Knowing the Heart of God: Where Obedience Is the One Path to Drawing Intuitively Close to Our Father

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Ludwig van Beethoven 's meditations on illness, conscience and mortality in the Late String Quartets led to his dedicating the third movement of String Quartet in A Minor Op. The American Society of Journalists and Authors ASJA presents the Conscience-in-Media Award to journalists whom the society deems worthy of recognition for demonstrating "singular commitment to the highest principles of journalism at notable personal cost or sacrifice".

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We might still have come to an understanding if, instead of asking everybody to pray for my soul, she had given me a little confidence and sympathy. I know now what prevented her from doing so: In actual doing she made every sacrifice, but her feelings did not take her out of herself. Besides, how could she have tried to understand me since she avoided looking into her own heart? As for discovering an attitude that would not have set us apart, nothing in her life had ever prepared her for such a thing: Conscientious objector , Civil disobedience , Natural law , Natural rights , Nonviolence , Nonviolent resistance , Protest , Prisoner of conscience , and Keeper of the King's Conscience.

A man has not everything to do but something; and because he cannot do everything , it is not necessary that he should do something wrong It is for no particular item in the tax bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with—the dollar is innocent—but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?

Why has every man a conscience, then? Comparative religion , Universalism , World government , Cosmopolitanism , and Common heritage of humanity. List of nonviolence scholars and leaders and List of whistleblowers. Old Traditions and Modern Transformations. The Light in Their Consciences: The Early Quakers in Britain — Universal Declaration of Human Rights , G. How Might We Live? Global Ethics in the New Century. Ambassador of Conscience Award. Retrieved 31 December The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. University of California Press. Conscience and Other Virtues. From Bonaventure to MacIntyre.

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If, however, one is not aware of one's error or if, despite an honest and diligent effort one cannot remove the error by study or seeking advice, then one's conscience may be said to be invincibly erroneous. It binds since one has subjective certainty that one is correct. The act resulting from acting on the invincibly erroneous conscience is not good in itself, yet this deformed act or material sin against God's right order and the objective norm is not imputed to the person. The formal obedience given to such a judgment of conscience is good.

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Tuesday, 4 March Aung San Suu Kyi: Cartoonist shot in London street". John 17 points in the same direction. Jesus limits his prayer in John 17 to his sheep — those whom the Father has given him. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. The consecration in view here is the death of Jesus which he is about to undergo. Therefore he is saying that his death is designed especially for those for whom he is praying. And for these he is consecrating himself. For these he is laying down his life.

Jesus died to gather these people into one flock. The point is the same as John And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also , and they will listen to my voice. And both are the divine design of the cross of Christ. Christ did not die just to make this possible, but to make this happen. It is described again by John in Revelation 5: This is the way we may understand texts like 1 John 2: In words very reminiscent of John Does this mean that Christ died with the intention to appease the wrath of God for every person in the world? Rather the verbal parallel between John In harmony with what we have seen, for example, in Revelation 5: Similarly in Matthew Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Here Paul says that the intended beneficiary of the death of Christ is the church, the bride of Christ. One of the reasons I am jealous for this doctrine of limited atonement or particular redemption is that I want the bride of Christ to be properly moved by the particular love that Christ had for her when he died. This was not only a world-embracing love; it was a bride-purchasing love.

God knew those who were his. And he sent his Son to obtain this bride for this Son. From heaven he came and sought her To be his holy bride; With his own blood he bought her, And for her life he died. So it is with God and all the people of the world. There is a universal love for all, but there is a particular love that he has for the bride. And when Christ died, there was a particular aim in that death for her.

He knew her from the foundation of the world, and he died to obtain her. Another important text on this issue of the design and extent of the atonement is Romans 8: They are the people of verses 29— Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us , who can be against us? This is the wonderful logic of Romans 8: But what becomes of this logic if God gave his Son in this way for thousands who do not receive all things, but in fact perish?

