God’s Conditional Love

From the American Vision blog:

What is the question? Simply this: "If God loves me unconditionally, why does it matter how I live my life?" Or it could also be phrased this way: "If God truly loves me unconditionally, why should it matter whether or not I ‘become a Christian?’" Be careful to not miss how powerful and deadly this question really is. It is not just a clever twist of wording, meant to sidetrack the evangelistic efforts of well-meaning proselytizers. Far from it. This question is the stake in the heart of the modern evangelical notion of God’s "unconditional love." In fact, I challenge you to search for the phrase "unconditional love" in the Bible or find the concept that God unconditionally loves every person on earth being taught anywhere in Scripture. In fact, R.J. Rushdoony makes the bold claim that "unconditional love is contrary to the Bible."

Again: the Calvinist is noetically incapable of seeing God’s love as being truly unconditional.  For him, when God says He “so loved the world,” the Calvinist is presuppositionally forced to inject “…of the elect” into the verse.  When the Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, he is again forced to inject “…any of the elect…all of the elect” where the clause does not in fact exist either contextually or necessarily.

The fact is, the Bible does teach God’s unconditional love – quite emphatically so.  It is, however, inaccurate to assert that unconditional love means that there are no necessary consequences for sin and rebellion.  I can love my son unconditionally – but if he misbehaves, because and as a direct consequence of my love, I will not shield him from the consequences of his actions, and will instead discipline him.  There is no real conflict between my unconditional love for my son and my then administering to him the consequences for his behavior when he misbehaves.

So, too, God.  God loves the world – every single person on it.  He even spoke to Judas in love, calling him at the very moment of his betrayal of Him, “friend,” giving Judas a last opportunity to repent.  That love is not inconsistent with His permitting men to receive the consequences of their choices, since that is likewise a consequence of two other of His attributes – justice and holiness.

But the consistent Calvinist cannot see this; he is committed to a theology which has God arbitrarily deciding from eternity past who will be saved and who will burn, with the individuals in question having absolutely no choice in the matter, instead being foreordinately and infallibly vouchsafed to whichever destiny He arbitrarily chose for them – who in effect created the vast bulk of humanity to suffer in unimaginable agony throughout eternity for His glory alone.

…and insist on calling these the “Doctrines of Grace.”

…and Calvinists wonder why us non-Calvinists run as hard and fast as we can away from Calvinism, screaming in horror the whole way.

God’s unconditional love for mankind is in no way inconsistent with His holiness and justice.  It is HIs holiness and justice which requires that sin be dealt with, and which in fact demands that there be such as place as hell for those who die in their sin; it was likewise His unconditional love which impelled Him to take upon Himself human flesh to die so as to provide the only way men might be saved through His free grace, providing an escape from the just consequences of their sins which would otherwise require their eternal damnation.  God’s unwillingness that any should perish but that instead all should come to repentance is in no way inconsistent with His will that those who do not repent will perish.  Nobody (who isn’t a Hypercalvinist) has any problem with the distinctions between God’s perfect, permissive, and declarative will.

I may not have things as tightly bound up and figured out as the Calvinist has; but I can identify crazy when I see it – and the assertion that God’s love is conditional emphatically falls under that category.

 

Season Preview

Wings season preview here.

 

WHEW! Well, THAT’S one thing I don’t have to worry about now…

I don’t know; I really think this is a very clever business model…

 

Richard Dawkins: the Peter Ruckman of Atheists

Spot-on summary analysis here.

 

Calvin Quote

One of the books I’m reading is "John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life", and in it I just read a great sort of ”why grace changes everything" quote:

Namely, that we see God as the only lord of our soul, and His Law as the only rule and spiritual instruction for our conscience, so that we do not serve Him according to all kinds of foolish human regulations. Further that He wants to be served by us in spirit and with a clean heart. On the other hand, we admit that in us there is nothing but unrighteousness, that we are corrupt in all we think and do, so that our heart is an abyss of evil. We therefore doubt ourselves, deny any claim to our own wisdom, worthiness, or aptitude for the good, turn to the fountain of all good which is Jesus Christ, and receive what He gives us, the reward of His suffering and death, so that we may be reconciled to God through it. Washed clean in His blood, we are now no longer afraid that our sins will prevent us from finding grace at His heavenly throne. Assured that our sins have been freely forgiven on the basis of His sacrifice, we find our rest and assurance of salvation. We are sanctified through His Spirit to devote ourselves to obeying the justice of God. Strengthened by His grace, we will be victorious over the devil, the world, and the flesh. Finally, as members of His body, we do not doubt that God counts us among His children, and that we may with full confidence address Him as our Father.

 

Mike Foster: The Necessity of Church as Mother

Very insightful and very spot-on blogpost here:

American Christianity has been severely synchronized to the idol of individualism. This has been clearly illustrated to me time and time again by the numerous amounts of Christians who have a complete disregard for the centrality of the local church. They act as if belonging to a church is an option on par with belonging to a gym or pouring cream in their coffee. They see church as merely an additive that is optional. This, of course, is a lie bellowing up from the smoky pits of hell. I have spent the last few years of my life working hard to confront this hersey. When I speak on this subject I will often cite the following quote from Cyprian: “You cannot have God as your Father if you do not have the church as your mother.”

