But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Well, he says right there, choose. It would be insane to say choose if you couldn't choose or if your choice didn't mean anything. And so, yeah, I do believe Reformed theology is terrible on the doctrine of salvation.
Now, there are other doctrines on the Trinity, the deity of Christ, things like that. We're in total agreement. But when it comes to this, how God saves souls according to the Scriptures, it's like they've got their fingers on the wrong key. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville.
Pastor Rick is currently teaching through a topical series. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick as he begins his study called Calvinism vs. Arminianism. We have next to the last question, actually two into one.
Reformed theology, is it good or bad? and Calvinism versus Arminianism, I would prefer to skip this topic. But if I didn't know about these two as a Christian, I would want a pastor to discuss it. In fact, when I was fairly new as a Christian, I got word, I think, on Christian radio of three sessions on Calvinism. And I wanted to know what that was.
And so I trekked out to Long Island in the evening during the week, three days in a row. And I was looking for something from the Bible. And all I got was, Dr.
So-and-so says this about Dr.
So-and-so. They were back slapping and telling each other how great they were. And I never got an understanding of what it was from the things they said. because Calvinism is veiled, usually. I remember leaving that church and walking through the lobby, and they had books on Calvinism for sale, and they were very thick books, which I wasn't going to buy that.
Too much reading, no pictures in them. Anyway, at that time, I figured I'd buy Calvin's Institutes. I don't know, about 24 volumes. It looked very nice in the catalog. and back in the 80s they went for about $100 to get the set.
But I never could get the set because something else would come along. Another book that, well, I'll get this one first and get that one. Until I learned about Calvinism, boy, God, thank you. I didn't waste $100 on that.
Well, Reformed theology is Calvinism. And the text, again, we return to Joshua, and I think this sums up. The Bible's answer to this defective doctrine, bottom line is, Reformed theology, Calvinism, says you do not have free will when it comes to salvation. Their doctrine of salvation is based on five points of Calvinism called, or acronym TULIP. We'll get to that later.
Joshua, we know this verse 24, verse 15. And if it seems evil to you to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers who served that were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Well, he says right there, choose. It would be insane to say choose if you couldn't choose or if your choice didn't mean anything. And so, yeah, I do believe Reformed theology is terrible on the doctrine of salvation.
Now, there are other doctrines on the Trinity, the deity of Christ, things like that. We're in total agreement. But when they come to this, how God saves souls according to the scriptures, it's like they got their fingers on the wrong key. and everything they typed was the right finger but the wrong letter and gibberish came out. They'd scoff at what I'm saying and I'd scoff back and I'd win.
All right. Anyway, it's a robotic theology because every thought that you have for God is filtered through his sovereignty at the cost of free will and that renders man a robotic. It makes him robotic. Example, you're too depraved to even think about accepting an invitation from God unless he selects you so that you can. Which is, again, a violation of just man's ability and accountability.
And some have the gall to deny this is the case. And we're going to get to the comparisons in a little bit.
So Reformed theology says you do not have the freedom to choose and are accountable for that choice that you can't make. You will be judged. You're so depraved you can't receive salvation and you're going to be judged for that. And by every standard we have as people, that is despicable. It doesn't somehow become wonderful because it's a good God doing it.
Well, he doesn't do it this way. We do have freedom to choose. what we shall do, and we are accountable for it. This doctrine strangely appeals more to those impressed with academia, middle class, and up. You don't find it taught in the slums, in the ghettos, in the hoods, in low-income areas, in the trailer parks.
They're not teaching Calvinism there. Same thing with clinical psychology. They don want to teach it there They have to find people who are impressed by it Well the Bible means what it says and to defend this doctrine they have to go out of their way to tell you it doesn't mean what this says, and here's an example. They tell you that once you're saved, you can't lose your salvation because God has already pre-chosen you before the foundations of the world, and he doesn't make mistakes, and if he's chosen you to be saved, you can't Fall away. But that's not what the Bible says.
Hebrews chapter 6, verse 4, it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come if they fall away to renew them again to repentance. I don't need a theologian to come tell me it doesn't mean that. I have a devil that can do that just fine. it's almost embarrassing to read these otherwise good commentators' detour when it comes to this doctrine. They don't treat the Trinity this way in Scripture.
1 Timothy 2.4, speaking of Jesus, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth. That's what God wants. Or would it not be schizophrenic for him to say, I want you to be saved, but I haven't chosen you, and I could choose you, but I'm not going to choose you, and I'm not going to tell you why because I'm sovereign. That's Calvinism. That's reformed theology.
First Timothy 2.6, who gave himself ransom for most people. No, it says for all. According to reformed theology, no one has or can volunteer to go to heaven. If given the choice. Or unless you've been pre-chosen.
And they use the word predestination as a cover for preset. Did God, by that doctrine, did God elect or predestined which angels would follow Lucifer and which ones would not? Did God preset Lucifer to become Satan? You see how messed up it gets if that if you go with this line of thinking. their hermeneutics, their study of the scripture is so muddled that Romans 9 has become almost unsearchable.