The logic is destroyed. Therefore, the design of God in giving the Son is not only a general offer to the whole world, but a rock solid securing of infinite riches for his people. We are loved specifically in the atonement, not just generally. Our future is secured particularly by the blood of Christ. In summary, the biblical point of limited atonement is that in the death of Christ God had a particular design for his elect. He was purchasing not just a possibility for them to believe and be saved, but he was purchasing the belief itself.

The overcoming of our deadness and rebellion against God is not performed decisively by us so that we then qualify for the atonement. And that grace is purchased for us in the death of Christ. God does not mean for the bride of his Son to only feel loved with general, world-embracing love. He means for her to feel ravished with the specificity of his affection that he set on her before the world existed. He means for us to feel a focused: And I send my Son to die to have you. This is what we offer the world. No, we offer this. We offer a full and complete and definite atonement.

We say, Come to Christ. And what we promise them if they come is that they will be united to him and his bride. And all that he bought for his bride will be theirs. All that he secured with absolute certainty will be their portion forever. Their faith will prove them to be among the elect.

And their coming to Christ will prove that they are already the particular beneficiaries of his particular redemption, his definite atonement. For it is the elect for whom he died with this immeasurable design of everlasting love. He chose those to whom he would show such irresistible grace, and for whom he would purchase it. It is unconditional in that there is no condition man must meet before God chooses to save him.

Man is dead in trespasses and sins. So there is no condition he can meet before God chooses to save him from his deadness. We are not saying that final salvation is unconditional. We must meet the condition of faith, for example, in Christ in order to inherit eternal life. But faith is not a condition for election. Election is a condition for faith. It is because God chose us before the foundation of the world that he purchases our redemption at the cross, and then gives us spiritual life through irresistible grace, and brings us to faith.

It says that those who were ordained to eternal life that is, those whom God had elected believed. This is the decisive reason some believed while others did not. Similarly Jesus says to the Jews in John It is the basis and enablement of our belief. See also John 8: Romans 9 is so foundational for the doctrine of unconditional election that I devoted an entire book to verses 1—23 in The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9: In Romans 9, Paul stresses the unconditionality of election.

In verses 11—12, he describes the principle God used in the choice of Jacob over Esau: I know that some interpreters say that Romans 9 has nothing to do with the election of individuals to their eternal destinies, but only deals with corporate peoples in their historical roles. I think this is a mistake mainly because it simply does not come to terms with the problem Paul is addressing in the chapter.

You can see this for yourself by reading the first five verses of Romans 9. When Paul says in Romans 9: The answer is given in verses 2 and 3. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. In other words, individual eternal destinies are indeed at stake. In other words, the individuals in Israel who perish were never part of the true Israel. We saw in the sections on irresistible grace and total depravity that we are unable to love God or trust God or follow Christ.

Our only hope is sovereign mercy, irresistible mercy. If that is true, what Paul says here makes sense. We are in no position to merit mercy or elicit mercy. That is what Paul says: The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. There is, I believe, a divine covenantal commitment to corporate Israel, but that does not contradict or annul the individual, eternal thrust of Romans 9. The principle of unconditionality is seen most clearly in Romans 9: 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 as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace. Some interpreters argue that this election before the foundation of the world was only an election of Christ, but not an election of which individuals would actually be in Christ. This simply amounts to saying that there is no unconditional election of individuals to salvation.

Christ is put forward as the chosen one of God, and the salvation of individuals is dependent on their own initiative to overcome their depravity and be united to Christ by faith. God does not choose them, and therefore God cannot effectually convert them. He can only initiate conviction, but finally must wait to see who will provide the decisive impulse to quicken themselves from the dead and choose him. So the natural meaning of verse 4 is that God chooses his people from all humanity, before the foundation of the world by viewing them in relationship to Christ their redeemer. This is the natural way to read the verse.

It is true that all election is in relation to Christ. Christ was in the mind of God crucified before the foundation of the world Revelation There would be no election of sinners unto salvation if Christ were not appointed to die for their sins. So in that sense they are elect in Christ. But it is they who are chosen out of the world to be in Christ.

