The Problem with Cage Stage Calvinism

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today's going to be a shorter video.

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I've been letting my videos go long because I love Romans so much and there's so much to learn.

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But I know that these videos are supposed to be less than 10 minutes.

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That was kind of my goal starting out was to do just a short little something for you to have over coffee.

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So I'm going to try to make these videos a little shorter going forward.

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Try to keep them less than 10 minutes.

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Today we're going to be looking at Romans chapter 15.

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So if you have your Bibles and you want to open it up to Romans 15, remember the encouragement to you is to read the whole chapter.

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Read it through multiple times throughout the day.

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Meditate on what it says.

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I just want to give you some thoughts about one of the passages that are in this chapter.

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And the one that we're going to look at today is chapter 15 verse 1.

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Chapter 15 verse 1 says, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.

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Now this is on the heels of chapter 14.

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And in chapter 14, Paul defines the weak and the strong as the weak being those whose consciences limit them in regard to their liberty because they have not fully realized their liberty in Christ.

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And so some people are limited in what days they celebrate and some are limited by what they can eat.

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And Paul basically just says, you know, that we who are stronger should be gracious to those who are weaker and be willing to, in a sense, give up our liberties if it means bearing with somebody who doesn't have the same liberties that we do.

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And I talked a little bit about that yesterday, but today I want to move a little further.

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I want to talk about more of a case in point, more of an example, because when it comes to bearing with people who are weaker, well, that begins, we can talk about things like dietary laws.

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We can talk about things like restrictions and food.

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And that was what we talked about yesterday.

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We talked about the idea of people who might have different limitations on their freedom than we do.

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But today, what I want to talk about is using this as the base, I want to talk about people who are weaker theologically, because there is a sense in which, and I've seen this a lot, in Calvinism especially, there's a sense of spiritual pride that often accompanies people who are Calvinistic.

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And if there's anyone who should understand that we should not be prideful, it's Calvinists, because we understand that God saved us absolutely in spite of who we are.

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He didn't save us because of any merit in ourselves.

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God chose to save because he is gracious and we are the recipients of his gracious action.

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We did not cause it.

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He didn't look down the corridor of time and see my goodness or see my faith or see my merit.

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God chose before I was born based on the counsel of his will.

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Therefore, I have no reason to boast except in Jesus Christ.

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I have no reason to be prideful.

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There's no boasting in Keith Foskey or anything that I have done.

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And so I see within Calvinism at times, people who begin to understand these things, and then they begin to look down on people who don't understand those things.

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And they high horse.

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And some people may think that that's what I'm doing when I come on, you know, the title of my podcast is Coffee with a Calvinist.

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And I have a shirt I wore today, five point Calvinist.

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And this shirt has certainly inspired a lot of conversations.

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And I've had a lot of interactions with people.

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And I don't mind calling myself a Calvinist.

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I'm not afraid of that term.

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Primarily because, you know, a Baptist shouldn't be afraid to be called a Baptist.

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A Lutheran shouldn't be afraid to be called a Lutheran.

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A Wesleyan shouldn't be afraid to be called a Wesleyan.

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And I'm not afraid to be called a Calvinist because my views on soteriology ultimately are in line with historic Calvinism, which has mainly been defined by what are called the doctrines of grace or the five points of Calvinism.

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And so some people say, well, are you a five point Calvinist? Well, yeah, that's that's what a Calvinist is.

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A person who identifies as Calvinistic in their sociology is a person who understands and believes the five points of Calvinism.

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Are there four pointers? Yeah, but you know, there's a debate as to whether or not that really qualifies as being a Calvinist, because the Calvinism encompasses more than the five points, of course, but certainly not less.

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But again, that's an issue of pride, right? What does it matter? Well, here's where the issue comes in.

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If I look at somebody who doesn't understand the doctrines of grace, as much as I do, or in the same way I do, and doesn't accept them as much as I do, then I need to be willing to bear with that person.

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If that person loves the Lord, if that person loves Jesus, if that person believes that the word of God is the inspired and errant word, if that person believes that they are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, if they don't understand the five points of Calvinism, if they don't necessarily agree with them, because maybe they just haven't come to an understanding of them yet, I need to be willing to be gracious to that person.

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And I've seen a lot of us who are not, and I say us because, again, I'm a Calvinist, and I've seen a lot of my Calvinistic brethren who are not very gracious.

