosing of those found in Christ harmonizes beautifully with his description of the Church as the body of Christ— those who “put on Christ” as we just read in Galatians 3:27.

It can be tempting to treat a word as the key that unlocks a verse, or a verse as the key that unlocks a passage, but if that’s the only approach that we use for interpretation then we are blinding ourselves to the clarity that context provides for those key verses and words. Stated simply, we can’t specify the scope of a word’s intended meaning without considering the implicit defining limitations of its related context.

This entire theological model of will, grace, and Faith also aligns harmoniously with God’s goodness and purpose for genuine loving relationship, which is a critical belief for the Christian Faith, because as God Himself says, He truly is Love, and He truly does love us even while we were yet still unclean sinners.

Obviously, God’s omniscience requires that He foreknows who will respond obediently with Faith. Yet, the emphasis of even this passage which some might consider a pillar of Reformed soteriology is not on some mysterious hidden mechanism that irresistibly causes faith. Rather, the emphasis is on the eternal plan of God fulfilled in Christ and applied to those who hear the Gospel, believe the truth, and respond faithfully to receive the seal of the Holy Spirit. The emphasis is on our reception of the gift of Faith more so than the gifted nature of Faith.

While I think that all I’ve discussed thus far is sufficient to make the necessary points for this section pertaining to the biblical emphasis on reception, I’d like to make a final, perhaps relatively minor, point of philosophical conjecture. This theory is less concrete by far than most of my other lines of reasoning, but I haven’t been able to disprove it to myself thus far, so it seems to me to remain an interesting possibly at the very least. I’m also not certain whether I’m the first person to try to explain it exactly this way, so if this idea is too novel for comfort, please, take it with a grain of salt. That said, here’s my theory.

Because God is eternal, we know that He is not bound by the limits of time, which is how He can be truly omniscient. Since we know that He is eternal and omniscient, we can also know that He has always known who would respond to his grace faithfully and take part in the salvation offered through Christ. Therefore, I believe it fair to propose that in some sense He could say that He predestines those who will respond with Faith by the very act of choosing to create them.

In essence, knowing what will happen as a consequence of an action followed by choosing to perform that action is in some sense predetermining the outcome. Of course, this logic doesn’t work if you assert a very limited definition of predestination which requires directly manipulating the variables at all times to enforce the outcome, rather than including the possibility of making strategically planned choices that are known to lead to the desired outcome.

However, I believe that I can fairly use the term this way because I think that to define predestination in a way that necessarily disproves this hypothesis by definition alone would require affirming conclusions that I have already through this episode labored to sufficiently counter with better explanations. To further explain my meaning with a non-supernatural example that mirrors imagery used by Jesus Himself as recorded in the Gospel pertaining to salvation, I could say the following:

If you are certain that a person will freely accept an invitation to your wedding if it is genuinely offered, and you then choose to send that invitation, you have in some sense predetermined, or predestined, that the person will be present at the wedding without having to coerce or force them through the door. Knowing what choice another will make in response to your offer does not mean that your predestination of the outcome is forcibly deterministic like the theoretical mechanism of irresistible grace is, as long as the person still has the genuine ability to reject the offer.

You are simply effecting your will through taking the steps that you know will lead to the desired outcome. Likewise, God has effected his will to save the body of Christ by taking the steps that He knew would result in his chosen people being found in Christ in order to predestine them for salvation.

If all of that seems like nonsense to you, that’s alright. We don’t have to agree on the mechanistic explanation of this particular matter to follow the explicit direct commands of God and be confident that we will have all of our theology worked out together after we are resurrected into the coming perfect eternity in the presence of God.

In fact, as I implied earlier, I believe that if we simply focus on the clear commands of God in Scripture and committed all else that remains to be considered unattainable mystery in this life, then we would still have everything that we need for practical daily living and salvation according to God’s Gospel of Faith in Christ. That’s not going to stop me, personally, from attempting to seek the more elusive wisdoms and mysteries of Scripture, but I won’t pretend that everyone else in the world is required to dive this deep into the weeds or agree with all of my particular conclusions.

If at any point after this you decide that you will hold to the doctrine of irresistible grace in spite of the case that I or anyone else may present for a different theological model, then I would finally at least beg you to remember to be encouraged by the assurance that this is not an issue which I would consider breaking fellowship over.

