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Do the Doctrines of Grace Really Matter in 2013 By David Calderwood

After five weeks of thinking, detailed thinking about the Doctrines of Grace,
you've really only got one question left to ask, to throw at you, and that is the
practical question, do they really matter in 2013?
Now, it's a question that requires some pondering, given that over the years
among Christians these Doctrines of Grace apparently have caused so much division.
As you ponder the question, let me recap the essence of the series.
The Doctrines of Grace were formulated about 400 years ago as part of a debate about
the Bible's teaching on salvation, and there's really two groups.
Some taught that though a person is severely affected by sin,
they still have the freedom and ability to choose to do the right thing towards God.
So, salvation in effect was a shared process, that is, God does his bit, albeit the largest part of the work,
and the individual also contributes.
But on the other side of the equation, all the major Protestant reformers
were convinced from the Bible that such was the nature and extent of sin
that a person was actually rendered unable and unwilling to respond in any shape or form to God.
And that therefore, if there is to be salvation, and indeed there is salvation,
that salvation must be by grace alone.
That is, it must be entirely by God's activity in a person's life.
Every aspect of salvation therefore they taught is due to God acting totally contrary
to what the sinner deserves, and in fact salvation therefore is in simplest form
God doing for any given individual sinner that which they could never do for themselves
even if they wanted to, which they wouldn't, left to their own devices and their own nature.
As I said, that debate was formulated 400 years ago, but even then it wasn't new.
It went right back to the early days of the church, the days of Augustine.
And it continues today.
It continues today even among otherwise known as conservative Bible-believing evangelicals.
And as I said right at the very start of this series, so I say again,
this debate is not just a slight difference in emphasis, it's not just nuance.
It's a whole different perspective on salvation.
And it can be summed up like this.
Either God saves sinners, in brackets because otherwise they wouldn't be able or willing or interested to save themselves,
or God enables or helps sinners to save themselves, brackets, because they have some ability to respond to God at some level.
In their own right.
So, come back to the question, do they really matter in 2013?
My first point, my first answer is to suggest, and this might surprise and shock some,
it'll be the most controversial part of the morning I think,
my first answer is to say that no, they don't really matter.
Now if you're struggling for breath at the moment, let me follow on by adding that there's a sense in which I want to be deliberately provocative there,
and I need to qualify that statement.
They don't really matter in the sense that the doctrines of grace, a belief in the doctrines of grace,
are not necessary for a person to be saved.
I want to be very clear at this point.
It is quite possible for a person to be a genuine believer and not know about, or do know about, but not be committed to, the doctrines of grace.
A person may be a true believer and not believe in God's electing love, which predestined them for salvation.
They may not believe in a particular atonement or redemption.
They may not believe in irresistible grace or the final perseverance of the saints.
They may not believe in any of that and yet be a genuine believer.
Even worse, let me put this on the table for you,
a person may be a genuine Christian and may even believe that their faith in some way,
their own response in some way, contributes to their own salvation.
Now I want to emphasize that point because we've got to get right.
We've got to make sure we don't say more than what the Bible allows us to say.
We shouldn't say less, but we shouldn't say more.
And what I want to say to you this morning is that with respect to the doctrines of grace,
the Lord is not limited by our lack of understanding in terms of how he acts to save a person.
The Lord is not limited by our sinful refusal to consider these issues
or even worse, sinful pride in thinking that in some small way our faith is our own doing.
That is just another aspect of the sinful nature.
God will save because God has determined to save
and because the death of Christ has paid for all our sins for all of his people.
Including, might I add, the sin of overrating ourselves in terms of our own faith or how we assess ourselves.
I also hasten to add that where there is genuine belief,
I think you'll find in any genuine believer that their being a Christian will automatically push them towards grace.
And the idea of God's grace and salvation, even if they don't embrace the whole package that we call the doctrines of grace.
Because I haven't come across any believer who doesn't, as they go along in the Christian life,
have an increasingly profound sense of their own guilt and sin before God.
And what does that do for them? It makes them call out for God's grace.
