Path of Evangelism VII: Sovereignty and Responsibility | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome back to the Behold Your God podcast. My name is Matthew Robinson. I'm the director of Media Grantiae, and I'm here again with Dr. John Snyder, my co-host and author and teacher of the Behold Your God study series for Media Grantiae.

Faith as Believing God and Devoting Ourselves to Christ

We're here in Christ Church in John's study, and we're all the way up to episode seven of our evangelism series. So last week in episode six, we made it to faith. I mean, this is a series about how do we bring people to faith in Christ, or how do we cooperate with God in his bringing them to faith in Christ?

But just last week in episode six, we finally got to, well, what is faith? What is this faith that we are hoping to see people come to? And this week, we're gonna go a little bit further in that. So here we are.

We got a great quote that we didn't give last week from Henry Venn. Matt, you wanna read that?

Yeah, so Henry Venn, a friend of John Newton and Charles Simeon, he wrote this about faith. Saving faith is such a persuasion that Christ is the great Messiah, and such a desire and expectation of the blessings that he has procured under that character as shall engage us cheerfully to commit our souls to him and his appointed method of salvation, with a disposition cordially to devote ourselves to his service in all the ways of holy and evangelical obedience.

Now, that's an 18th century mouthful. He's said a lot. John, why don't you unpack the key statements there?

Yeah, I think this is such a helpful description of faith because it's a very experiential description. We talked last week about faith is fundamentally believing God. We credit what he says to be true because of who he is.

But Venn helps us here. It's not just an intellectual crediting that God speaks the truth. There is a real personal persuasion that Christ is who he says he is, and that the method of our redemption that he has carried out is all that he says it is.

And we know that this has been laid hold of by us. When we find those other elements there, he talks about a desire and an expectation of the blessings that he procured under that work as our redeemer.

But not only that, there is the desire, there is the will to engage with Christ according to that method of rescue, that our heart is in whole agreement that this is not only what we need, but this is the most God-honoring and beautiful way of his enemies being rescued.

And then to devote ourselves to him in evangelical obedience.

Yeah, and to do that cordially. You know, that's a word we don't use a lot, but warmly, there's a fervent desire to, we think that this would be the greatest possible good if we could devote our lives to Christ in holy and evangelical obedience.

Yeah, and that's not a term that we use very often, but it is such, it's such a significant term. Evangelical obedience is the old writer's way of distinguishing between a self-righteous kind of offering God a bribe.

Okay, God, I'm reading about what Jesus did, and I see that I need that. So if you're gonna give it to me, I'm gonna have to pay something, right? Now, I can't fully pay, but I can give you something.

And so I'm gonna work up a little change spiritually. I'm gonna do some good things. And that is what we could say a man working for life, and that's death. But evangelical obedience is the result of God working in our souls in such a way that turning from all else and turning to Him, as Vin describes here, we are so full of gratitude that from love and thankfulness, we say to Him, I can never pay you back, but I want to give all to you moment by moment.

And now, if you think about it for the Christian, the grief for the lost man regarding sin is he can't get enough of it, he can't get it without penalty or consequence. But the grief for a Christian is that I want to give all, and I see myself so often giving less.

And that's a complete shift in the heart.

Yeah, that word evangelical in 2019, especially here in America, has gotten so tweaked. I mean, we just think of evangelical as maybe this is a certain voting block. Evangelicals do this. But it's such a great word.

If we get down to just the core root, I mean, it's the evangel, it's the gospel. So we're talking about gospel-motivated obedience. Because of all of the true things that Paul tells us that God has done in Romans 1 all the way through Romans 11, because that's the truth, and we've been impacted and gripped by the gospel, then Romans 12.

We want to present ourselves a living sacrifice, and we want to cordially do that. It's our greatest joy to do that. But my question is, okay, we're born in trespasses and sins. Again, in Romans, we're told that none does good.

