Titus 2:11 - For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
Message: Is Grace Cooperative?
Time: Paul is the author, written in AD 63. Paul went with Titus to the island of Crete and evangelized there before Paul left Titus there in a position of leadership. The book speaks of living right as guided by Truth.
What the Lord is Saying:
The issue: How free is the human will after the fall of Adam.
Humans beings are free to make choices. But our freedom is limited by our desires. Freedom is doing what we most want to do. Apart from God's grace, the only thing that we want to do is sin. In order to do what is truly good and pleasing to God, grace must change our hearts. It is only the regenerate person that understands the things of God.
I go back to an idea that I have been focusing on: the horizontal and the vertical. The horizontal is our life lived with one another and the life I live for myself. In this life there is freedom: each day there are choices to engage in good acts and bad acts as they relate to man's relationship to man. Much good has been done by men and women on this horizontal level. We should not ever diminish these acts. But there is the vertical - man's relationship with God. Without God's grace there is no vertical, only a horizontal. Grace brings the vertical into my life because sin removed the vertical. Without grace, I will only live on the horizontal. With grace, I can carry out the things of God. Thus, today's text states in Titus 2:11 - For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. Salvation is a God thing and it is needed to make me right vertically, right with God.
The debate that I have been looking at is - can man get to God on his own or must God intervene? And is this intervention completely by God or is man involved?
RC Sproul Message - Is Grace Cooperative - In this message RC Sproul begins his lecture by reciting a quote by Joseph Arminius in which he upholds the lost condition of man following Adam's sin or his sin and mentions that the only way man can be brought to salvation is through the act of grace into that person's life. He mentions that Arminius began as a pure Calvinist and Augustinian but then he got wrapped up in a debate with someone and in that process began to move further and further away from the reformed doctrine.
Early on he speaks of preventing grace and prevenient grace. "Pre" means before and "venient" - coming before so this is 'grace that comes before something." Grace comes before conversion. There are also those who look at internal grace and external grace. External grace is something that happens outside of ourselves, outside of our soul. Internal grace would be something that God does inside of us. For Arminius, grace is not limited to an external operation of the Holy Spirit, but also God's internal operation. However, he then goes to say that all persons have their own will and can refuse the call of the Holy Spirit. So even though it is internal (God doing something inside of us), it is not irresistible. He says the grace of regeneration is sufficient to convert. It is all a person needs to be liberated from spiritual bondage. The grace is enough. But it is not inherently efficient as it does not always affect conversion or regeneration. Thus, prevenient grace or grace that comes before man's choice to then choose whether or not he wants that grace.
Calvin however speaks that the calling of God is effectual. Here the Spirit effects what it intends and thus, it cannot be rejected. Thus, grace is internal and effectual. But for Arminius it is internal but can be rejected. Arminius says that if man does not submit to the grace, the fault lies with man. Pelagius would though deny this for Pelagius believes that God does not have to help a person be saved. But Arminius says that God does have to help, but man can reject. Arminius seeks to not make God accountable to people rejecting Him whereby with Calvin the onus is completely on God as to man being saved or not saved. While Arminius believes that the rejecting by man means that the fault rests on him, he also does not believe that the acceptance of man does not rest on man being virtuous. To believe this would mean that man has something to boast about and this would contradict what Paul says in Ephesians 2:9.
Arminius gave a famous example of a rich man coming to a beggar to offer him a gift. The beggar does nothing to earn the gift, and to receive it simply reaches out his had to accept the gift. But the beggar can also not reach out his hand and therefore be content in his position of being poor. Billy Graham even stated that God does 99% and man does 1% whereby reformers would say that for the drowning man, the person would drown and then God would pull him out of the water and resuscitate him to life.
After Arminius died in 1609, some of his disciples in the Synod of Dort were called upon to consider the five articles of Remonstrance. It was in response to these five articles that we received the five points of Calvinism.
[I was thinking of this question - most of the proof text I think about Calvinist thought, namely whether man is involved at all in salvation, comes from Paul's writings (and also Hebrews). Is it possible that Augustine and Calvin concluded their points on man having no place in saving man from Paul alone or is that line of thinking consistent throughout the Bible? Stated another way, is Jesus a Calvinist? Is God and the Old Testament writers Calvinist? This is a side-note question of mine. Some people have made the assertion that if we only follow the red letters or Jesus' words then we won't come to the conclusion of grace alone.]
RC Sproul Message - Born to Sin - In this message RC Sproul begins speaking about Jonathan Edwards and his book, Freedom of the Will, written in 1754. That book is very theological and philosophical and technical. It was written after Edwards had been removed from his church in Northampton and began a ministry to the Indians at Stockbridge (both in Massachusetts).
