Can Arminians be Saved?

Our question for this issue is: "Can someone who is theologically Arminian be truly saved?" This is not an easy question.

We want to emphasize at the beginning that Arminianism is another gospel that is no gospel (Gal. 1:6-7). Its teaching denies the sovereignty of God in salvation and the power and effectualness of Christ's death on the cross (by teaching that Christ died for all it teaches that His death actually saves no one). It also denies that salvation is by grace alone with its teaching concerning the sovereignty of the human will. These are fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.

Not only that, but we believe that Arminianism has crept into the teaching of many Reformed churches under the guise of a love of God for all men, a desire on God's part that all men without exception be saved, and the teaching that there are gifts of grace and benefits of the cross for all. This poses a deadly danger to Reformed churches.

We agree, therefore, with the following quote: "False doctrine is worse when it goes under the cover of the truth, and when it quotes Scripture, and sings Amazing Grace. Satan is always at his best in opposing the truth when he does it in the name of Christ. There has never been a more subtle expression of false doctrine than which affirms all the 'truths' of the Christian faith on the basis of human effort, merit of works, foreseen faith, or 'free will.' To affirm grace on the condition of works is the ultimate perversion. It is The Lie" (John K. Pederson, Sincerity Meets the Truth, pp. v, vi).

But does this mean that those who hold to free will and other teachings of Arminianism cannot be and are not saved? We do not believe that. Even here, however, we wish to be very careful in our answer. We would insist that a person who truly and consistently believes that he is saved by his own willing and running, contrary to Rom. 9:16, cannot be saved; he has denied the very heart of the gospel.

The teaching that man is saved by his own running is Rome's, the teaching that he is saved by his own willing is that of apostate Protestantism, but really they are no different. That teaching, according to Romans 10:1-4, is ignorance of and refusal to submit to the righteousness of God, and leaves a person in need of salvation. By his emphasis on will and works a consistent Arminian sets himself outside Christ (Gal. 5:4).

Nevertheless, many people inconsistently confess both grace and works. They ascribe their salvation wholly to God's grace, and yet speak of having chosen Christ, of having free will, and of God being dependent in salvation on their own free will choice. They thank GOD for their salvation and yet speak as though they were the ones who made the decisive choices.

Usually this is the fault of the teaching they have received - teaching which speaks along two lines. It is a teaching that affirms grace on the basis of works and free will. Those who teach such things have the greater fault. Nevertheless, those who think along these lines, though they may be saved, also need to realize that what they believe is not the truth, and need to repent of it.

So too, as the author quoted above says: "We need rather to be greatly ashamed of ourselves for our tolerant friendship with the doctrine of human sovereignty which lies at the rotten core of evangelicalism, and which, on account it, of our sleepy indifference to is a testimony to our own cowardice." Grace saves, not free will and works.

Ronald Hanko
http://www.prca.org/resources/publications/cr-news/item/731-can-arminians-be-saved 
http://www.prca.org/

You Don't Believe in Free Will?!

 

If there is one "sacred cow" in the modern church it is "freewill." Almost every person I meet in the modern church assumes that 1) man has freewill, 2) that man can use his freewill to choose salvation, 3) that God is a perfect gentleman who would never force salvation on man.

Deny "freewill" and you will hear objections:

1. You are making man to be a robot!
2. God would never do that!
3. That is a horrible doctrine!
4. Why bother?

The problem is that most objections are based on emotional responses, knee-jerk reactions.

Let us be clear what we mean.

1. The only ultimate "freewill" is God's. Only God can say, "I will do all my pleasure" (Isa. 46:10) Only of God can it be said that He works all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11). Our wills, whatever else they might be, are the wills of creatures and necessarily limited.

2. Man has a will. Man's will (not "freewill," but will) is his faculty of choice. Man, whether a sinner or not, has this faculty of choice. A robot and a puppet do not. No one teaches that man is a puppet. Therefore, man can make real choices between options presented to him. He can choose tea over coffee; he can choose to buy one model of car over another. Of course, his choices are limited by various factors. I might choose to buy a 2012 BMW car, but if I don't have the money I will have to settle for something cheaper. In addition, man is free to choose in that he is not forced by God to make a choice one way or the other.

3. Man was created (in Adam and Eve) with freewill. This freewill was a faculty of Adam's mind according to which he made choices. Adam's mind and whole being (and therefore will) were perfectly upright and holy. Adam willingly and with delight served God his Creator. God made man that way in His own image, but with the possibilty of falling. We know, of course, that man fell into sin. The contentious issue is this: did man's fall affect his nature, and especially his will?

