The Doctrines of Grace and The Regular Guy - pt 2 - Sola Scriptura

Well, I am a regular guy. And apparently I failed to mention in my last post that regular guys procrastinate. It has been more than a week since I posted part one of this series, and I apologize that it has taken me this long get to part two. I will try to do better with the rest, but I make no guarantees. After all, training camp has begun in the NFL and the preseason college football poll is out, so there are many things that can distract a regular guy like me. All right, enough with the excuses and on to the topic at hand.

One of the most important discoveries for my spiritual growth over the last couple of years has been what is sometimes known as the doctrines of grace. In this series of posts I will explore these doctrines from the perspective of a regular guy and seek to answer the question, "Why should the doctrines of grace make a difference to me?" As we tiptoe into this topic it seems that some background is in order. It occurs to me that before you can answer the question, "Why should the doctrines of grace make a difference to me?", you may need to answer the question, "What in the world are the doctrines of grace?" A very helpful and succinct explanation can be found on Gregg Harris' website. To say it even more succinctly, though, the central idea (not the first in order, nor the only, but the central one) is that God actively predestines us for salvation in eternity past, not based on any works that we have done, either good or bad (see Romans 9:10-13).

I must confess that it was not that long ago that I completely disagreed with that sentence. Indeed, you may have just read that sentence and thought, "I had no idea that he was talking about predestination when he referred to 'the doctrines of grace'. I've heard about predestination, and I believe in grace, but certainly don't see how the two could be linked together and lumped under one umbrella of doctrine. In fact, predestination sounds like just the opposite of grace, if you ask me." You may be tempted at this point to discontinue reading and go surf a different wave on the wonderful World Wide Web. I would like to encourage you to endure my ramblings through to the end of this series of posts. You may ultimately disagree with the doctrines of grace, but what I would like to explain here is why they matter. And I want to do it from the viewpoint of one that formerly did not believe in the doctrines of grace as they will be subsequently laid out.

You see, it didn't make sense to me that God could choose whom He would save before they ever lived. I believed in an all-loving God that was able to save anyone that "believes in him" (John 3:16) and "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord" (Acts 2:21). But as far "predestination" goes, the best that I could come up with was that God saw in advance everything that was going to happen, including which people would accept Christ and which ones would reject Him, and that constituted "predestination". I was very comfortable with that explanation for a very long time. It fit very well in my life and fellowship circles. In fact, when given the opportunity, I taught it that way and even counseled others from that perspective. I was not seeking another explanation at all, nor did I see a reason to. But I had a problem. And that brings us to our topic today.

My problem was that although I did not believe the doctrines of grace (more specifically, I did not believe in predestination), I did believe, or at least I thought I believed, in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. I believed that Scripture was the all-sufficient rule for faith and practice. This is the doctrine that the reformers called "Sola Scriptura", which is Latin for "Only Scripture". Now I must pause at this point and interject an observation. Many, many people believe that they believe in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. However, some of them have come to very different conclusions with regard to what Scripture says. They leave out significant portions on foundational ideas, such as sin and wrath and holiness and other essentials, and they are left with a Bible that says what they want it to say. Nonetheless, they proclaim Scripture to be their only foundation, and they do so with zeal. "Our church preaches the Bible!" is the statement of the leadership and the faithful followers. In that sense, a statement by a church or a pastor or a Christian that they believe in the Bible can be a very misleading one. Certainly, most of us realize that you can go into four different churches on any given weekend, in any given city, and though all of them may proclaim that they believe in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, it is likely that they will have come to four very different conclusions on some significant matters.

Please do not misunderstand me--I am not here to say that others are all wrong, and that I am all right. I only point that out to say that there was a time in my life that my belief in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, along with my study of Scripture, ran in opposition to other things that I actually believed. In other words, I said that I believed in the Bible, but there were many times that I would read it and think, "That says something very different than what I believe." In fact, at one point I was surprised to find out that the word "predestined" was actually in Scripture. For a long time I thought that it was just something that someone made up out of their head. But there it was in black and white; nestled right up against one of my favorite verses, Romans 8:28 (it is in other places as well). We all know that verse well and love to quote it (with good reason I might add). "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (NASB) I love that verse, and I am not alone. Many people love that verse and have no idea what the next verses say. Allow me to quote, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified." (Romans 8:29-30, NASB)

I have to say that this was more than a little annoying to discover. This meant that predestination was not just an idea that came out of some guy's head—it was something that was in the pages of Scripture. And if it was in the pages of Scripture that meant that I had a choice to make. One possibility was that I could ignore it and pretend like it wasn't there. Certainly there are many other things in Scripture that could keep my attention, and at the same time provide some more practical preaching and teaching points. Sort of the "10 steps to a better you" approach to Scripture. I tried that and it worked for a while. The only problem is that God's sovereign choice in election is not a minor point in Scripture. It seemed like the more I tried to ignore it, the more that I found it. John 6, John 10, Romans 9-11, Old Testament, New Testament. And it was popping up in some of my favorite Scriptures: Romans 8:28-39, I Peter 2:9-10, Proverbs, Psalms, and other places. I studied the life and conversion of Paul in Acts, and that lead me to some questions that could not be answered the way that I wanted them to be answered. On and on it goes. The point is that even though I tried to ignore it, the frequent instances in Scripture were too prevalent for me continue to sidestep.

Another possibility was that I could try to explain it away. This really didn't work. You see, one of the things that I believed about the sufficiency of Scripture is that Scripture is the final authority on Scripture. Therefore, the more I looked into Scripture for an explanation that would support my beliefs, the more that I saw that my beliefs were not supported. Every time I honestly looked into Scripture to explain itself I did not like the explanation. Once again, that is very annoying and humbling at the same time.

The final option was to submit to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and allow Scripture to have the final say. Don't try to ignore it; don't try to explain it. Study it, embrace it, and let it change me. I must confess that this option was not preferred, but ultimately it was the only option that was left.

The bottom line was that I did not want to believe in the doctrines of grace because I did not want to believe that God was like that. The question that I could not resolve, however, was, if God is like that, and if He chose to clearly and repeatedly reveal this about Himself in Scripture, isn't it incumbent upon me to understand that? One of the conclusions that I reached in all of this is that I was trying to make Scripture say what I wanted it to say, and only what I wanted it to say. Unfortunately, that meant that I was allowing large portions of God's Word to fall silent in my heart. My prayer now is that I will always allow God's Word to have the authority in my heart.

The only problem with that is that I am a natural born habitual sinner…but I'll save that for next time.

Soli Deo Gloria!

PS - For an excellent post on the sufficiency of Scripture check out my friend Randy's blog.