Following is an excerpt from an article in the July/August, 2006 issue of Modern Reformation Magazine. This magazine, and it’s sister radio show, The White Horse Inn, are sources for my regular theological nourishment. In the year 2006, they’ve been conducting a “Romans Revolution,” emphasizing the fact that many significant spiritual awakenings have been sparked by a rediscovery of the truth of justification by faith as taught in Paul’s most systematic presentation of the gospel, the book of Romans. In Romans 7, Paul highlights the struggle between our indwelling sin and the new life of the Spirit which compete for our compliance. How do we deal with the struggle most effectively? Realize that even though our strides in sanctification are often few and far between, our justification freely given to us on account of Christ will not only comfort us, but give us the hope to get back in the fray with the flesh!

. . . in Romans 8:1, Paul assures us that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So, Romans 7:4 and 8:1 say essentially the same thing: God does not look on our struggles against indwelling sin with an attitude of condemnation and judgment because the condemning power of his law has been forever dealt with by Christ.

So in the midst of our struggle with indwelling sin, we must continually keep our focus on the gospel (emphasis mine). We must always go back to the truth that even in the face of the fact that so often “I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (v. 19), there is no condemnation. God no longer counts our sin agaist us (Romans 4:8).

Or, to say it another way, God wants us to find our primary joy in our objectively declared justification, not in our subjectively perceived sanctification (emphasis mine). Regardless of how much progress we make in our pursuit of holiness, it will never come close to the absolute perfect righteousness of Christ that is ours through our union with him in his life and death.

So we should learn to live with the discomfort of the justified life. We should accept the fact that as a still-growing Christian, we will always be dissatisfied with our sanctification. But at the same time, we should remember that in Christ we are justified. We are righteous in him. There is the familiar play on the word “justification,” which means “just as if I’d never sinned.” But there is another way of saying that which is even better: justification means “just as if I’d always obeyed.” That’s the way we stand before God–clothed in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that’s the way we can live with the discomfort of the justified life.

T — Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

T — So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

It is amazing how we gloss over verses that don’t fit into our systems. And how common it is that these kinds of verses are ignored totally by semi-pelagian preachers and teachers. Romans 8:7 covers the idea that the unregenerate are not subject to the law of God. Calvinist and non-Calvinist can agree on this. We all have Romans 3:23 underlined in our Soul-Winner’s New Testament! “all have sinned,” after all! But what is this? It goes on to compound the issue with a clear statement regarding one’s moral inability. Not only are those who walk after the flesh, being carnally minded and therefore dead, not subject to God’s law, but that are not subject because they cannot be subject.

This speaks to the debated question of who it is who can receive Christ. If “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and if verse 8 says they that are in the flesh cannot please God, then does it not follow that they that are in the flesh cannot believe unless regenerated before he believes? Oh, but that would demonstrate the logical connection between Total Depravity and Irresistable Grace . . .

Stomping Toes and Stomping Souls: The Moralistic Bent to Fundamentalist Preaching – Fundamentally Reformed

L — “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:9-11 KJV)

L — “And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14 KJV)

L — “We love him, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

One thing that is important to keep in mind when reading the apostles’ letters to the churches, most of what they write about the work of redemption, they put in terms that indicate the work was done for us. Now, the question is raised whether these references include the whole world, or is the apostle meaning to refer only to the audience to which he is writing? It has become my conviction that these references are directed to the church and not the world at large unless the context specifically demands such an interpretation.

Now, to highlight the doctrine of Limited Atonement in this passage:

The paragraph which contains verses 7-12 is basically about the fact that our love for one another is evidence that God’s Son indeed has saved us. But look at some of the atonement theology contained in this paragraph:

In verse nine, the love of God is manifested toward the elect because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that the elect might live through him.

In verse ten, we are shown the logical order of Christian love. God did not send his Son to propitiate him for sinners because he foresaw who’d love him, but the kind of love God reveals in Scripture is the kind revealed in his Son’s propitiatory work on behalf of the sovereignly chosen elect. God takes the initiative from A-Z in the doctrine of salvation.

In verse eleven, there is some very simple application. Would that it were this easy to apply all of Scripture! We have a very clear redemptive focus, and we are aware of man’s fallen condition in his lack of love for others.

The redemptive focus is that God has loved the elect by sending his Son to redeem them, and since not only does the elect benefit spiritually from this work, but once Christ’s work as our Substitute has been planned by the Father, accomplished by the Son and applied by the Holy Spirit to the elect, they now have the great Example of our holy, covenant Head to follow toward others. God wants the elect to give themselves to others on the “horizontal” plane as Christ gave himself for them on the “vertical” plane.

