Strength for Those Suffering With Christ: The Doctrine of Calling – Part I

Romans 8:28-30

Open your Bibles to Romans, chapter 8. We’re down to Romans 8:28 and 29. I’ve been reading through this chapter again and again this last couple of weeks.  It’s so important to remember context. The more I study the Scripture, the more I’m impressed by how much we miss because we don’t look at favorite verses and promises by really examining how it fits within the context. One of the areas where there is an egregious amount of proof texting is in the area of the debates over the sovereignty of God versus the free will or volition of man. It’s important not to just grab verses as you read through theologies and other things written on this topic. They just list a string of verses and you look at a lot of those verses and you start looking at the context around there and you say, “I’m not sure that’s even talking about what they say it’s talking about. It doesn’t really apply to this situation.” So we need to look at that and one area we need to look at is Romans 8:28–30. 

This is going to take several weeks because we have to slowly and precisely work our way through these words that are used here so we’ll have a number of word studies. Hopefully we’ll get into the first one tonight on the doctrine of calling. What does it mean when Paul uses the term ‘the called’ in verse 28 and then again in verse 30?  Before we get there I want to look at context. Now when we study the Scripture there are really four things that need to be evaluated as you study a passage. The first is really context. We have to really understand a number of things about its context. What kind of literature are we dealing with? Are we dealing with poetry like Proverbs or Psalms? Are we dealing with legal literature such as the Torah, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy? Are we dealing with historical narrative which is what we’ve had a lot of in Acts? Are we dealing with epistolary literature like the letters where Paul is very methodically, logically, precisely building an explanation of important doctrines or teachings of Scripture? So that’s one area of context. 

Another area of context is the flow of the author’s thinking as he writes through the book. It used to drive me nuts when I was in high school and I would go up to Camp Peniel as a worker. We’d be given an assignment every day to read through three or four verses and then we had to write them out in our own words. You really have to think about something to do that and understand it. You have to learn to read well and back in 1967 and 68, all we had was a King James Bible. That was extremely difficult. Now when you have more up-to-date translations, it’s a little easier to do something like that. That was a hard thing to do with the King James Bible when you’re in high school.  I wasn’t a dumb high school kid. I can’t imagine how a lot of people in high school are today because they just don’t have the reading comprehension skills. 

That’s why so many of these English translations that have been coming out the last twenty or thirty years seem to have dumbed things down so much is because the whole education system in the country has dumbed down so much that high school kids today, for the most part, read at such a low level of comprehension that if you want a high school kid to understand the Bible, you’ve got to translate it at a third or fourth grade level. That means taking out a lot of significant English words that have a time-honored tradition of theological significance. Words like justification, redemption, and propitiation just don’t communicate at all to people who are just the products of our public education for the most part. That’s why we have to go through and explain all of these different concepts. 

We have to look at the context, the literary context, what is said before a passage and after a passage. We have to ask how these verses fit in the flow of what the writer is saying. We have to deal with that and too often, what I find, is that people do Rorschach Bible study. The Rorschach tests are those ink blot tests that psychiatrists use. They have an ink blot and they put it out in front of you and you’re asked what it makes you think of. Somebody looks at a passage and they see a word there and they say, “Oh, I’ve seen that same word over here.” They start connecting the dots where they shouldn’t be connected. Just because there are similar ideas or words doesn’t mean that the context of one passage is talking about the same thing as another passage. You don’t need to connect those dots. 

Sometimes you’ll have passages that are talking about the same thing but not using the same vocabulary but those passages need to be connected together. The only way you get there is if you’re familiar with a text of Scripture. So we’re going to be doing some of those things as we go through here but we need to start with context and really understand the flow of what Paul is saying here in Romans, chapter 8. Remember he started off at the beginning talking about the contrast between those who walk according to the flesh and those who are walking according to the Spirit.  So you have two different kinds of believers. You have those who are living as if they’re unbelievers; they’re walking according to the sin nature called ‘the flesh’ by Paul in many passages or they’re walking in fellowship with God, walking according to the Spirit and applying the Word of God daily, consistently in their life. Believers fall into one of those two categories. Those who are consistently walking according to the flesh are developing a quality of life called a death-like existence as a believer. They can’t please God, verse 8. If you live according to the Spirit, you’ll experience that richness and abundance of life from the Spirit. 

