Christ died for ALL men: Interacting with those who are not the elect

I have recently been blessed to share a new acquaintance, Father Kenneth Tanner, pastor of Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, MI.  My introduction to Fr. Tanner was a beautiful poem about our Lord's entry into the world as a babe which I will share with you at the end of this post.

This web log entry is actually a response to a Facebook discussion that began following a post by Fr. Tanner on his own wall which is as follows:

  "In my youth, I was down on folks who said their faith was all about Jesus, who seemed to sit loose on doctrine.
   Yet the older I get the more I think Jesus plus nothing *does* actually equal everything, *if* we really know Jesus.
   If someone wants a vague Jesus, or wants Jesus on their own terms, so that they reject or ignore the experience, practices, and teaching of the first Christians, and of (frankly) most Christians down the centuries, my youthful concern still guides.
   However, time has taught the opposite is true, too: tightly-controlling abstract doctrines apart from an encounter with the living Christ are as dangerous as a vague Jesus with no Creed.
   I ran across a stunning example of this late last night: a learned man, someone with obvious Christian commitments and academic credentials, who, because of an a priori commitment to what is called "definite" (aka, "limited") atonement, admits he is reticent to tell sinners that Christ died for them for fear of lying to them if they are not of the "elect."
   You see, the doctrine of definite (limited) atonement teaches that Jesus' death on the Cross was not intended for "the sins of the whole world," as John plainly tells us, but for the sins only of those who God foreordains to salvation.
   Besides bordering on blasphemy, in its diminishment of the Cross, the doctrine makes a joke of apostolic missionary effort in the New Testament on down to this day, and it puts a damper on Christ's command to preach the Gospel to all nations. Who wants to have either a limited Cross or the fear of telling lies in their mind and heart when they declare the work of Jesus for all persons?
   Bottom line: Someone who starts with Jesus can never paint themselves into the corner this professor and brother in Christ finds himself because he commits first to a set of abstract doctrines, not to the behaviors, actions, teachings, dispositions, and person of Jesus as *the* controlling reality and manifestation of the invisible God."

Below is the exchange which followed that led to my desire to respond more fluently.  I should point out that my initial response was 2 hours after my normal bedtime and hastily typed on my phone.  That Fr. Tanner's eloquent defense was posted another 2 hours later is humbling to say the least.

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Kelley: Fr. Tanner, it is tough for me to read the gospels and not come away with a sense that there is an elect. I do not think it is incompatible with missionary effort as no one but God knows whom the elect are. The more I ponder the "free-will vs. predestination" antinomy, the more I realize that our Lord is big enough to reconcile these things which boggle our finite minds.

Tanner: Jesus dies for the sins of the world. No exegete not already committed to a limited atonement reads the passage as other than "all sins." All sin. I see no conflict in acknowledging the complete victory of God on the Cross over all sin at the same time we discern that some will choose to reject the incomprehensible love expressed by this victory. Yes, election is central to the New Testament but as in the Incarnation, so also at the Cross and in the Resurrection, Jesus Christ is the New Adam, represents a new humanity, a Son whom God elects from before all worlds so that all might be elect in him. Radical universalists say we ultimately cannot resist the choice of God, the choice that as Father, Son and Spirit loved us before any of us existed; while most of the rest of us suspect from the witness of Jesus and the apostles that God really does give us the terrible freedom to choose not to elect his loving "yes," not to accept his loving choice of us. I cannot imagine doing so, or that anyone would, but I do catch glimpse of it in myself, first, and also, at times, in others. I want to believe that God's love is so powerful that no one will be able to resist his love forever. Many say it's Christian to pray that this might be so even as we cannot preach what we do not know. I am one of them.
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Okay, so I am not going to pretend that I think I can convince Father Tanner of the 'rightness' of reformed theology.  I might say that Tanner cannot imagine anyone not accepting God's loving 'yes,' simply because he is a member of the elect and can only think as one; but that would be wriggling off the hook, rather than confronting the dilemma.  In fact, as I pondered how I might respond throughout the day today, I became increasingly convinced that I should just toss this draft and concede that I am not so far along the process of sanctification as my brother Kenneth and I would best be served and serve others by keeping my thoughts to myself.  Then, after a busy day that kept me from doing anything other than my job (I dislike that kind of day though I'm blessed to help people as a career), on my drive home it occurred to me that these may not be words that Fr. Tanner needs to hear, but rather his friend who is locked in a theological quagmire that is stifling the Gospel.

