|
The Church as a Mixed Multitude |
||
| Home |
More Reflections on Whether a True Christian Can Ever Be Lost |
|
|
None
of us ever approaches any biblical passage without a certain bias, a bias
formed out of our own experience. Ideally,
that bias is substantially shaped by our having sat for some time under
sound preaching; our daily, systematic, devotional study of Scripture;
earnest prayer for grace and understanding, rooted in a sincere desire to
know and do the will of God revealed in Scripture; and fellowship with
older, godly saints, including fellowship that reaches back across the
centuries, experienced through the writings of those who have now finished
their course. As such,
especially since both John 15 and Romans 11 are richly metaphorical, I
self-consciously approach them in light of my understanding of the rest of
Scripture, an understanding shaped within the Reformed Tradition.
I
look at John 15 and Romans 11 in light of my study of other Scriptures,
just as I look at other passages of Scripture in light of John 15 and
Romans 11. As such, I read the
Bible critically: What is this
passage actually teaching? Is
this passage possibly inferring this idea, or is it explicitly teaching
it? If it is teaching this
concept, how does that fit with what I have read elsewhere?
This critical approach to Scripture is commended to us in the
Confession of Faith, I, ix.: “The
infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself:
and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of
any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and
known by other places that speak more clearly.” (Approaching
the Bible like that doesn’t mean that I have to flatten it out into a
mere systematic theology that I have to sort out, like somebody who
dropped a package of files and who now has to take days putting the
scattered pages in order, in their correct folders.
As with the Incarnate Word, God’s written Word is both fully
human and fully divine, and just as the Lord Jesus, though tempted in all
points, was without sin, so Scripture is true, without contradiction.
The fact that the Bible is God’s own Word and therefore
infallible, inerrant and consistent with itself, does not rule out the
fact that it is comprised of the writings of many different authors, whose
styles and vocabularies differ widely.
For example, PISTIS, faith, for From
that study of Scripture, I have come to embrace the particularism that is
such an essential doctrine within the Reformed Tradition. (I will deal
with the implications of that in a moment.)
As I look at both John 15 and Romans 11 in light of the rest of
Scripture, what do I find? Christ
himself is present with his Church. He
is present in the preaching of the Word; he is present in the Sacraments.
As Christ is present, so is grace, not merely as an abstraction,
but as Christ’s own presence by means of the Holy Spirit, who works
through the means of grace. For
anyone, saved or lost, to come
into an assembly of worshipping saints is for him to experience not only
the outward symbols, but Christ himself, for Christ himself is present,
through the Holy Spirit, who brings the earthly assembly into the heavenly
City. As the writer of Hebrews
states: “But you have come
to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the
firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to
the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a
new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the
blood of Abel.” (Hebrews 12:22-24.) That
is why Saint Paul
can warn the gathered people of God
at As
the Confession states in X, iv.: “Others,
not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and
may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come
unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved . . .” And
the Westminster Larger Catechism teaches us in 154:
“The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to
his church the benefits of his mediation, are all his ordinances;
especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual
to the elect for their salvation.” As
I approach John 15 and read in verses 2 and 6 that, “Every branch in me
that does not bear fruit, he takes away; and every branch that bears
fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit . . .” and, “If
anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up;
and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned,”
I understand that everyone who names the name of Christ, whether in the
waters of baptism or by public, verbal confession, is visibly in Christ.
When
I speak of their being visibly in Christ, I mean insofar as we can
see. And I would draw a
contrast between what people can see, what is “visible,” and what God
alone can see, which is ultimately “invisible” to us. By
affirming that all the gathered folk are visibly in Christ, I am not
speaking in nominalistic* language. As
I stated above, Christ is present, and so all those who attend to the
means of grace receive God’s grace in Christ, Christ himself.
That’s why the Supper is so serious, because the whole Christ is
present in the meal. As such,
it is a meal that not only communicates Christ himself, so that we may
feed upon him by faith, but it is a meal that can bring sickness and death
to those who do not discern the Body of the Lord.
(“For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of
the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you
are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.” 1
Corinthians 11:29, 30.) However,
by affirming that all the gathered folk are visibly in Christ, I am not
affirming that they are savingly in Christ—the reality of which only God
can see. I look at these
statements in John 15:2, 6 and Romans 11:17-24 in light of that
distinction, a distinction that is demonstrated to be profoundly biblical,
as is seen within the more immediate context of the Romans passage. (“But
it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Hebrews
3:6 says in effect, if we do not hold on to our courage and hope in the
Lord Jesus on into the future, we are not Christ’s house at the present
time. This pushes me to ponder my present state in view of the future: if
I turn away from following the Lord Jesus, then I never really was part of
his house. I may have thought that I was, and others may have been
persuaded of the genuineness of my faith. People may have even been
converted to Christ under my preaching, but if I don’t continue seeking
the Lord and finally turn away, I prove that I was never savingly united
to him. And
Hebrews 3:14 states that the proof of any person’s having become a true
Christian is that he continues on in that profession firmly until the end.
