Sanctification and Reformation

God's Sovereignty: Predestination & Free Will Part 2 Many begin the discussion of salvation through the 5 points of Arminianism or Calvinism with a discussion of man’s natural state.   However, I don’t think that’s the appropriate place to begin.   All theology begins and ends with God, not man.   That’s why we must begin with God and not just in a general sense but specifically with respect to His sovereignty. So once again the history behind how this discussion came into being is helpful in understanding the way that it developed. The Remonstrance, you’ll recall, was a protest against the Protestant church (which itself was a protest against the Roman Catholic Church).   The Protestants, up to that point, largely held to Augustinian (proto-Calvinist) theology.   The Remonstrance opposed this and said they believed that men were sinners but that they were not so spiritually dead that they could not respond to God spiritually. They believed t...

Part 2 (of 2) In part 1 of this post we covered the first four characteristics of the omniscience of God. We covered how God has perfect self-knowledge, perfect knowledge outside of Himself, that His knowledge is eternal, and that His knowledge is immediate and instantaneous. Today, we'll cover four more aspects of this amazing attribute of God. 5) His knowledge is exhaustive . He numbers and names all of the stars (which are incalculable). Not even a sparrow falls without His knowledge. He numbers every hair on your head. These are excerpted from verses which all use this language to help the reader grasp how complete His knowledge is. A sparrow was worthless in that day – yet God does not allow even one to fall to the ground without His complete knowledge. He has numbered the hair follicles on your head – which isn’t a particularly useful thing to know.  So if He perfectly knows these things which are not valuable, then He definitely knows what going on with and in y...

Have you ever made a mistake or been caught in a lie? It’s unnerving to know that someone else knows your sin.  But have you had that experience and then thought, “If they only knew the half of my sin they’d disown me.” If someone were to look into my heart or watch a film of my secret decisions, motives, and desires, they’d most definitely run from me. But I imagine I would run from you too because we’re not that different from each other. Sin has infected us like the worst type of spreading cancer; affecting every thought we have. So this attribute of God can be a little unnerving. It can actually cause us to try and block it out as silly and ironic as that is.  God’s omniscience means that he is all-knowing. So in running we quickly resemble Jonah who ran from the Lord and found Himself being held against his will in the belly of a whale. I encourage you, as I study and share my thoughts with you, to think like a follower of Christ. This attribute is incredibly en...