All of that leads up to the fact that there are two categories of believers that are addressed in those passages. One it referred to as “children of God”, which includes every believer. That instant you put your faith in Jesus Christ, that instant you believe Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, alone, is sufficient for your forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and justification, you receive new life in Christ. You’re a child of God. You’re adopted into the family of God. But then there’s another type of child of God and that’s called a ‘son of God” in this passage using the term huios, just as the Son of God in reference to Jesus Christ is called huois. 

Verse 14 says “As many as are led by the Spirit”. This refers to those who are following the leadership of the Spirit and are walking by the Spirit. They are pursuing spiritual growth and spiritual maturity so the term that’s used of them is a term that reflects a mature son. They’re called sons of God. There’s a contrast that’s then made in Romans 8:17 which we have covered extensively in the past. It requires a change in punctuation. Remember there was no punctuation in the original Greek. In fact, in the uncial manuscripts, all the letters were upper case with no spaces between any of the words and no punctuation. They didn’t divide words like we do by syllable with a hyphen at the end of the line. If they ran out of space at the end of the line, they just started on the next line. So you have to know the language. Now you think, “That would be pretty hard to read” but not if that’s how you learned to read and that’s what you’re familiar with.  They understood that and they knew the language. That wasn’t something difficult to them. But what happens with us we come in and read a verse and we have to ask how we should punctuate that in English. 

The punctuation that we find in most Bibles is to put a comma after Christ in verse 17, which makes it look as if “heirs of God” and “fellow heirs of Christ” with a comma there, are synonymous. The problem with that is that it makes being an heir of God or joint-heir of Christ conditioned upon suffering with Him. Now the gospel doesn’t say that you can have eternal life if you suffer with Jesus. That’s not much of a free gift. If the gospel is not by works but by grace, then it’s a free gift and we simply accept the gift. We believe on Jesus. We don’t have to do anything. There’s no condition. We just believe the gospel. We accept it; we receive the gospel, all of these are synonyms for faith in Christ. So if we re-punctuate the verse it reads, “So if children.” Children is the word teknon and refers to every Christian who is a believer in Jesus Christ. Every person who is a member of the royal family of God. “If children heirs also, heirs of God…” This is where the comma goes, that’s the first category. Every child in the family is an heir of God. 

Secondly, then fellow heirs or joint-heirs with God on the condition that is expressed by the “if clause” that we suffer with Him that we also may be glorified with Him.  Suffering entails spiritual growth and spiritual advance on the basis of obedience. Whenever we’re obedient, we’re going to learn things through suffering. In Hebrews 2:10 we read, “For it was fitting for Him [God the Father] in bringing many sons to glory.” That is believers in Jesus Christ and bringing us to glory “to make the captain [the Lord Jesus Christ] to make mature through suffering. So Jesus Christ had to grow to maturity learning in His humanity through the things that He suffered just living amongst unbelievers in the midst of Satan’s cosmic system. 

We’re going to go through suffering. Now as soon as Paul said that in verse 17, I think the editors are right that there’s a paragraph shift that occurs in verse 18 because it’s a slightly different focus. From verse 18 down to the end of the chapter, the focal point is helping us understand some things about suffering with Christ. So this topic, this idea of suffering with Christ, becomes the umbrella concept from verse 18 down through verse 39. Once you get the grip on the fact that this is the umbrella term dealing with understanding suffering in the life of the believer, then it becomes clearer. Suffering is part of God’s plan and purpose and this is how He has determined that we will be brought to maturity and in preparation for a future where we rule and reign with Christ. 

