In the nearly three years of holding to the doctrines of grace, I have heard many learned men in the realm of theology and Scripture say that most reformed folk are cold, callous and apathetic when it comes to proclaiming the gospel. I expected to hear that from non-Calvinists. When I started hearing it from fellow Calvinists, I began to get angry.
First, an admittance. It is true, some Calvinists tend towards hyper Calvinism, or at least take a lethargic, ho-hum attitude toward sharing the gospel. The zeal for evangelism doesn't seem to be there. No doubt this is problematic, to say the least. But when I hear Calvinists say that other Calvinists and Calvinistic churches have a problem sharing the gospel, I get upset not because they are going too far, but because they are not going far enough.
In my book you aren't a Calvinist if the gospel isn't everything to you. A Calvinist who is apathetic towards sharing the gospel is no Calvinist; in fact he is far worse than an Arminian that is zealous to share the gospel with the world. There has to be either something wrong in the person's theology or understanding (meaning they aren't really a Calvinist) or in the person's heart (likely meaning they aren't really regenerate) to claim to adhere to the doctrines of grace, and yet not want to share that grace with the world.
I'm not talking about fear of man. Believe me, I have a fear of man. I want to share the gospel so badly with others, yet so often fear of man overcomes me and I keep my mouth shut, or don't put things as plainly and pointedly as I ought. But then I go home and am burdened at night for not doing what I so badly want, and should want, to do. And the truth is I never, and I mean virtually never, felt this way, until I became a Calvinist!
The Calvinist gospel is why I became evangelistic, not just in theory, but in practice. In the first 18 years of my life, prior to being a Calvinist, I never shared the gospel with a single soul on my own. In the last three years since becoming a Calvinist I have shared the gospel with more people than I can count. And I am not talking about street preaching or handing out tracts (I am not denigrating that by any means) but actually taking my time to talk with people, for hours, one on one, about Jesus Christ, about judgment and forgiveness of sins.
The reason is the message. The true message of saving grace, amazing grace, is something that Calvinism reveals. It's partially hidden when you take a free will belief system. Free will systems present a grace less amazing, a Savior less saving, a God less glorious, and replaces it with a more magnificent man. But of course, a true Christian who is not reformed never thinks of it like this. The truth is, they don't know that the truth is so much better than their misunderstanding! It is the amazingness of the truth of God, His love for His people, His love for me, in light of my incredible sinfulness, that gave me my evangelistic fervor.
Not because of anything we have done, or would do in the future, but because of God's mere pleasure did He save you and me. God looks down on man, and he doesn't see people seeking Him out, or people just a little confused, but people in open rebellion against Him, so much so that they have convinced themselves they are good and in God's graces. He sees a people who will reject God once they realize how holy and just He is. He sees a people who always spurn the offer of salvation, because they don't want to be saved from the one thing they love- sin.
God's love saved me from myself. It saved me from my love of sin- sin itself- not just its penalties. He made me willing to love Him by taking out all that hated Him in my heart and replacing it with the love of Christ, the Spirit of Christ! He saved me by dethroning me, and putting Himself on the throne. Now the non-Calvinist gospel says you must choose to do this if you want to be saved, that you must dethrone yourself and give God permission to take up residence in your heart. The true gospel says that God on the throne is the salvation that God gives, that He pours out on His people- He dethrones us, because we would never dethrone ourselves. This is because salvation is from sin, not hell. It is from what ultimately brings sorrow and destruction and death, unto the only source of gladness and restoration and life- which is God Himself.
When you understand that this, all this, is given to you totally undeservedly, by the good God whom you naturally hate, you can't but help share this good news with this lost and dying world. As the love God had for His Son spilled out over to us, so our love for Christ, and what God did for us through Christ, spills over to our fellow man. The loving Spirit Christ had for the world, we now have for the world, because the love of Christ has been poured out into our hearts (Romans 5:5).
The bottom line is this- experiencing God's saving grace is the best thing that has ever happened, not just to me, but to anyone. It is still happening to me, I am still being saved daily by the grace of God. I am captivated by the love of God. 1 John 4 puts it well:
We didn't love Him. We didn't choose Him. He chose us, He chose to love us, knowing we would never love Him back unless He gave us the same love He had for us. This love is too much! The only qualification I had to have to receive it was to be a God hating sinner. Believe me, I qualified. From Calvinism, from Scripture, I learned that true love is this- dying for those who hate you to produce a love in them that cannot die.