As I initially said, I do not think you can honestly read the gospels, in particular the gospel of John, and not come away with a concept of  'the elect.'  The evangelist and disciple whom our Lord loved and to whom He entrusted his dear mother does say that Jesus died for "the sins of the world," that "God so loved the world he gave his son."  But the same evangelist records our Lord's prayer.  Not the prayer He taught us to say, but the prayer He prayed for us.  In John 17, Jesus prays for those who believe He was sent by the Father, those who the Father gave Him from the world (vv. 8-9).  The elect.  That same evangelist records in his apocalypse an image of our Lord destroying thousands by the power of His word, a vision of an occupied throne sovereign over all, and a prediction of trials for the fledgling church in Smyrna.  The letter to Smyrna (Rev 2:8-11) includes the duration of those trials proving He is aware of the actions the enemy will take against the church and knows the length they will last, that they are predetermined.  For me, it is the writings of this evangelist which most thoroughly inform my position as a believer in predestination.

It is, however, this same evangelist who most thoroughly informs my understanding of God as triune, as "loving relationships in community" as Tim Keller puts it in The Reason for God. To continue to quote Keller's remarkable chapter on the trinity, God is three persons in one, "...in the Christian conception, God really has love at his essence." God offers this love to us.  So how to reconcile the dilemma of delivering a message of hope to someone who may be doomed?  We simply cannot look at it in this way.  We must fall back on our best examples of what our Lord asks of us as members of His body, doing His work.  The Apostles.  They were privileged to hear directly from the incarnate Lord what His work for them was to be.  That work?  Share the message of hope.  Cry out at every opportunity the message of God's love and redemptive plan.  The Apostles, including Paul, do not stop to consider whether someone they share the message with is of the elect.  They trust God, the Holy Spirit, to use them and place them in the position to best achieve His work.  Since I'm not trying to convince a free-will advocate, but rather a believer in predestination there is one example which stands out for me in Acts, when Paul is prevented by the Spirit from going to Bithynia (16:7).  We must trust the Holy Spirit to guide us to those to whom we are meant to share the Gospel.

As I have told a friend who is not (yet) a brother on several occasions, God is a relentless pursuer.  Challenges have faced this friend, things we feel we should not have to endure, and yet somehow I find myself able to share the Gospel with him most easily in the wake of these misfortunes.  I am convinced that God has placed these storms in my friend's life to His good purpose (Jonah 1:14) or at least He is, in Keller's words again, "weaving bad decisions into His loving plan for us."  Should I have withheld the message of saving Grace the Gospel offers because my friend is desperately fleeing God's love?  I see the predetermined-ness of my availability at the precise moments where he needed to hear that God loves him, rather than focusing on the possibility that, perhaps, he will succeed somehow in escaping God's loving, untiring, pursuit of him.  I must trust that my work, as all disciples (and Apostles) before me, is to share the Gospel and I must trust that God's will is not to let one true kernel be lost (Amos 9:9).

Thank you for reading this.  I must end by honoring Father Tanner's request. 

 "To be honest, brothers, I have already taken my eyes too far off Christ with what I've written above about us and how we respond to his love or not. I just listened to John Rutter's magnificent setting of Charles Wesley's "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Give it a listen--hear the words, especially that last verse--and let him take over your vision. Peace." 

Below is the amazingly beautiful poem, which as we are immersed in the season of Advent, seems most appropriate as we contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation.  Let it wash over you and bless you:

She lays his bright flesh in a feed trough, swaddled against the anxiety of leaving her womb, nestled by wool and straw from the cold night's sting.

The One who was God before all worlds lies there, as helpless against fragile existence as any of us, bound to the poverty of homelessness, a slave now to the elements he created, a hungering creature of necessity, soon to be an immigrant fleeing political terror, held aloft from the damp ground by wood that as God he holds together.