Let me show you how that works out. You can just circle some of these key words as we go through here. I want to trace this broad idea for you before we start getting down into the details of Romans 8:28 because if you don’t understand how the particulars, the details, orient to the general flow of thought then you can easily get off-track. We have to understand where Paul is taking us. It’s like looking at a map. I know some people are directionally challenged and as soon as I talk about a map their brain goes blank just like mine does when people start talking about numbers. When you look at a map, it gives you an overview. You look at the route you’re going to take and then all the different towns and cities you go through along the way begin to make sense in terms of how they’re strung together on the route from Point A to Point B. That’s what happens in the text. We’re getting the overview so the details make sense only as how they relate to that overview. 

Verse 18 starts with the word ‘for’. Most of the time in the English text when we see a verse start with the word ‘for’, it’s a translation of the Greek word gar, which always introduces an explanation. Paul just made this statement, “If indeed we suffer with Him, that we may be glorified in Him.” Then he says, “Let me explain.” Not only does verse 18 begin with ‘for’ but it also brings in the idea of suffering so he’s expanding on our understanding of why we suffer and helping us understand that role in terms of our future glorification with Christ. Verse 19 begins with what? “For.” Circle that word. It’s a further development of the explanation. Verse 20 begins with “for”. In these two verses we introduce creation and how creation itself even groans under the curse of sin, which is explained in verse 22. So 18, 19, 20 and 21 [which is one sentence] all start with “for”. Then verse 22 introduces a fourth ‘for’ explanation and verse 23 develops the idea from verse 22 and then verse 24 begins with a “for”. 

Something happens in the flow of thought when we get down to verse 24 where Paul says, “For in hope we have been saved.” So now he’s talking about how this hope, our confident future expectation, is related to how we can handle suffering right now because we understand where we’re headed. Hope has to do with a future certainty. A confidence of a future situation so we’re saved with this hope, this confident expectation.  Then he explains a little bit about hope in the rest of the verse and then verse 25 also talks about hope, “If we hope for what we do not see.” Then in verse 26 he says, “likewise”. I didn’t hit this last time. I didn’t catch this until this week. It says, “Likewise the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses.” This word ‘likewise’ means in the same way or in a similar manner. In a similar manner to what?  Well, the only thing we have in the immediate context is the hope. So the hope is a problem-solving device. It’s a way to solve the problem of adversity. We’re in adversity.

How do we handle it? We handle it because of that confident expectation. It’s that personal sense of our eternal destiny that helps us here. We know that God has a destiny where he’s taking us and that’s related to our confident expectation so we know God is doing something in our life even if we have to go through suffering or adversity right now. This serves a purpose; it has a purpose. Then he says, “In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness.” Well, hope helped our weakness. That’s what he’s implying there. Hope as a tool, a technique for handling adversity strengthened us in the weakness of having to deal with adversity. Weakness was a term that James used a lot in dealing with the same thing in facing adversity and trials or testing.

 So likewise, in the same way that hope helps us, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness. Then he explains how the Spirit helps because the Spirit intercedes for us when we don’t know exactly how to pray for circumstances or situations, the Holy Spirit acts as kind of a divine translator in articulating our prayers the way they ought to be. As I pointed out when we studied this the last time, that doesn’t excuse us for praying in a sloppy manner, an imprecise manner, or in a generalized manner. You don’t find any writer of scripture from David in the psalms, and David in the psalms all the way up through Jesus’ prayers and any of the apostle’s prayers, just bailing out in some sort of generalized prayer, saying, “Well, Lord, I don’t know what to pray for so the Holy Spirit will do it. Amen.” No, they craft their prayers. They articulate them to the best of their ability but they know that ultimately they don’t comprehend all that needs to be comprehended and the Holy Spirit is going to handle the situation but that doesn’t relieve them of their responsibility.