Fallen Man

1. The Pelagian denies that the nature of man was affected by the Fall. According to that view, Adam fell but it was a very minor affair. Man became guilty, but his mind, soul and will were basically unaffected. And none of his posterity were affected by Adam's fall either. There is no original guilt, or original corruption (original sin). Modern man, as a sinner, is still in the image of God and still able to serve God. You ask: why does no man live a life without sin?  The answer: all men sin because of the evil examples of parents and other human beings. Sin is not in the nature, but in the "nurture."

2. The semi-Pelagian admits that man was seriously affected by the Fall. He lost many of the powers of his original nature. Man is "weakened" but not ruined by the Fall. Now it is much more difficult to serve God and to choose good. This view teaches that man is "sick" but not "dead." But man still has the power to cooperate with the grace of God.

3. The Bible teaches that the Fall ruined Adam and also all his posterity. As a result of the Fall man became a slave to sin (John 8:34), totally corrupted and depraved, and he lost the image of God (knowledge, holiness and righteousness [Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; John 8:44] ). Now man does not have a "free" will (he has the faculty to choose but that has been corrupted also). He has a corrupted will.

The Choices of a Fallen Man

1. What is will? What is faculty of choice? Are you, as a sinner, completely free to choose, and entirely uninfluenced in that choice? No! A man chooses that which he loves, that to which he is attracted, that which pleases him. Why do you choose to drink coffee, perhaps, whereas that would not be my choice? Because you like coffee, and I cannot stand the smell of it! Why does a sinner choose to sin? Because the sinner loves sin!

2. A sinner when faced with the choice of righteousness or sin, holiness or depravity, loving God or loving self will always choose the latter. Why? Because he has a totally depraved heart, a twisted mind, a perverted will and a ruined, fallen nature.. Therefore, sinners choose willingly to sin. They follow sin greedily (Eph. 4:19) even when they know that sin will destroy them. Sin is irresistible to the sinner. God does not force a person to sin against his will. Sin is his natural choice exactly because he has a fallen nature.

a. Man is dead in sin (Eph. 2:1-3)
b. Man hates light and loves darkness (John 3:19-20)
c. Man's carnal mind is enmity [hostility] against and cannot even be subject to God's Law (Rom. 8:7-8)
d. To the natural mind the Gospel is foolishness and he cannot receive it (I Cor. 2:14)
e. There is none who does good, seeks God, understands, etc (Rom. 3:10ff)
f. man drinks sin up as water (Job 15:16)
The Bible is FILLED with testimonies such as that.  And when the Bible does talk about sinners seeking God, longing after God, etc., it speaks of saved, regenerate, belieivng sinners. Do not confuse the two!

3. So, offer to the will of the sinner (who is dead in sin, hates light and loves darkness, finds spiritual things foolishness and cannot receive them, does not do good, understand or seek God, and whose very mind is hostlity to God) the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and what will the reaction ALWAYS be? Rejection! Unbelief! Refusal to repent! Why? Because the unbeliever freely, willingly and in accordance with his fallen nature ALWAYS hates Christ and is never atracted to Him.

4. Does that mean that conversion is impossible? Yes, for man it is. Man is as the Bible describes him: totally depraved. Does that man that God cannot convert a man? Of course, not! God can convert the most hardened sinner. Does that mean we should not preach to sinners? No, of course not! We must preach to sinners, but in preaching we do not rely on our abilities to appeal to man's will, but we preach knowing that it is God who gives life to sinners. God is pleased to use means to bring elect sinners to salvation.
5. What about you, believer? Is it not true that you were also like the unbeliever described above? Consider the analogy of the so-called "perfect gentleman" Jesus knocking at your heart (there is not one word in the Bible about this "gentleman Jesus" by the way; and Rev. 3:20 is not about Jesus knocking on the door of an unbeliever's heart but about Christ knocking on the door of the church in Laodicea!). If you love darkness and the light of the world is knocking at your door will you ever in a million years open the door? Will you not like a darkness-lover lock the door and get away from Him as far as you can? Did you overcome your own depravity, your own slavery to sin, your own enmity against God? Of course not!

6. Why do some believe? Because God by His Spirit works, opens the closed heart (Acts 16:14), opens the blinded eyes, unstops the deafened ears, and even gives life from the dead, and gives a new heart. Does He give that to everyone? Clearly not! He gives it to the elect.