Verse 11 makes it quite clear then. If we are to have the love of Christ, then we also ought to love one another the way Christ loved us. And the way Christ loved us was by dying for us. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. As enemies, He died for us. As children of wrath, children of the devil, He died for us. He opened our hearts so we could see that sin is death but He is life and happiness.
This is just pure gospel, but not so much if you aren't a Calvinist. I didn't share the gospel before I was saved, because I didn't understand how great my salvation was. I am convinced of this. I thought that I chose God, that God would be disrespectful if He changed my will. I thought I desired Him and His righteousness and not sin because of me, with some help from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I truly believed my thinking went something like this: "I love God, I chose God, and others don't. It is up to them. It isn't hard. If they keep on sinning when they know that they could be forgiven, that's their choice, that's their problem."
But Calvinism showed me that true salvation is being set free from what you desire- sin- and having a new enslaving obsession- desiring God. We were made for God, therefore, we find our satisfaction, our rest, in God. Before salvation, I was enslaved to sin, willingly. But Christ made me a willing slave to righteousness.
What I am trying to get at is the supernatural nature of salvation. I didn't fully grasp that as a non-Calvinist. Sure, I gave mental assent to it, and believed that the Holy Spirit would now convict me, but I didn't understand that the whole process, including faith, was a work of God. So my crisis was that most everything I had been told was a lie. I needed to be saved, truly, to be freed from my love of sin. Indeed, I cannot just make a decision to stop living for sin because as unregenerate it is all I worship and adore! My friends didn't understand this good news. The world didn't understand this good news. I had to tell the world.
Some refer this to the cage stage for Calvinists, or something like that. Well, as far as I am concerned I wish I never came out of it. Sure, the way the message is presented can be a bit rough sometimes when you first learn of it, but are we not handing out passes to super zealous arminians despite the fact that half the time they are presenting a gospel that is no gospel at all? My point is simply that when you hear the good news of the gospel, the true gospel, the gospel that Calvinism draws on, you can't help but love it and want to proclaim it to everyone, assuming you are regenerate. So for those 'Calvinists' who aren't all about the gospel, both knowing it more deeply and sharing it with their lost loved ones, arminian friends, the world at large, etc., there is something terribly wrong. Either they aren't regenerate, or they don't really get it. I understand hearts can grow dull at times, and I am prone to apathy, but the thing that brings us out of that dullness, by our prayers and through the Holy Spirit, is falling back on the one true gospel and remembering it all over again! So I can't see how a true Calvinist can be apathetic to sharing the true gospel for long. For me, Calvinism is all about the gospel. If it isn't for you, then you aren't really a Calvinist, no matter what theology you claim to hold too.
So that's the corollary. When you see the beauty of the gospel as Calvinism shows it to us, and since the love of Christ which you now much more clearly understand is shed abroad in your heart, you pour out this same love to even those who hate you. Yes we still fight the flesh and the devil, we still have the fear of man, but He who is in us is greater than our flesh and the devil and all the wicked, scary men of this world. Our gospel message, our Christ, has overcome all that, He has overcome the world!
One last thing I want to address. It is true that Calvinists can get big heads. To learn of the the doctrines of grace for me was like being opened up into a whole new world. It was like going through puberty as a Christian. Crossing the threshold of Calvinism further opens your eyes, analogous to how puberty opens our eyes even further to our very nature. Calvinists see the importance of theology and how it directly relates to loving God. Knowing God more is a command. But it should be done so that we can adore Him more. You aren't a Calvinist if you don't understand that. You aren't a Christian if you don't understand that at least to some degree. If it is just head knowledge, then it's sin. The true gospel is not head knowledge, it's salvation. To those who are being saved, the message of the cross is the power of God. So we seek to know Him more and more and more, so we can love Him more and more and more in our hearts, and then pour out that love in our hearts on others more and more and more.
Knowing more leads to loving more, which leads to living rightly more. This is what Calvinism, the true gospel, ultimately connected for me. Therefore, Calvinism leads to evangelism! True gospel coming in the power of the Spirit produces true love, which produces love for the lost, for those who hate God, because this IS the love of Christ.
