I grew up in an area with lots of dirt roads. There were not lines on these dirt roads, not in the middle or on the sides. The boundary markers for those roads were the ditches. The roads seemed always to slope toward the ditches, particularly on a dark and rainy night. Sounds like the beginning of an article about a monster coming out of those ditches on a dark and rainy night! Sorry to disappoint you, but this article is about how easy it is to fall into these ditches and how hard it is to keep our lives and our doctrine on the biblically defined straight and narrow way. My grandfather who lived with us all of my adolescent years used to say the same thing to me whenever I left the house to go out at night: “Bo (that is what he called me), keep it between the ditches.” Now how did he know that sometime before coming home that night I would be driving on a dirt road?
I want to speak to just one of those ditches here. I will address others in future posts. But just to help us understand what is being addressed, here are some of the ditches: one, is God primarily a holy and just God or is God primarily a gracious and merciful God; two, is God primarily interested in what we believe or is He really focused on how we behave; three, should the church be really concerned about how we worship God or should we be more concerned about how we attract people to worship God; four, is the primary priority of the church evangelism/discipleship or is it making sure that we care for those who need care and execute justice in situations where justice has been miscarried; four, should the preacher preach to inform the mind and to transform the heart or should he preach to do whatever it takes to move people to make a decision for Jesus; five, should the church focus on discipleship through groups and programs or should the church focus on the public gathering for worship where the Word of God is preached and taught in such a way that the Holy Spirit develops disciples in His own way; six, should our primary focus in missions be right here where we are and those in our surrounding area or should our primary focus be unreached peoples who have never heard the Gospel? I hope by now that you get the picture. What I want you to see, however, is the real problem that we face in our day.
Here it is: we live particularly in America in a context in which we think in “either . . . or” terms. We have all but lost the capacity to think in “both . . . and” terms. The results are increasingly tragic for the church and particularly for the pastors called to lead the church. I want to show you this reality with one of the biggest issues that churches face in our day. But before I do that, let’s be clear that I am not talking about finding some kind of “mushy middle” here. Some issues are so clear that there is no “both . . . and.” For example, I cannot be a committed follower of Jesus and believe that God is anything less or other than totally and thoroughly omniscient. And to take a practical and now very highly political matter, I cannot say that I am a Christian committed to Jesus as Lord and take a pro-abortion stance. Issues like these two and many others are just too clear biblically for there to be any “both . . . and.” But let me turn to the one that is destroying many churches now and contributing the most significant exit of pastors from churches in a very long time.
We can frame the issue in two questions: first; “Is God absolutely and totally sovereign over all things in the sense that He alone decrees all that will come to pass so that He does not change His mind and accomplishes in time all that He has decreed.” Second, “are we as humans fully responsible to God knowing that we are making free choices that are not coerced, and particularly in connection to our relationship with God?” The first question is connected with those called “Calvinists” or much more correctly, “Reformed.” The second question is connected with those called “Arminian” or in Baptist life “Traditionalists.”
The resolution created by the two questions is simple; the problem is much harder since we in our culture contrary to previous ages have turned the answer to the questions into “either . . . or” rather than “both . . . and.” In fact, it has gotten so nasty in some corners that to address these questions as “both . . . and” is to be heard and seen as a coward. The entire situation is complicated by caricatures of both positions that do not represent either position biblically or historically. And the issue is made more messy still when people in our churches use the terms but do not know they mean and worse, have never read a book or commentary by John Calvin or Jacob Arminius or any writer from either persuasion. It creates a gnarly mess that should not ever happen.
The main road between these ditches looks something like this: God sovereignly saves all those known to Him as His from before the foundations of the world who hearing the Gospel are brought by the Holy Spirit under such conviction of sin that they are compelled to come to Jesus and to surrender all that they are to Him. Any person who comes to Jesus, He will not refuse because they cannot come unless He calls them to come.
Satan has created this mess. Want to be concerned about something that matters? Let me give you two things: one, there are those who believe sincerely that they are born with a good heart, mind and soul who are loved by God and will be with God forever, as will all the people they know. Such people in the past would have been called “Pelagian.” We call them “universalists” today. Two, nobody comes to Jesus nor is any person known by Jesus from before the foundation of the world as His that will be saved by Jesus apart from the Gospel. So, while you are gossiping in order to hurt people on one or the other ditch, lobbing rocks at one another, why not join hands on the main road and run with the good news that our God sovereignly saves all who having heard the Gospel come under heart and soul wrenching conviction of sin that compels them to come to Jesus will be saved. He saves sovereignly. All who are saved by Him are responsible to Him to come to Him in faith.