Having just discussed the difference between monergism and synergism, it is now time to explain what brought these to mind.

While studying Ephesians 6:23-24, I was surprised to note two demonstrations of monergism. Now, biblical evidence of monergism can be found over and over again, I just did not expect to find it here:

Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.
Ephesians 6:23-24

Take a moment and see if you can spot the two ways this passage presents monergism, the belief that salvation is entirely the work of God. Need a hint? The first way is found in verse 23; the second way starts with verse 24 but reaches back to verse 23.

Monergism in the gifts of grace

The first way is fairly straightforward. In blessing the Ephesians, Paul calls for them to receive peace, love, and faith. These would each be given to us by God’s grace – that is, we do not merit them; God gives them to us freely by his own good pleasure. Peace and love would be two-dimensional: peace between man and God, love between man and God, peace between man and man, love between man and man. Faith is one-dimensional: faith in God. Paul describes each of these as gifts coming from God. Neither faith nor love nor peace come as a result of our own free-will decision for Christ, nor as a result of our effort or achievement. Even saving faith comes as a gift from God (see also Ephesians 2:8-9). And love, which demonstrates the work of God in us (see Romans 5:5 and 1 John 4:12), is given to us from God.

So here is monergism. It is as Peter says in 2 Peter 1:3-4: God has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. Every bit of it comes from him, none of it comes from us. We do not cooperate in any independent sense, for any effort we perform is carried out through the strength he gives us. Paul reinforces this point over in Philippians 2:13: …it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Salvation belongs to our God, and praise be God that he has given us salvation, making us his children.

Monergism in the qualification for grace

The second example of monergism is harder to spot, so bear with me. In verse 24 Paul says, Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. In verse 23 Paul already blessed them with gifts of grace, so in a sense Paul goes from being specific in verse 23 to more general in verse 24. “I bless you specifically with these aspects of God’s grace, but more than that I bless you with the full measure of God’s grace.”

In verse 24, this blessing of grace is qualified with the limiting phrase, all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. While God extends some grace to everyone, the grace Paul has in mind (God’s covenant blessings for his people) is only for those who love God with true, lasting love.

On the surface, this might look like evidence of synergism. “See!” a synergist might note, “Paul says we have to love God in order to receive grace! We cooperate with him!” The problem with this argument is what Paul has just said in verse 23. We already noted that love comes as a gift of God. Romans 5:5 helps illustrate this when Paul says, …God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. This does not just mean God’s love for us, it also means our love for God. The Holy Spirit pours God’s love into our hearts and with that love we love God. 1 John supports this point over and over again, as in 1 John 4:19: We love because he first loved us. His love is the source of our love.

So love itself is a gift from God, but we cannot receive gifts from God (grace) until we love him (Paul’s limiting statement in verse 24), but we cannot love him unless he gives love to us. Is there any way to receive God’s grace? There are two parts to resolving this dilemma.

God extends grace

Simply put, unless God extends grace to us and pours his love into our hearts, we are hopeless. We cannot love him unless he fills us with his love. The monergistic system becomes necessary: it is impossible for us to love God; we cannot cooperate to receive his grace. He must do it, or we are hopeless.

With grace comes love

And in fact, he does do it. God extends grace to those he chooses to save. Among other things, he pours love into the hearts of his elect, giving us his grace. But verse 24 seems to indicate that love must be present in order to receive grace, so I must love God to receive grace from God. What actually happens is that love and grace are born in us simultaneously. Immediately as God extends grace to us, our hearts fill with love for him. It is inevitable: his grace to us creates our love for him. We cannot receive this kind of grace and still refuse to love him.

This is like someone opening his eyes. Assuming you are not blind (a safe assumption, unless someone is reading this blog entry to you), when you open your eyes, you immediately begin to see (yes, you were already seeing the back of your eyelids, but that doesn’t count). You will not see unless you open your eyes, but sight comes immediately as the eyes open. We can say that sight comes because we opened our eyes, but we cannot say that it comes after we opened our eyes. As you open your eyes, you are able to see.

Another illustration is fire. When you strike a match, which happens first, light, or heat? We might say that the light comes from the chemical reaction caused by the heat, but light and heat are simultaneous products of fire. (Both illustrations – fire and eyesight – come from John Piper.)

So it is with this love (and faith and peace) and God’s grace. As he gives us his grace, we are filled with love for him, faith in him, and peace with him. They come immediately with his grace. Now, growing in Christ is a process that will take the rest of our lives, but the process is begun in an instant when God, completely on his own (monergistically), works salvation in us.

There are two types of Christians in the world: monergists and synergists. These terms describe what people believe about the role of God and man in salvation. Most theological labels have limited usefulness because of imprecision. Most non-Calvinists are not Arminian, yet most non-Calvinist are called Arminian. Similarly, many Calvinists do not agree with many of Calvin’s beliefs yet they are still called Calvinists. But monergism and synergism are precise enough to provide a clear distinction among Christians.