Now we come to verse 28. Verse 28 says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good.” What are the all things in context? It’s not necessarily every detail in life. It’s talking about this suffering, the adversity that’s been the topic since verse 17 which is how to handle the adversity, the suffering we face in life as we are pursuing spiritual growth, spiritual maturity with the end game of being a joint-heir with Christ in order to be glorified with Him. So Romans 8:28 fits within this flow. We see that Paul shifts his focus now to a general principle that is known to his audience. He includes the audience with himself and this is a principle they understood and he is appealing to the concept of God’s sovereign plan. It’s a plan of such a scope that God is able to orchestrate all the details and elements of history, specifically the elements of adversity in the life of a believer, in order to bring about maturity and glorification in the life of the believer so that he can rule and reign with Christ in the kingdom in the future. 

The next thing we should notice is at the end of verse 30. We read, “And those whom He predestined, He also called, and these whom He called, He also justified, and those He justified, He also glorified.” Now when was the last time we saw that word, “glorified”? We saw that back in verse 17, “and if children, heirs, also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” So you see contextually we’re dealing with this issue of taking the believer through suffering through this aspect of glorification with Christ as a joint-heir with Christ. Although the principles we see here are in one sense true for every believer, Paul is not dealing with what’s true for every believer. Paul doesn’t focus on the lowest common denominator and say, “You’re a failure believer. You’re unfaithful. You’re not walking in the Spirit.  This is what you get.” 

He assumes that if you’re a believer you’re going to do what you ought to do which is pursue maturity. So he focuses on the high road and he’s not dealing with the exception of the losers. It’s true for them. The person who is not pursuing maturity just gets mired up in a lot of adversity and self-induced misery as well. But Paul is talking about how the maturing, focused believer is aided by understanding God’s sovereign plan. The point I’m making here is that we have to understand Romans 8:28-30 to encourage us on how we look at our adversity in life as we’re pursuing spiritual maturity. 

Look down to Romans 8:35-37. This is in the midst of a whole series of rhetorical questions that Paul asks. We’ll get into all of that when we get there. But look at verse 35. He says, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” In other words does any of this indicate that God doesn’t love us anymore? You’re going through difficult times. You’re going through hard times. You’re going through persecution. You’re going through imprisonment. 

Today I was looking at something on the Mamertine prison in Rome. This was basically a hole in the ground. The way they treated prisoners in Rome was because they knew they were going to die, they didn’t really care so they just stuck them down in this dungeon and there was no sanitation, nothing down there. They were just left there. They just threw food down there and it was just an absolute horrid existence. You can certainly see why when people are going through extremely difficult times, they question if God loves them anymore, and why He takes them through this. They wonder if God hates them to take them through all this. So Paul is answering that kind of a question here. “Can anything separate us from the love of Christ?’ No matter how horrible it might get: tribulation, distress, persecution, or famine or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

In verse 36 he quotes from the Old Testament. “For Your sake [referring to God] we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” Our lives are for Him to use however He deems necessary. In verse 37, Paul says, “But in all these things [adversities] we overwhelmingly conquer [we are more than conquerors] through Him who loved us.” That word for ‘more than conquerors’ is hupernikao, a compound word in the Greek. nikao is the verb form for someone who overcomes. The noun form is nike where we get our word for the shoe brand “Nike”, the conqueror or victor in the races. The verb is used for the participle for the overcomer in Revelation 2 and 3. The overcomer is the believer who is really pursuing spiritual victory in his life through spiritual maturity. And this is a huper, which means adding something to it. I’m tempted to translate it with a little German. This is the uber-conqueror. This is the uber-victor. This is the uber-mature believer who is pushing off, so the uber-mature one he is focusing on. 

This takes us right back to the concept that he’s focusing on that he introduced in verse 17 which is how to be a joint-heir with Christ. We need to push on to be a co-heir with Christ and that’s done by how we handle suffering. So Romans 8:28 fits right in this context. It is a verse introducing a thought on how we are to think about the suffering and the adversity, that’s going on in our life. So that sets up the context. Now let’s look at this verse because this is a verse that is filled with some difficulties. I’m not just talking about understanding what it says; we have to first know what it says. ((CHART)) Romans 8:28 starts out, “And we know.” The top verse on the chart is the New King James Version. The second verse is from the New American Standard Version. The top verse reads, “And we know that all things work together for good.” So the main verb is sunergeo, work together, but the way it’s translated you have the Greek word for “all things” which can be nominative but the same form is also for the accusative. So it appears in that text that all things is the subject in sort of a passive construction, all things impersonalize or depersonalize construction, all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 