If he does not, then he never came to share in Christ. It
is at this point that the Reformed, particularistic standards are so
helpful. Particularism is a
thread that runs throughout the Westminster Standards. It is a fundamental
of the system of doctrine and is expressed in such Calvinistic
distinctions as that drawn between the Invisible and Visible
If
we do not bear that distinction in mind as we preach John 15 and Romans
11, we end up confusing people terribly.
A person may be a true Christian and teach that people can truly
and savingly be in Christ and then cease truly and savingly to be in
Christ, but a person cannot legitimately be a teacher in a Reformed church
and teach that, because it is completely contrary to the particularism
that is a fundamental of the system of doctrine taught there. As
an ordained teaching elder who was first licensed to preach in 1965, I am
more concerned about the kind of carnal presumption that I have witnessed
in the mainstream Presbyterian Church of my upbringing than I am of people
being fearful of losing their salvation—not that I want to err in either
direction. As a preacher
I never forget that I am preaching to three kinds of people when I stand
before the gathered people of God: 1.
God’s elect who have come to have saving faith in Christ, 2.
God’s elect who have not yet come to have saving faith in Christ,
and 3.
Reprobates, who, though they may be part of the Church as fallible
humans see it and participate in the means of grace, yet never have and
never will be truly and savingly united to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only
redeemer of God’s elect. In
light of this diversity within our congregations, as we preach to the
gathered people of God, we must press them to self- examination, avoiding
the errors of extreme subjectivity and extreme objectivity. On the one
hand, we must press people to come to a real assurance of salvation, “accepting,
receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification,
sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.”
(WCF XIV, ii.) Most of God’s
elect, having been baptized and having made an authentic profession of
faith, should have a settled assurance of their salvation, and it is
destructive for ministers to preach in such a way that those who have cast
themselves on God’s mercy in Christ are regularly robbed of this great
comfort. But
there is the opposite danger, one that leads our hearers down to the fires
of hell while imagining that all is well. There are undoubtedly many
people in hell who had been baptized with water, intellectually believed
the propositional truths of the gospel and lived moral lives, not only in
their own estimation but also in the estimation of the leaders of the
Church. After all, Can
God regenerate an intellectually uncomprehending child through the waters
of baptism? Both the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession answer,
yes. Yet it is the preaching of the gospel, not baptism, that is the
primary means whereby God’s elect are brought to conscious faith: “The
grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of
their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is
ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word, by which also, and by the
administration of the sacraments, and prayer, it is increased and
strengthened.” (WCF XIV, i.) Any
teaching that never presses the members of ones congregation to
self-examination or that encourages parents to presume that all their
baptized children are regenerate can be as dangerous to souls as anything
cooked up by modern, “decisionalistic” evangelism that gets people to
agree to a simplistic syllogism and then presses them never to doubt that
they are right with God and on their way to heaven no matter how they
live, even if they never darken the doors of a church building. For
a minister not to embrace the Reformed distinction between the Visible and
Invisible Church is a very serious departure from the Christian Faith as
it has come down to us within the Reformed Tradition.
Anyone who holds to such views and who professes to subscribe to
the Westminster Standards, even in the loosest view of subscription, is
simply deceiving himself. My
expansion of the theme of particularism within the Westminster Standards
follows. Cordially
in Christ, * “The view which regards universals or abstract concepts as mere names without any corresponding reality.” (Oxford English Dictionary, in loc.) **
I. The Distinction Between the
Invisible and Visible Church “The
catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole
number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one,
under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness
of him that filleth all in all. “The
visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not
confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those
throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their
children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and
family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.”
WCF XXV, i, ii. **
II. Effectual Calling as
Distinct Within the Calling of the Ministry of the Word “All
those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is
pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his
Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by
nature, to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds
spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away
their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing
their wills, and, by his almighty power, determining them to that which is
good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come
most freely, being made willing by his grace. “This
effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from
anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until,
being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to
answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. “Others,
not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and
may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come
unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men, not
professing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever,
be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of
nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And, to assert and
maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested.” WCF X,
i, ii, iv. **
III. The Sacramental
Distinction Between the Outward Sign and the Thing Signified by it “There
is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union,
between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that
the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other.” WCF
XXVII, ii. When
the Confession speaks (XXVIII, vi.) of baptismal grace being “not only
offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such
(whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto,” following
Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, (Acts 2:39.), it qualifies that statement
under the canopy of unconditional election and effectual calling: “to
such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according
to the counsel of God’s own will, in his appointed time.” Furthermore,
the Confession explicitly states that what may be effected in the waters
of baptism to God’s elect “is not tied to that moment of time wherein
it is administered.” (XXVIII, vi.)
|