At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon said of this tightly wrapped bundle of dust, 'the heaven of heavens cannot contain you.' Yet contained he was for nine months within this weary teenager named Mary, smeared with dirt, sweaty from her labor, catching her breath in time with this One who breathed the stars into the astonished sky above them.

The beginning and end of the Christian revelation of God is this baby, this mother, this manger, this dust, this sweat, this wood, this night, these halting breaths. 
-Kenneth Tanner

Is God just love, or is God just love? Reflections on Jeremiah 42-44 and Luke 23

I've been reading The One Year Bible this year and for the last several days, my 3 year old has asked me to read to her as she falls asleep.  The daily readings this time of year (if you start on January 1) are the last few chapters of Jeremiah.  Not really what I would pick to start my daughter on when thinking of easy verses to digest, but they do put her right to sleep at least.  The subject matter of the book of Jeremiah is the destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians.  This would be a very, very difficult book to understand if you came upon it with the preconceived notion that God is just love.  God imprisons, exiles, slaughters, and starves all but the smallest remnant of His people in the book of Jeremiah.  A different notion of God is needed to understand what is going on.  We must consider God, not as just love; but rather as just love. Merciful, but ultimately just love.

God created us to be in communion with Him, but He also created us to worship Him.  This morning in my life group we watched a lesson from Paul David Tripp on parenting 6-12 year olds which focused on teaching your kids that they are idolaters.  It was listening to Dr. Tripp that led me to understand a passage in Jeremiah and I want to elaborate on that today.  After the Fall, we began to choose other things over God.  As Augustine is oft quoted, "Our loves are not rightly ordered." In the book of Jeremiah, we find that the Jews have, for generations, been idolizing other gods and things and ideas instead of devoting all their worship to their Creator.  Although they have been given a special place in Creation by God, they have chosen to follow other 'gods' and disobey the law that God established for them through Moses.  The Mosaic law has a fairly clear penalty for this: death.

So, when Jeremiah starts to receive messages from The Lord of Heaven's Armies as the NLT translates it, he is surrounded by people who, based on the law they have received from their Creator, carry a death sentence.  In chapter 42, we find the last remaining Judean rebel captains have come to Jeremiah claiming they want the counsel of the Lord.  They claim they will accept what the Lord says and do as He asks.  What God says is amazing.  God says, paraphrasing vv. 10-12, "I'm sorry that I punished you all so severely.  I will stop this and turn my weapon, Babylon, away from you if you obey me and stay in Jerusalem.  I will show you mercy, even though you don't deserve it."  What amazing love!  Generations of these people have dishonored their Creator, even though they know Him and are special to Him, and still God decides to show mercy.

Unfortunately for the Judeans, it turns out they were not being honest with Jeremiah and had already made up their minds to do something different than what God has asked them to do.  Of course, God knows this, but still He seeks for these people to choose differently.  In v. 21, Jeremiah tells them exactly that and in v. 22 he reiterates the fate of those who would disobey and seek refuge in Egypt with the Judean ally against Babylon.  Now we get to the part I was having trouble understanding.  If Jeremiah knows that all the Judeans who enter Egypt will die, then why in 43:6 would he consent to go with them?  I was committing the same idolatry as so many before me.  I was putting myself in Jeremiah's shoes and choosing the idol of comfort and safety over submission to the will of God.  Of course, Jeremiah does not do this. Jeremiah is not an idolater.  He is going to Egypt because his loving God is going to make one more plea to His people to obey Him.  Jeremiah's trip to Egypt affords him the opportunity to actually show the Judeans the very place where the Babylonian king will set up his court to dispense justice upon those who had disobeyed God and make one final plea for them to return to Jerusalem.

This is merciful, but ultimately just, love.  This is not just love.  Even Jeremiah's final plea falls on deaf ears and their sentence is read in 44:14.  The Judeans lived after the law had been established but before God's plan for redemption of all His fallen creation had been revealed.  Later, in Babylon, a man named Daniel would be one of the first humans to have God's redemptive plan explained to him.  If you don't know the details of this plan of redemption or have questions about it, please contact me or ask another Christian about something called The Gospel.  It will, quite literally, save your life.  If you've accepted the good news and still want to read my ramblings about how this same quality of just love is revealed in Luke's recounting of Jesus on the cross, then let's continue.