They look to Christ for his grace of forgiveness and new relationship through the death of Christ.
And they recognise that if in the end they get to heaven, then it will be because of God's grace.
But here's where the rubber meets the road.
They can be a genuine believer and not be committed to the doctrines of grace.
But I would add that therefore they won't have as marvellous a picture of God's character and God's love
and God's saving power as they might otherwise have.
They may even claim for themselves that which is rightfully God's in that whole process
and thereby diminish God's glory somewhat.
But here's the point.
As those who do thoroughly believe in the doctrines of grace, this golden chain of salvation,
we have no business suggesting that others who do not hold to this position are not and cannot be genuine believers.
And I make this point with some emphasis because sadly that is exactly what some who hold to the doctrines of grace do.
And I believe do so without biblical warrant.
But moving on positively, my second answer is of course the doctrines of grace really matter in 2013.
And I want to make five points clustered into two groups.
The first point is this, that the doctrines of grace really are the sum and substance of scripture as to how and why God saves us.
So they're the sum and substance of scripture.
The first sub point, the doctrines of grace actually underpin or permeate the whole of the Bible.
When you start at page one, the story of creation in Genesis, it's God's grace, a statement of God's grace
because in all of God's creation God graciously relates to mankind as an image bearer.
And from the point that sin, the sin of Adam and Eve, brings such devastation to God's relationship with his image bearer,
the message of the Bible, the key to understanding the Bible, is the message of God's absolute grace
whereby God promises to intervene in this now messed up world, to undo the effects of sin
and put things back the way God intends them to be.
And that by grace.
And Paul in this letter, in the letter to the Ephesians, speaks of the riches of God's grace that he is freely lavished on us.
That's a brilliant phrase if we just allow it to sort of sink into our minds.
The riches of God's grace which he is freely lavished on us.
In other words, as Paul writes to these Christians, he's absolutely overwhelmed
by the sheer generosity and beauty of God's actions towards sinful people.
And he described it in verse 3 there of chapter 1, that in Christ we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.
That is, he's describing God's mercy and God's loving kindness
which drives the Lord to treat sinful people totally contrary to what we deserve.
We deserve condemnation and yet what do we have? Every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Verses 4 through to 14, he details that out.
And the detail is of how God acts in spontaneous goodness to save sinners.
Read through the verses there.
He determines before the creation of this world to love the unlovely.
That's a pretty big call isn't it?
Promising to renew the unlovely and restore relationship with them.
And then God actually redeems or actually saves by securing forgiveness at such great cost to himself in the death of his son.
And then we're told that God doesn't just leave it to chance there.
He actually effectively moves in people's lives causing us to respond.
When left to ourselves we would have continued in rebellion.
And finally God leads his people, his saved people into full knowledge and enjoyment of himself.
And he leads them through life overcoming all obstacles.
All obstacles to the fulfillment of this purpose of salvation that arises at each and every stage throughout life.
The ultimate purpose of which?
So that the people he determined in eternity past would be saved will actually get to heaven finally to be with him forever.
Friends, the doctrines of grace therefore I want you to hear this morning are biblical truth.
Biblical truth to be understood, to be embraced, to be treasured and to be guarded I believe for successive generations.
That's why I'm here passing them on as it were to the next generation.
That's what biblical truth is for.
Let me flip the coin and look at it negatively.
They are not given so that Christians can have something else to fight about and argue about and divide over.
And that's really important because today many who call themselves evangelical Christians want to dismiss the doctrines of grace
as simply, well it's just one of those things we call historical theology.
It's when church people in the past, Christians in the past, they get a couple of degrees under their belt and then they go stupid.
And they formulate historical theology and it causes great problems and we'd all be better served if we just dismissed it.
That's not what it is. It's permeating the whole of the scripture.
It's not just a historical creed that has had its day which may now be discarded as though somehow or other these doctrines of grace are not in any shape or form connected to the Bible.
No, the doctrines of grace permeate, they underpin all that God has to say about himself and his commitment and purpose to save in the Bible.