Well, faith is a good thing, and it's a righteous thing. Why would anyone ever do that? And how would it ever come about? I mean, what is it that makes a person want to have faith in this way?

Faith as a Gift in Regeneration and the New Birth

Yeah, that is a question that ought to grip every thinking person that reads the Scripture. Sadly, I mean, I look at my own life, how many years I spent in church just thinking that when the Bible said things like Jesus is the author and finisher of my faith, I don't know what I thought that meant.

It just sounded like Bible words. That's just King James, and they talk that way. So the idea that faith is a thing that isn't just a duty, but it's also a gift, and that is the only way to explain why any of Adam's fallen race were turned from that self-intoxicating, self-reliant kind of living, and to say to a God that we have not seen with these eyes, and based on a book that is ancient, I will risk everything on this word, and I will entrust everything to you, and I will cordially follow your son.

Why does anybody do that? Well, because faith is a gift as well as a duty. And when we think about that, there are two major categories we want to look at. The agent of faith, all right? Where does the gift come from?

Who's the giver? And then there's the instrument of faith. How does the gift enter into a life like ours?

So you said the agent of faith. That's, you know, we might think of like a secret agent or something like that, but what we mean there is that God is the one who gives this gift of faith. But when does he do that, and what does that look like?

I think the best way to understand that is when we come back to the doctrine of regeneration, or new birth, or rebirth, or the new creation, where God, by his Holy Spirit, works within a man invisibly.

We see the effects of it, but like the wind, we don't see the wind itself. We see the impact of the wind. We see it in the trees, in the grass. We don't see the Holy Spirit regenerate a man, but we see the effects of that.

We have an old nature, a nature under the dominion of sin, a nature that has been permeated by the lie that I have a right to live for myself. And under that terrible tyranny, the mind thinks along those lines always.

You know, what's in it for me? The heart desires according to that tyranny, and the will, we say, is enslaved by that tyranny. But in the new birth, God places spiritual life within us, the life of God in the soul of a man.

We are born again. Our nature is renewed by the Holy Spirit. And now we have a mind that is free to think the way God tells us to think, a heart that is willing to love what God says is lovely, and a will that is free now to make the right choices.

And the first thing that the freed soul does is to turn in repentance and faith toward God.

So some of the places where the Scripture talks about this, and I think about Hebrews 12 too, right, where Christ is given this title. We're told, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

And it's a really good question for us to ask ourselves, have we ever wondered, how is Jesus the author of my faith? We can't just read over that, and like you said, well, that's just Bible language. So how is it?

Well, Jesus is the author of our faith because He's the one who's given it to us. He is the agent. He has regenerated us when we come to Him. Ephesians 2 .8, for by grace you've been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

So we see there that faith doesn't just originate from within us. We didn't just somehow work it up and get it up to the level where it was good enough or big enough or significant enough for God to notice it, but it's not of ourselves.

It's a gift. What are some of the struggles, and you mentioned it earlier, some of the ways that people take that verse and sort of get it flipped?

The Gift of Faith in Ephesians 2 and Philippians 1

Yeah, it's easy to read it like this. For by grace you've been saved, and then a big parentheses, through faith, that not of yourselves, end parentheses. It's a gift of God. Grace is a gift. But I think that there are some grammatical reasons in the Greek to link gift with faith instead of with the word grace.

It, what is the it? What is the pronoun referring to? But there are also theological reasons, and we have the scripture as a whole. Grace is a word that means gift. By the undeserved, unexpected gift of God's favor, you have been saved, and that's received through faith.

But listen, even faith, it's not of yourselves. You didn't work that up. Even that is a gift from God. You know, you think of Philippians 1, 29. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

So Paul in that state, that verse, makes an amazing statement. Two gifts given to you here. The ability to believe in Christ and the privilege of suffering for Christ. Well, we can understand the privilege for suffering, but what about this ability to believe?