Also the wording of verse 5 suggests the election of people to be in Christ, and not just the election of Christ. Christians come to faith and are united to Christ and covered by his blood because we were chosen before the foundation of the world for this destiny of holiness. Perhaps the most important text of all in relation to the teaching of unconditional election is Romans 8: We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? It is God who justifies. They are chosen on the basis of their foreknown faith, which they produce without the help of irresistible grace and which God sees beforehand. But this does not work with the way Paul develops his argument. Notice that Romans 8: This calling in verse 30 is not given to all people.

There is an infallible connection between called and justified. Therefore all are not called. So this calling in verse 30 is not the general call to repentance that preachers give or that God gives through the glory of nature. Everybody receives that call. The call of verse 30 is given only to those whom God predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son verse And it is a call that leads necessarily to justification: We know that justification only happens through faith.

What then is this call that is given to all those who are predestined and which infallibly leads to justification? We saw this above in section 4 when discussing irresistible grace. It is the call of 1 Corinthians 1: Rather, the calling happens through the preaching in the hearts of some of the listeners.

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In other words, the calling of Romans 8: Since justification is only by faith, the calling in view must be the act of God whereby he calls faith into being. And since it always results in justification all the called are justified , it must be sovereign. That is, it overcomes any resistance that gets in the way. So the calling of verse 30 is the sovereign work of God which brings a person to faith by which he is justified. Now notice the implication this has for the meaning of foreknowledge in verse God does not foreknow those who come to faith apart from his creating the faith, because there are no such people.

When God looks from eternity into the future and sees the faith of the elect he sees his own work. And he chose to do that work for dead and blind and rebellious sinners unconditionally. For we were not capable of meeting the condition of faith. We were spiritually dead and blind. So the foreknowledge of Romans 8: Rather, it is the kind of knowledge referred to in Old Testament texts like Genesis But the meaning here is, You only, Israel, have I chosen for my own.

Cranfield says, the foreknowledge of Romans 8: Therefore, what this magnificent text Romans 8: He foreknows that is, elects a people for himself before the foundation of the world, he predestines this people to be conformed to the image of his Son, he calls them to himself in faith, he justifies them through that faith alone, and he finally glorifies them. And nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ forever and ever Romans 8: To him be all praise and glory! If you are a believer in Christ, you have been loved by God from all eternity.

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He set his favor on you before the creation of the world. He chose you when he considered you in your helpless condition. He chose you for himself unconditionally. We may not boast in our election. That would be a profound misunderstanding of the meaning of unconditionality.

When we had done nothing to commend ourselves to God in any way, he set his favor on us freely. It was with us the way it was with the election of Israel: He loves you because he loves you. He chose to do that in eternity. And because his love for you never had a beginning, it can have no end. What we are studying in this article is simply the way God works out that eternal love in history to save his own and bring us to the everlasting enjoyment of himself.

May God take you deeper and deeper into the experience of this amazing sovereign grace. It follows from what we saw in the last section that the people of God will persevere to the end and not be lost. The foreknown are predestined, the predestined are called, the called are justified, and the justified are glorified Romans 8: No one is lost from this group. To belong to this people is to be eternally secure.

But we mean more than this by the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. We mean that the saints will and must persevere in faith and the obedience which comes from faith. Election is unconditional, but glorification is not. There are many warnings in Scripture that those who do not hold fast to Christ can be lost in the end.

We do not act with a kind of cavalier indifference to the call for perseverance just because a person has professed faith in Christ, as though we can be assured from our perspective that they are now beyond the reach of the evil one. There is a fight of faith to be fought. The elect will fight that fight.

Conscience

We must endure to the end in faith if we are to be saved. In 1 Corinthians Jesus told the parable of the soils to warn against these kinds of false beginnings:. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. In other words, there is, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians Similarly Paul says in Colossians 1: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. Paul is following the teaching of Jesus in these words.

Jesus said in Mark This is what we mean by the necessity of perseverance — the statement that we must persevere. But a clarification is in order. Persevering in faith does not mean that the saints do not go through seasons of doubt and spiritual darkness and measures of unbelief in the promises and the goodness of God. Measures of unbelief can coexist with a true faith. Therefore what we mean when we say that faith must persevere to the end is that we must never come to a point of renouncing Christ with such hardness of heart that we can never return, but instead only prove ourselves to have been hypocrites in our professed faith.