Edwards deals with the question - "What is the will anyway?" Philosophers often looked at the mind, the affections, and the will OR the mind, the heart, and the will. Edwards felt it was important to distinguish between the mind or thinking and the will or choosing. He says they are interrelated. In analyzing the will, the making of human decisions or choices, he looked first at the law of causality. Causality is every effect must have a cause. Thus, he analyzed human choices as effects with causes. The choices we make are made for a reason and the mind supplies the reason. Thus, the choices we make are what we deem to be good for us, though, Edwards use of the word good isn't necessarily morality, but rather good is what is pleasing to us. Thus, the good is what is most pleasing to me, at this moment, and to choose what I want. Thus, this is the role of desire in the making of choices. The mind deems a particular action to be good and pleasing to us. For example, when one is hungry, those hunger pains alert the mind and then the mind through choosing decides to eat, in order to meet the need of hunger, in order to please himself.
Edwards states that all choices are caused by something. They don't just happen. And what causes choices are inclinations. Thus, choices are motivated or driven by inclinations. Edwards understood that as humans we are complex. At times, we have very complex desires and motives within our lives. Paul reverberates this idea in Romans 7:19 - For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do. What Paul seems to be saying that in him are competing desires and competing inclinations. In Christ is the desire to always do those things that honor God, but in his flesh is desires contrary to the Spirit and sometimes I follow these desires. Edwards might say to Paul that at the time of your choice to sin, you have a stronger desire to not do what is pleasing to God than you have in yourself to please God. Thus, there is a conflict of inclinations. Thus, Edwards states that we always choose according to the strongest inclination at the moment.
This is not determinism which is being controlled by external forces that coerce us, such as our environment and place in which we live and grow up. Atheists believe in determinism, meaning we are a product of our environment. What Edwards is focused on instead is self-determination in which the choices we make are determined by us. What Edwards is getting at is our choices are determined by us and my desires and what my mind deems to be most good for me at the moment. There is a desire continuum we have. Some desires are strong while others are mild. Thus freedom is the power to choose according to your inclinations.
For example, the doctor may recommend and I may agree that I need to lose 30 pounds as losing pounds has a myriad of positive outcomes. But, my desire to lose those pounds varies from moment to moment. After eating a thanksgiving meal I have no desires to eat more and want to lose pounds, but when I am hungry and a chocolate sundae is presented before me, my desire for that sundae is greater than my desire to lose weight. Thus, the desire continuum. We have different degrees of desires, but without an inclination there wouldn't be a choice is what Edwards argues.
Yet, Edwards is arguing with pagan philosophers and even other theologians which might say that the will is not indifferent, but has a prior bent, disposition or inclination. To be really free it would have an equal means to go to the right or the left. Edwards says an indifferent choice is an irrational concept. If I choose one thing over another for no other reason whatsoever, like choosing which way to go at a fork in the road with no reason to choose either way, how would that have any moral significance. Intent is essential to a moral decision, to a voluntary act. To be a moral decision, there has to be a reason or intent. But he says the idea of an indifferent choice is a nonsensical concept.
What Edwards is most famous for is his distinction between our natural ability and our moral ability. This is similar to Augustinian's distinction between free will and liberty. Edwards says, "We have the natural ability to make choices." We have natural ability that is not coerced by outside forces. What we lack, according to Edwards, is the moral ability to choose the things of God. Because in the fall, we lost our disposition, our desire, our inclination for God. We don't choose God because we don't want him. We cannot choose what we do not want. We have no natural inclination for the things of God until the Holy Spirit creates that in our soul. Thus back to the vertical, Edwards is stating that we lack, on our own, the ability to see that God is what we need the most in our lives, and in turn meets us on the vertical, on our own. The only way our heart is inclined to the things of God is God coming to us and once God comes, we cannot resist Him. Thus, grace is not cooperative.
Summary: On the horizontal, man is capable of making choices, based upon his inclinations and desires. The problem is that apart from grace, we only desires the things of this world, the things that do not save us, that are not of salvation, that therefore are not of God. To do the things of God, God must intervene in our lives and this intervention is not resisting. If God calls us, we will respond.
Promise: Paul says that the grace of God has brought salvation to all people, thus God has saved all sorts of people. The gospel must be preached to all people.
Prayer: Father, your word is alive and true. I seek truth. Even as I spend time talking to people that are coming from a myriad of faiths, I want to make sure that the truth of who you are and how salvation happens or how I am made to be free from sin happens. Guide me into truth always. Thank you for saving me and making me whole and giving me new life. I live now in obedience to You and I do not want that to ever be muddy or unclear. You are my God and I am yours. You love me and in response I love You and others and want You to be in the life of all others I am near. Save. Save people. Keep on saving people.