The second thing, and this will be perhaps arguable again and you can argue about it in your, discuss it robustly in your response groups.
They preserve a proper supernaturalism with respect to our salvation.
I'm going to have to unpack that a bit for you. Presumably you won't understand what I'm driving at there but it goes like this.
When you read the Bible, at least when I read the Bible, I see that every Bible writer, every book of the Bible has as a theme, salvation is of the Lord.
But sadly I think the force of that concept has been at least severely diminished or in some cases even lost among some who call themselves evangelical or conservative Bible believing Christians today.
Here's how it works. We used to speak about people needing to be saved or needing to be converted.
Now, when you speak in those terms, you're speaking passive, that is the subject of the verb is God and he is the one who has to do the action on the person saved, the person converted.
He is the one who needs to rescue people from their desperate and hopeless plight by changing and renewing them from the inside out.
A person must be saved, needs to be saved, must be converted, needs to be converted.
But so many evangelical Christians now speak about the need to make a commitment or to make a decision to follow Jesus.
Now, I think this is more than just modernizing language. I think it reflects a significant change in theology, the theology of salvation.
On the one hand you see, it changes the subject of the verb from God to the person.
Now, clearly scripture calls us to be committed to Christ. No shadow of a doubt at that.
But if salvation is primarily commitment, then it's something that primarily the person does.
And on the other hand, it suggests that the desperate life and death issues of salvation, of being dead and made alive again, have been lost or rejected.
So, if I make a commitment or a decision to follow Jesus, then it primarily has that sense of Jesus being a model of morality,
lifestyle and attitudes that, well, I want to commit to being like Jesus rather than I need the substitutionary, sacrificial death of Christ applied to me for the forgiveness of my sins so that I might be made alive and acceptable to God.
And so, if we ask the question, why is it that professing Christians today argue that the doctrines of grace do not really matter,
I suggest to you this morning that we might find quite often the answer is in this change of theology.
So, buried in that, you see, God is no longer the holy, holy, holy God Almighty that Isaiah met and who just crushed Isaiah before him,
so he bowed and said, Woe is me, I'm undone, aware of his sinful state before the perfection of God.
And at the same time in our generation in the church, people are now considered to be basically good.
The idea of total depravity, total inability, the idea of sin being such a permeating, devastating thing in our lives that that means what renders us useless before God,
that seems to be getting pushed aside. Now people are basically good and what we need is some help to bring the good out of us so that we might achieve our full potential.
So there's been a fundamental inversion of the gospel, I believe, among evangelicals with the focus now on the individual and their rights,
their needs, their commitment, their opportunity and practical well-being and that's the language here of application of sermons.
Now I don't for a moment suggest that everybody who uses the language commitment is taking on this full theology.
I'm simply thrown up this morning for your consideration because we may inadvertently by taking up modern terms be inferring a change in theology with respect to salvation.
And so all that has been that the Lord God and the riches of his grace and salvation are diminished at least because the focus has been brought on to us.
Or at worst they've been excluded from this modern gospel.
We say the doctrines of grace therefore put things back into proper perspective because the doctrines of grace, whatever else they are, they're about God acting supernaturally at every point in salvation.
God in his mercy and in a process that demands supernatural activity. Supernatural activity before the creation of the world.
Supernatural activity as he sends Jesus into this world, God and man. Supernatural activity as Jesus dies and is resurrected.
Supernatural activity as the church is formed and Christ governs his church from heaven.
At every point supernatural activity and the doctrines of grace pushes back to that proper supernaturalism.
And alongside that then is the very comforting truth as Gordon mentioned in his introduction that nothing can thwart the purpose of God.
Nothing can smack up our salvation because God doesn't give us any chance at any point to stuff it up. God does it all for us.
The third reason why the matter is the doctrines of grace get glory for God like nothing else does. Friends it follows on from the last point.
Very simple equation again. The greater the debt that is forgiven, the more hopeless and desperate the plight of the condemned person who then knows forgiveness,
the greater will be the love and adoration and sense of indebtedness of the one forgiven and rescued and freed into new life.