Like, I don't know what it means now, because I've got this thing in my head where God's picking people to go to hell and others not to. But if you can get that out of your head and read Romans 9, you'll find out Paul's making an argument for the sovereignty of God and the hope of Israel.
So we cannot undo for them what Calvinism has done to them. And I've never met a Calvinist who has had any interest in reasoning through these things. Instead, they throw big words at you that they've made up. Again, like clinical psychologists who make up sicknesses that they claim to cure, the Calvinists make up these doctrinal words that you waste your time, You'd be better off memorizing the Lord's Prayer or Psalm 23 or Psalm 91 or Colossians 2. You'd be better off spending your time memorizing Scripture than trying to figure out what a Pelagarian is.
Now, you teens, I hope you understand that debate within Christianity is not new. And I'll give them this much. coming out of the dark ages of the popes and Roman Catholicism, there was the scramble of scholars to try to put doctrine in order. You can understand, okay, that makes sense. But what happens is they went too far in some areas.
They held on to Roman Catholicism in other areas, like in communion, for example, transubstantiation, things like that. It was a tough job for them, so I'm not trying to be too hard on them. None of this, none of my disagreeance with them has anything to do with attacking them personally. I believe many of them, if not most of them, they love the Lord just as much as we do. And so now we come to Calvinism versus Arminianism.
And this, where do you begin with? How do you, when we get to the five points of each, because each has five points, Two sides have put their positions into five points. The heroes of Calvinism are often very stoic for the truth, and that's admirable. There's some charisma that goes along with some of these characters. Martin Lloyd-Jones, back in the 1950s, maybe a little bit before, before Martin Lloyd-Jones, G.
Campbell Morgan was pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. And G. Campbell Morgan is known as the Prince of Expositors. Spurgeon's the Prince of Preachers, and Morgan was of expositors. And when Morgan, in his 80s, decided to retire, he chose Martin Lloyd-Jones, who was a medical doctor by profession who became a pastor.
And Martin Lloyd-Jones, when it comes to standing up for truth, he is fierce. He's admirable. And boy, this guy is right on. But if you were to get his commentary on the life of David, you would be saying, at least I did, say to myself, reading through him, who does this guy think he is picking on David like this? Does he not know this is a sweet psalmist of Israel ordained by God to be the last man named in the New Testament in the Bible?
Does he not? He better back off some of this, but that's what Calvinism does. It makes you hard. It's an icy kind of love. And of course, there have been others.
I'll just use Martin Lloyd-Jones as examples. There are others that are Calvinists that are stoic, heroic, charismatic, not in a like Pentecostal kind of way, but personalities go. And this has an intoxicating effect on those who are not listening to what they're really saying. this doctrine is saying.
So otherwise, intelligent people can be stone cold wrong in certain areas, or else they would never disagree with them.
So all the smart people would agree with each other but they don Luther he believed in things that Calvin didn and Calvin believed in things Luther didn agree on everything I admire our Secretary of State Marco Rubio I vote for him for president things as they are now, without hesitation. I really admire him. But I would never let him do a Bible study here in this church. His theology is not right.
So you could be intelligent, bilingual in his case, maybe more. Just very a high caliber human being. But he's not, that doesn't make him fit to be able to teach the word of God if he doesn't have the anointing and the truth. And this would explain somewhat why a person can be successful in one area and not so much in another area.
So we shouldn't be surprised that otherwise intelligent people make mistakes also. Nobody has all the answers. But we have to go, we have to be very committed to the things we believe and why we believe them and be able to back them up.
Now, Calvinists, of course, live under the influence of wrong definitions. I've covered this already when we went through predestination, so I'll skip that. You can refer to that if you want to go to it. For time's sake, we'll skip it. But free will is just too basic for them.
It needs to be more complicated, and their five points have done just that, complicated, recategorizing free will as works. It's fatalism in Christian God. And when you hold them accountable to defining love and its characteristics, they cannot say anything back. It's been my experience. When you hold them to the fire, say, wait, what kind of love is this?
Your love is fickle. It's unstable. God loves some, but the Bible says he loves all. But to support your doctrine, you have to change that or else your doctrine dies.
So the origins of Calvin, well, the doctrine of Calvinism, I think, has brought nothing good to Christianity whatsoever. We would have been fine without it. It marginalizes reason. and then there's the whole Michael Sivirtis situation that I'm going to skip many believe Calvin was directly involved in his burning at the stake in 1523 on October 27th others present arguments that well he was not really that much against it actually he was looking to be more merciful than that so rather than get bogged down with that I only mention it in case you say, well, why didn't you bring up the burning of Michael Savirtas? Because it's just a rabbit hole that I think distracts from the discussion of what is the difference between Arminianism and Calvinism.
but God's absolute and unconditional, this is Calvinism, God's absolute and unconditional decree to create men so as to save some damn others based on nothing in themselves. That is a paraphrase built from their doctrine. And remember, their forefathers, Calvin and Theodore Beza, That's their conclusion. That comes straight from them. They spoke French.
We speak English. And so in the translation, it's not verbatim, but that does sum up the doctrine. God's love is only for God's liked people, the ones he likes, not the rest.