Furthermore, as Dr. John Piper has suggested in some of the material that I studied for this project and in accordance with James 4:12, it is not our place to know who is elected. Even if you believe in an effectual calling that is applied selectively by irresistible grace without the functionally present ability to resist through independent will, you should not try to determine for yourself who may or may not be called.

You should not pick and choose to whom the Gospel should be shared — to whom should be evangelized or discipled — based on your own judgement of who might be one of the elect or chosen. It’s not our job to judge whether a person is one of the elect. That’s for God and God alone to judge. There is but one Lawgiver and Judge, and you are not Him.

To conclude this section in which I’ve attempted to explain the emphasis on reception of the gift of Faith found throughout Scripture, I will note that while I think the effectual will and irresistible grace doctrines are inconsistent with God’s expressed desire that all know the truth, his universal call to Faith, the Great Commission, and the metanarrative of Scripture in general, I know that my Reformed brothers and sisters in Christ generally still affirm the unambiguous command to preach the Gospel to all people, to disciple those who choose to believe, and to leave the rest to God. That’s enough for me to cross the aisle on this matter and cooperate with our shared purpose to go forth and do the will of God, however it is that we think his will is effectively applied within our experience of time.

PROXIMITY DOES NOT IMPART FAITH

Before I address works and boasting, I want to first pivot to a brief discussion of proximity or association. Most people who have attended a local church body very often probably recognize that there is a seemingly ever-present category of people that some have called pew-sitters, or spiritually lukewarm people who seem to be Christian in name only.

These people tend to attend church services at least somewhat regularly, but they also tend to not really immerse themselves in the life and work of the Church. However, what I think is even more concerning than those whom we may feel relatively confident identifying are those who put on a show that will fool all but the very most discerning, even if they can never fool God who judges the heart with perfect clarity.

Some, such as Judas Iscariot, may seem closer to Jesus, closer to holiness and righteousness than nearly anyone else you’ve ever witnessed — until the mask slips and they are revealed to be a deceiving charlatan — a betrayer — an apostate. I think that Judas is the clearest example of someone being called by Jesus to Faith in every way that we can observe and yet ultimately choosing to reject the Gospel.

Not only did he receive his call to discipleship face-to-face with his incarnated God and Messiah, he walked with Jesus, heard his teachings, witnessed his miracles firsthand, shared in the ministry of the original Twelve apostles, and was warned by Jesus Himself of the impending betrayal, death, and resurrection. Yet still, Judas ultimately betrayed Jesus to the cross, committing one of the greatest atrocities in all of human history by effectively sending the Messiah of all mankind to the most humiliating form of tortuous execution in that historical era.

If Judas the betrayer was not justified by his position among the disciples of Jesus, then we must recognize that church attendance and spiritual titles cannot impart moral holiness or Faith unto salvation. A person can stand near the Light and still love the darkness — hear the words of Christ without trusting the heart of Christ — participate outwardly with Christian activities and yet remain inwardly surrendered to their sin.

The example of Judas teaches a sobering reality regarding the God who calls us to Faith. That is that He does not confuse proximity with union or outward participation with inward surrender. This lesson emphasizes the need for a genuine transformation of the soul through spiritual rebirth in response to the call of our Savior.

My primary reason for bringing this to the discussion is the following cautionary recommendation: I would urge all to recognize that any doctrine of Faith and means of teaching and explaining it that we subscribe to must preserve the caution of Judas’s example.

Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to say that our churches still regularly shelter people who are doing little more than walking their dry bones in and out of the doors without ever drinking from the spring of living water. You cannot quench your thirst just by standing near the water, gazing at your reflection in it, or even submerging your hand in it. You have to drink it — to internalize it.

That also doesn’t make the act of drinking the saving agent. That remains with the living water itself. More on that in the next section.

Before we get to that though, consider what John c. 1 v. 11-13 says regarding Jesus Christ our Savior:

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in his name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

End quote.

It was not those that were considered his people by proximity or blood that were given the right to become children of God, but those who believed in Him. Proximity to righteousness does not impart holiness. Internalizing righteousness through Faith which leads to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the only means of acquiring righteousness that justifies one to God according to his will as revealed in Scripture.