But it’s a little different in verse 28 in the American Standard and the NIV and about five other translations. Those read, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Now the issue here is that we have a textual difference between two basic manuscript groups. This is what it looks like on the bottom of a Greek New Testament. I’ll explain this to you. What it tells you is that right up here where we have this Greek word ho theos or God is that that’s found in these five manuscripts here. And papyrus number 6A, which is Codex Alexandrinus, B, which is the abbreviation for Ephraim of Syria, 81 is another manuscript, which is a more recent translation. The biggies are A and B, which are fourth century manuscripts and so there’s some people who follow the principle that if it’s older, its accurate which is a fallacious principle because it can be a copy of an even older wrong document. So it’s not even an issue between the critical and the majority text at this point.  And this line tells us what manuscripts support the reading of the text, which leaves God out. That’s Sinaticus, which is one of the oldest and best manuscripts found on Mount Sinai at St. Catherine’s monastery at Tishendorf. Then these next four represent other uncials, or older, capital letter Greek manuscripts and then some other minor manuscripts. 

This funky looking “m” here stands for the majority text or the majority of manuscripts that come out of Greece and modern Turkey. These others stand for some other different translations and writers. So regarding all of this, you see there are only two basic strong manuscripts that support this reading and there’s a vast number that leave God out. 

Bruce Metzger, who before he died was considered one of the top two or three textual critics—even though he didn’t hold to a majority text he was still recognized as one of the greatest scholars on textual criticism—wrote quite a bit and was one of the major editors of the critical Greek text that we use. He also published a commentary back in the 80’s explaining why they chose certain readings over other readings. You can catch the gist of what he said here. He said, “Although the reading that has God in it [God worked all things together for good] is both ancient and noteworthy, a majority of the committee deemed it too narrowly supported.” In other words, it’s only in a few manuscripts. It doesn’t have enough support from different geographical regions as well as a number of manuscripts. “It’s too narrowly supported to be admitted into the text, particularly in the view of the diversified support for the shorter reading.” Then he lists all the different manuscripts that have the shorter reading. He then goes on to say, “Since sunergeo, ‘working together,’ may be taken to imply a personal subject, God, it seems to be a natural explanation made by an Alexandrian editor. The bottom line he’s saying is that the shorter reading is always to be preferred because the tendency of scribes was to add something in order to enhance the explanation. It’s implied that God is the one working all things together but that’s not what the text says. 

I think the reality is that usually the debate in textual criticism is between the critical text and the majority text view. But this isn’t even a majority text/critical text view. There’s just little support for this in the manuscript. It’s only accepted in a couple of English translations and the vast majority doesn't accept that because the manuscript evidence is just too weak. So it’s implied in the text that God is the one who is working but it doesn’t state that. “We know that all things work together for the good to those who love God.” 

Now this raises the next question, “Who is it that loves God?” There’s two ways to look at this. This is a really tough thing to try to resolve. The first view is that this passage only relates to that class of Christians who are obedient to God and are advancing spiritually. The second view is that this passage refers to all believers whether they’re growing or not, faithful or not, or walking by the Spirit or not. Let me give you the rationale behind each view. The first view is that the passage only relates to that class of Christians that are obedient and walking with the Lord. That this is how the phrase “loving God” is used in many passages. Not everyone who is a believer not only in the Old Testament or in the New Testament is a lover of God.

How does the Scripture say we demonstrate our love for God? By being obedient. The one who loves God keeps His commandments. So not everyone who is a believer keeps His commandments. So view one emphasizes that aspect. For instance in Exodus 20:6, “Showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep my commandments.” 