An example of such hardness is Esau. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God;. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it [repentance] with tears. All he could do is weep over the consequences of his folly, not the true ugliness of his sin or the dishonor he had heaped upon God in preferring a single meal to his entire God-given, God-accompanying birthright.

On the other hand the New Testament is at pains to make sure we do not despair thinking that backsliding and waywardness in sin is a one-way street. It is possible to repent and return. John began his letter the same way he is ending it: So when we speak of the necessity and certainty, see below of perseverance we do not mean perfection.

And we do not mean that there are no struggles or serious measures of unbelief. We must keep in mind all that we have seen so far in this article. Belonging to Christ is a supernatural reality brought about by God and preserved by God Jeremiah The saints are not marked most deeply by what they do but by who they are. They are born again.

They are a new creation. They do not go in and out of this newness. And it is irrevocable. But the fruit of it in faith and obedience is a fight to the end. The fight will be fought and will not be finally lost. This is not to say that God demands perfection. It is clear from Philippians 3: But the New Testament does demand that we be morally changed and walk in newness of life. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By this we may know that we are in him: Again let there be a caution lest anyone take these texts in a perfectionistic direction.

The perseverance of the saints is not the guarantee of perfection, but rather that God will keep us fighting the fight of faith so that we hate our sin and never make any lasting peace with it. This is why we believe in eternal security — namely, the eternal security of the elect. The implication is that God will so work in us that those whom he has chosen for eternal salvation will be enabled by him to persevere in faith to the end and fulfill, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the requirements for a new kind of life.

We have seen before the ironclad chain of divine work in Romans 8: There are no dropouts in this sequence. These are promises of God rooted in unconditional election in the first place and in the sovereign, converting, preserving grace that we have seen before. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. I and the Father are one. We saw before that being a sheep of Jesus means being chosen by God and given to the Son.

In other words, the promise of Jesus never to lose any of his sheep is the sovereign commitment of the Son of God to preserve the faith of the elect for whom he laid down his life. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. The fact that such a thing is possible is precisely why the ministry of the gospel in every local church must contain many admonitions to the church members to persevere in faith and not be entangled in those things which could possibly strangle them and result in their condemnation.

Pastors do not know infallibly who of his listeners are the good soil and who are the bad. His warnings and exhortations to persevere are the way he helps the saints endure. They hear the warnings and take heed and thus authenticate their humble and good hearts of faith. The point here is the emphasis above on the necessity of persevering faith and obedience does not mean God is waiting to observe our perseverance and obedience before he declares us completely righteous in union with Jesus Christ.

The first time we believe in Jesus we are united to Christ. In union with him, his righteousness is counted as ours, at that moment. The ground of our acceptance with God is Christ alone — his blood and righteousness. The role of our faith is not to be a performance of something virtuous that God rewards with salvation. The point is that faith is a receiving of Christ who performed what we could not, a punishment for our sin and provision of our perfection. Faith is not the ground of our acceptance but the means or the instrument of union with Christ who alone is the ground of our acceptance with God.

The role of the obedience in our justification is to give evidence that our faith is authentic. Deeds of love are not the ground of our first or final acceptance with God. Their function is to validate, and make public, the sovereign work of God giving us new birth and creating the new heart of faith. Paul puts it this way: What counts with God in justification is the kind of faith that works through love. Love is a fruit of the Spirit. And we have received the Spirit by our first act of faith Galatians 3: Therefore, the necessity of perseverance in faith and obedience for final salvation does not mean he waits till the end before he accepts us, adopts us, and justifies us.

That happened in our union with Christ on our first act of faith. Paul put it like this: Christ has made us his own. That is how we fight on. In the final judgment according to works not on the basis of works , the point of those works in the divine courtroom in relation to justification will be as public evidence of unseen faith and union with Christ. Christ will be the sole ground of our acceptance then as now. We are not left to ourselves in the fight of faith, and our assurance is rooted in the sovereign love of God to perform what he has called us to do. The texts that follow here are all expressions of the new covenant that we discussed in section 5.

