One time, after I had preached a sermon from John touching on some of the main points of the Reformed faith, I found a copy of that week’s bulletin on which someone had scribbled his opinion of the message: “I’m sick of Calvinism in every sermon.”

The message did not particularly bother me. Notes like that seldom do. But I found it surprising that the person who wrote the note somehow regarded Calvinism as a system of thought that could well be dispensed with while, nevertheless, as he assumed, still preserving Christianity. In other words, this person, like many others, somehow regarded the doctrines that go by the name of Calvinism as at best an addition to the pure gospel and at the worst a system that is opposed to it. Is this true? Are the doctrines of grace wrong? One proof that they are not is seen in the verses to which we come in this chapter.

有一次，在我讲完约翰触及的关于改革宗信仰的一些要点的讲道后，我发现了一份那周的公报，上面有人潦草地写下了他对这一信息的看法：“我厌倦了加尔文主义每一次讲道。”

这个消息并没有特别困扰我。类似这样的笔记很少见。但令我感到惊讶的是，写这封信的人在某种程度上认为加尔文主义是一种完全可以被抛弃的思想体系，但正如他所假设的那样，他仍然保留着基督教。换句话说，这个人和其他许多人一样，在某种程度上认为加尔文主义的教义充其量是对纯粹福音的补充，而最坏的是一个反对它的体系。这是真的？恩典的教义是错误的吗？证明它们并非如此的一个证据可以从我们在本章中谈到的经文中看到。