I know a few good Christians who are not reformed. They are not Calvinists. Yet God has given them a heart that loves about as well as they possibly can for the bit that they know. What I mean is, there are good Christian non-reformed folk out there. Some, many probably, have bigger hearts than I do. They have bigger hearts for God, not because they necessarily know more theology than I do, but because they have taken seriously the call to love God and kill sin more seriously than I have. And that is the abominable thing. I can know so much about God, yet still love so little. It is a profound disturbance. I beg God that my head would not grow fast yet my heart slow. I pray that my heart would grow fast as well as my head. We need big hearted Christians, filled to the brim with the love of God. But the amount of love we can have grows with the amount of understanding of God that we have. Indeed, one can have a false understanding of God, and truly love their false understanding, and therefore truly be worshiping a false god!
I've only seen a few people in my life that God has blessed with both big hearts and big heads. When I meet one though, I love to talk with them. They are the type of people you want to be around, not just to pick their brains but to pick their hearts. To learn something about God not just from their knowledge but from their life, their kind and gentle spirit. The way they carry themselves. I want my Christian friends to be big hearted and big headed. I want the girl I marry to be big hearted and big headed. I want to be big hearted and big headed, by God's grace, for His glory.
Here is the rub- big heads don't lead to big hearts. Big hearts lead to big heads. But you can't have a big heart without a big head. So how can you ever get either? By the grace of God, by the love of Christ poured out in our hearts. The regenerate heart seeks out God and His righteousness because the regenerate has had his eyes opened and been given ears to hear and understand the true gospel. The sinful flesh and our lack of understanding, our lack of mind renewal, may mislead and deceive us, and cause us to spurn the true doctrines of grace, but patience and diligence with such people, I have no doubt, will lead them to see the glory of the cross through the lens of the sovereign grace of God. The true gospel is powerful, it is beautiful, it sets the world aright. For those who have that Spirit of Christ already, it is just inevitable that the true gospel will lead to evangelistic fervor. Sin will certainly temper it, and sanctification is certainly a process, but is it not blatantly obvious that a supposed "Calvinist" who is growing in the head but shriveling in the heart is not only not a Calvinist, but not a Christian?!
So please, don't say Calvinists are weak in evangelism. Those who claim to be Calvinists may be, but true Calvinists, who are regenerate, who really understand the amazing message of the gospel, are literally burdened that the lost hear this amazing message! Fear of man, sin, may soften our fervor, but only for a season. The Spirit of Christ, the renewing of the mind, the ability to fall back on this true gospel again and again, assures us that we can never lose this passion. It will ebb and flow, but it will flow more and more the more we study, the more we learn, the more we seek to understand the object of our love- our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
First, an admittance. It is true, some Calvinists tend towards hyper Calvinism, or at least take a lethargic, ho-hum attitude toward sharing the gospel. The zeal for evangelism doesn't seem to be there. No doubt this is problematic, to say the least. But when I hear Calvinists say that other Calvinists and Calvinistic churches have a problem sharing the gospel, I get upset not because they are going too far, but because they are not going far enough.
In my book you aren't a Calvinist if the gospel isn't everything to you. A Calvinist who is apathetic towards sharing the gospel is no Calvinist; in fact he is far worse than an Arminian that is zealous to share the gospel with the world. There has to be either something wrong in the person's theology or understanding (meaning they aren't really a Calvinist) or in the person's heart (likely meaning they aren't really regenerate) to claim to adhere to the doctrines of grace, and yet not want to share that grace with the world.
I'm not talking about fear of man. Believe me, I have a fear of man. I want to share the gospel so badly with others, yet so often fear of man overcomes me and I keep my mouth shut, or don't put things as plainly and pointedly as I ought. But then I go home and am burdened at night for not doing what I so badly want, and should want, to do. And the truth is I never, and I mean virtually never, felt this way, until I became a Calvinist!
The Calvinist gospel is why I became evangelistic, not just in theory, but in practice. In the first 18 years of my life, prior to being a Calvinist, I never shared the gospel with a single soul on my own. In the last three years since becoming a Calvinist I have shared the gospel with more people than I can count. And I am not talking about street preaching or handing out tracts (I am not denigrating that by any means) but actually taking my time to talk with people, for hours, one on one, about Jesus Christ, about judgment and forgiveness of sins.
The reason is the message. The true message of saving grace, amazing grace, is something that Calvinism reveals. It's partially hidden when you take a free will belief system. Free will systems present a grace less amazing, a Savior less saving, a God less glorious, and replaces it with a more magnificent man. But of course, a true Christian who is not reformed never thinks of it like this. The truth is, they don't know that the truth is so much better than their misunderstanding! It is the amazingness of the truth of God, His love for His people, His love for me, in light of my incredible sinfulness, that gave me my evangelistic fervor.