Jesus purchased for us all the promises of God when he shed his blood Luke This promise recurs in many wonderful expressions in the New Testament:. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I sometimes ask people: Why do you believe you will wake up a Christian tomorrow morning?

Why do you think you will have saving faith tomorrow when you wake up? I ask this to test what sort of view of perseverance someone has. I am committed to Jesus. The answer is found in all these texts. God will work in me. God will keep me. God will finish his work to the end. When I ask this question I am fishing to see if anyone has the view that eternal security is like a vaccination.

That is a misleading analogy because it implies that the process of preservation is automatic without the ongoing work of the great physician. Perseverance is not like a vaccination, but like a life-long therapy program in which the great physician stays with you all the way. He will never leave us Hebrews That is the way we persevere.

That is the way we have assurance. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have seen plainly, for example, from Romans 8: They are links in a chain of salvation that cannot be broken. What Peter means is: Be zealous to maintain your assurance of them and to confirm them continually by walking in the joy of them. He has not left us to ourselves to confirm our calling and election.

By his divine power we then grow in faith and virtue and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection and love 2 Peter 1: In other words we make eager efforts to trust the promises and power of God so deeply that sin is put to death in our lives by the Spirit and the goal of love is joyfully pursued. Faith working through love Galatians 5: God never meant us to fight the fight of faith alone. We are to fight for each other. Those whom he justified he glorified. That is a mistake. But the way God has ordained to make it certain is by means of empowering human partnership in the fight of faith.

Paul sees his ministry of the word as essential to the perseverance of the elect. Take a simple example. Suppose God has predestined that a nail be in a two-by-four with its head flush with the surface of the board. It is certain that this will happen. God is God and he has planned it.

Does that mean he is indifferent to hammers? In fact God has also ordained that the way the nail get in the board is by being struck with a hammer. Similarly, the elect will certainly be saved in the end with eternal glory. Does that mean God is indifferent to the ministry of the world in getting them there? God has made it essential. And the reason that does not undermine the certainty of salvation is that God is just as sovereign over the means as he is over the ends. We see this truth applied to all of us in Hebrews 3: But the way he will keep us from falling Jude 24 is by mutual exhortation of other believers in our lives.

This is one of the highest tributes that could possibly be paid to the church. God ordains the body of Christ as the means of his infallible keeping of the elect. To know that God chose you, and God called you, and God gave you faith, and will never leave you, and will preserve you, and present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy — that assurance brings an invincible joy and strength and courage into your life.

May God take you down ever deeper into the divine grace of perseverance. These ten points are my personal testimony to the effects of believing in the five points of Calvinism — the doctrines of grace. It has led me to see that we cannot enrich God and that therefore his glory shines most brightly not when we try to meet his needs but when we are satisfied in him as the essence of our deeds. Worship becomes an end in itself. It has made me feel how low and inadequate are my affections, so that the psalms of longing come alive and make worship intense.

One of the curses of our culture is banality, cuteness, cleverness. Television is one of the main sustainers of our addiction to superficiality and triviality. God is swept into this. Hence we tend to trifle with divine things. Earnestness is not excessive in our day. It might have been once. But it seems to me that the far greater sadness in our day is people who are simply unable to be reverent. They seem to have never been awed by the greatness of God. They only know one mode of relationship: This is a tragic and impoverishing incapacity. Evangelism of the humorous type [we might say, church growth of the hip, cool, clever, funny, market-savvy type] may attract multitudes, but it lays the soul in ashes and destroys the very germs of religion.

Spurgeon is often thought by those who do not know his sermons to have been a humorous preacher. As a matter of fact there was no preacher whose tone was more uniformly earnest, reverent and solemn. Banner of Truth, , p. The greatness of God that stands forth from the doctrines of grace has been a weighty ballast in my boat. It gives me great joy, and guards my heart from the plague of silliness.