Synergism

Synergism is the position of the non-Calvinist and expresses the belief that God and man cooperate in salvation. The classic illustration of synergism is that God extends his hand halfway and waits for us to reach the other half. God may do most of the work for our salvation, but the final act to bring salvation is something we do: we pray a prayer, we exercise faith, we repent and turn from sin to God. Each of these would be considered acts performed without the superimposing work of the Holy Spirit. That is, while the Holy Spirit may woo or draw us, the determining factor in our salvation is our free-will decision to accept Christ.

Monergism

Monergism is the Calvinist position and expresses the belief that salvation is entirely God’s work. We do not cooperate. We do not grasp Jesus’ outstretched hand. We are not the final determining factor. Every step of salvation is God’s work. Thus, those saved have been saved because God elected (chose) them, God drew them, God regenerated them (caused them to be born again), God gave them faith, and God turned that faith toward himself.

John and Jane

Another way of seeing the difference is demonstrated with John and Jane. John has become a Christian, Jane has not. What makes them different? Why has John accepted while Jane rejects? The synergist would answer that John and Jane both made free-will decisions to accept or reject. John is a Christian because he reached out and received the salvation extended to him by Jesus Christ and Jane is a non-Christian because she rejected salvation. Jane could have decided otherwise and could have reached out to receive salvation.

The monergist would answer that neither John nor Jane is capable of independently reaching out to receive salvation. The corruption of sin has blinded the minds of all people so that no one would receive salvation. So John is a Christian only because God intervened in his life to awaken him and create faith within him, while Jane is a non-Christian because God has not awakened her from her sin. Both John and Jane deserve judgment for their sins. God will not be unjust when he condemns Jane to Hell for her sin. Though she was never awakened from her blindness, hers was a blindness caused by her own sin.

I had originally planned to put this online in a series of posts, but I already have a notion of how many people will read through this monster, so I might as well put it all up at once. It can also be downloaded as a PDF:

GCR-Comments.pdf

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force was organized to examine denominational entities and make recommendations on how we as a denomination can be more effective in missionary work. Formation of the task force was approved during the 2009 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Louisville, Kentucky and the task force will present its final proposal at the 2010 SBC meeting in Orlando, Florida.

The final proposal was released to the public on May 3rd and is available at http://www.pray4gcr.com/. The document is 27 pages long and consists of four sections:

• Introduction
• Proposal, presented in seven components
• Summary of the recommendation to the SBC
• Concluding challenges to individuals, churches, and entities of the SBC

In my comments on the GCR proposal I’m going to try hard not to nitpick. There were a number of statements that jumped out as really good, and a number of statements that jumped out as really bad. Many of the bad statements point to deeper problems within the SBC. I discuss one of those bad statements in a previous blog post. But for the purpose of this post, I want to remain focused on what the GCR proposal is intended to bring about, what specific recommendations are being proposed, and whether or not I think the recommendations are good.

Several months ago, the GCR Task Force released a rough draft of their proposal. At that time the document had little more than the opening introduction/sermon and the proposal itself. Now, however, the final report includes a section of challenges to Southern Baptists. I think the challenges are the best part of the document and am thrilled to see them in the final report. Read the rest of this entry »

The Southern Baptist Convention is a group of autonomous churches working together for certain causes. Historically, the primary cause for denominational cooperation has been evangelism. 100 churches (or 42,000 churches in the case of the SBC today) working together can do more to send missionaries around the world than 1 church trying its own thing. Thus the Southern Baptist Convention has from the start been a convention organized to facilitate the missions work of the various individual churches that voluntarily participate.

The work of the local church, however, is a bit more broad. While true that churches exist to facilitate the missions and outreach work of individuals within the church, this is not all that churches do. At a bare minimum we must speak of at least two functions of the local church: going forth to tell, and drawing together to grow. Both functions together serve one purpose: glorifying God. Thus the functions are not ends in themselves but ways of working for God’s glory.

The first function is the function of missions. We go throughout our neighborhoods and towns and countries and world sharing with others the bad news about sin and the good news about the grace, love, and mercy of God through Jesus Christ, praying that God might use us to lead others to himself.

The second function is the function of discipleship. We work to grow and ground believers in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Recognizing that it is not enough to get someone to profess faith in Christ, we then lead believers in the process of growing more like Christ each day.

The distinction in these functions is important. More and more I am hearing voices within the SBC speak as though the first function were the only real work of the church. For example, take the following snippet from the Great Commission Resurgence proposal:

[The Southern Baptist missional vision should be] As a convention of churches, our missional vision is to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.