FAITH PRODUCES FRUIT YET EXCLUDES BOASTING

The final aspect of Faith that I think needs to be addressed at this point is the productive nature of Faith beyond merely the miracle of internal spiritual rebirth leading to ultimate salvation. That miracle is critically important of course, but also not the full picture of Faith’s transformative effects in a believer’s life. Genuine Faith should also produce external fruit that can bless those around us and show them that there is a meaningful difference between a dead life shackled to sin and the productive freedom that is found in Christ.

That said, the presence of fruit from good works driven by Faith does not allow us to boast in our works, which I believe would include the practice of considering our works in any way contributing to our justification before God for salvation. The reality of Faith precluding boasting testifies of a God who will not share the glory of salvation with human merit, and yet will not leave his people’s lives barren after spiritual rebirth.

Consider the following a succinct version of the conclusion that I’m next going to trace the definition of through Scripture: If Faith is treated like a trophy that you earn through your own good works, it has been misunderstood. It cannot boast in itself without ceasing to be Faith as defined by God’s Word.

The fruit of Faith is good works, beginning with the Holy Spirit’s work in you which overflows into the rest of your life, and the fruit that comes from your good works is reflective of the inherent goodness of God and his genuine transformation of your life. Human faith that boasts in itself has turned its attention from the Giver to the receiver.

Aside from reinforcing the gifted nature of Faith, this understanding guards against any doctrine of faith that regards works as meritorious justification contributing to our salvation. The identity of Christ applied to us through his blood is the only justification that we need. It is sufficient to cover all sins of all people, no matter the timing or severity.

Consider with me the thesis-containing passage of this topic found in Ephesians c. 2 v. 8–10. In this passage, the Word of God says:

… by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

End quote.

We are saved by grace through Faith and yet this is not a result of our work, but a gift of God so that no one may boast in themselves, but only in Christ! Furthermore, Scripture does not pit Faith against good works as though good works are evil.

Truly good works are indeed good by definition, but not meritorious, or meriting more grace for us because they cannot wash the stain of sin which requires the blood of Jesus. What Scripture does pit Faith against is boasting, earning, and justification from ourselves. And as we see in Ephesians 2, it then immediately tells us that those saved by grace through Faith are also created for good works.

Thus, we must keep the separation clear in our doctrine between what good works do and do not accomplish. They are the fruit of Faith, not the cause of Faith. They show people evidence of our salvation, but they do not earn that salvation.

While I think Ephesians is clear enough when it says that salvation is not our own doing, not from our works, and a gift from God, there’s one slightly more subtle element of proof hiding in the shadow of those monumental truths. That is what it positively affirms about good works, which is that we are created in Christ for them. I think it’s clear that “created in Christ” refers to the spiritual rebirth which we know is performed by the Holy Spirit as a consequence of Faith in Christ.

So, aside from the obvious appeal to the gifted nature of Faith, Ephesians also seems to imply that we are made ready for good works through being saved — not partially saved, not saved until we sin again, but just saved — by grace through Faith, so that no one may boast.

The force of the position expressed in these Scriptures outweighs any mental gymnastics that we could perform in an attempt to understand Faith as a meritorious work of humanity in the context of this discussion. In fact, if you want to consider Faith as a work, then according to Scripture it seems that you must consider it a work of God freely given to you, as is well-established by the gifted nature of Faith that I attempted to explain in the fourth section of this episode.

I know that some theologians, especially those attempting to maintain the Roman Catholic tradition, have tried to distinguish initial justification from final justification in a way that gives human works a role in our justification unto salvation, but I just don’t see how their reasoning can survive the force of the plain reading of Scriptures such as Romans 3, Romans 4, and Ephesians 2.

Even when considering the argument as explained by some Catholic apologists, the validity of the reasoning seems empowered not by the unquestionable authority of God’s Word so much as the human authority of the papacy, and if you would say that those are necessarily one and the same, then I wonder how you can justify the contradiction between the two.

Even Roman Catholic history as recorded by the Church of Rome itself contains formally recognized cases where a pope’s handling of doctrine was later condemned by church authority, and that condemnation later confirmed by another pope. One specific example is Pope Honorius I, who was anathematized by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which was affirmed by Pope Leo II.