In other words, he prayed that we would experience what he had just taught. That our hearts would be able to grasp what had really happened to us. Every ground of boasting is removed. Brokenhearted joy and gratitude abound. The piety of Jonathan Edwards begins to grow. When God has given us a taste of his own majesty and our own wickedness, then the Christian life becomes a thing very different than conventional piety.

Edwards describes it beautifully when he says,. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires: Yale University Press, , pp. In my book The Pleasures of God p. The same thing happened in England in the 19th century after Spurgeon. A New Biography documents the same thing: You can also read in J. Crossway Books, , p. These doctrines are a bulwark against man-centered teachings in many forms that gradually corrupt the church and make her weak from the inside, all the while looking strong or popular. That is what these truths have proved to be for me.

I can hardly read the newspaper or a Google news article or look at a TV ad or a billboard without feeling the burden that God is missing. When God is the main reality in the universe and is treated as a non-reality, I tremble at the wrath that is being stored up. I am still able to be shocked. Many Christians are sedated with the same God-ignoring drug as the world.

Some think it is a virtue that God be neglected, and invent cynical names for people who speak of God in relation to everything. These teachings are a great antidote against that neglect and that cynicism. Christians exist to reassert the reality of God and the supremacy of God in all of life.

We are therefore in need of a great awakening. These truths keep me aware of that and impel me to pray toward it. For only a sovereign work of God can make it happen. The truth that God will use all his sovereign power to keep me for himself is supremely precious. I know my heart. Left to itself my heart is proud and self-centered and an idol factory. Few prayers are more needful for me than this:.

Yes, I need — and I want — him to chain me to himself everyday. Hold on to me. And the doctrines of grace are the perfect satisfaction for these desires. This is exactly what God has promised to do for me. This is worth more than millions of dollars. Through the lens of these doctrines I see that all of life relates to God and that he is the beginning, the middle, and the end of it all.

He is the one who gives meaning to everything 1 Corinthians Reality becomes supercharged with God. He is the all-pervading glory in all that is. Everything is from him and for him. The words of Jonathan Edwards thrill me because they represent so beautifully the implication of the doctrines of grace:. Here is both an emanation and remanation.

The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and he is the beginning, and the middle, and the end. The warrant for prayer is that God may break in and change things — including the human heart.

He can turn the will around. Cause people who are not hallowing your name to hallow your name. Cause hearts to be opened to the gospel. It is what I now gladly do for others. And the reason I pray this way is that God has the right and the power to do these things. No human autonomy stands in the way. Prayer is where most Christians sound like Calvinists. Most sincere Christians pray with the assumption that he has the right and power not only to heal human bodies and alter natural circumstances, but also to sovereignly transform human hearts.

That is what we ask him to do. Which means that the doctrine of irresistible grace is the great hope of answered prayer in the lives of people for whose salvation I plead. The doctrines of grace make evangelism among spiritually dead sinners possible. Without the sovereign grace of God we may as well be preaching in a cemetery. Because we are preaching in a cemetery. That is what this world is. So evangelism only makes sense in the light of the doctrines of grace. We really believe God can raise the dead. And we know he uses the human means to do it.

This is the power of God unto salvation Romans 1: Therefore the doctrines of grace give hope for evangelism in the hardest places. He raises the dead Ephesians 2: As I look out on the remaining task of world missions I do not despair. And that is the effect it has had on me, as I have tried to do my part in promoting the great work of frontier missions. The sum of the matter is that God is God. He is absolutely sovereign.

And he is gracious beyond all human analogy. He has not left the world to perish in its sin. He has planned, is performing, and will complete a great salvation for his people and his creation. He has done this with infinite wisdom and love. Which means he has done it so that he gets the glory in us and we get the joy in him. And it cannot fail. In other words, it is possible to be persuaded of a reality at one level and have no sweet experience of that reality at another level.

Jonathan Edwards said there are two ways to know whether the sticky brown material in the bowl is sweet. You can deduce from color and smell and particles of honeycomb that this is honey and then know by inference that it is sweet because honey is sweet. Or you can taste it. I hope you will have the sweet experience of resting in the massive comfort of these truths. I want you to feel the tremendous incentive for love and righteousness and for risk-taking missions flowing from these truths. And I pray that your experience knowing and trusting the sovereign grace of God will be such that God gets great glory in your life.