Not because of anything we have done, or would do in the future, but because of God's mere pleasure did He save you and me. God looks down on man, and he doesn't see people seeking Him out, or people just a little confused, but people in open rebellion against Him, so much so that they have convinced themselves they are good and in God's graces. He sees a people who will reject God once they realize how holy and just He is. He sees a people who always spurn the offer of salvation, because they don't want to be saved from the one thing they love- sin.
God's love saved me from myself. It saved me from my love of sin- sin itself- not just its penalties. He made me willing to love Him by taking out all that hated Him in my heart and replacing it with the love of Christ, the Spirit of Christ! He saved me by dethroning me, and putting Himself on the throne. Now the non-Calvinist gospel says you must choose to do this if you want to be saved, that you must dethrone yourself and give God permission to take up residence in your heart. The true gospel says that God on the throne is the salvation that God gives, that He pours out on His people- He dethrones us, because we would never dethrone ourselves. This is because salvation is from sin, not hell. It is from what ultimately brings sorrow and destruction and death, unto the only source of gladness and restoration and life- which is God Himself.
When you understand that this, all this, is given to you totally undeservedly, by the good God whom you naturally hate, you can't but help share this good news with this lost and dying world. As the love God had for His Son spilled out over to us, so our love for Christ, and what God did for us through Christ, spills over to our fellow man. The loving Spirit Christ had for the world, we now have for the world, because the love of Christ has been poured out into our hearts (Romans 5:5).
The bottom line is this- experiencing God's saving grace is the best thing that has ever happened, not just to me, but to anyone. It is still happening to me, I am still being saved daily by the grace of God. I am captivated by the love of God. 1 John 4 puts it well:
10 "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
We didn't love Him. We didn't choose Him. He chose us, He chose to love us, knowing we would never love Him back unless He gave us the same love He had for us. This love is too much! The only qualification I had to have to receive it was to be a God hating sinner. Believe me, I qualified. From Calvinism, from Scripture, I learned that true love is this- dying for those who hate you to produce a love in them that cannot die.
Verse 11 makes it quite clear then. If we are to have the love of Christ, then we also ought to love one another the way Christ loved us. And the way Christ loved us was by dying for us. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. As enemies, He died for us. As children of wrath, children of the devil, He died for us. He opened our hearts so we could see that sin is death but He is life and happiness.
This is just pure gospel, but not so much if you aren't a Calvinist. I didn't share the gospel before I was saved, because I didn't understand how great my salvation was. I am convinced of this. I thought that I chose God, that God would be disrespectful if He changed my will. I thought I desired Him and His righteousness and not sin because of me, with some help from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I truly believed my thinking went something like this: "I love God, I chose God, and others don't. It is up to them. It isn't hard. If they keep on sinning when they know that they could be forgiven, that's their choice, that's their problem."
But Calvinism showed me that true salvation is being set free from what you desire- sin- and having a new enslaving obsession- desiring God. We were made for God, therefore, we find our satisfaction, our rest, in God. Before salvation, I was enslaved to sin, willingly. But Christ made me a willing slave to righteousness.
What I am trying to get at is the supernatural nature of salvation. I didn't fully grasp that as a non-Calvinist. Sure, I gave mental assent to it, and believed that the Holy Spirit would now convict me, but I didn't understand that the whole process, including faith, was a work of God. So my crisis was that most everything I had been told was a lie. I needed to be saved, truly, to be freed from my love of sin. Indeed, I cannot just make a decision to stop living for sin because as unregenerate it is all I worship and adore! My friends didn't understand this good news. The world didn't understand this good news. I had to tell the world.
Some refer this to the cage stage for Calvinists, or something like that. Well, as far as I am concerned I wish I never came out of it. Sure, the way the message is presented can be a bit rough sometimes when you first learn of it, but are we not handing out passes to super zealous arminians despite the fact that half the time they are presenting a gospel that is no gospel at all? My point is simply that when you hear the good news of the gospel, the true gospel, the gospel that Calvinism draws on, you can't help but love it and want to proclaim it to everyone, assuming you are regenerate. So for those 'Calvinists' who aren't all about the gospel, both knowing it more deeply and sharing it with their lost loved ones, arminian friends, the world at large, etc., there is something terribly wrong. Either they aren't regenerate, or they don't really get it. I understand hearts can grow dull at times, and I am prone to apathy, but the thing that brings us out of that dullness, by our prayers and through the Holy Spirit, is falling back on the one true gospel and remembering it all over again! So I can't see how a true Calvinist can be apathetic to sharing the true gospel for long. For me, Calvinism is all about the gospel. If it isn't for you, then you aren't really a Calvinist, no matter what theology you claim to hold too.