Why would God, for Christ's sake, give me faith? And that takes us all the way back to the biggest picture, the widest panoramic lens of our rescue, that in eternity past, the Father in love and in delight for his Son has promised the one he chose to be our Redeemer that he would be given a kingdom, a people, a bride, a church.

And there was never a moment in history or prehistory where there was a chance that the Son would pour himself out for us as our Redeemer, as our Adam, and the result would be that no one would believe.

Yeah, so what theologians would call the covenant of redemption.

Yes.

And as you dig into that, you will find, I think, I mean, I have, that all the riches of the gospel are there in seed form. The Father gives a people, the Son commits to be the Savior of that people. And now in present day and time, the Spirit is going forward and applying that redemption that the Father promised the Son accomplished, and now it's being applied in real time by the Spirit.

And when we come back from our break, we'll talk about the instrument of that faith. How is it that the Spirit applies that redemption that has been purchased by the Son and planned by the Father to us in our normal day-to-day life?

Yeah.

So when we get back from the break, we'll jump right into that.

I think that we all would say, well, I need to know God better, or perhaps my grasp on the doctrines of the gospel should be clearer. But if there's any area of life that we think we haven't figured out, it's us, I know me.

But what does God say about us? Discerning the Plight of Man is a book by Paul Washer. Here in this book, Paul takes us through the scriptures and shows what God says about all mankind, what's going on underneath the surface.

Paul divides up his 26 short chapters into four main sections, the creation and fall of man, the moral depravity and sinfulness of man, God's disposition toward the sinner, and God's judgment of the sinner.

We've used this book in our Sunday school classes, particularly with an evangelistic emphasis. It's a great resource for anyone who wants to know what God says about us.

For more information about Discerning the Plight of Man, you can visit themeansofgrace .org.

The Word of God as the Instrument of Faith

Welcome back to the Behold Your God podcast. We're continuing our discussion of faith. And before the break, we had just made this assertion that, and what theologians call the covenant of redemption, that before time began, the Father plans redemption, and then the Son comes into time 2 ,000 years ago, accomplishes the redemption of His people on the cross.

And now the Spirit is in time and space, entering into our lives as individuals, and He's accomplishing this redemption.

Why?

Well, because the Father promised His Son a people. He promised a bride, a church, a kingdom, and there's no possibility that that will not be given. But do we see examples of that? Is this just, you know, big theology, or do we get this from the scriptures?

Yeah, there are so many examples. I think of John chapter six, where Christ is dealing with a crowd, and so many turn away. And the sadness, you know, the tragedy of the crowds turning away from the Messiah, gives Him an opportunity to do a lot of explaining about why do some believe and not others?

But let's just take two examples from the book of Acts. In Acts 13, 48, we see this, when the gospel is going out to the Gentiles, and we're first, you know, the very first glimpse of the dam of grace breaking, and it's not just the Jews that are hearing the good news of the Messiah, it's the whole world that's beginning to hear it.

And this is what Acts says in Acts 13, 48. Now, when the Gentiles heard this, the gospel, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life, believed.

You know, so if we're just watching the scene, humanly speaking, we see the gospel being preached, we see men and women and children embracing the gospel. But if you see it from the heavenly perspective, you see these are people that God has appointed to life, and he is giving them that faith to grab hold of the gospel.

Another example, Lydia. Acts 16, 14, now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.

So again, the roots of Lydia's faith go deeper than Paul's preaching and Lydia's willingness to listen. There is this mighty mercy of the Spirit.

Yeah, and there's something in common in both of those passages that I see. When the Gentiles heard this, Acts 13, 48, now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.

So it's not that God just, you know, forgive me, this may sound irreverent, but he didn't just zap them just out of the blue. There's an instrument that's being used here. So we might call this the instrument of faith.

What tool is it that the Spirit uses to bring people to faith?

The Dangers of Hyper-Calvinism and Faith-as-Duty

Yeah, wonderful balance there in the scripture. We're never out of balance. The Word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the instrument, is the tool in the hand of the Spirit that brings men and women to faith.