Those are viewed as going together: loving Him means you keep His commandments. Deuteronomy 30:20 states, “By loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice and by holding fast to Him for He is your life.” Love and obedience go together.  If you say, “Oh I love God” and you’re not walking with the Lord and you’re not obedient, you don’t love God. You just have a lot of warm fuzzies about what you think is God but you don’t love God. 

Jesus says the same kind of thing in the New Testament. In John 14:15, He says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” John 14:21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me and He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” Again, if you love God, you’re going to keep His commandments. John 15:10, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” 

Abiding in God’s love is another way of talking about fellowship so again it’s obedience. 1John 5:3 says, “For this is the love of God [the love for God or toward God] that we keep His commandments.” So how do you know if you have love for God? You keep His commandments. All of that is related to keeping His commandments. The first view would say, “Okay, this verse doesn’t apply to every believer. It only applies to those who love God, those who are pursuing spiritual maturity.”

The second view comes along and says, “No, the concept of those who love God is defined clearly in context. Look at what it says.” “All things work together for good to those who love God.” Those who love God are then explained as those who are the “called according to His purpose.” Now who are those who are called according to His purpose? Well, that’s explained in verse 29, “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined..” Okay, how many people did He foreknow? Let’s just say five billion. He predestined all of that five billion to become conformed to the image of His Son. Any more? Any less? No, it’s the same number.

It goes on in verse 30 to say, “And those whom He predestined, He also called.” Did He lose any or gain any?  He doesn’t lose any or gain any. So the ones whom He foreknew, that same exact number, no more, no less, are predestined. That same number, “these He also called.” That same number—no more, no less—is justified. So that means that all of those who are saved and get eternal life and are justified are among those who are the set, fixed group who are foreknown, and that set, fixed group that are predestined, and “these whom He called, He also justified, and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” So, according to the explanation in verse 30, those who are called according to His purpose are everyone who is justified and everyone that’s glorified. He doesn’t lose any. It’s not admitting of any subset of faithless believers versus faithful believers. It doesn’t make that division at all so the definition of who are the called applies to every believer. 

Now, how do we resolve this? I think we resolve it by simply saying that this is true for every believer, but Paul is simply applying it and addressing it to those who are pursuing spiritual maturity. It’s true for every believer in one sense but Paul, like John does in 1 John about the one who is born again doesn’t sin. He is not using the term ‘born again’ as an exact equivalent, that every person who is regenerated no longer sins; because if that’s true, none of us is saved and we might as well go home. He’s talking about those who are regenerate, those who are begotten of God, those who are living as family members. He’s addressing the group that is pursuing spiritual maturity. 

That’s what you have with Paul also. He addresses those who are going somewhere. He’s not talking about those who are not going anywhere. He is encouraging, in the context, those who are pursuing spiritual maturity and spiritual growth. 

He’s not addressing those who have just decided to be unfaithful, to live in carnality and walk according to the flesh. Even though the principle applies to every believer, it is only a reality to those who are pursuing spiritual maturity because it is what strengthens and encourages them as they face adversity.

Now that brings us to the big term right in the middle of this verse and it’s defined and used again in verse 30. That is the word ‘the called’. This is the beginning where we’re going to have to go through each of these concepts: calling, predestination, justification, and glorification. Let’s talk about some concepts related to the term “calling”. This is just a basic word. The Greek word is kaleo and it simply refers in a generic sense to an invitation to something. Just as we use our word call with a broad range of meaning, the word kaleo has a broad range of meaning but when it comes to theology, it is used to refer to the overall process, the whole process whereby an unjustified sinner comes to understand the plan of salvation and God’s invitation to them to receive salvation in Christ. It’s a broad term. It refers to that whole process from the beginning of understanding the plan of salvation, God’s invitation to every human being to accept that salvation, and ultimately to those who have accepted and received that salvation. So it’s a broad term. It can be used as generically as an invitation and then it’s used in a little more precise way. 

The second point I want to say about this in that in the development of theology, it’s come to pack on a lot of baggage. It’s got a lot of additional meaning that have been stuck on this. In the stream of Augustinianism, which I mentioned Tuesday night, which preceded Calvinism, the term became identified with a theological concept called ‘irresistible grace’. 