In Luke 23, Jesus is sentenced to execution by crucifixion.  On the day of his execution, it just so happens that two other men have been ordered to be crucified at the same site.  These two men carry a death sentence which has been justly issued under Roman law, just as the Judeans in Jeremiah's day carried death sentences justly issued under Mosaic law.  In vv. 39-43 we have an exchange between these men and Jesus.  One man, seeking a God who is just love, asks for Jesus to save himself and them, even though they don't deserve it.  The other man, recognizing that God is just, knows that he deserves to die and asks only that Jesus "remember" him, a plea for mercy over justice.  One of these men is promised paradise though he deserves only death.  The other man was given an opportunity.  He, though he did not deserve it, was given a model in his fellow condemnee of a way to escape death.  Had he chosen to admit his guilt and plea for mercy over justice as the other man had done, I am certain that Jesus would have granted it.  As the evangelist does not record this act of repentance, we are left to surmise that it did not occur.  Ultimately, Jesus(God), did not show only love for his created and save everyone, but rather displayed merciful just love.

Are Americans living in 5th Century BC Judah? : Reflections on Nehemiah Chapters 1-6

  When reading Nehemiah this morning I couldn't help but draw comparison to our current situation.  When Nehemiah requested permission to return to his native Judah and leave the service of the Persian king Artaxerxes, his country was in trouble.  The walls of the capital, Jerusalem, had been toppled and were thought irreparable.  His countrymen had allowed a system to perpetuate over generations that had led to severe wage inequality to the point where the 'nobles and leaders' (NLT) were in a positions of ownership of not only most of the arable land and planted orchards and vineyards which they had acquired after citizens had been unable to repay mortgages, but they had even purchased many of the people as the lower class citizens had been required to sell themselves or their children into slavery to buy food and pay taxes/tributes.
  Today, in the US, our economy has been severely affected by world events leaving us vulnerable in a way we have never been in the past.  Although our military is intact, I can't help but see the parallel to the mighty capital city, Jerusalem, with its walls toppled.  We have indebted ourselves as a nation to other national interests by selling bonds internationally as a way to support spending domestically.  The economic downturn has left many families who once had homes of their own now indebted to others or forcibly removed because they have been unable to afford their mortgages.  Worse, wage inequality is so severe that many people cannot work enough to support themselves and their families.  Although we have abolished slavery, this creates a state of dependency and desperation for even low-wage jobs that is tantamount to the bond-servitude of ancient times.
  I could flesh this out further, but I think I've made my point.  The question I have is this: Does God's Word provide an answer for us in our situation?  I think the answer is yes.  In fact, I would argue that the answer to this question is always yes, whatever you might be facing, but I will focus on the answer I found to our national dilemma in the Word this morning.
  On Nehemiah's arrival everything changed.  Nehemiah had the authority of the king to utilize resources to rebuild the walls, but those resources were not just going to show up on their own.  The people of Judah recognized that in Nehemiah they had a leader with vision who could direct them effectively.  They banded together as a nation and rolled up their sleeves to harvest lumber, cut stone, clear rubble, and rebuild their capital and their nation.  The 'nobles and leaders' voluntarily restored previously mortgaged lands to their original owners, recognizing that home-ownership of the citizens would increase the prosperity of their nation.  Slaves (bond-servants) were freed to return to their families and work their own land.
  Our nation once had this common vision.  When faced with a threat to our existence we made the choice to band together and roll up our sleeves.  Marginal income taxes on the wealthy increased to over 80 percent in order to provide the resources for the common good.  Wage inequality improved as business owners took less profit home (or to shareholders) and returned it to the workers in higher wages.  If that meant local goods were more expensive, other citizens were willing to pay more to see our flag on the tag or sticker of the products they purchased.
  So what can we learn from Nehemiah today?  Our obstacles, however great, are not insurmountable but we must have a common vision.  We must have people willing to roll up their sleeves and work hard and we must have the support of those of means and those in power to rally us, sacrifice their wealth for the common good, and lead us back to prosperity.