Continued from previous page...
...The shorthand version of this is what I sent you, “Our
perfect God had a perfect plan to save certain imperfect sinners, whom He calls
His sheep, by sending His perfect Son to accomplish all of His perfect holy
will, and He sent forth His perfect Holy Spirit to perfectly apply and bring
about all that is related to His perfect plan.
And it is all by grace alone, God’s unmerited favor bestowed upon
completely unworthy sinners.”
In one of your e-mails, you quoted
the first line of that statement, but stopped at the words “certain
imperfect sinners...” You
then stated that you did not agree with it. I found it curious that you stopped
at that particular point in my statement, because it seems you didn’t notice
that I qualified that statement by providing the words, “whom He calls His
sheep.” What I stated is
simply what the Bible clearly affirms; Jesus came to lay down His life for His
sheep, and not every single person who ever has or ever will live is counted as
one of His sheep (in passing, did Jesus lay down His life for His sheep or for
the goats as well? Read John
Chapter10). To disagree with the
one clause (i.e., “certain imperfect sinners”), a person would also have to
disagree with my qualifying statement, “whom He calls His sheep…” and to
disagree with that, one would have to disagree with Jesus Himself, because that
is precisely what Jesus said.
I think it’s also important to
understand that to disagree with any one part of the statement, one would
also have to disagree with every other aspect of the statement, because it is
all interconnected, at least as far as I can tell. Let me explain: If
God is perfect, that means all of His plans are perfect. If all of His plans are perfect, that means that there is no
possibility that they could fail (Job 42:2 NIV). Yet we find that not every single person who ever has or ever
will live will be saved; many will be saved, but others won’t be.
So far, so good…I know you would agree with that.
But now we must ask a difficult question, “was this not part of God’s
perfect plan?” It would seem to me that to say that it wasn’t is to say
that God has not considered all things related to His plan, and His plan would
thus no longer be perfect. To then
say that God still wants to save them but is unable to do so, or doesn’t do
so, is to say that His plan isn’t perfect, because His sovereign, decreed will
has been frustrated at that point—which by its very nature is an impossibility
if God is truly sovereign and omnipotent.
If that is true, then it seems that the only conclusion we could draw is
that God Himself is not absolutely sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, infallible
or perfect. If that is true, if
that is in fact the right conclusion, it would seem that I would have to reword
my statement to say “An imperfect God had an imperfect plan to save every
single imperfect sinner, whom He calls sheep and goats, by sending His imperfect
Son to accomplish none of His imperfect will, and He sent forth
His imperfect Spirit to imperfectly apply and not bring about anything that is
related to His imperfect plan.”
To borrow a question you asked of
me in a previous e-mail, “Does that sound like Jehovah?”
I think you know and agree that it doesn’t. Please note, I’m not
saying that this is what a non-Reformed person believes about God, I’m just
showing what the logical conclusion would be concerning the statement I wrote if
in fact God is not absolutely sovereign, omnipotent, and omniscient, and His
plans and purposes can fail. The logical conclusion would be how I reworded my statement.
If the logical conclusion I drew is in fact correct, the question then
becomes, “why don’t more Christians embrace the Biblical view of the
infinite perfections of God’s Being since only the Reformed (Biblical) view
can avoid the negative conclusions that I outlined?”
I can think of many reasons. For
one, many Christians just haven’t thought through the issues enough.
They just aren’t connecting the dots.
Another reason is that many of the issues are tough to grapple with,
especially as it relates to predestination. This is why the Westminster
Confession of Faith states, “This important and mysterious doctrine of
predestination must be treated with special care…” But I would say that
the number one reason more Christians do not embrace the Reformed view,
especially when presented with it, is because at the heart of it we,
unfortunately, simply have difficulty submitting ourselves to what God’s Word
says about these things. Instead,
we replace God’s Word with our own traditions, unbiblical speculations, and
humanistic philosophies.
Many try to soften the view of
God’s absolute sovereignty that is presented to us in the Scriptures. I’ve
already touched on the impossibility of doing that—the Scriptures simply will
not allow for it. However, the
problem doesn’t stop with the absolute sovereignty of God for the non-Reformed
believer. Even if they succeed in
doing away with altogether God’s absolute sovereignty (at least in their own
mind), they fail to recognize that if they acknowledge just the bare fact that
God is omniscient, then they cannot escape the conclusions of the Reformed
position.