A Tale of Two Gospels

 In my post "A Tale of Two Sermons", I shared something the Calvinist pastor at my ex-church preached, which was... 

"The key verse in Jonah - the one that the rest of the book of Jonah hinges on - is 'Salvation belongs to our God.'  Tim Keller [Calvinist!] says this: 'If someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing.  It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself.  No!  God saves us.  We do not and cannot save ourselves.  That is the gospel.'  And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects.  Only God sovereignly draws.  Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin.  Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes."

And here's a segment from that post sharing my comments about it, with a few edits and additions (I think this should get its own post because it's a crucial point):

1. We all agree that God saves us, that we cannot save ourselves.  But what Keller - and all Calvinists - really mean is that we can't even choose to put our faith in Jesus on our own, that God decides whom to save and that He causes those prechosen people to have faith and that no one else can be saved.  And the Calvinist pastor at my ex-church confirms it.  

And that idea - combined with "God controls everything" (something else the Calvinist pastor says) - is what all Calvinist sermons hinge on.  Their underlying belief that "God chooses who gets saved and controls everything" taints everything else they preach.  

And notice how the Calvinist pastor slipped in into the middle.  Oftentimes, Calvinists will preach a fairly good sermon, but then they'll slip in their unbiblical Calvinism - the bottom-line, what they really mean - somewhere in the middle surrounded by biblical-sounding things or at the end after all the biblical-sounding things.  Because if they had said it upfront, it would have completely negated or contradicted the rest of their sermon.

[It's like my Calvinist pastor's Christmas sermon about why most people reject Jesus.  Almost the whole sermon was about real reasons people don't want Jesus, but his very last point was that most people won't come to Jesus simply because God doesn't call them because He didn't choose them, and so they cannot come to Jesus.  THIS is the only point in his whole sermon that mattered, the point that erases all the other ones because all those other ones mean nothing in light of the last one.  And he saved it for the very end, tagging lies onto the end of truth, first lulling people into listening to him, trusting him, and then tossing in a dose of poison that kills his whole sermon.  And then he dared to add that we should just be happy that God chose to save anyone at all when we all deserve hell - basically shaming those who might disagree into keeping quiet.  We wouldn't want to be ungrateful or question God's sovereign control, now would we?]  

2. To Keller: Oh my goodness, no!  The gospel is not that God preplans/chooses whom to save and that He causes them (and only them!) to be saved and that we have no influence or choice over whether or not we are saved (which is what Keller is really saying)!

The gospel is (my paraphrase, and succinctly) "Jesus died for your sins and rose again so that you could believe in Him and be saved."  That is the gospel!

1 Cor. 15:3-4: "For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures,".

This is of first importance, the message we are supposed to pass on to all people: Christ died for our sins and rose again, and so we can believe in Him and be saved.  

John 20:31: "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." 

1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..."

That is the gospel, the good news!  

And yet this gospel is exactly what's missing from Calvinism's message of "'If someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing.  It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself.  No!  God saves us.  We do not and cannot save ourselves.  That is the gospel.'  And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects.  Only God sovereignly draws.  Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin.  Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes."

If someone can't even get the simple gospel right then they have no business being a pastor.  And I don't care whatever else they do get right.  If they get the gospel wrong - the most important part of Christianity - then it doesn't really matter that they get some minor, secondary things right.  Like Paul said, "of first importance."  If Calvinists cannot understand the "first important" message, then they should be disqualified from teaching God's Word.

Calvinism's "gospel" is only good news for the elect.  But the Bible's gospel is good news for all people (Luke 2:10): Christ died for all our sins, and so anyone can believe in Him and be saved, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11). 

Or even a little more fully: "We are all sinners headed to hell, but God loves us all and wants us all with Him in heaven.  But because we can't get to heaven on our own (our sins keep us out), Jesus came to earth to make heaven possible for us.  He paid the penalty we owe for our sins by dying the death we deserved.  He died in our place so that we could live.  And then to prove He's God and has power over death, He rose again three days later.  And because He died for all people's sins, He offers the free gift of eternal life to all people.  And if we want it - if we want to spend eternity with Him in heaven - all we have to do is accept the free gift of eternal life by putting our faith in Him as our Lord and Savior, accepting His sacrificial payment for our sins, His death in our place.  And anyone can."  

Romans 3:23-24: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ."

Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all."

2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live..."

Acts 2:38: "Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you ...'"

Romans 10:9,13: "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved... Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." 

John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

This is the gospel according to the Bible.

And it's far different than the gospel according to Calvinism: "Jesus died for some of you - the elect - and if you're elect then you're predestined to heaven and God will make believe.  But the rest of you are non-elect - hopelessly lost, created for hell, predestined to reject Jesus, and there's nothing you can do about it because Jesus didn't die for you anyway."

3. And for the record, if the Calvinist pastor bothered to look up the Jonah reference to "salvation" in the concordance, he'd see that in the Old Testament, the word "salvation" does not refer to salvation from sin, but it refers to God delivering people from things like distress, war, servitude, enemies, etc.  Yet, Calvinists make it about eternal, save-your-soul-from-hell salvation and then say "See, it says salvation belongs to God, meaning that God controls who gets saved."  And then they quote Calvinist theologians to "prove" it.  (Bogus!)

4. And furthermore, Calvinist pastor: No, the message of Jonah is not that God sovereignly controls whether we are saved or not.  It's that God is merciful and wants all people to repent and be saved, that He made it possible for all people to repent and be saved, even wicked sinners.  No one is hopeless.  No one is predestined for hell.  No one is beyond God's saving grace.  Anyone can be saved because God loves all and wants all to be saved and offers salvation to all.  But it's our choice to repent and believe, or not.  That's the message of Jonah.  Big difference!  And your Calvinism, your sermon, is a terrible corruption of God's Word and heart and gospel!  

Bonus:

It's been awhile since I've seen this, so I thought I'd watch it again.  It just keeps getting better and better: Hitler & Calvinism (a 4-minute satirical video)