Conserving Well the Gospel of God’s Grace (1 Cor. 1:17-31)

 

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In this series, “Conserving Well, Changing Wisely,” we are talking about the importance and need for both conservativism and change in the church and the interplay between them.  The primary concern here though is conservatism, not change.  The point is that we won’t conserve well if we are not willing to change wisely.  We will get to the change part.  But for now I want to spend a few weeks highlighting the things that we want to conserve.  

I am not going to mention every article of our faith as things we need to conserve. Please don’t take that to mean I think we shouldn’t conserve them!  I gladly and firmly support every word in our articles of faith.  But I am being selective in terms of what to speak to.  So let me explain why I’m picking the things I’m picking to highlight as the things we need to preserve and conserve.  The topics I’m choosing to speak to are things that are not shared by all evangelical churches, and therefore they are things that are more in danger of being let go or their importance lost sight of.  The less support there is for something in broader evangelicalism, the more likely it is that those who inhabit this world may let it go.  But these are also things that I don’t want us to let go.  And so I want to advocate for them as things that we need to make a particular effort to preserve.

Now there are churches that believe in the authority of Scripture and that salvation comes only through the eternal Son of God incarnate by grace through faith, but who differ from us on some of the things I’m going to be highlighting.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t true churches.  Preserving these things doesn’t mean that we deny the status of church to those who don’t necessarily hold them.  But neither does it mean that it doesn’t matter what you believe about these things.  I’m going to argue that it does matter, and that it matters that our church holds to these things in such a way that we will preserve them and pass them on to the next generation.  

What are these things that we need to conserve?  I’m going to highlight at least three areas: an area of theology, an area of doxology, and an area of ecclesiology.  In the area of theology, I’m going to be addressing the importance of the doctrines of God’s sovereign grace.  In the area of doxology, I’m going to be addressing the importance of the simplicity of worship and, in particular, the benefits of acapella singing.  In the area of ecclesiology, I’m going to be addressing the Baptist way of observing the ordinances and church government.  These are all things that this church has been doing well from its beginning, so these are matters that are matters of conservation, not change.  And they are good things, precious things.  But sometimes we can lose sight of the greatness of things that we have come to take for granted and I hope that in these messages, if that has happened to us, that we will regain a sense of appropriate wonder and gratitude for the things that our church has believed and practiced for so many years.

An Area of Theology

In this message, I want to begin by looking at the centrality of God’s sovereign grace in our understanding of the gospel and how God saves sinful men and women.  To do that, I want to direct your attention to 1 Corinthians chapter 1.  Paul is explaining to the Corinthians who were glorying in the wisdom of men why it was utter and complete folly and nonsense for them to do so.  The primary reason he gives them is that the very heart of the Christian faith is completely at odds with the wisdom of the world.  What is at the heart of the Christian faith is the gospel and what is at the heart of the gospel is a message of a crucified Savior.  The gospel was and still is that Christ died for those who have sinned against God, was buried, and rose from the dead in fulfillment of the OT Scriptures.  The mission of Paul and of the church in every age is to preach one message and one message only: Christ and him crucified (17-18, 23; 2:2). The message of the church is not human achievement  but that of divine achievement; that the salvation of sinners does not come through human self-effort but through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, received by faith alone.

But to the Jews this was a stumbling block and to the Gentiles this was absurd (1:22).  Paul’s own fellow countrymen couldn’t imagine a Messiah who was cursed and condemned to hang on a cross, and the Greeks couldn’t imagine salvation that involved the resurrection of the body from the dead.  In other words, the intellectual environment of the first century made the gospel sound very strange. All the “credibility structures” of the day were against the gospel, not for it.  

Why then did anyone believe?  Paul attributes it, not to the wisdom of the Corinthians, or to any ability on their part, but wholly to the divine summons to faith: “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (23-24).  Now he is talking about something here that is more than merely hearing the gospel.  Those who found Christ to be a stumbling block found him so precisely because they heard the message of the gospel and rejected it.  The same with the Greeks who heard the gospel and rejected it as foolishness.  So hearing this call is more than just hearing the gospel.  This call is something which secures the response demanded by the gospel, which is repentance and faith.  It is the call of God that is made effectual by the power of God that begets the faith called for: “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (2:4-5).

In other words, Paul says that it is the power of God explains why some believed when others didn’t.  Paul’s argument in this text does not allow us to find that explanation in the heart of man.  Paul’s whole argument in this passage does not allow us to say that Bob believed rather than Jim because Bob was smarter or better than Jim.  The reason is to be found entirely in God.  Wisdom and intellectual capability does not make a man more likely to believe.  In fact, Paul seems to argue just the opposite.  Man’s intellectual prowess creates as it were cataracts of pride that blind him to the truth.  Wealth and status create a dependence upon wealth and status that keeps men from the kingdom of God. Nor is it our ability to respond that makes the call effectual because left to ourselves we would remain in the camp of those who find the gospel a stumblingblock and foolishness.  Rather, the effectual call itself creates the response.  This means that the ultimate explanation for why some believe is to be found in the power of God rather than the will of man.

