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“P” Stands for
Perseverance of the Saints Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis August 24, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill II Samuel 7:1-17 "By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading.” Having tiptoed through T.U.L.I.P. for the last few weeks, I must confess that I am ready to quit the garden tended diligently (to this day) by conservative Calvinists, in favor of a field of wild flowers--though the rocky coast of Maine holds even more promise for a Presbyterian preacher grown weary of the religious narcissism of these disputed doctrines! In case you are just back from the shore or the Pocono’s, be advised that you have managed to avoid a month of Sundays devoted to four of the five disputed Calvinist doctrines of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, and Irresistible Grace. This morning, to complete the assignment, we will listen for the gospel, as it is understood through the doctrine represented by “P”: “P” stands for Perseverance of the Saints. The doctrine can be summed up in one sentence from Paul’s letter to the Romans, a sentence that could just as well have been our text for the morning. In the eleventh chapter, Paul writes “…the gifts and call of God are irrevocable.” Curiously this phrase refers not to God’s eternal election of individual Christians, but refers to God’s irrevocable covenant with God’s people, with the Jews. “As regards the gospel,” Paul says of his own people, “they are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved.” It is a point most conservative Calvinists in Philadelphia Presbytery do not like to hear these days—a point which should remind us that God’s covenant with God’s chosen people stands and stands in no need of our evangelizing! But if with the old theologians we also take Paul’s words to Rome or Peter’s words from Rome as a word to Christians, the meaning shifts from a people chosen to individuals saved. Now we are told the witness of scripture means that once a person has been elected by God for salvation, there is nothing that person can do or fail to do that will change God’s mind about God’s choice to be with that person eternally. God is obviously the persistent one in the relationship, and were these doctrines about God, then a better definition of “P” would be, according to some, the Preservation of the Saints; or even better in my opinion, the Persistence of God’s Love. But given that the doctrines represented by T.U.L.I.P. are all about the elect, this last doctrine has been more honestly called the doctrine of eternal security or the doctrine of blessed assurance. What the old theologians meant to effect in the believer’s life by this doctrine was a kind of confidence in one’s salvation, a confidence that freed the believer to lead a life of gratitude and service. No longer need the elect ask the question asked of me this week by a woman who had the distinct look of a deer caught in the headlights. “How will I know that I am saved?” she asked. In light of this doctrine, the Calvinist might encourage her to take comfort in the fact that God’s claim upon a human life is irrevocable. Though the Calvinist would quickly add that, in order to convince her own heart and mind of this truth for herself, she should live a life demonstrative of the fact of her salvation day by day. In so doing, she can expect to grow into an assurance that God’s grace and salvation are hers forever. “A fortress of religious security based…on the consciousness of election,” roars the most prominent critic of such doctrinal narcissism, “since neither the Catholic option of basing it on the church nor the Lutheran option of basing it on faith alone was possible.” That is to say, our part of the Reformation, as it sought to put a point on Calvin’s thought, not only rejected the expensive grace sold by the Roman church in the form of indulgences, but the old theologians also rejected the cheap grace of Lutherans offered by God in the gift of faith. Rather, they based the eternal destiny of individuals on an absolute decree made by God sometime “in the beginning” to elect [or predestine] a few for salvation. Then, almost as if to underline in red ink the confidence of the elect, they added the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints and the “infallible assurance” of being in that number, founded upon the inward evidence of God’s promises and upon “the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirit that we are the children of God…” By the time these words were written into the Westminster Confession of Faith, says Karl Barth, a doctrine that had “at one time sought to secure the knowledge of God’s freedom and majesty, has degenerated here into a proposition intended rather to provide the Presbyterian Christian an unshakable freedom and majesty that enables him to navigate with the necessary insouciance through the vicissitudes of sinful earthly life.” “How remarkably,” Barth concludes with disgust, “the believing confession of the great deeds of God has become here an almost technical instruction for the assurance that man [that human beings] will be saved! It is an assurance that apparently requires so much verbiage because something about it is not quite right.” Something about all of these doctrines is not quite right. But what? To answer that question in sum on this last Sunday of our series, we finally must ask after the one whose theological questions prompted these not quite right answers. In 17th century Holland, a professor of theology named Jacob Arminius began to question the teaching of Calvin and his followers on a number of fronts, but the nub of the matter had to do with the nature of God’s election. Arminians, as they came to be called, believed that God chose the elect on the basis of God’s foreknowledge of the individual. God looked into the future, saw who was being naughty and nice, and with that foreknowledge, chose the good for eternal salvation. They thus affirmed partial depravity [some would choose God], foreseen faith, universal atonement [Christ died for all, though not all decide for Christ], resistible grace and the possibility of a lapse from grace. In other words, our eternal salvation hangs on a choice we will make for or against God. Knowing how we will choose before we choose, God elects only those whom God knows will choose God. From whence comes the question, “Are you saved?” and the answer, which requires of the believer a decision for Christ. Philadelphia Presbytery is overrun with Arminians-ironically posing in the garb of strictly orthodox Calvinists--and we are ordaining them by the fistful into the Presbyterian Church today! What is wrong with Arminian doctrine, biblically and theologically, is that it IS all about us, and that is what the Dutch Calvinists set out to counter with T.U.L.I.P. They meant to put our salvation in God’s hand from the beginning. Before we did or said or believed anything, God decided for us or against us. Yet precisely there, with us as the object and subject of God’s choosing, with a limited number of us said to be recipients of God’s electing grace, Calvinists went terribly wrong too! For what these old theologians also missed was the truth above every truth. Namely, that the God electing and the Person elected, the God choosing humanity and the human being chosen of God, in the beginning and in the end, is Jesus Christ alone: the Word which was in the beginning and was with God and was God, the Word which became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. Predestination is not about us, but about God’s gracious decision, God’s predetermination in Christ and through Christ that we would, that the world God so loved would—in him and through him—belong to God. Put simply, in Jesus Christ, God decided to be with and not without our true humanity eternally. Hence the story goes, when Karl Barth was asked if he were saved, his reply was, “Yes. Two thousand years ago on a cross.” For two thousand years ago on the cross, the electing God and the elected Man bore the rejection and revealed the saving grace which only an almighty love can bear, in order that nothing would ever be able to separate any from God’s love, now or eternally. By grace you have been saved through faith, we say to you week in and week out, as assurance of a relationship no sin can severe: and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God. Curiously at the end, we come to the same place as the old theologians—freed for lives of gratitude and service--but you see, we arrive with a lot more company by our side! In fact, we arrive with the whole company of the saints--which is to say the whole company of sinners—chosen of God in Christ from the beginning, used of God throughout human history to accomplish God’s saving purposes, saints and sinners in the same flesh who “through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fires, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness…” saints whose confidence was not in themselves, but in the God to whom they belonged, in life and in death. Why, then, has the church majored in pronouncing these separations, these distinctions, these judgments, and not in the proclamation of God’s grace and love and mercy toward all? Perhaps it is because, if people really believed the gospel, if people actually lived as though nothing could separate them from God’s love, then much of what passes for religion would be out of business! “The only distinction we are entitled to draw,” wrote Brian Gerrish, “is not between the elect and the non-elect, but between the regenerate and the not yet regenerate (Schleiermacher) or those who live as God’s elect and those who don’t (Barth).” This is why I am more than ready to quit the properly tended garden of T.U.L.I.P. for the wild flowers or the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and so to start living like the elect: anxious for nothing, daring all things, rejoicing always because, “By his great mercy, he has given us [all of us!] a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading.” Thanks be to God! Amen. |