In and of itself, that would be fine. As a missional statement it gets across what missions is intended to do: spread the gospel around the world. But the proposal goes on to say:

This missional vision must drive everything that Southern Baptists do, and reset every priority of the local church and denomination.

Here we should see the problem. The problem isn’t just in the GCR proposal. I’ve heard it from pastors, read it on SBC blogs, and seen it in denominational publications. The problem is that this kind of focus leads us to ignore or at least downplay one of the two functions of the church. We become so focused on expanding the walls of the city that we ignore the condition of the things inside the city. We are so focused on reaching unbelievers that we neglect discipleship and have a denomination full of superficial faith.

It is striking to me that the majority of the Bible is written for those already claiming to be the people of God. The majority of the Bible calls God’s people to greater knowledge, to deeper faith, to more faithful obedience. In the New Testament, the passages calling believers to share the gospel make up just a small subset of the passages calling for holiness, for obedience, for knowledge and understanding, for lives of prayer and studying the things of God.

We must go and tell. We must share the gospel. We are right to stress the importance and necessity of evangelism. If we do not share the gospel, we are sinning. But sharing the gospel is the fruit of a life focused on Christ. The more we grow in our love for God, the more we walk in obedience to God, the more we live in the righteousness of God, the more we will delight to tell others about God. The reason so much of our evangelism sounds so superficial is because it is. We have trained our people to tell others God loves them but we have not trained our people to love God.

I think the best concise definition of evangelism is, “Loving God enough to make him known.” There are several things that makes this a good definition, but for our purposes this definition shows that the one telling the gospel must first be growing in his love for God, something that can only happen through discipleship, through walking in holiness, through growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. The more believers walk with God, the greater our love grows. The more our love grows, the greater our desire to share him with others.

Thus we cannot say that a missional vision should drive everything we do. Getting back to the distinction between the local church and the Southern Baptist Convention, we can and should define the SBC in missional terms since that is why it exists. But the work of the local church goes beyond the work of the convention. Drawing together the two functions of the church and its one great purpose, something like the following might be a better vision for the local church: “Seeking the glory of God by helping believers grow in their love of God and faithfulness to God and by helping believers share the love of Christ throughout the world.”

Precise, accurate, and thorough are three words that should describe our study and interpretation of the Bible. We must be accurate – careful to ensure that the things we say are true; we must be precise – careful to be specific about the meaning of Scripture; and we must be thorough – seeking to dive as deep as the text goes.

Looking at science, here is how this would play out:

• It is accurate to say the Sun is far from the Earth, but it is not very precise.
• It is precise to say the Sun is 10,947.763 miles from the Earth, but it is not very accurate.
• To be precisely accurate, the Sun is a long way from earth – 1 Astronomical unit, or 92,955,807 miles.
• To be a little bit more thorough, we might note that this is the perfect distance to sustain human life. Much closer and we would be too hot. Much farther and we would be too cold. We could also note that while 93 million miles is a great distance, it’s still nowhere near as great as the distance between the Sun and Jupiter or Neptune or Pluto (and FYI, I’m still bummed about the whole Pluto fiasco). And the distance fades to a tiny speck if we compare it to the distance between the Earth and the Andromeda Galaxy (some 2,500,000 light-years away).

When it comes to Bible study we must be accurate in our observations, precise in our details, and thorough in our study. We will only grow in our knowledge of God’s Word, and the things revealed through God’s Word, when all three parts are present.

Take, for example, Revelation 22:18-19:
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

• It is roughly accurate to say, “By this verse we see that anyone who adds or takes away from this book is cursed.”
• It is more precise to say, “John warns the reader of Revelation that if anyone adds or takes from the book of Revelation, he will be cursed.”
• Adding a bit of thoroughness, we can observe that the books of the Bible were originally independent works and John would have written the warning as applying to “this book I have written”, the book of Revelation. Nonetheless, we could say that the principle applies to all of Scripture, even if this verse does not directly apply. We are not to tamper with God’s Word. Note 2 Corinthians 2:17, 4:2.

(Note that in the example I’m by no means trying to say everything there is to say about the verse; I’m limiting myself to the scope of the verse’s application.)

Now, why am I saying all this?

I think we have a tendency to settle for accuracy without showing much concern for precision or thoroughness. When we do this, we can only arrive at a partial – and often distorted – understanding of Scripture which means our ability to walk in obedience will be limited. We also leave others with the impression that the Bible is not worth careful, attentive study and that people can claim to love Scripture without actually interacting deeply with the things taught in Scripture.

If we are to be people of the book – and we absolutely should be people of the book – then we must labor daily to arrive at a precise, accurate, and thorough understanding of all the verses of the Bible. We will never get there, but that’s no excuse to be caught neglecting the Bible.