How I Distinguish Between the Gospel and False Gospels
February 26, 2008
(The following is an outline of the message with the texts and notes. It's not a complete manu????.)

（略）

1. The gospel is planned.
Support and Explanation

(1 Corinthians 15:3)
(John 15:25)
(John 13:18)
(Matthew 26:55-56)
(John 19:24)
(John 19:34-36)
(Acts 4:27)

When was this plan made?

All who dwell on earth will worship [the beast], everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. (Revelation 13:8)

Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. (2 Timothy 1:9)

Therefore: part of the gospel is that it was a plan from eternity. This is good news because:

1. God was not taken off guard by the horrific deeds against his Son;
2. Sin and death and hell and Satan are not frustrations of God’s eternal design but fit into it;
3. God’s love for us and his willingness to die for us is not an afterthought but eternally deep in the heart of God;
4. It is all the more clear that the events of the gospel were God’s doing, not historical turns of fate.
5. This all strengthens and deepens our certainty of God’s commitment to us in the gospel

Distortions and Denials of the Gospel as a Plan

There are many today, as in every day, who bring to the Bible the presupposition that sinful man must have the power of self-determination in order to be held accountable by God. This is not a biblical presupposition. It threatens to undermine the gospel because it pushes people away from believing that God can plan and bring to pass the sins that are essential to the death of his Son.

We don’t usually think about Arminianism as a threat to the atonement. It usually comes in at the point of the accomplishment of the gospel and the offer of the gospel, not the point of the plan of the events of the gospel. But here we see that there is an intrinsic incompatibility between the basic Arminian presupposition and the gospel as including a set of planned sins against the Son of God. That presupposition is that for humans to be morally accountable agents they must have the ultimate power of self-determination at all those points where they are found blameworthy or praiseworthy.

That presupposition pushes people away from believing that God has the right and power in righteousness and wisdom to infallibly plan the death of his Son through the sinful acts of morally accountable men. But the Bible teaches that he did. There is no atonement and no gospel without God-planned sins against the Son of God. He died at the hands of sinful men by God’s design. That is an essential part of the gospel. “He died for our sins according to the ????ures.”

2. The gospel is an event. （略）

3. The gospel is an accomplishment.

Support and Explanation

The gospel is an objective accomplishment—the purchase or obtaining of redemption for all who would believe (verse 3: “Christ died for our sins”—the debt was paid)

In his death he bore our sins.
(1 Peter 2:24)
(2 Corinthians 5:21)
(1 Corinthians 6:19)
He endured God’s wrath and condemnation in our place (propitiation).

(Romans 8:3)
(Galatians 3:13)
(Philippians 2:8)

The truth of “limited atonement” comes in here. The L in Tulip. It is not a suitable de????ion. What it means is that in dying for us and in paying the price for us and in completing an obedience for us and in bearing God’s wrath for us, these things were certainly and decisively accomplished for us. These things will become ours because they were obtained for us by the work of Christ.

Christ knows those who are his sheep and he lays down his life for the sheep.

(John 10:11)
(John 15:13)
(Ephesians 5:25)

The death and resurrection of Christ really accomplished these things decisively and once for all.

The right title of this teaching would be successful atonement or definitive atonement or triumphantly effective atonement.

This doesn’t mean that the atonement isn’t offered to all. This is what needs to be clarified. Those who oppose this teaching say: No, Christ died for all and quote John 3:16 or 1 Tim. 2:4 or 2 Peter 3:9.

We say yes, that is true in the sense that you mean it: What Christ did is proclaimed to all and offered to all. Absolutely, without distinction. And any who believe will be saved by this accomplishment. Christ died for all in the sense that all who believe may be saved and the salvation is offered freely to all.

The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:17)

We agree. But we say more was accomplished at the cross than the possibility that all who hear and believe could be saved. He did not die for all in the same way. The salvation of Christ’s sheep was actually secured. All that it takes to save those his chosen ones was obtained by Christ.

And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. (Revelation 5:9)

In John 17:6,9,19 Jesus prays, "I have manifested Thy name to the men whom you gave me out of the world; yours they were, and your gave them to me...I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom you gave me, for they are yours. . . And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth."

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

Problem: 1 John 2:2, "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."

Solution: John 11:51-52, "He prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad."