Roman Catholic apologists may point out that his story does not meet inclusion criteria for the later definition of an “ex cathedra” papal statement being recanted, or more simply an authoritative definition of doctrine meant to bind the entire Church being tossed out, but that is precisely my point.

Never mind the concern regarding the claim of divinely appointed authority for an office where one can be so wrong in their theology that they are anathematized while supposedly remaining infallibly correct on all specially defined authoritative decrees — papal explanation and church tradition in any case must not be treated as identical or equal to the unquestionable authority of God’s inspired Word. We must not deviate from the plain truths of Scripture to align with doctrines that seem to require non-Scriptural sources in order to construct.

Consider with me now Romans c. 3 v. 23-28, which says:

… 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. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

End quote.

Consider v. 27 for a moment. A law of works would allow the possibility for us to boast in ourselves, because it would require that we are saved by our earned righteousness — our own meritorious works.

The problem with this kind of law is that it’s the kind of law which Israel was given in the Old Testament in order to show us God’s standard and prove for all time that no man will be able to stand on his own works because, as it says in the first verse of this reference, v. 23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Works only work for whoever has never sinned, and unless you are Jesus Christ, that is not you. Therefore, your only recourse for salvation from sin is the gift of Faith.

Consider the following comment from Romans c. 4 v. 1–11:

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

End quote.

So, Abraham’s righteousness came from believing God — trusting in God — having Faith in God. Faith is not a gift if it is earned, because what is earned is a wage, and as it says in v. 5, the one who does not work but believes in God is counted as righteous.

There’s no wiggle room in the Bible for partial justification. It’s just not in the text. Abram wasn’t counted partially righteous by belief. He was counted righteous. Period.

Folks, this passage precludes any involvement of work in any kind of salvific justification before God because it says that the one who does not work is still considered justified by Faith. How can one have Faith without performing any work and yet still consider Faith a work? You cannot, because it doesn’t logically follow by any stretch of the imagination according to the plain biblical definitions.

As was pointed out in v. 11, the sign of Faith, the work of circumcision in this case, came after Faith was acquired and considered a seal of the righteousness imparted by Faith. A seal is a sign of a pre-existing reality, not a causal factor of a new reality. A king does not have authority because he has a seal. His seal has authority because he is a king.

Consider with me 2 more quick references to hammer in the final nails in the coffin of meritorious works for justification prior to wrapping up with a bow on the concept of boasting in Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:28–31 says that,

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

End quote.

If you think that Christ’s blood is not enough, and that your good works are part of your final justification before Christ, then you are contradicting 1 Corinthians 1:29, which says that no human will boast in the presence of God because if any part of your justification is by your own merit, then you would be able to boast on at least that merit. Furthermore, this passage also tells us what we can boast in and that is the Lord and Savior — God the Son, the one who actually merits our justification before God the Father.

Consider also Galatians 6:14-15, which says the following:

… far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

End quote.

I believe that the “new creation” phrase in v. 15 is referencing the same reality of spiritual rebirth which Ephesians 2:10 refers to as “created in Christ”. Both the passage in 1 Corinthians and Galatians 6 are reflected in the statement from Galatians c. 5 v. 6 which says, “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love”.

Do you see the parallel ideas present in these passages? Galatians 5 and 6 in particular treat circumcision status, the outward works in this context, as irrelevant — a zero sum in the analogical formula for salvation. What matters is described by the differing parallel descriptions which all point to the same prerequisite.

Reduce these statements to algebraic formulas for a moment. If a+b=c, and a+b=c, then a+b=c. If b = circumcised or not, and c = salvation, then what is a?

In this context, a is the variable wording between these texts which describes what is missing from our works. It is the only thing remaining that truly matters in the search for salvation, since, as the text demonstrates, neither our work nor our lack of work matters since we already fall short from our first instance of sin.

Ephesians 2 calls it “created in Christ”. Galatians 6 calls it “a new creation”. Galatians 5 calls it “faith working through love”. What does Faith working through godly love produce in us? The regeneration of the Holy Spirit — the new man — the spiritual rebirth of our identity by which we take on Christ to be found in Christ!

So, what is the explanation for a+b=c? Our works amount to nothing, so to arrive at the conclusion of salvation, we must add to our zero sum merit the infinite sum merit of God’s grace through Faith.