Now, Arminius, Jacob Arminius, he was a Dutch theologian. And as he was preaching on Romans 9, he began to develop opinions about grace and predestination and free will that were not consistent with what Calvin and Biza were teaching. And he disagreed. He said that Calvinism did not allow for lost souls to even feel conviction of sin. Man's too depraved.
He's too sinful. to even know when he's being told by God he's guilty.
Well, Arminius said, that's not what I find in the Bible. And Arminius is the one that put five points together to refute Calvinism, and Calvinism responds back with their five points to refute Jacob Arminius.
So Arminius emphasized man's free will, that all humans are created in God's image. And when we realize that Calvinism's true teachings are what they are, we're shocked. We say, who could believe that? Who could come to the Bible and believe that God says you're going to heaven and you're going to hell and neither one of you have a say-so in it? It's unconditional election.
And we say, nobody can believe that. And it is a very dominant doctrine.
Now, the hyper-Calvinists, that's another group of the Calvinists, they are at least honest enough with the doctrine to say, if God has already chosen who's going to heaven and who's going to hell, it makes no sense for me to witness to anybody.
So they don't bother trying to save souls. That's the proper conclusion to their own doctrine. And the other Calvinists look down on them, and they've labeled them. They're hyper. They're running around all the time.
So the Bible condemns Calvinism before Arminianism does.
So let's look at the key principles. And I'll use as a verse to set this off. Acts chapter 8, verse 37. Keeping in mind Joshua 24, choose you this day who you're going to serve. Then Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may.
This is when the Ethiopian said, what stops me from being baptized? I believe in Jesus Christ. And Philip says if you believe with all your heart you may And he answered and said I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Calvinism comes along and says he couldn say that unless God let him say that And the other people that didn get baptized God didn let them He didn want them Yeah, well, Jesus says this, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself.
Well, I'm never in the mood to let someone come along and say, all does not mean all. It means all those preselected.
Well, show me where that is. Show me where man is so depraved from the Bible that he can't respond to God. I'm going to show you in a minute from Genesis that God thought otherwise. Again, you need someone to teach you how to disagree with the verses. And yet because they have their solid in other areas like the Trinity and the deity of Christ like that, we let our guard down with these people.
Why bother drawing all peoples if it has already been decided? Both summarize these theologies, or both summarize. I'm going to read one more verse, and then we'll get to the difference of the five points. Acts chapter 17, the Bereans, it says this of them, They received the word of God with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore, many of them believed.
it doesn't say many of them were predestined. They're predestined to be like Jesus if they come to Jesus. They're predestined to heaven if they come to Christ, if they receive the invitation. Yes, they are predestined. That is the course they've set.
But if they reject him, they're also predestined to go to hell.
Sovereign election, well, with everything, God is sovereign. Everything to him is sovereign. He knows it all. We don't. Conditional election is the first one up, and this is what the Arminians believe, and I side far more with them, way more.
There's only maybe one point that I'll get to it, but conditional election. Arminianism says God elects individuals for salvation based on his foreknowledge of who will freely choose to believe in Christ. Election is conditional on faith and not an arbitrary divine decree. It's based on whether you say yes or no and not whether God has said, no, I'm letting you in and you can't do anything about it. Which is what Calvinism teaches.
That's unconditional election.
Well, let's look at the scriptures again. 1 Peter 1, verse 2. Elect according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, and sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. According to the foreknowledge of God. God knew who he was going, who we're going to save.
He didn't do it. He made it available, knows who it is. Calvinism says God knows because he chose without any input from the sinner. But that's not what Paul says, Romans 1.16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, or is the power of God to salvation for everyone handpicked. No, for everyone who believes.
You can't just take the word believe and arbitrarily say it doesn't mean that because it doesn't suit the doctrine. And this is what they do. Everything I'm saying to you, they will counter with a twisted verse. And I already pulled the teeth on their predestination, so they can't throw that one at me. Because God chooses does not mean sinners have no choice.
1 Timothy 2 God who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth as I read earlier 2 Peter 3.9 God is long suffering towards us not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance willing that none should perish then how does Calvinism come up with his any meany mighty mode who's going and who's not and they get offended by that. And their comeback usually is he's sovereign.
Okay, I believe he's sovereign. I don't believe he's tyrannical.
So according to Calvin, God caused what he does not want. That does not make sense.
So unconditional election is their response. In response to conditional election, God chooses you based on the condition of you accepting salvation. Unconditional election is this. God chooses certain individuals for salvation based solely on his will and grace, not on any merit or foreseen faith in them. This election is unconditional and predetermined before creation.
It's preset. Manufacturer is set from the manufacturer, and you cannot change it. Like Microsoft stuff. You get messed up and you can't change it.
So, you know, in other words, God picks who goes to heaven and who goes to hell and calls it grace and makes it impossible for you to question that approach from the scripture because they say so.
Okay, so then what does this mean? Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.
Well, why bother reasoning? What a waste of effort. God tells us to love the sinner because he does too. Thanks for tuning in today to Cross Reference Radio, where Pastor Rick has some answers for various questions that have been asked. We can't fully express how grateful we are that you've been with us today, But if you're ever looking for more teaching and content from us, you're welcome to subscribe to our podcast.
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