“If people must become the ultimate decisive cause of their own repentance, we have no hope of salvation. ”
In Providence, John Piper shines a light on the myriad of ways that God sees to it that all his decrees come to pass. Through verse after verse, he illuminates God’s sovereignty over all of creation. And he destroys every last vestige of the illusion of man’s autonomy. He addresses the notion of man’s ultimate self-determination and leaves this theory buried under Scripture, so as not to rise again. But the flesh doesn’t die easily. Pelagius rose up, only to be soundly refuted by Augustine. Erasmus wanted a shot at asserting the freedom of the will and Martin Luther destroyed his arguments with ammunition from the Bible. Jonathan Edwards did the same in his Freedom of the Will. So I have no illusions of Piper defeating the lies of the Enemy; both the false teaching and Satan are as old as the encounter in the Garden. But, as much as one book can, Providence has thrown the Articles of Remonstrance into a chest, locked it and thrown away the key, wrapped it in chains, encased it in concrete, and thrown it into the ocean.
All quotes in this article are John Piper’s, from Providence.
The Governor
“God governs what happens in the world, not only by holding sway over the decisions of human hearts, but also by giving success, or not, to the decisions he permits.”
Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of Yahweh; he turns it wherever he will.” So God directs the desires of men, he makes their attention to go in a certain direction. This much is crystal clear throughout God’s Word. Piper does an excellent job at also pointing out that God also determines the outcome of man’s decisions. From Genesis to Revelation, the Serpent has been seeking to destroy the seed of the woman. In each battle, God determines the success or failure of the Devil. God gives success to the Accuser in some skirmishes, and destroys him in other fights. But, rest assured that God will never give victory to demons or evil men to the extent that they eradicate the Church. The Second Adam said as much, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)
Hardened
“In choosing whom to treat with hardening and whom to treat with mercy, God is not constrained by anything outside himself. Nothing in man, good or bad, past, present, or foreseen, determines who is hardened and who is shown mercy. ”
In Deuteronomy 7:7, God tells his people, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples . . . “. In other words, God makes his decisions with absolute independence from any other being in the universe. Indeed, he decreed all that comes to pass before he created the world and everything in it. God states, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Romans 9:15) God doesn’t owe anyone anything, but as the Righteous Judge, he sees to it that “an evil person will not go unpunished”. (Proverbs 11:21) God is not ruling over a democracy, nor does he ever learn new information. The end has been “set in stone” from the beginning. He has created some men (like Pharaoh) as “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction”. And he has created other men (like Joseph) as vessels of mercy.
Guilt Made Certain
“God‘s hardening does not make human fault impossible; it makes it certain. God decided who would be hardened and who would be rescued from it in mercy. God‘s hardening does not take away guilt; it renders it certain.”
Deuteronomy 2:30 reads, “But Sihon king of Heshbon was not willing for us to pass through his land; for the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand, as he is today.” When God hardens a man’s heart, the man will be at fault. Jesus explains why people don’t believe in him: “Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.” (John 12:39-40)
If God makes someone blind, they cannot see.
Limitless
“As Creator, God is never limited to managing what he finds at hand. The Creator never “finds“ what he has not first appointed to be put in place. ”
God is not bound or restrained by anything or anyone outside himself. For example, he cannot and will not lie (Numbers 23:19), but this is a constraint imposed by his character. Since his nature is holy, righteous and just, and he never acts against his nature, he doesn’t lie. He never changes. Man, however, is constantly changing. Man is limited to working within his environment and circumstances.
Infinite Outrage
“God is so insignificant in the hearts of fallen people that they do not lose any sleep over the infinite outrage that holds sway every day in the world in every human heart where God is not the supreme treasure. ”
Most people don’t make a point of saying that they hate God. They won’t tell you that they love their sin and reject God’s authority over their lives. But by excluding God from all of their conversation and actions, they attempt to render him insignificant. Just think of it! The Almighty God, the Lord of all of Heaven and Earth, ignored by his subjects! Fallen man treasures money, sports, fame, sex, leisure, entertainment. But they don’t place any value on God.
The Language of Pain
“While fallen people do not value God, they do value being pain-free. Therefore, to point them to the outrage of belittling God, God judges that belittling of God with physical pain and sorrow. In other words, God puts the call to repentance in the language everyone can understand – the language of pain and death.”
Why is their pain, sickness, depression, sadness and death in the world? It is God’s judgment on the human race and God uses this in men’s lives to bring them to him or to heap up judgment upon them. Left to ourselves, we are perfectly happy to go through life without acknowledging the infinite worth of God. One of the most harmful consequences of the charismatic teaching regarding health is that it seeks to rob people of one of God’s means of repentance. Of course, God will not be stymied; this only hurts the person putting their trust in the false teaching that God wants all people to be healthy all the time.
The Worst Form of Slavery
“We were slaves of our strongest preferences, and we preferred sin to Christ. ”
One of the concepts that Scripture uses to describe fallen man is that of slavery. Just as the Hebrews were enslaved to Pharaoh, the sinner is a slave to his sin. Jesus said that “everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” Sinful man is enslaved by his own desire for lawlessness. He would rather follow the path of sin to death and eternal torment in hell than turn to Christ for refuge. Just as the Israelites couldn’t free themselves from Egypt, the rebel against God can’t extricate himself from sin’s shackles. In fact, he doesn’t even want to. God must give someone a new heart, new desires, before they will love his holy Law. Piper explains further: “Our bondage is the overwhelming force of our heart’s preference for self-exaltation over submission to God.” In refusing to submit to God, man does not remain neutral. No, he makes himself his own god. He forms an idol of a god in the image of man, rather than surrendering to the One who made man in his own image.