((CHART))  I’ve got a little chart here, which I put together; a timeline, and this may help you sort of conceptualize some of the things I talked about on Tuesday night. On the one hand, we have, both in terms of philosophy and theology, we have people who believe man is completely and totally free, that there’s absolutely nothing to hinder human will and human freedom. They believe man is free, just like Adam was created to make any decision, no external influence on him whatsoever. On the other extreme, you have those who believe that man is totally determined by God or by nature or by chemical makeup or by something like that so there’s no freewill whatsoever. They believe everything is programmed into your computer, your DNA. You do what you do because it’s all programmed. That goes by the name of fatalism or determinism. It’s impersonal. 

On the left side is those who believe man is absolutely free with absolute free will, like Adam. On the other extreme we have those who have an absolute determinism or absolute fatalism. Now I inserted this line of Roman Catholics in the middle ages. This was their big debate between free will and what we call Calvinism, a more deterministic view and those were the representatives in the Roman Catholic tradition. The first person to use the term ‘irresistible grace’ was Augustine. Augustine lived in the late 300’s, early 400’s, and he said that if God elected some and chose who would be saved and who would not be saved, then what brings those who were the elect to salvation is that God gives them grace but they can’t resist it.

That became an extremely debated doctrine for the next hundred years until about 525 when you had a council that met in Orange. They left out irresistible grace from the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Pelagius was the British priest who believed that everything was free, so he was Augustine’s great opponent. So Pelagianism was declared a heresy, but then you had the Augustinian viewpoint, which is a very strong precursor to Calvinism. But at the Senate of Orange the Roman Catholic Church basically adopted a view of semi-Augustianism. This gets real confusing. You’re not going to get a test on this or anything but this gives you an idea of what was going on. In the Middle Ages there was also another intermediate view called semi-Pelagianism and it gets really weird. There were a lot of debates that went on long before the Protestant Reformation. That’s really the thing I want you to take away from this is that these ideas have been debated over and over again long before Christianity. They were debated among the Greek philosophers and a lot of those Greek ideas were brought into the church, which affected how they interpreted Scripture.

Even today a lot of the books that are written on free will and the sovereignty of God have a lot of philosophy in them and they just burst your brain cells.  So this just gives you kind of a little historical background and this all leads up to the Protestant Reformation. By the time of the Reformation, semi-Pelagianism which is emphasizing a really heretical view of freewill dominates the Roman Catholic Church so when you have the Protestant Reformation, it’s spearheaded by a guy named Martin Luther who nails the 95 debate points or theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg, which was the local Facebook page and calls for a debate over these 95 points that he thinks express all the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk. He was in that order and he’s been reading Augustine and he wants to go back and get away from this “loosy-goosy, you can lose your salvation, you can work your way to heaven” kind of understanding of the gospel which was dominating the Roman Catholic Church and he wanted to go back to Augustinianism.

Having said all of that, by the time you get past Calvin into the end of the 1500’s, there developed a lot of controversy over these issues related to free will and sovereignty among Calvinists. There was a theology professor by the name of Jacob Arminius whose teaching in Holland and his followers [he died in 1609] put together and summarized five basic points, which they wanted to emphasize, on how they viewed man’s condition and salvation. Those were called the Remonstrance and the Calvinists came up with what they called the counter-remonstrance, which we call today the five points of Calvinism. That’s indicated by the acronym T-U-L-I-P. T stands for total inability. Because of sin, man is not capable of doing anything to not only please God but he can’t even exercise positive volition toward God without a work of grace changing him. The U stands for unconditional election, which means that God chooses who will be saved and who won’t be saved and that’s really what determines whether you’re saved or not. It has nothing to do with your volition or your belief in Christ if God chose you ahead of time. The L stands for limited atonement. If God is only going to save a few people then Christ only died for them. They ask, “Why waste Christ’s blood?” If he died for the unsaved, He only spilled His blood on Calvary. That’s how they’ll argue that. The I stands for irresistible grace. This is the idea that for the elect to come to Christ God has to irresistibly draw them, and He will only draw those who are elect. He won’t draw others. This is also called effectual calling. The P stands for the perseverance for the saints. This is their meaning of eternal security that Christ perseveres in keeping the saints saved. But for many, in the last hundred years or so, especially the last fifty years, the emphasis has been more on the fact that if the professing believer doesn’t persevere or continue in his faith, then he wasn’t truly saved to begin with. Not that he loses his salvation but he wasn’t truly saved to begin with and that form of theology is what we refer to as “lordship salvation” or “lordship theology”.

