Romans 12:3 - The Pelagian Captivity of the Church

Romans 12:3
For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

Message: The Pelagian Captivity of the Church

Time: Written sometime in AD 57-58, probably from Corinth, at the end of Paul's third missionary journey.

What the Lord is Saying:

I have arrived at the last lesson of this series on salvation by grace alone. I have learned a lot. But it has taken me a long time. I should be okay with that. It has taken almost a year to go through this one month as I started on March 6, 2019. Yowza. That's 20 or so lessons. Hmm. Oh well. At least I am still going at it. It is March 19, 2020. I started this post over a month ago, and now revisiting it. I've been doing other things, BSF, but also not waking up early, and getting busy with getting on with each day. At the moment, due to the coronavirus, I am working at home more, so I go back to revisiting these studies, to see what I can get through.

I think what I have been amazed about through this series (as I have been listening to RC Sproul messages on the last 5 or so of these lessons) is the history of comprehending salvation and whether man has done anything to earn salvation. The message is simple: Jesus did it all.

Pelagian, a man who lived 1600 years ago, is still having an impact on how people think today - being the idea that man is involved in salvation and God can only work in man if man agrees.

In his final message in this series, he has titled it "The Pelagian Captivity of the Church" which makes sense because the tenets of Pelagian are still at work today in the church. Sproul hones in on this idea of the extent that Pelagian and his ideals have made their way into evangelicalism today and invaded the church still today. He speaks of Charles Finney, a 19th century preacher, and his focus on evangelism and 500,000 people coming to Christ. His methods of evangelism live on today. Yet, while Finney may say that Jesus paid it all, how many gets to salvation is about man being involved in this work.

Let me step back for a moment - what I am seeing in this study is trying to intersect God's ways with my thinking of God's ways. Who God is and how he works sits on a plane. If we believe in God, then life is about understanding how he works and who He is. So is my understanding of Him the same as His? Does my plane intersect His? To me that is the goal. To be on the same plane. So does God's plane or ways include me being involved in my salvation or not? At the end of the day whether I am saved or not does not change. Can I change God's mind? Can I change my own mind? All of these are questions I am trying to figure out as I read and learn and study scripture.

As I back up to Finney, I am not saying the 500,000 that came to Christ under his method are not saved. Whether I think that or not is not for me to decide, as if my view of their salvation determines their salvation. I can honestly say the Spirit of God is living in me. I know this. So now my quest is understanding salvation and what actually occurred. Then as I intersect with others, no matter what they believe, I first wonder if the Spirit of God is living in them. I don't want to assume He isn't based upon the label they have attached to their lives of the type of religious thought or group they hold to. For example, I don't want to assume all Catholics are not Spirit-filled. But, I know this is my tendency.

Historically, the group of people that are identified as evangelical are those that embrace the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Yet Charles Finney, who is generally regarded as a hero of the faith, denies this thinking. What he denies is sola fide - which can be described as - when the sinner looks to Christ by faith and puts his trust in Christ and Christ alone that God legally declares that sinner just by the virtue of the imputation or the transfer of the merit of Christ and the righteousness of Christ to the legal account of the sinner who lacks merit and lacks any righteousness of his own. "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28). Each person has an account. Before Christ it is an account of works with the hopes that my works will yield salvation. But my works without Christ include sin and sin on its own whether intermingled with good works is unclean and cannot merit being declared just by God. Thus salvation is the sinner looking to Christ by faith, putting his trust in Christ, believing in the resurrection, believing in the transfer of righteousness -- then I am declared just by God imputing or transferring the merit or work of Christ or the righteousness of Christ to my account, to cover my sin - and man is incapable of having anything to do with this righteousness transfer. I don't make the transfer happen. But, my faith in Christ does happen.

According to Finney, such a view of justification would be a travesty of divine justice and God indeed would never make a legal declaration in calling someone just when that person is not just in and of himself. In this vein, he shares a common objection to forensic justification of the Roman Catholic church. Where Finney missed it was in his view of what Jesus did on the cross, seeing it as an example of the seriousness of sin and thereby the Christian is pardoned by God, not justified, but pardoned. It is not about Christ atoning but Christ using the cross to show us that we are evil and therefore we need to clean up our lives. In a subtle way it shows that man is responsible agent in cleaning up his/her life. For Finney sanctification yields justification whereas the classic protestant view is justification occurs and sanctification is a process in the Christian's life of being conformed to the image of Christ.

Finney is Pelagian to the core in that he believes that man has a natural ability and moral ability to make choices, to naturally choose right and wrong, but also the moral ability to choose the things of God, even without grace. Whereas, the discussion of classical Protestants is that man does not on his own have the ability to choose the things of God unless God intervenes.

What Sproul is arguing is that most evangelicals today hold to this view and do not rightly understand the meaning of original sin. Do we come to sin thinking that we can change or do we come to sin thinking that Christ must change us?

Summary: Salvation by grace alone. Man is a sinner and nothing in man can make him right with God except for the grace of God intervening. Man cannot choose to be right with God. Faith is the expression by man of the grace of God in God making man right with Himself through the work of Jesus and the transfer of His righteousness to man upon His conquering of sin through the resurrection after He was crucified on the cross. It is a fine line.

Promise: We do not have to invent fancy techniques to bring people to faith; we just have to preach God’s Word accurately and trust Him to save His people. Let us put our hope not in methods but in faithfulness to God’s Word.

Prayer: O Lord, thank you for the truth of your Word that has invaded my life and shown me the significance of Your grace. Forgive me for thinking I make myself righteous. I want to turn to You and trust You and You alone and depend on You. Thank you for RC Sproul and illuminating him and calling him to teach and show us that your truth is continuous. Keep us on the right track. Help me to discern false messages, expose them, and continue to uphold and praise You God. Give me compassion upon people and help me to not have strife with others over this issue. As I've learned of you, continue to sink truth into my life - to your Glory.

Note: I follow the readings from the Tabletalk Magazine devotional, though I am a little behind and working through 2017 devotionals. 2017 is a study of key biblical doctrines celebrating the 500th year of the Reformation. The month of April is about salvation by grace alone. March was about the sovereign providence of God; February was about the doctrine of revelation and the various aspects of the doctrine of Scripture that sola Scriptura seeks to preserve; January is about the doctrine of God.