Read the whole article here.

 

Discussing Christian Freedom

Friend and fellow-pastor Tom Spithaler discusses Christian freedom here.

 

The Cost of Discipleship

The Chalcedon Foundation (a Reconstructionist concern) publishes a bimonthly magazine dealing with various issues of the Christian faith.  In the most recent issue, author Martin Selbrede writes a very interesting article, The Cost Of Discipleship, in which he makes the very intriguing argument that the modern discipleship movement – indeed, the very concept of “discipleship” as much of the modern church takes it – is actually antithetical to that Christian liberty which Christ died to procure, and in reality short-circuits the sanctifying work which the Holy Spirit Himself desires to bring about in the believer’s life.

The gist of the evangelical push for accountability is horizontal accountability. This push is a major factor in many ministries in which believers are advised to hold one another accountable for various aspects of their Christian walk. An implicit distrust of the Holy Spirit’s office of sanctifying the believer lies behind this push. The Spirit may be sent to convict the world of sin and of righteousness, but evangelicals feel He needs a little help—He’s just not quite omnipotent enough, you see, and so men need to fill in what’s missing. Just as we have many new precepts of men rushing in to fill the vacuum that results when God’s commandments are tossed out, even so we have many new sanctifying agents rushing in to fill the gap when God’s Holy Spirit is judged inadequate to perfect the saints in holiness.

The pattern is all too clear: just as many evangelicals are dead-set on being lawmakers on God’s behalf, many more are committed to becoming little holy ghosts for their brothers and sisters. One’s “accountability partner” becomes a surrogate for the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s work is usurped. This is a way “that seemeth right to a man.”

The dominant focus in Scripture is that men and women are accountable to God. Accountability is fundamentally vertical. As David put it so directly after being implicated in the death of Uriah the Hittite, “against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4). This idea grates on human pride and pomposity, but it is God’s law, not man’s law, that is being broken. We are to inculcate the fear of God, the vertical relationship, in others. But we undercut this because accountability partners subconsciously act out of fear of man. Our motivation in these relationships takes an unconscious turn: “I’m doing this because I don’t want to look bad to my accountability partner.” God holds us all accountable. Nothing ought ever to pull our eyes down from heaven, from Him with Whom we have to do, to worry about our fellow man’s opinion of us. We ought to worry about what God thinks of us. “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12; see also 1 Pet. 4:5).

Accountability partnering puts man back in front of a human audience, inviting us to operate in terms of that new relational dynamic instead of in terms of the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying power and quickening of His law-word to our minds and hearts.

I can excuse the author’s compulsive jab at non-Calvinists (“We would expect this kind of thinking among Arminian believers who repose much weight in the actions of man as opposed to the operations of God, but the idea is rampant among Calvinists who have temporarily lost sight of the fact that God controls sanctification as much as any other aspect of our lives.”) given that he is a Calvinist, and as such is characteristically incapable of viewing other theologies in anything less than hubristic contempt.  Don’t let that rob you of the meat of what he has to say.

Overall, I find myself very intrigued with his arguments…not sure if I buy them completely, but fascinating nonetheless.

 

Riverside

Interesting view here on the decline of respect for clergy in modern America…especially how it ties said decline with a corresponding rise in “professionalism” in the ministry.

Today they are regarded as hired help.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting…

 

Open Letter to President Obama

Interesting article here by Harry Jackson:

All too often, both the press and politicians view the African-American community as a monolithic group that will go wherever the cultural winds blow them. This is not true.We want to express our concerns and be heard. The following letter is an attempt to encourage the president to consider our viewpoint on the redefinition of marriage.

Same-sex marriage is not a civil right. The laws enacted by Congress during a century of struggle for equal rights for African-Americans were intended to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, not on the basis of an individual’s sexual preferences or personal behavior.

Many of the people we speak for felt that your disparaging statements during the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot were directed at them. Some of the people with ‘worn out arguments and old attitudes’ are not bigots or homophobes; they are our cultural elders, who are rightfully saying, ‘Don’t tear down a fence until you understand why it’s there.’ Recent studies show that there is a resurgence of hope about marriage among the young people of this generation. Mr. President, let’s keep hope alive.

We also stated that the California Proposition 8 votes amending the state’s constitution to protect marriage marked the beginning of a new era in American politics. For the first time in recent history, black and Hispanic voters (predominately Christians) voted for President Obama and simultaneously voted against the Democratic power structure on this social issue. In light of this phenomenon occurring simultaneously within the black and Hispanic communities, we respectfully warned the president that hooking his political wagon too closely to the gay marriage bandwagon could precipitously erode public confidence in his administration.

Very interesting read.