Another core text of Calvinism besides Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 is John 6, starting at v. 37. Here is how I would summarize a Calvinist reading of the passage, heavily borrowing much language from the chapter itself. Before you read my interpretation though, please listen to the scripture itself.
Romans 9 – The Unstoppable Purpose of God in Unconditional Election
The following are notes from a Reformation Sunday sermon (MP3) I preached last year on Romans 9:1-23 at a church in Santaquin, UT. I predict that what I will promote here is, for most of you, completely foreign to the worldview that you were brought up with. I only ask that you make a valiant effort at understanding the text itself before approaching the issues using traditional philosophy.
I also want you to know that I have an emotional and spiritual connection with this text, for a number of reasons. You see, Romans 9 and I have a history together. It was a source of controversy in my college days. It was something I originally vehemently disagreed with. It was something that, once it clicked, was hard for me to handle with maturity. But it was also something that, in the long-run, explosively enlarged my view of God and catapulted me forward with a confidence that God was far bigger than I ever imagined. A big reason why I am in Utah today (and not closer to family on the East Coast) is that I believe that the God of Romans 9 can effectively call people to himself, including Mormons.
Continue reading “Romans 9 – The Unstoppable Purpose of God in Unconditional Election”The happy feeling of being small
The bigger I become in heaven, the bigger I will know God to be, and therefore the smaller I will feel.
Christian “theosis” or “deification” (if you want to call it that) is the ever-increasing happy feeling of being small and finite before an infinitely big God.
Like the awe of flying through the Grand Canyon, and then an ever bigger canyon.
D.A. Carson on Some Different Ways the Bible Speaks of the Love of God
Excerpt from D.A. Carson’s The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, 16-21.
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(1) The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father. John’s Gospel is especially rich in this theme. Twice we are told that the Father loves the Son, once with the verb ἀγαπάω (John 3:35), and once with φιλέω (John 5:20). Yet the evangelist also insists that the world must learn that Jesus loves the Father (John 14:31). This intra-Trinitarian love of God not only marks off Christian monotheism from all other monotheisms, but is bound up in surprising ways with revelation and redemption…
(2) God’s providential love over all that he has made. By and large the Bible veers away from using the word love in this connection, but the theme is not hard to find. God creates everything, and before there is a whiff of sin, he pronounces all that he has made to be “good” (Gen. 1). This is the product of a loving Creator. The Lord Jesus depicts a world in which God clothes the grass of the fields with the glory of wildflowers seen by no human being, perhaps, but seen by God. The lion roars and hauls down its prey, but it is God who feeds the animal. The birds of the air find food, but that is the result of God’s loving providence, and not a sparrow falls from the sky apart from the sanction of the Almighty (Matt. 6). If this were not a benevolent providence, a loving providence, then the moral lesson that Jesus drives home, viz. that this God can be trusted to provide for his own people, would be incoherent.
Continue reading “D.A. Carson on Some Different Ways the Bible Speaks of the Love of God”Fire in my bones for the God of glory
Read with Our God playing. To the God worth declaring.
Let it echo across the Salt Lake Valley
Let the people of the true Jesus rally
Let the timid see a glow and feel the heat
As the word of the Lord is preached
God is too great to keep Salt Lake placid
Yet God is too kind for speech like acid
Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth
Fit both to whisper and to preach
Fire in my bones for the God of glory
Blood on my hands if I don’t share the story
Beats in my heart for sheep with no shepherd
Today is the day to preach
Forgiving Grace: If I Can’t Have It Now, I’ll Never Have it
Read with How He Loves playing. To the God of the brokenhearted in Romans 4:5.
The grace I need is deeper than the grace they have
I can’t wait around to be forgiven
I need forgiveness today
Actually, this second
Don’t meet me at my weakness, and do the rest
No, go underneath it
To the bottom
And do it all
Don’t tell me to be what I never will be in this life
And then tell me that afterward it will be OK
No, I want more than “OK”
And I want it now
I need grace after all I can do to screw up
My opportunities
My relationships
My heart
Regard me as something that I’m not
Treat me like I’m already everything
You ever wanted me to be
And then change me
I don’t want the prospect of your forgiving love
I want the reality
Today
Now
The Angels Gasp Twice
Reading accompanied by Kevin MacLeod’s Snowdrop
When the sons of Adam said of the Most High
“He perhaps sinned“, the angels stood by
And gasped in horror, drawing their swords
But the Lord of lords, He commanded pause
“Though the sons of man fall like the sons of God,
This time I curse a lightning rod
My justice will come, my fury come fierce
But first my Son I plan to pierce”
Now angels with strange sweet delight
Gasp at the shocking, awesome sight
Of wretches rescued from blasphemy
Gladly singing Holy, Holy, Holy
I Love Evangelism at Temple Square
I love the normal downtown nights
No Conference crowds or Christmas lights
More regular people willing to talk
More college students on casual walks
Less screeching King James callous men
Less mocking via theatric sin
Less garment-waving, stringed book throwing
More heart ache pleading word seed sowing
Having hearty, lengthy, truth-filled talks
Is what I yearn for, what I want
With hearts and Bibles together opened
To words sweeter than honey
I love praying for a conversation
And going home with exclamation
Seeing God in every situation
Advancing His good reputation
I Hate Winter
Winter depression
Sinus infection
Chill in the air
Stuck in my lair
Freezing two feet
Too hot under sheets
My lungs feeling old
Master bedroom so cold
If Spring was a sprinter
Outrunning every cold Winter
I wouldn’t be writing
This poem
Some good things, if talked about, are rarely done, and if done, are rarely talked about. Beware of talking about such things.
I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 