Let me put a couple of quotes up here just to give you a little flavor of what is being said. ((CHART)) This long quote up here comes from Millard Erickson who wrote a three volume, now it’s a one volume, of systematic theology that has superseded Chafer and Berkhoff and others at Dallas Seminary and most seminaries today, except for Chafer seminary. He’s describing Calvinism here. He says, “We’ve already seen several characteristics of election as viewed by Calvinists. One is that election is an expression of God’s sovereign will and good pleasure. It’s not based on any merit in the one elected or on foreseeing that the individual will believe.” Now this is a side point. In Calvinism belief is meritorious. That is, faith is given to you by God and faith has merit. So we disagree strongly with that. He goes on to say, “It is cause [that is, election is the cause], not the result of faith. Second, he says that election is efficacious. Those whom God has chosen will most certainly come to faith in Him and for that matter will persevere in that faith until the end. All of the elect will certainly be saved. Third, he says election is for all eternity. It is not a decision made at some point in time when the individual is already existent. It is what God has always purposed to do. See, that is fatalism. It doesn’t matter what you believe. God already made the decision for you. That is a form of fatalism or determinism. Fourth, he goes on to say, “Election is unconditional and doesn’t depend on human performance, specific action or meeting certain conditions, i.e., faith or terms of God.” There are some hyper-Calvinists who believe that if God wants you to be saved, you’ll be saved whether you hear the gospel or not. Then he goes on to say, “It is not that God wills to save people if they do certain things. He simply wills to save them and brings it about.” Finally he says, “Election is immutable. God will not change His mind. Election is from all eternity and out of God’s infinite mercy He has no reason or occasion to change His mind.” That’s his description of Calvinism.

Then he goes on in his conclusion dealing with the work of the Holy Spirit and salvation, he says, “Salvation consists of three steps, effectual calling [irresistible grace].” This is not to be defined as God the Holy Spirit making a person’s faith effectual for salvation. That is redefining a classical, historical Calvinistic term. I’d had twenty or thirty guys go through seminary and it’s taking me a year or so to beat that wrong definition out of their heads because they read a Calvinist, they say, “Oh, this guy is right.” No, effectual calling is a Calvinist synonym for irresistible grace and you can’t ever re-define it. You have to let them use their terms in their way. 

Now, we had the word calling used several ways in the Old Testament and it simply refers to a commissioning.  In Isaiah 42:6, he says, “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness.” Isaiah 43:1 says, “But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.” It relates to his commissioning of Israel. Isaiah 45:3, “I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.” He is saying, “I commissioned you and gave you a purpose and a focus. 

Same thing in Isaiah 45:4 and all of this leads up to the fact that this is the same way Paul uses the term “called” when he says, “I, Paul, called an apostle.” He’s talking about it as a specific commission from God to be an apostle. But there is a commissioning at salvation for every believer and this is how the word calling is used. We’ll come back and take this up more in-depth next time but I wanted to at least get to this point. In Ephesians 4:1, Paul says, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling [the commissioning, the task which I set before you] with which you have been called. Every believer has this calling. This really refers to the end process of what began as the initial external invitation, external call to the gospel when you first heard it all the way up until you believed in Christ. Those who have gone through that process are referred to as “the called” because they’ve gone through that process. I skipped over a lot of stuff in the middle of this to get the overall view down and then next time I’ll deal with some questions and some other things there. We’re out of time today.

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