So how does the doctrine of grace position us? Well very simply we owe God everything.
And it's not just we owe God everything, it's we owe God everything and that everything is totally the opposite of what we rightly and justly deserved.
And so for Paul the gap between God and man was literally the gap between heaven and hell,
between being saved by grace alone and as he writes here in Ephesians, being without hope and without God in the world.
A mere object of God's wrath and condemnation and awaiting final destruction, man that's a big gap.
And so for us as Christians then to be able to say, whoa, look at how God has bridged the gap in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that gap is not only bridged but effectively removed so it's no longer even an issue in God's eyes.
That gets glory for God.
Four times in this chapter Paul breaks into his writing, so he's describing this process of salvation and four times he just gets lost,
he gets carried away and he puts a sort of, in our English it's a hyphen, a break in his thought.
And the break in his thought is then punctuated by the phrase, to the praise of his glory.
Every time Paul thinks of an aspect of this salvation he just can't help himself, he just has to stop and say, whoa, to the praise of his glory.
Verse six, talking about predestined, loved ahead of time, to the praise of his glorious grace.
Verse seven, the forgiveness of sins, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Verse 12, might be for the praise of his glory. Verse 14, to the praise of his glory.
And the trend continues in the following chapters as Paul speaks about the beautiful mystery of God's grace that is salvation in Jesus and the unsearchable riches of God's grace in Christ
that creates the church, the community of saved people, that Paul then says, through whom God's incredible wisdom and love and faithfulness and purpose is shown.
So the existence of the church itself is designed as the end point of salvation because it gets glory for the Lord.
Look what the Lord has done. The Lord has the last word in a sinful world.
And that's why many Christian songwriters, both modern and ancient, write over and over and over and over again about amazing grace.
To say that salvation is of the Lord in conception, in planning, in accomplishment, and in application such that sinners like you and me will be in heaven with the Father forever
is simply to give God the glory he deserves.
Nothing more than that. Simply giving God the glory he deserves.
But flip that coin and take away any of that and you start to diminish God's glory.
The second major point is that the doctrines of grace free us and encourage us to confident Christian living.
They encourage us to come to Christ individually in all our sinfulness.
If you're like me, and I have no doubt that you are like me, at least I hope you're like me,
so often we become so aware of our guilt and sin before the Lord that we find ourselves starting to think that we're just too sinful to be saved.
We're just too sinful to be saved.
Yes, this package of salvation is wonderful, but for me, perhaps it's that sin in the past, that big sin in the past,
perhaps that nobody knows about, perhaps people do know about it.
But there it is, lodged in our innermost being, wherever that innermost being is, and you just think, no, that's too big for God to save.
And so we fear that God will reject us.
Even as Christians, as we struggle to be faithful to Christ, our daily failures cause us to fear rejection by Christ.
I prayed asking for forgiveness today for the same thing I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that and the day before that,
and surely to goodness, God's just going to get jack of it after a while.
And so I fear rejection.
You see, if you look at Ephesians chapter 1 and you understand this golden chain of salvation that Paul's writing about here,
the golden chain of salvation which shows God's ultimate purpose in salvation for his people,
then we realize that it's God's commitment to us that delivers us from fear, not our commitment to him.
And there's all the difference in the world between those two statements.
In Christ we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. Now what does that mean?
Well it means very simply, there is nothing else that God could have given us or could do for us that he hasn't already given us or done for us.
There's just nothing else. It's as if God's sitting up there thinking, now what have I missed? Have I overlooked something?
And his conclusion is, no, you have every spiritual blessing in Christ.
So, when our fears threaten to overwhelm us, and they do, we need to drive away fear by praying for yourself and praying for others as Paul does in verses 15 through to 22.
Just let me read that to you again. I don't think it needs coming.
For this reason, that is the reason of this chain of salvation, God's grace in verses 1 to 14.
For this reason, Paul says, ever since I've heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,
I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Now here's the essence of this prayer. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.
See, fear is driven out by knowledge, knowledge of God's purpose in our salvation, knowledge of God's commitment to us.