1 Peter 1, 23 gives us an example of this,.

Where Peter writes,.

"'For you have been born again, "'not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable, "'that is, through the living and enduring Word of God.'". And that's why we read things like what Paul says in Romans 10, verse 14.

"'How then shall they call on him?'. And that's required, faith. "'How then shall they call on him "'in whom they have not believed? "'And how shall they believe in him "'of whom they have not heard? "'And how shall they hear without a preacher?

"'But they have not all obeyed the gospel, "'for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report?'. "'So then faith comes by hearing, "'and hearing by the Word of God.'".

Yeah, so we see this principle. I mean, it's established so crystal clear in the Scriptures. But as with everything, there are some dangers. You know, there's a path, and the path is clear, and it's biblical.

And on both sides of that path, there is a ditch. And I think there are at least a couple of dangers here. You might even say they're twin dangers that accompany this great reality that the Spirit is the one who comes and applies the gift of faith to us.

The Word is the instrument that he uses, but I think we have to watch out for those. So what would you say those dangers are?

I think the twin ditches that you mentioned. One, you know, is that kind of a fatalistic abuse of this truth. Some people call it hyper-Calvinism. And then the other would be emphasizing faith as a duty, because God commands it, to the point that you're unwilling to even mention God's part in it.

And as you said, this is a constant temptation. It's not as if you're the right kind of person, you won't feel this. And it's not only because of our tendency to go toward extremes. I mean, I think in the American culture, we're particularly susceptible to extremes.

But we do have an enemy who is constantly, one of his schemes, you know, that Paul mentions in Ephesians 6. One of the schemes of the enemy, it seems to me to be to constantly get us to grab hold of a good truth in scripture and then hold it in isolation from other truths to where it's held in an extreme fashion.

It takes on proportions and it has implications that the Bible doesn't give it. So let's think about that. How do you spot that in a life? Well, a man or a woman that wants to emphasize the fact that faith is a gift from the Lord will focus on the sovereignty of God in this great work.

And that certainly is there in scripture. But they focus on it to the degree that they are afraid to admit that there is any instrumentality, that there is any secondary calls. So God is the primary cause.

And they say that means there's no room for a secondary cause. And then that's where you get that kind of a fatalistic approach where preaching the gospel is considered almost unnecessary. Ultimately, faith and repentance are unnecessary because God's just gonna give salvation to people.

On the other side, though, a person that emphasizes the duty aspect of faith, which is scriptural, if that's the emphasis, then the temptation is to be afraid to ever admit that God's agency is involved.

It's almost as if God, you know, you can think of the gospel as being a ticket, a train ticket. And if you take this train ticket and you get on that gospel train, you're gonna go to heaven. And if you don't use this train ticket that's been given to you, then you're gonna go to hell because you're gonna miss that gospel train.

And so it's as if God just gives every person this little train ticket, and then he backs away from the equation. And so the gospel is being preached, the Bible is being read, and it's up to the individual to find within himself or herself something rare, something unique, the desire to do what God commands me to do when it goes against everything inside of me.

And, you know, if that's the, if that's, if duty is the emphasis, then the talk about God giving faith or opening a heart or appointing people to salvation seems to us as being completely contrary to evangelism.

And why are we even doing it?

Yeah.

Yeah, and one of the dangers and the way that it has shown up historically and the way that I think it shows up even today, and in a lot of ways, we may not recognize it as being this, but if you emphasize the duty of humanity more, okay, so it's my duty, I have to respond in repentance and faith, then faith, instead of being a gift that comes from God, becomes this new work.

So, okay, I can't keep the 10 commandments, I can't keep God's law perfectly, I have sinned, I'm guilty of breaking all these commandments if I've broken any of them at any point, but faith is now like a little lower work.

And I can do faith. I mean, I can have faith. And if I just have faith, well, then God sees that work that I'm doing and having faith, and then He responds by letting me into heaven. It's like me taking the step and getting on the gospel train, whatever that Southern gospel song you were quoting earlier is.