It is no wonder then that Paul traces the hand of God in conversion and calling back to God’s eternal choice, his election: “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence” (1:26-29).  Do you see what Paul is doing?  The logical sequence of thought here is not, Bob believed, therefore God called him, and therefore God chose him.  That’s getting it exactly backwards.  The sequence doesn’t begin with us.  It begins with God.  Why do you believe?  Because God called you.  Why did God call you?  Because God chose you.  The sequence is a Divine choice leading to an effectual call to embrace Christ in the gospel leading to a radical conversion to Christ.

This is how we must understand how sinners like you and me get saved.  Paul sums it up in these words in verses 30-31: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”  In the NT, salvation as a whole is something that only becomes ours through union with Christ.  A saved person is a person who is united to Christ.  This is what the NT is referring to when it says that we are “in Christ.”  To be “in Christ” is to be united to Christ.  How are you in Christ?  How do you become united to Christ?  I don’t deny that we are united to Christ’s righteousness when we believe, for we are justified by faith.  But how is it that we come to have faith in Christ by which we are united to him?  Paul’s answer: “of him” – that is, of God – “are ye in Christ Jesus.”  The reason why anyone – anyone! – is in Christ is because God put him or her there.  That is the reason.  Paul does not trace it to human goodness or free will or brain power.  He traces it to God, and to God alone.

This is why our church embraces what are sometimes called the doctrines of grace.  We embrace them because they are taught in the pages of Scripture.  By “doctrines of grace” we aren’t referring to some nebulous nod in the direction of grace, we are referring to the grace of God that actually saves.  We are saying that our salvation originated in electing grace that is unconditional, that it was accomplished through redeeming grace that is sacrificial, that it is applied by regenerating grace that is effectual, and that it will be finished through preserving grace that is eternal.  We believe that salvation is of the Lord, not merely in the sense that he provides for it but in the sense that he guarantees it.  We don’t think that most of our salvation is by grace but that all of it is.

This is what we mean when we say that we are saved by grace.  To be saved by grace means that there has never been and will never be something in us which is the basis of our relationship with God.  It is a gift of God from first to last.  Even faith is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8).  So is repentance (Acts 11:18).  When others say that God can’t change the heart or sovereignly draw sinners to himself, that at the end of the day what makes a man saved is him exercising his free will independently of God, they really are denying what Paul is saying here.  They are saying that what saves a person is not God’s choice or God’s call but man’s will.  Paul would then have to say, “But of your own free will are you in Christ Jesus,” but he doesn’t say that.  He says, “But of him are you in Christ Jesus.”  Salvation is of the Lord and of the Lord alone.

Why this matters

God forbid that we should ever think that this matters because this is what makes us different from the “Arminians.”  Beware of holding to something because it makes you different.  I think some people like that.  They just like to be different.  But my concern here is not to be different but to be Biblical.  That is the primary reason why I think all this matters.  It matters because this is what the Scriptures teach.  I know that not everyone agrees with me.  And I’m not denying that there are hard things that we have to deal with when we embrace God’s true sovereignty in grace and salvation.  But at the end of the day, those hard things don’t matter much to me when I see how clearly the Bible teaches the sovereignty of God in salvation.

But there are other reasons.  God does not act in a way that is inglorious.  The gospel is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God (1 Tim. 1:11).  He does not act in ways that are not for the ultimate good of the church and the believer (Rom. 8:28).  If the Bible teaches that God acts in ways of free and sovereign grace in the salvation of sinners, then it is for our good that we believe it.

What then are the goods that we get when we believe in sovereign grace?  I see two reasons here in the text.

The Good of the Glory of God and the Abasement of Man

Note what Paul says: “And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Cor. 1:28-29).  Why has God chosen “things which are not,” that is, people whom the world utterly despises and treats as if they did not exist?  He does so in order “that no flesh should glory in his presence.”  This is why God’s sovereignty in salvation is so important for us.  If God has done everything he can for my salvation and yet my actual salvation depends on something that I do independently of God, then at the end of the day there is a place of boasting.  I can boast in my choice of Christ, because I’m the one who did it, not God.  There is no getting around this, as far as I can tell.  Saying that God has initiated salvation by grace and provided for salvation by grace does not take away the ground of boasting if my actual salvation depends on something I do independently of God.  