So that's the corollary. When you see the beauty of the gospel as Calvinism shows it to us, and since the love of Christ which you now much more clearly understand is shed abroad in your heart, you pour out this same love to even those who hate you. Yes we still fight the flesh and the devil, we still have the fear of man, but He who is in us is greater than our flesh and the devil and all the wicked, scary men of this world. Our gospel message, our Christ, has overcome all that, He has overcome the world!
One last thing I want to address. It is true that Calvinists can get big heads. To learn of the the doctrines of grace for me was like being opened up into a whole new world. It was like going through puberty as a Christian. Crossing the threshold of Calvinism further opens your eyes, analogous to how puberty opens our eyes even further to our very nature. Calvinists see the importance of theology and how it directly relates to loving God. Knowing God more is a command. But it should be done so that we can adore Him more. You aren't a Calvinist if you don't understand that. You aren't a Christian if you don't understand that at least to some degree. If it is just head knowledge, then it's sin. The true gospel is not head knowledge, it's salvation. To those who are being saved, the message of the cross is the power of God. So we seek to know Him more and more and more, so we can love Him more and more and more in our hearts, and then pour out that love in our hearts on others more and more and more.
Knowing more leads to loving more, which leads to living rightly more. This is what Calvinism, the true gospel, ultimately connected for me. Therefore, Calvinism leads to evangelism! True gospel coming in the power of the Spirit produces true love, which produces love for the lost, for those who hate God, because this IS the love of Christ.
I know a few good Christians who are not reformed. They are not Calvinists. Yet God has given them a heart that loves about as well as they possibly can for the bit that they know. What I mean is, there are good Christian non-reformed folk out there. Some, many probably, have bigger hearts than I do. They have bigger hearts for God, not because they necessarily know more theology than I do, but because they have taken seriously the call to love God and kill sin more seriously than I have. And that is the abominable thing. I can know so much about God, yet still love so little. It is a profound disturbance. I beg God that my head would not grow fast yet my heart slow. I pray that my heart would grow fast as well as my head. We need big hearted Christians, filled to the brim with the love of God. But the amount of love we can have grows with the amount of understanding of God that we have. Indeed, one can have a false understanding of God, and truly love their false understanding, and therefore truly be worshiping a false god!
I've only seen a few people in my life that God has blessed with both big hearts and big heads. When I meet one though, I love to talk with them. They are the type of people you want to be around, not just to pick their brains but to pick their hearts. To learn something about God not just from their knowledge but from their life, their kind and gentle spirit. The way they carry themselves. I want my Christian friends to be big hearted and big headed. I want the girl I marry to be big hearted and big headed. I want to be big hearted and big headed, by God's grace, for His glory.
Here is the rub- big heads don't lead to big hearts. Big hearts lead to big heads. But you can't have a big heart without a big head. So how can you ever get either? By the grace of God, by the love of Christ poured out in our hearts. The regenerate heart seeks out God and His righteousness because the regenerate has had his eyes opened and been given ears to hear and understand the true gospel. The sinful flesh and our lack of understanding, our lack of mind renewal, may mislead and deceive us, and cause us to spurn the true doctrines of grace, but patience and diligence with such people, I have no doubt, will lead them to see the glory of the cross through the lens of the sovereign grace of God. The true gospel is powerful, it is beautiful, it sets the world aright. For those who have that Spirit of Christ already, it is just inevitable that the true gospel will lead to evangelistic fervor. Sin will certainly temper it, and sanctification is certainly a process, but is it not blatantly obvious that a supposed "Calvinist" who is growing in the head but shriveling in the heart is not only not a Calvinist, but not a Christian?!
So please, don't say Calvinists are weak in evangelism. Those who claim to be Calvinists may be, but true Calvinists, who are regenerate, who really understand the amazing message of the gospel, are literally burdened that the lost hear this amazing message! Fear of man, sin, may soften our fervor, but only for a season. The Spirit of Christ, the renewing of the mind, the ability to fall back on this true gospel again and again, assures us that we can never lose this passion. It will ebb and flow, but it will flow more and more the more we study, the more we learn, the more we seek to understand the object of our love- our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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