To this end, I have gathered here some testimonies of what these truths have meant to some great Christians of the past. For those who have known the doctrines of grace truly, they have never been mere speculation for the head, but have always been power for the heart and life. A thousand years before the Reformation, Augustine savored the sovereignty of grace in his own life.

He was resoundingly converted by the irresistible grace of God after leading a dissolute life. He wrote in his Confessions X, I have no hope at all but in thy great mercy. Grant what thou commandest and command what thou wilt. Thou dost enjoin on us continence. Truly by continence are we bound together and brought back into that unity from which we were dissipated into a plurality. For he loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake.

O love that ever burnest and art never quenched! O Charity, my God, enkindle me! Oxford University Press, , p. These are the words of a man who loves the truth of irresistible grace, because he knows he is utterly undone without it. But also in his doctrinal letters, he drives this beloved truth home Epistle ccxvii , to Vitalis:. If, as I prefer to think in your case, you agree with us in supposing that we are doing our duty in praying to God, as our custom is, for them that refuse to believe, that they may be willing to believe and for those who resist and oppose his law and doctrine, that they may believe and follow it.

If you agree with us in thinking that we are doing our duty in giving thanks to God, as is our custom, for such people when they have been converted. For Augustine, the truth of irresistible grace was the foundation of his prayers for the conversion of the lost and of his thanks to God when they were converted. Jonathan Edwards, the great New England preacher and theologian, had an equally deep love for these truths.

He wrote when he was 26 about the day he fell in love with the sovereignty of God:. The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. It has often been my delight to approach God, and adore him as a sovereign God. Edwards wept openly when George Whitefield preached in his church, because of how much he loved the message he preached.

Banner of Truth Trust, , p. I cannot bear the thoughts of opposing you: George Whitefield , Vol. The doctrines of our election, and free justification in Christ Jesus are daily more and more pressed upon my heart. They fill my soul with a holy fire and afford me great confidence in God my Saviour. I hope we shall catch fire from each other, and that there will be a holy emulation amongst us, who shall most debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus.

Nothing but the doctrines of the Reformation can do this. All others leave free will in man and make him, in part at least, a saviour to himself. My soul, come not thou near the secret of those who teach such things.

I know Christ is all in all. I am persuaded, til a man comes to believe and feel these important truths, he cannot come out of himself, but when convinced of these and assured of their application to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed! Not many people know the theology that undergirded that great ministry. In his mid-twenties , he had an experience which he records later as follows:. Before this period [when I came to prize the Bible alone as my standard of judgment] I had been much opposed to the doctrines of election, particular redemption limited atonement , and final persevering grace.

But now I was brought to examine these precious truths by the Word of God. Being made willing to have no glory of my own in the conversion of sinners, but to consider myself merely an instrument; and being made willing to receive what the Scriptures said, I went to the Word, reading the New Testament from the beginning, with a particular reference to these truths.

To my great astonishment I found that the passages which speak decidedly for election and persevering grace, were about four times as many as those which speak apparently against these truths; and even those few, shortly after, when I had examined and understood them, served to confirm me in the above doctrines. My life has not been so variable, and I may say that I have lived much more for God than before.

Charles Spurgeon was a contemporary of George Mueller. He was the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London and the most famous pastor of his day — and a Baptist at that. His preaching was powerful to the winning of souls to Christ. But what was his gospel that held thousands spellbound each week and brought many to the Savior? I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism.

It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel. Banner of Truth Trust, , orig. He had not always believed these things. Spurgeon recounts his discovery of these truths at the age of Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still believed the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit, and did not see the grace of God.

I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths in my own soul — when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron. Spurgeon started a college for pastors and was intent that the key to being a worthy teacher in the church was to grasp these doctrines of grace. Arminianism is thus guilty of confusing doctrines and of acting as an obstruction to a clear and lucid grasp of the Scripture; because it misstates or ignores the eternal purpose of God, it dislocates the meaning of the whole plan of redemption.

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