Conclusion

We do not deny that man has a will. Man has a will, a very active will, a will actively and greedlly set on evil, only evil, always evil. His will is corrupt and disordered because his whole nature is corrupt and because the whole man is enslaved to sin. That is why we need salvation: God frees our will, and changes our nature, and then we believe. Salvation is not of man's freewill (man's will is bound to sin). Salvation is of God's grace, free, sovereign, efficacious, amazing grace!
And, in heaven, when our will shall be finally delivered from the corruption of our nature, we will no longer even be able to choose sin. That will not mean that we will be robots, only able to chose good and never evil. We will be free, perfectly free, happily and gloriously free, to serve God forever without even the possibility of sin!
How did you become convinced there was no "freewill"? And have you experience strong opposition as you expressed these beliefs?


Rev. Martyn McGeown
http://limerickreformed.com/blog/item/572-you-dont-believe-in-free-will?

Does Man Have a Free Will?

When people hear us say that an unbeliever is spiritually dead and completely unable to do good works, they sometimes ask us whether we are denying that human beings have a free will. The answer to that question depends on which human beings you are referring to, and what you mean by free.

How our Lord explained freedom

It is important that we speak of freedom and bondage the way that Scripture does. To be in bondage is to be a servant of sin and Satan. To be free is to be liberated from this, so that we are able to do that which is good in the eyes of God.

This, of course, is not the way that sinful man views freedom. He thinks he is free when he is able to do whatever he wants. But what sinful man wants is always evil. And for a man to pursue the evil that he wants is not to be free, but to be enslaved.

Jesus pointed this out when responding to some Jews who denied that they were in bondage. Jesus had just finished saying that those who continued in His word were truly His disciples, and that His disciples would know the truth, and that the truth would set them free. To this these Jews responded, and said: "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free" (John 8:33b).

Jesus then explained that the freedom He was talking about was a spiritual freedom. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever commiteth sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34).

So if we are going to speak of freedom the way our Lord did, we will say that to have a free will is to have a will that is not enslaved to sin. It is to have a righteous and holy will that brings forth the fruit of good actions.

How the will is freed

So how does the will of a person become freed? Scripture and our confessions teach that our will becomes freed when God "infuses new qualities into the will" (Canons 3/4, B, 6).

The first reference speaks of God infusing something into our heart. The two statements together that when God infuses something into our heart, He infuses it into our will.

To prove that this infusing really does take place, our fathers quoted a number of Scripture passages. The first one they refer to is a passage from Jeremiah that speaks of God putting His word in our hearts: "After those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts" (Jer. 31:33b).

When God regenerates us, the word of God really does enter our heart. And it is because God's word is in our heart that we are now able to begin to do what that word says: "But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it" (Deut. 30:14).

It is in this way that God infuses new qualities of faith, obedience, and a consciousness of His love into our hearts. When God's word is in our heart, we believe in God. We know Him, love Him, and are free to do what His word says. 

The unregenerate, however, do not have God's word in their heart. When Christ spoke to some unbelievers, He said: "ye seek to kill Me, because My word hath no place in you" (John 8:37).

God's word was not in the heart of these people. That explains why they hated what God said to them. First God puts His word in our heart, and only then do we love Him, listen to Him, and strive to so what pleases Him.

Only the "good trees" have a free will

It is when these new qualities have been infused into a person, that the individual becomes a good tree, able to produce good fruit. The Canons say that God "infuses new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, He quickens; from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, He renders it good, obedient, and pliable; actuates and strengthens it, that like a good tree it may bring forth the fruits of good actions" (Canons 3/4, 11). 

Here we have yet another passage in our confessions that clearly speaks of how only those who have been regenerated can do good works. Something must be infused into us first, so that we go from being corrupt trees that produce only corrupt fruit, to being good trees that "bring forth the fruit of good actions."

So the regenerated or "good trees" are the only ones who have free will. By nature they were dead trees that were in bondage of corruption. But God has raised them from the dead, quickening their dead will, so that now they are freed from corruption, and are able to produce fruit that is truly good. 

We believers confess that Christ, the Truth, really has set us free. And the more we come to hear the truth preached, and believe that truth preached, the more that we experience the joy of that freedom.

This is the true freedom. As our Lord Himself: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).

 We are free indeed! Free to do what is pleasing to God, which is also what we genuinely desire to do in the new man. May we rejoice as those truly liberated, and show our love and thankfulness to our God by continuing in His word, that we might ever more so experience the liberating power of the truth, as it is applied to our heart by Christ's Spirit.


Rev. James Laning
The Standard Bearer (A Reformed Semi-Monthly Magazine, Feb. 1, 2014) Vol. 90, No. 9, pp. 211-212