Those who struggle with the fact of sovereign grace need to keep in mind that all we ever do is a response to God’s working in us to will and do according to his pleasure. We did not initiate our creation; yet Adam, our Head in the covenant of works, did (under God’s inscrutable foreordination) fall into sin of his own free will (and if we were in his shoes, we would’ve also), but everything after that is based on God’s promise; a promise he was not obligated to make. It would have been perfectly fair for him to leave us in the condition in which we find ourselves in Adam. All of God’s redemptive work for the elect is done to keep his promise, to show mercy to the elect for his glory, to not be “fair,” but gracious! Remember, fairness means death!

Now look at verse 14. This is one of the non-Calvinist’s proof texts of a general atonement. My semi-pelagian friend, stop and think about the world in which the apostle John is writing. The natural children of Abraham had the world classified in two categories: “us” and “them”; Jew and Gentile. John was a Jew. When a Jew in the first century talks about God doing something for “the whole world,” he means to emphasize the amazing truth that God’s not only doing something for the people he delivered from bondage in Egypt, but in the Lord Jesus Christ, he’s now delivering sinners from every nation from bondage to sin! This was a truly awe-inspiring thing going on in the world. It happened to Rahab, and Ruth, but now Gentiles were being brought into the Kingdom of God en masse! If a Jew as going to communicate clearly, he needed to specify about whom he’s speaking. Jesus came to save, not the Jews only, but elect sinners from the whole world!

“Finally, brethren” (insert preacher joke here), verse nineteen is a restatement of that simple application that we are to go and do for others what God has done for us. God demonstrated the greatest expression of love in Christ on behalf of the elect in his sinless life, propitiatory death and life-imparting resurrection, and now we are to obey not only the Great Commandment (love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength), but the second as well, which is “like unto it” (love your neighbor as yourself). This love is the fruit of justification. R. C. Sproul once broadcast that the righteousness of God was imputed to us, but that when that justifying work took place, God’s love was imparted. If we’ve been justified by faith, then we, the believing elect, will love God and our brothers in Christ and the lost! So since the work of God is effectual, and we have his promise that it will happen, let’s get after it in the assurance that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance! As the English Standard Version translates verse nineteen, “We love (others) because he first loved us.”

A few years ago, when I was beginning my transformation from an “independent, fundamental, soul-winnin’, separated, premillennial, (semi-pelagian), King James Bible-believin'” Baptist, having come to learn “the way of God (specifically, the way of his grace) more perfectly,” I began to notice traces of those doctrines which have been most controversially affected by God’s sovereign grace throughout much of the New Testament in familiar places which I never dreamed I’d find them. As I noticed them, I began to mark them in the margin next to the verses or passages in which the doctrines evidenced themselves in varying degrees.

Of course, I’m speaking of what Calvinists call “The Doctrines of Grace,” and what most semi-pelagian, “independent, fundamental . . .” Baptist preachers mistakenly call “Hyper-Calvinism” (mostly in an attempt to commit the logical fallacy of “guilt by association”). As many of you are aware these are the doctrines which have been grouped together and given an acronym over the years (do any of you theologians out there know who it was that first popularized the acronym? I’m aware of its origins with the Synod of Dort, what about the acronym itself?), presumably to aid in memorization. The Doctrines of Grace are those doctrines which are radically God-centered, contrary to the way they are naturally and commonly understood by the “unlearned and unstable” (and I mean that charitably); they are those doctrines which eminently magnify God and humiliate man. Indeed, they so humiliate man, and sometimes so infuriate him, that even the Apostle Paul had to answer some of the very questions raised by these doctrines in Scirpture, which are always raised by non-Calvinists to this day, as well as defend them against the same charges which continue to be made against them to this day.

These “Doctrines of Grace” are:

Total Depravity (In other words, “How the doctrine of the sovereignty of the gracious God affects the biblical doctrine of human sinfulness”)

Unconditional Election (“How the doctrine of the sovereignty of the gracious God affects the biblical doctrine of election)

Limited Atonement (“How the doctrine of the sovereignty of the gracious God affects the biblical doctrine of the atonement”)

Irresistable Grace (“How the doctrine of the sovereignty of the gracious God affects the biblical doctrine of the gospel call and regeneration”)

Perseverance of the Saints (“How the doctrine of the sovereignty of the gracious God affects the biblical doctrine of the security of the believer”)

So as I noticed traces of these doctrines throughout Scripture, I’d mark a “T” or a “U” and so on, in the margin, until my New Testament was littered with them. These I intend to begin sharing one by one each week, with a few comments of my own so that these wonderful doctrines may be made more clear to those who continue to struggle with them, and likewise for the edification of those of us who already hold them so dear.

But this is just the introduction. Probably next week we’ll begin our stroll through the New Testament and occassionally “Stop and Smell the TULIPS!”