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And I want to just say that this is the reason why there's something called cage-stage Calvinism.

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And cage-stage Calvinism, if you've never heard of that, cage-stage Calvinism is a person who is usually new to Calvinism, and they're so excited about it that they just want to tell everyone about it, and they want to browbeat people who don't understand it, and ultimately they give Calvinism a bad name, and therefore we jokingly say, well, that person needs to be put in a cage for a while because they're still in the cage stage.

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And that's, again, it's a joke.

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Some people are offended by it.

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I'm not trying to be offensive, but it really does indicate a problem, and the problem is the problem of theological arrogance.

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I know something that you don't.

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I understand something that you don't.

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Therefore, I am better than you.

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I'm a better Christian, or I'm smarter, or I'm more intellectual.

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I'm part of the intellectual Christian elite, which is not true.

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Anything that you understand, it's the Holy Spirit has revealed it to you.

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Anything that you have, you have nothing except what's been given to you by God, and therefore if you have something that someone else doesn't have, you don't need to be prideful about it.

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You need to be thanking God, and you need to be praying for the person who doesn't have it.

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You need to be gracious to that person, and I see, like I said, I see so many examples of this, of the bad side of it.

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I remember years and years ago, I was at a Bible conference.

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It was actually a pastor's conference, and I was sitting with a man, and he was a sweet brother.

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We were joking.

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We were having a good time.

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We'd just met each other, and at some point, he begins to talk about the doctrines of grace, and he begins to say he believes in the doctrine of grace, how committed he is to them, and he said, and I just don't understand why anyone would deny this.

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I don't understand why anyone wouldn't believe this.

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I don't understand, and they're just so ignorant.

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They're just so foolish.

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They're just so blind, and he's just, and he's browbeating, and I said, well, let me ask you a question.

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How long have you been a Calvinist, and he said, well, about six months, six months, and he'd been a Christian much longer than that, and so I said, so, you know, were you ignorant and foolish and all of those things up until six months ago, and even if you would admit to that, would you be willing to say that God wasn't still at work in your life prior to six months ago? I just found it very eye-opening, and I remember just sitting thinking that this is unfortunate, that people who have come to a knowledge of the truth would be arrogant towards people who haven't.

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We need to bear with those who are weaker, even in the subject of theology.

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We need to be gracious.

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We need to seek to bring people along.

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We need to seek to point people to Scripture.

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Sometimes people aren't going to understand for whatever reason, and we need to be gracious to them, even if they don't understand the things that we understand and the things that understand it in the way that we do, and there's a lot of other things I could say about this, but like I said, I wanted to keep today's video short.

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Ultimately, my encouragement to you is this.

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Be willing to bear with weaker brothers.

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Be willing to bear with those whose liberties are not the same as yours.

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Be willing to bear with those whose theology may be a little different than yours.

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As long as it's not rank heresy, as long as someone is not going down the line of something that's dangerous, then be willing to bear with that person, and yes, try to teach them.

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Try to encourage them.

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Have healthy, encouraging, godly conversations.

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The man who helped me understand the doctrines of grace simply pointed me to Scripture.

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He asked me a few tough questions, and he pointed me to the Word of God, and God ultimately did the rest through his Word.

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He didn't browbeat me.

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He didn't seek to embarrass me.

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He didn't seek to show me how much of a fool I was.

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He just said, Keith, have you thought about this, and he asked me several questions that I hadn't really thought about.

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He showed me a few Scriptures that I hadn't really considered, and at that point, God got a hold of me, and that's all she wrote.

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I didn't need to be to be embarrassed or made a fool of, and neither do people who don't understand the things that you might understand.

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The best way to encourage someone in the Word of God is to be encouraging with the Word of God, so my encouragement to you today is to be an encourager.

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Come alongside your weaker brothers.

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Love them.

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If they don't understand what you understand, help them, but certainly don't ever consider yourself better because anything that you have that is good is a gift from God.

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You didn't earn it.

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It's all of God.

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Thank you for watching Coffee with a Calvinist today.

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I appreciate all of you who watch.

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Hopefully you who have been watching have already subscribed, but if you haven't, please subscribe to our channel.

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I appreciate you watching.

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Again, my name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.

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May God bless you.