Now someone might say, “But doesn’t the Bible teach that we receive and choose Christ?”  Yes, it does say that: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (Jn. 1:12).  Or, as Paul puts it to the Colossians: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (2:6).  And it is true that faith in Christ is necessary to be saved.  But the Bible also teaches that even our faith is a gift of God. Not in the sense that he allows us to believe but in the sense that the faith itself is something given to us by God.  Paul teaches this in many places.  For example, in Eph. 2:8, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”  Or, to the Philippians, “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Phil. 1:29).  Again, the whole context of 1 Cor. 1 argues in this say.  And this is not something that Calvin invented, as some want to imagine.  A thousand years before John Calvin, Augustine, perhaps the most influential theologian of the early church, was saying these things as well.  As he put it in his treatise on predestination: “no one is sufficient for himself, either to begin or to perfect faith; but our sufficiency is of God” (Book 1, Chapter 5).  Again, to quote Augustine:

“Man . . . unwilling to resist such clear testimonies as these [Scriptures that ascribe our faith to God as his gift to us], and yet desiring himself to have the merit of believing, compounds as it were with God to claim a portion of faith for himself, and to leave a portion for Him; and, what is still more arrogant, he takes the first portion for himself and gives the subsequent to Him; and so in that which he says belong to both, he makes himself the first, and God the second!” [Book 1, Chapter 6]

This is the faith of the church from the very beginning.  

Jesus himself taught this.  He tells his disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you” (Jn. 15:16).  It’s not that the apostles didn’t choose Christ; they did.  But our Lord is teaching them that it was not their choice of him but his choice of them that was determinative and ultimate.  It was his choice of them that secured their choice of him.  

And this truly takes away any place of boasting on our part.  I cannot say that any part of my salvation ultimately depends on me.  It is all of grace.  It is all of God.  This way of seeing things abases man before God.  No one can glory in the presence of God: “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7).

However, the reason we need to be abased before God is to see the glory of God.  It is only when we can say with Paul, “I cannot glory in the presence of God,” that we will be able to truly say, “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1:31).  When I have taken away any ground of glory in myself, then God gets all the glory, which is the way it should be.

And this leads to the second good we get when we embrace the Biblical doctrine of God’s sovereignty in salvation.

The Good of Resting in God’s All-Sufficiency

As long as I think that there is even a small part of my salvation that depends on me doing something independently of God, that provides a ground not only for human boasting but also for anxious concern.  I think some people will gravitate to one or the other.  Some people will glory in their supposed moral judgment that enabled them to do the right thing in comparison with others.  They may not say it just like the Pharisee, but they feel it: “Lord, I thank thee that I am not like other men are.”  The amazing thing about that Pharisee’s prayer is that he starts by thanking God, which is an acknowledgment of grace on some level, but at the same time it’s very clear that he did not see God’s grace as the cause of his condition, but his own righteousness in which he was glorying (Lk. 18:9-14).  It is possible to glorify God’s grace with your mouth when your heart is trusting in your own goodness. 

But there is another kind of person, and that is the person who, believing that their eternity hinges upon something in themselves, becomes anxious and depressed.  They know themselves.  They see the sin in their heart, the weakness of their will, and it terrifies them that their salvation in the final analysis depends upon them.  They are scared.  But to this person I say, “God is completely sufficient for you.  All your salvation depends on the grace of God from first to last, including your faith both in its beginning and in its continuance and in its ending.  

This, I think, is the point of Paul here as well.  Our abasement before God should not lead us to despair but to hope, because although we cannot contribute even one thing towards our salvation, everything that we need is in Christ.  Everything!  Hence Paul writes, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).  God puts us in Christ, not to scrounge around for ourselves, but to find complete salvation in him.  He is the wisdom of God.  God’s wisdom is not shown in leaving us to ourselves but in providing for us a full salvation: “righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”  Righteousness to meet the needs created by our condemnation before God, sanctification to meet the needs created by our sin the makes us unclean and unfit to come into the presence of God, and redemption to meet the needs created by our slavery to sin.  Everything we need is in him: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3).

We are not, by the way, saying that our choices are not relevant or meaningful.  They are.  We are not saying that faith and repentance aren’t necessary.  They are.  We aren’t saying the gospel is not a means by which God brings his elect into an estate of salvation.  It is.  What we are saying is that God is not constrained by our choices, and the exercise of our will to repent of our sins and to put our trust in Christ is itself a gift of the grace of God.  “God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3).  God gets all the glory as we get all we need from him to be saved.

So our hope and humility, our assurance of faith and exultation in God, are things that depend upon the sovereignty of God’s grace in our salvation.  These are not insignificant things.  These are things that we really do need to rejoice in, and, if necessary, fight for.  These are things worth preserving and conserving well.  We need to be intentional about it, and that means first of all that we need to be people who are convinced of these things.

This is also one of the things that we celebrate in the observance of the Lord’s Supper, isn’t it?  In the Lord’s Supper we are acknowledging that our needs are met wholly in the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is his body and blood that purchased all the blessings of the New Covenant for us: a new heart, the forgiveness of sins, friendship and fellowship with God.  The New Covenant is a sovereign grace covenant.  There is not a word in the covenant about what we do to obtain the blessings, but everything about what God does to bring them to us through Jesus Christ.  The Lord’s Supper is not a celebration of our goodness, but of God’s grace, not of our strength, but of the weakness of Christ by which we are saved, not of our wills, but of God’s sovereign will that overcomes our stiff necks and melts the heart of stone.

Brothers and sisters, this is a theology to be conserved well, to be rejoiced in, to be understood and defended and shared.  May the Lord enable us to do so.