Through Galatians, we see that Scripture reinforces yet again that we boast in Christ rather than ourselves, and adds the final nail in the coffin of our works’ merit by saying that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. That is to say, the presence of works doesn’t matter in the context of meriting salvation, because we are not under the law of works but the law of Faith in which salvation comes prior to and apart from any good works that we may participate with.

All that said, we must not minimize the importance of good works, because while they do not merit, or purchase, salvation, the Word found in the book of James does not allow us to treat Faith as a barren claim. So, when God’s Word in James’s writing says that Faith without works is dead, He is not contradicting his Word in Paul’s writing which says Faith is apart from works.

He is openly confronting counterfeit faith which claims belief in Jesus yet with no evidence to support the assertion of true Faith. In other words, Paul’s explanation excludes works as the meritorious basis of justification while James’s explanation exposes the reality of barren faith that is not truly Faith at all.

Consider with me James c. 2 v. 14-26.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”— and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

End quote.

A common mistake made when reading this passage is to ignore everything else that Scripture says regarding Faith and enforce single-minded focus on the first 3 verses which suggest that faith without works is no good, even dead. However, let’s first ask ourselves, how might the context of this letter inform our reading of this particular statement?

Consider this: Why is it that the book of James is considered by some to be the “Proverbs of the New Testament”, as is stated in the ESV’s introduction to this book? That statement is reflective of the purpose of the book, one quite similar to Proverbs: that is to provide wisdom for daily living.

Now, consider this: What is a critically important concept to understand as it pertains to Faith for all of those who are called to the Great Commission, that is, all Christians? I’ll propose to you that it is the need for outwardly visible evidence of Faith for the sake of those whom we would minister to. If they see no fruit of Faith, then all they see a dead faith.

This text in James is not one of those primarily explaining how to acquire salvation. All of those texts clearly preclude the ability to boast or teach meritorious works for justification before God.

The focus of this particular portion of Scripture is, as it clearly states immediately after referring to dead faith without works, presenting us with a critical reason that evident good works really matter: showing evidence of our Faith — shining the light of Christ in the world!

Nowhere in this text does James teach that works can merit justification for salvation. Rather, he teaches that Faith which receives salvation is living Faith which does not remain barren as the contradictory witness of counterfeit faith which produces no good works and may be described as dead.

Works complete Faith as its outward expression rather than a component of its justification for salvation. In other words, work is to Faith as fruit is to tree — completing the image of visible life of the plant.

This is how James can get away with referring to Faith without works as dead, because he’s making an analogy of Faith by suggesting that Faith is not effective for evangelism, ministry, or discipleship if it isn’t demonstrated for people through good works. Even prior to this section, the first 13 verses of c. 2 are also more directly concerned with the expressed representation of the Gospel than they are with the mechanism of Faith.

Nutrients produce a tree’s fruit, not vice versa. Likewise, a fruit of Faith, such as good works, cannot produce Faith itself. It is a natural consequence rather than a causal factor.

Consider as another example the following analogy. Good works are evidence for Faith in the same way that an ID card is evidence of citizenship. You don’t have citizenship because you have an ID card.

You have an ID card because you have citizenship, unless it’s a fake ID, and there are probably an unfortunate number church-goers holding onto fake IDs as well in the form of fake works — facades to fool not just others, but sometimes the ID holder themselves. Those are the lukewarm, the pew-sitters, or even the wolves in sheep’s clothing in the case of those attempting to lead others astray from within our congregations, whether they do so intentionally or not.

These are people who mimic genuinely good works of the Spirit through outwardly-appearing beneficial deeds, and to many people this can pass as an ID for proof of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. The problem that such people must come to terms with eventually is that God judges the heart, not merely the appearance of our deeds, and only those who obtain genuine citizenship in the Kingdom of God will be allowed through the gates of eternity.

Your outwardly appearing good deeds do not amount to genuinely good works if they are a means of deception, whether that’s to deceive others or yourself into believing that you have genuine Faith. Good works are not the root of Faith, but the fruit of the root of Faith.

Returning to James c. 2, I believe that the strongest case in favor of human works meriting grace in this passage is in v. 24 where it says that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone”. However, if you believe that this is referring to justification before God for salvation, you are reading that into the text rather than reading it from the text, because every other explicit statement regarding salvific justification clearly states that justification is not by works at all, or else it would not be according to grace.