Sparing Traitors
“Jesus has every right to command me to be the kind of person who does what is right, even if my love for what is wrong keeps me from it. ”
Many people assume that if God commands man to keep his Law, then man must be able to obey his precepts on his own. It is love of sin that keeps people from obeying God’s dictates. Piper continues,
“God decided before the foundation of the world which traitors would be spared. If we bring the assumption to the Bible, that if God desires all people to be saved, he cannot refuse to gift of repentance to any, then we will misinterpret the Bible. That assumption is not taught anywhere in the Bible. Nor is it demanded by the laws of logic. On the contrary, Paul protects us from making that assumption by saying very plainly, “God may perhaps grant them repentance“ 2 Timothy 2:25.”
Mercy, by definition, is underserved. God is under no obligation to grant clemency to anyone.
The Sense of Belonging
“Whatever willingness humans have to come to Jesus is not the basis but the result of belonging to the Father beforehand. ”
It is crucial that we understand the order of salvation. Before time began, the Father chose a people who belong to him. In time, they would be born of a woman and be born again from above. Two thousand years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ took the punishment for these people who belong to the Father. Those who come to Jesus for forgiveness are those whom the Father chose. No one will come to Christ who the Father did not choose; all those that the Father chose will come. No exceptions. This is detailed in John 10. Piper puts it this way: “God chose some darkness lovers to be his.”
The Struggle-Free Life
“If you find the Christian life to be untroubled, without struggle, and without warfare against your own sin, you may not be living the Christian life. If your view of the providence of God is that his promise and power to help us mean there are no commands, no warnings, no threatenings, then your view has probably been more shaped by dubious theological inferences then by specific biblical teachings. ”
The life of a Christian is a battle. It is a war against the world, the flesh and the Devil. If someone isn’t at enmity with their own sin, then they are at enmity with God. There is no neutrality, no middle ground. As Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me . . .” (Matthew 12:30). It is very popular to create a category of Christians who live like pagans. People who are saved, but don’t surrender to Christ as Lord. People who love Jesus, but don’t love his bride, the Church. The Bible says otherwise. God constantly issues commands to all men, for his glory and their good. Life goes better when people obey the Ten Commandments; this is the way God designed the world. And God consistently warns mankind of the consequences of forgetting, ignoring and resisting his Word. The life of the Christian is a package deal and God sets the terms. It is all in Christ. Piper explains:
“The blood of Christ purchased, or secured, sanctification as well as justification, faithful obedience as well as forgiveness, good work as well as eternal life, present transformation as well as final glorification. The practical holiness that leads to heaven Hebrews 12:14, the obedience that enters the kingdom of God 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, the fruit that marks every good tree Matthew 7:18, and the love for people that shows new birth 1 John 3:14 – these realities are not only predestined Romans 8:29 and promised Ezekiel 36:27, but also purchased.”
In other words, no one will end up in Heaven who God didn’t start preparing in this life. It might be just minutes, like it was for the thief on the cross. By God’s grace, it will be a lifetime for faithful saints. But when God saves a man, he empowers him to obey. God begins the transformation process. Not everyone will have a lot of fruit, but every believer will have some fruit. All those who have inherited eternal life will treasure God above all. Piper states it well: “God is not glorified by hearts that are more satisfied in his gifts than in him.”
The Decisive Cause
“People have been taught to a salvation with themselves as the decisive cause at the point of conversion. This view of their own decisive power obscures the glory of what God has actually done for them, strips them of stunned thankfulness for the gift of faith, dulls the intensity of their amazement that they were raised from the dead, it takes away the wonder that their perseverance is owing to the omnipotent, moment-by-moment keeping of God.”
Why are you a Christian and your neighbor isn’t? If you were to die today and God asked you why he should let you enter into Paradise, what would you say? If you answer in the first person, you may not be saved, or you may have a misunderstanding of conversion. There is only one answer that God accepts and that is that someone is saved because God chose them. If you think that your choice made the pivotal difference between Heaven and Hell, you are sadly mistaken. God will not be robbed of the glory to due him and his work. If God only helped you, but didn’t do all the work to bring you from death to life, then your gratefulness need be only partial. You could rightly thank God and congratulate yourself. If God only assisted you in loosing the shackles of sin, then you need not marvel at his awesome power. Rather, you can thank him for the help and go on your way. If you believe that you are “once saved, always saved” because you chose God, then you can “unchoose” him at any time from now throughout eternity and be lost to Hell.
Happy Inconsistencies
“Arminians must either give a praying that God would convert people or give up ultimate self–determination. Or go on acting inconsistently. ”
Those who adopted the Articles of Remonstrance came to be known as Arminians, named after Jacobus Arminius. Perhaps the most famous Arminian was John Wesley (Arminians can also be known as Wesleyans). Arminians believe that fallen man’s self-determination is intact to the extent that he can exercise faith prior to regeneration. Piper points out a glaring inconsistency for the praying Arminian. If he is to pray for someone’s conversion, what exactly is he asking God to do? Is he pleading with God to do everything he can without violating the potential convert’s “free will”? Is he begging God to arrange circumstances such that the sinner will, of his own volition, “realize” his predicament and cry out to God for mercy? If so, then it is still up to the man to respond. God has done everything he can (or will), and it’s in the hands of the God-hating rebel.
Or the Arminian prays that God will make a dead man alive, open a deaf man’s ears, set a prisoner free. Thank God for such inconsistencies. As Piper says, “The unthwartable providence of God is not a problem for evangelism; it is the only hope of success.”