The following sermon was preached at South City Church on January 1, 2017. It is a Christmas sermon exploring the theme of Christ’s incarnation utilizing the work of the Athanasius (296-373).
Salvation
D.A. Carson Illustrating the Difference Between Arminian and Calvinist Conceptions of Grace
In Exegetical Fallacies, D.A. Carson dismantles an analogy by which Donald Lakes seeks to deny alleged differences between the Arminian and Calvinist understandings of grace. Carson then counters with an example of his own that helpfully exemplifies the difference that is truly at play.
Donald M. Lake, for example, in attempting to argue that grace is no weaker in an Arminian system than in a Reformed system, offers us the analogy of a judge who condemns a guilty criminal and then offers him a pardon. Although the man must accept it, such acceptance, argues Lake, cannot be thought of as a meritorious work, a work that in any sense makes the man deserving of salvation. “Calvin and later Calvinists,” he adds, “never seem to be able to see this fundamental distinction unfortunately!”
But to argue that the role of grace in the two systems is not different, Lake would have to change his analogy. He would need to picture a judge rightly condemning ten criminals, and offering each of them pardon. Five of them accept the pardon, the other five reject it (the relative numbers are not important). But in this model, even though those who accept the pardon do not earn it, and certainly enjoy their new freedom because of the judge’s “grace,” nevertheless they are distinguishable from those who reject the offer solely on the basis of their own decision to accept the pardon. The only thing that separates them from those who are carted off to prison is the wisdom of their own choice. That becomes a legitimate boast. By contrast, in the Calvinistic scheme, the sole determining factor is God’s elective grace. Thus, although both systems appeal to grace, the role and place of grace in the two systems are rather different. Lake fails to see this because he has drawn an inadequate analogy; or, more likely, the inadequacy of his chosen analogy demonstrates he has not understood the issue.
D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Carlisle, U.K.; Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster; Baker Books, 1996), 121–122.
Justification as the Marriage Union of Faith (Martin Luther)
This is one of my favorite portions in Luther’s writings and one of my favorite illustrations.
The following is from Luther’s short work Freedom of a Christian.
The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31–32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?
Scot McKnight and Robert Paterson on the Saving Significance of Christ’s Death in Acts (an Artificial Conversation)
I like to maintain the habit of reading multiple books simultaneous. An interesting thing that happens occasionally is when two or more books happen to ‘interact’ over an idea as I read these books in conjunction. Something like this happened as I just finished Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel and am near the front end of Robert A. Paterson’s Salvation Accomplished by the Son.
In The King Jesus Gospel (which, by the way, is a good book, although many conservative evangelicals like myself will quibble over emphases and the way he frames/words things), McKnight makes the point that too often evangelicals have reduced the Gospel to the cross of Christ to the exclusion of “the full Story of Jesus, including his life, his death, his resurrection, his exaltation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, his second coming, and the wrapping up of history so that God would be all in all” (119). However, this was
Not so in the early gospeling [i.e., evangelism], for in those early apostolic sermons [he is referring to those in the book of Acts primarily here], we see the whole life of Jesus. In fact, if they gave an emphasis to one dimension of the life of Jesus, it was the resurrection. The apostolic gospel could not have been signified or painted or sketched with a crucifix. That gospel wanted expression as an empty cross because of the empty tomb (120).
That’s true. McKnight is right.
But, without necessarily pitting McKnight’s argument against Peterson’s (to follow), one might get the impression from McKnight that the apostle’s gospeling in the book of Act’s didn’t provide much comment (if any) on the theological, redemptive significance of Jesus’ death. … And that’s where Robertson’s observations serve as a helpful conversation partner.
Calvin on the Relationship between Works and Justification by Faith
I first read the following a few months ago. It stood out to me as an excellent articulation of the relationship between works and justification by faith alone.
This passage exists within The Institutes of the Christian Religion’s third book entitled “The mode of obtaining the grace of Christ. The benefits it confers, and the effects resulting from it” (especially note the “benefits” and “effects” “resulting from” grace received). In this section Calvin seeks to refute the idea that the reformers “destroy good works, and give encouragement to sin” by their doctrine of justification by faith alone. On the contrary, Calvin desires to prove that “justification by faith establishes the necessity of good works” (emphasis mine).
Our last sentence may refute the impudent calumny of certain ungodly men, who charge us, first, with destroying good works and leading men away from the study of them, when we say, that men are not justified, and do not merit salvation by works; and, secondly, with making the means of justification too easy, when we say that it consists in the free remission of sins, and thus alluring men to sin to which they are already too much inclined. These calumnies, I say, are sufficiently refuted by that one sentence; however, I will briefly reply to both. The allegation is that justification by faith destroys good works. … They pretend to lament that when faith is so highly extolled, works are deprived of their proper place. But what if they are rather ennobled and established? We dream not of a faith which is devoid of good works, nor of a justification which can exist without them: the only difference is, that while we acknowledge that faith and works are necessarily connected, we, however, place justification in faith, not in works. Continue reading
Kirk E. Miller 