I’ll say again, these surface-level differences cannot be true contradictions because all Scripture is breathed out by God. Therefore, I must conclude that v. 24 is not suddenly changing the subject to explain a contradictory means of justification for grace, but continuing along with the same purpose of the rest of this passage: that is to explain how we demonstrate our Faith to others for the sake of evangelism and discipleship — how we justify our claim to Faith in the eyes of humanity.

The text itself seems to make this argument by reminding us in v. 23 that Abraham was counted righteous for believing in God — the same example that is used by the same inspired Author of all Scripture to explain in Romans c. 4 that Faith comes apart from works.

Set aside the narrow typical theological interpretation of the term “justify” for a moment to consider with an open mind the following paired claims. We justify our Faith in Christ to people by our work. God justifies the application of grace to us by the received gift of Faith on the basis of Christ’s work.

I believe that in the context of a text that is inspired by an all-knowing and all-good God, that this is the only fair way to interpret the passage in question, and I know that every other discussion pertaining to this topic that I’ve examined that did not exclusively attempt to make a case for works meriting salvific justification has come to a similar conclusion regarding the explanation of this supposed pillar of the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification.

In fact, I propose that when read fairly in the intended context, this text stands as yet another pillar of the gifted nature of Faith, by which we merit nothing related to grace or salvation unto God. Galatians 5:6, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, and 2 Peter c. 1 v. 5-8 emphasize that Faith works to produce fruit. Consider the passage from 2 Peter:

… make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What will be impacted for good if we have these virtues active in our life? Our ability to be effective and fruitful with the knowledge of Christ. That’s why there is no fruit in those who have knowledge of Christ yet without works to express the virtues of Christ.

As James explained, we show our Faith to others through good works which are enabled by the first genuinely good work in our life — the miracle of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. By this, we reflect the character of God, not as the seller of salvation, but as the cultivator of Christ-likeness!

ACKNOWLEDGING REMAINING MYSTERY

At this point, I would like to acknowledge the presence of remaining mystery pertaining to the nature of God and the gift of Faith. Throughout this episode, we’ve traced the narrative and wisdom of Scripture as it defines Faith and its implications for our understanding of God and our relationship with Him.

We can see that Faith is God’s gift — freely given, genuinely received, impossible apart from grace, not merited by our works, not imparted by proximity, and fruitful when genuine. Yet, the exact inner mechanism by which divine grace, human response, foreknowledge, and spiritual rebirth interact remains beyond us.

The degree of remaining mystery will surely vary from person to person as some of us may understand more or less than others. Thankfully, we aren’t required to comprehend the systematic theology or deeper mysteries of Faith to begin taking part in it. We are simply called to be obedient in our reception of Faith and let it produce the work of God in us.

In the absence of perfect understanding, be encouraged by the Word from Romans c. 11 v. 33, which says:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

End quote.

Finally, for those of you less concerned about your own understanding than you are another person’s salvation, recall, in addition to God’s love and desire to be known by his creation, the following statement from Jesus as recorded in John c. 3 v. 8.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

End quote.

You can appreciate the breeze without knowing its coming and going, but unlike a natural wind, you can trust the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to land on everyone who will genuinely receive Him. The remaining mystery does not imply that God is not trustworthy, but that his ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts — or one might say, the wisdom of the Giver of Faith is greater than that of the receiver of Faith.

A PARABLE

Prior to my final exhortation, I’d like to present a parable that I wrote in order to depict the biblical theology of Faith as I understand it. Like any parable, the following is not meant to describe every element of the related doctrines and theology, but the relational depiction of gift, Giver, and receiver. It’s not meant to represent any specific individuals or churches, but rather certain general responses to the Gospel. The parable is as follows.

A benevolent King left his throne to seek those of his people in need of help. Beyond the gates of his palace, he found four men starved to the brink of death. The King offered each of the men a gift of food and a room in his palace.

The first man refused the gifts, so the King grieved the man’s fate but left him with the consequences of his decision. The second man pointed to the food and began to arrogantly brag as though he had earned this reward, so the King left him outside the gate where he continued to brag about the King’s offer until he perished.