And that shows up in really smart guys, Richard Baxter, that's kind of close to some of the error in his justification.

Yeah, Richard Baxter is a Puritan. I mean, he's one of the guys that we think of as, man, look, they're all good guys. And Baxter loved the Lord. This isn't a thing that people fall into because they're dumb.

And it's not a thing they fall into because they don't read a Bible. And it's not a thing they fall into because they don't really love Jesus and they're just playing at it. We have an enemy that pushes us to extremes.

And Baxter taught a governmental theory of atonement that Christ having fulfilled all that was required in the covenant of works or under the old covenant. Well, so he's done all that. And now as the reigning ascended King at the right hand of the Father, he renegotiates with the Father and says, well, in the new covenant of grace, let's set the bar lower.

Let's just say they only have to do two commands, believe and repent. And as you said, we think, well, I can do that.

Yeah, yeah, that's something I can do.

Yeah, and so that's a real danger when a person thinks of faith only as a duty.

The danger on the other end of that though, so when we emphasize just the gift aspect of it, that tends to show up in genuine hyper-Calvinism. So the idea that, look, God has given a people to his son, all the elect will hear the gospel.

So I can just sit here on my hands. What's the point of going out and doing evangelism? What's the point of anything that we do? And it leads us to disobey the really clear commands in the scriptures to go into all the nations and make disciples and teach them to obey all that I've commanded you.

And we don't take the obligation that we have seriously.

Yeah, it turns everything on its head. And in both of these, we were talking in our break, in both of these, you have a truth from the Bible that you start with, faith is a command.

Yes, it is.

Faith is a gift.

Yes, it is.

And you develop that truth in isolation from the scripture, which is easy to do if we're not careful, and especially if we're not part of a body of believers. That's a healthy body where our brothers and sisters can come to us and say, I know you love the Lord.

I'm not accusing you of not loving the Lord. And I know you're serious about the Bible, but you've got things out of balance and they help us. You can get out on a limb with biblical phrases and then look at yourself and realize, but when I read the New Testament, I don't sound like the New Testament anymore.

So then you have to shape the Bible to fit your sort of biblical definitions of how things work, and that's not a good thing to do.

If you become a hyper-Calvinist, then not only are you not evangelistic as a believer, but the unbeliever says, hey, I believe in the sovereignty of God too. And I'm just waiting for Him to give me this gift.

And I don't have to obey the King because the King is sovereign.

Now that's nonsense.

You're so sovereign, I don't have to obey you because I can't, so I'm gonna wait for the gift. You ignore all the words of Jesus of Nazareth, where he's saying to the crowds, I am the bread of life, come to me.

And you say, well, no, no, I'm waiting for the gift of coming. I'm waiting for the gift of seeing, of believing. And so you find yourself really in a very bad place where the enemy scheme has captured you.

Well, the answer to those two things is actually much simpler than our complicated, gotta hold your mouth just right, don't fall into these ditches. It's just the fact that it's God who makes His words produce faith in us.

And faith, I've heard it said, faith hears God in man's sermons. And that's based on what we read in 1 Thessalonians 2 .13. For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

There's so much that we could say about that.

Holding Together God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

Yeah, so in this paradox, we have a great opportunity to do what we ought to do. In paradoxes, we don't choose one or the other. We don't choose our favorite. We stretch out and by the grace of God, we grab hold of two biblical truths, even though they may feel like they'll pull us in half sometimes, but we do not let go of them.

We hold them both to be true. And to be a good ambassador of Christ, we're going to have to do that.

That's right.

God is sovereign, man is responsible. Faith is a gift. Faith requires a response. Both of those things are true because both of those things are in the word of God. And we hold on to those with all of our might.

Well, thanks for listening. And there's again, there's so much more. We may have to pick up with this thought in our next episode, continue to go. But we do want to ask you to stay tuned for our supporter appreciation episode.

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