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you,
the riches of his glorious inheritance, in the sense, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
Freedom from fear, my friends, is knowing the doctrines of grace in the context of God's power,
and God's purpose in salvation, and God's commitment to save those he determines to save.
And this in turn frees us for confident Christian living, because that frees us from that awful performance treadmill that we so often so easily get trapped on,
of thinking that we have to try and earn God's favour by getting things right.
And that then just consumes us. But you see, when we understand that it's God's commitment to us, then we're free from that,
and we can get on with the job of living grateful, responsive lives to the mercy of God in Christ.
Friends, this includes, hear this very carefully, this includes freedom to fail, as we inevitably do, again and again and again.
The doctrines of grace, you see, are such beautiful things that they allow us to fail.
Then seek God's forgiveness, and once again determine to live and act and think in a way that shows a proper response of gratitude and worship for his mercies to us.
All the while, as I said last week, all the while confident that God is actually working in us for that same end,
for that very same outcome, and will in fact complete what he starts in us, and has started in us.
So the doctrines of grace encourage us to come to Christ. Listen to Jude verse 24.
Doxology. Listen to where the subject of this is, and where the point of adoration and praise is.
To him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.
To the only God, our Saviour, be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages, now and forevermore. Amen.
And secondly, the doctrines of grace not only encourage us to come to Christ in all our sinfulness,
but they encourage us to encourage others to come to Christ in all their sinfulness.
Evangelism is hard work.
I mean, at the end of the day, evangelism is about changing a person's heart, changing their attitudes and their desires, reorientating their whole life.
And who can do that? Who can change a single attitude in some other person?
Which of us could cut through that deep instinctive hostility that people have towards God?
Well, the answer is, thankfully, we don't have to. God has never called us to do that.
God has said, get out there and preach the gospel, declare the message of Jesus.
There's no salvation in any other person apart from Jesus. That's our job.
Let God do what God can do, and that is cutting through unbelief, regenerating and renewing, giving life to dead people.
So we need to just be happy to do what God wants us to do because God said, I'll use what you do as part of what I do.
And that's such a relaxing partnership, is it not?
It is.
And so therefore the doctrines of grace have been throughout the ages the basis for real confidence in evangelism and cross-cultural mission work, and it was true for Paul also.
He knew that people would be saved because God has marked a great multitude for salvation and has not only marked that they would be saved,
but the means by which they'd be saved will be hearing the word of God spoken, the message of salvation.
So Paul just gets on with the job of speaking, confident that somewhere in some group, at some day, somebody will be made alive.
Let me conclude with Acts chapter 18. First, not the whole chapter you'd be pleased to hear, just one verse.
Remember, Paul went into Corinth and it was an excessively liberal city, modern day Sydney.
You could find any sort of aberration in life, groups pushing all sorts of lifestyles, world views.
Hostile, hostile, hostile to the gospel.
Great source of problems for Paul.
It felt like giving up.
Acts chapter 18 verse 10, the Lord says to Paul in a vision.
Do not be afraid.
Keep on speaking.
Do not be silent.
That's Paul's brief.
All Paul has to do is keep on speaking.
Yes, people reject it or are hostile to the message of the gospel.
Paul has to keep on speaking.
Don't shut up your mouth simply because life's hard.
Here's what God says.
For I am with you and no one is going to attack and harm you because I have many people in this city.
Paul's confidence in a hostile city with a world view that was opposed to God was God's sovereignty in salvation.
God had his elect people in Corinth and nothing would stop those appointed for salvation from being saved.
Paul's confidence was God's grace that as he had been saved, snatched from the jaws of hell itself,
so many in Corinth would likewise by God's grace be snatched from the jaws of hell.
And so Paul pressed on, arguing, persuading, being beaten up, pressing on, pressing on with what God had asked him to do, speaking.
Confident that God would do what he had promised to do.
Renewing, transforming, renovating from the inside out.
I'm just going to finish with Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4.
That brings the series to conclusion.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.
It is by grace you have been saved.