Distortions and Denials of the Gospel as an Accomplishment

I will mention four claims that have risen up to obscure the triumph of God in the accomplishment of the cross.

1. Universalism: Christ effectively saved everyone on the cross and all will be in heaven some day. George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis’ mentor believed this. But it flies in the face of the Biblical teaching that we must believe (John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him), and the biblical teaching the punishments of hell are eternal (Matthew 25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life).

2. The view that since Christ died for all the sins of all people in the same way all those sins are forgiven and the only sin that Christ did not die for is final unbelief. So no one is condemned for their sins but only for their unbelief. This goes against the focus of the atonement that we saw in John 17 but also against Colossians 3:5-6:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.

3. The atonement accomplishes potential salvation for all but accomplishes definitive salvation for none. This is typical Arminian teaching. It diminishes the glory of the cross and encourages people to take into their own hands what belongs to the work of the cross, namely the purchase of their own rescue from unbelief. God is allowed to rescue them from the guilt of sin by the cross, but not from the bondage of unbelief by the cross. The cross does not obtain or accomplish that. I must provide the decisive impetus for overcoming my unbelief, the cross did not accomplish that. In that way part of the gospel is undone.

4. The claim that God’s punishing sin in his own Son (Rom. 8:3; Gal. 3:13) in morally unacceptable, a kind of cosmic child abuse.

“The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement: God is love”. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” (Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 182-183.)

That undoes both the heart of God’s love for us and the accomplishment of the cross

（中間一段自己看，John Piper 提到 NPP 的問題。）

Distortions and Denials of the Gospel as an Application

1. Arminianism

Arminianism (Wesleyanism) teaches that God helps all people overcome their deadness of soul and leaves to the decisive will of man whether to follow that grace and trust Christ and as a consequence be born again. In other words regeneration does not cause faith; faith, in an act of ultimate self-termination, chooses to agree with God’s grace and believe and thus be born again.

How serious is this? Must one believe that faith is decisively caused by God through regeneration? Or can one be saved believing that faith causes regeneration?

The issue comes down to this: Is the heart relationship to God one of utter reliance on God’s grace in Spirit-wrought humility, such that God gets the glory for all of my salvation, both accomplishment and application?

Can the heart be truly humble and reliant in this way while the mind espouses a theology that claims that the human will is taking credit for what the humble heart is really depending on God to provide?

Answer: There are those who totally rely on God in their heart but who fail to see with their minds that total reliance on God includes reliance on God for their reliance on God. Their hearts are better than their heads. They humility echoes the truth while their theology is out of sync with it. God is willing to look at their heart for the truth.

There are more and less virulent forms of articulated non-reliance on God for the gift of faith.

Pelagianism says that our will is free to will our faith and not so enslaved that we need any divine assistance to do so.

Arminianism in its popular form (most of evangelicalism) says we are unable without divine assistance to believe, because we are dead in trespasses and sins, but God gives assistance to all, making it possible for us to believe but not bringing us to believe. That is left for our decisive determination. At that point we are ultimately self-determining.

Pelagianism has historically been regarded as such a virulent form of self-reliance and such a virulent assault on grace that it is considered heresy in the sense that to truly hold it ????s. That is, it stretches charitable judgment to the breaking point if one attempts to say that the heart is truly reliant on God in salvation when the mind is saying that there is no need of divine grace in the use of the will to believe.

Arminianism/Wesleyanism recognizes more truth about our sinful and helpless condition apart from grace, and gives more credit to grace, but stumbles intellectually over the implications of sovereign grace. It cannot bring itself to embrace the apparent implications of faith as a gift of God, namely, unconditional election. It appears to them unjust and unloving. Historically charitable views of a good heart behind this mistaken theology have been encouraged.

But how should we regard these errors in relationship to the teaching office of the church and other institutions?

Here’s my rule of thumb: the more responsible a person is to shape the thoughts of others about God, the less Arminianism should be tolerated. Therefore church members should not be excommunicated for this view but elders and pastors and seminary and college teachers should be expected to hold the more fully biblical view of grace.

Do you separate from a denomination that allows pastors and seminary teachers to believe and teach this error? You can. We do. Oh, how we need discernment concerning how helpful you might be to the cause of Christ and his truth.

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