The third man accepted the King’s offer, but told the others outside the gate that he had no choice in the matter, and so depicted the King as a tyrant without regard for his subjects’ wills. The fourth man humbly accepted the King’s offer and thanked him for the food and for enabling him to receive, by faith, a secured future in the palace.

To explain the parable: The first man refuses the gift. His destruction is most obvious. The second boasts as though he earned salvation, but never genuinely accepted the gift, so his destruction is assured as well. The third received, but misrepresented the King as though grace disables a meaningful response. The fourth received humbly, thanked the King, and knew even his faith rested upon the King’s mercy.

The call of Scripture is not to complicate faith, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, or to wait passively for an inevitable destiny. It is to trust and obey Christ — to repent from sin, believe the Gospel, and proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord: the one true God and Messiah!

FINAL EXHORTATION

Finally, to commence the true conclusion of this episode, I am going to first provide a condensed form of the theological conclusions that I’m convinced are critical for a proper theology of faith. The following is adapted from my personal statement of faith, which I discussed at length in my prior episode, the confession of faith, with a slightly adjusted presentation informed by the work I’ve done for this episode.

Because God is just and all of mankind have fallen short of the standard of righteousness, we are dependent on God for salvation. Yet, God does not force salvation upon us, but by his will He requires that we respond to repent and believe. He judges each person perfectly according to the degree of revelation received.

Spiritual rebirth produces good works in our lives, but our good works cannot produce spiritual rebirth because no work of ours can wash away the stain of sin. Thus, salvation is acquired only by God’s grace through faith in Christ’s death and resurrection by which He suffered the consequences of sin for all believers despite having never been guilty of sin Himself.

Furthermore, even our faith is a gift from God, and yet He still commands us to receive it. By this, God’s gift is shown to be not inconsiderately enforced but lovingly offered.

Faith is a gift that originates from God's initiative and is genuinely offered to all people in conjunction with His foreknowledge of who would receive it. We are entirely dependent on His grace for the opportunity and ability to receive and act upon this gift.

At this time, I believe that what I’ve presented in this episode is an accurate description of the doctrine of Faith and its impact on biblical Christian theology as I understand it. Before I truly conclude this episode, I want to acknowledge that people have tried to systematize the mysterious mechanism of faith in numerous different ways before now, and many of them would disagree on some of the finer details.

Some describe it as irresistible grace with unconditional election. Some others describe it as prevenient grace with genuine response. Yet others may not try to describe it with any real detail, but rather simply say what the Bible plainly says, believe that whatever it means is true, and do their best to obey the simple command to believe and receive.

I just want to remind everyone from every doctrinal camp that hears this message that whatever terms we use or reject, we must preserve all that Scripture says: faith is commanded, faith is grace-enabled, faith excludes boasting, faith receives Christ, and faith bears fruit.

At the end of the day, what I think we need to remember and communicate through our testimony is this: Faith does not come through mere intellectual assent, emotional impulse, religious adherence, self-generated virtue, or parroting doctrinal statements. Faith comes through responding to the invitation of God unto holy spiritual rebirth.

It is the gift we are called, but not coerced, to receive; and your responsibility for your response to that gift is not so that you can boast in your ability to agree to a pardon you could never deserve, but so that you can know that your relationship with God is genuine.

He has proven his love for you through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and now He asks you to reciprocate love through the one thing you can actually offer to God, again, not through your own power but through his enabling grace. That offering is a repentant soul, turned away from sin and surrendered to Him. Even that, you owe to Him twice over — first because He owns you by right as your Creator, and second, because He purchased your life by the blood of Christ from the just consequence of sin, which is death.

Jesus says in John c. 14 v. 6,

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

By this we know that Jesus is the way. There is no other way, no side door into heaven, no cheat code to eternity. You are either saved through Faith in Jesus or you are destined for Hell.

OUTRO

Studying and applying the Word of God always blesses and refreshes me. I hope the way I’ve presented Scripture in this message encourages meaningful dialogue and sharper understanding. If you’re interested in further studies and discussions centered on the transformative truths of the Holy Bible, you can follow this podcast or search for The Wisdom Crucible on YouTube for video recordings.

Media metrics may drive the algorithms, but the Word of God is what drives me — and that’s what I hope to pass on. May the Lord bless you— and continually refine your heart through His Word.