LaRosa Johnson {dot} com

Over the past few weeks and months I’ve noticed quite a bit of discussion and controversy over the doctrines of grace (i.e. Calvinism) versus practically everything else. There have been countless discussions & debates on message boards and forums, as well as a number of bloggers who have chosen to write about the subject, I guess with myself included now that I’m writing this. It’s been a topic on my mind of late because it has hit particularly close to home, or sorts.

A few weeks ago, in December sometime, a friend of mine was having a discussion after church with one of the ordained pastors over this very topic. Since it was getting late, they agreed to discuss it over email, which I happened to be CC’ed on, and got to watch the entire discourse. Well, around the same time one of the TM forum members was posting a topic discussing Calvinism versus Arminianism, a carryover from a debate he had had elsewhere. So, it has been pretty close to home, so I figured I’d briefly share some thoughts concerning the subject (hoping to not start a debate in the process).

In gauging the discussions that I’ve seen online, it seems that one of the major hot button issues is the sovereignty of God. From the Reformed (Calvinist) side of things, there is a major push that God is completely in control of the salvific experience, to the point of choosing some for salvation and dooming others to hell, with them having no say in the matter. On the other hand, the opposing view tries to take God’s sovereignty completely out of the picture, saying that salvation is all about man’s free will and that God’s sovereignty doesn’t play much part at all. The more I study it, I have a hard time believing that either side is balanced in its view. On both sides, each is able to find Bible passages that fit into their view, but from what I’ve seen, neither handles the other’s passages very well.

As I grew up in church, this was never much of a discussion. We were taught to get saved, live like a Christian, that we couldn’t lose our salvation, and that was the extent of it; there really wasn’t a depth to theology and studying the Bible. So, when I left my church back in North Carolina, one of the first things I studied was the doctrine of salvation. I almost immediately rejected Arminianism because I knew that I didn’t agree with their beliefs. So, that left Calvinism for me to study. I bought several books on the subject and read them cover to cover, and I even discussed the subject with many who held to these doctrines. All of that went well, but there were passages that I was never able to adequately resolve in studying that point of view. The idea of Limited Atonement was one of them because it ignored the plain reading of texts like John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:3-6 to name a couple. It was things like that, as well as passages showing man’s role in salvation that led me to believe that there had to be something more biblically balanced than what the doctrines of grace teach.

The more I studied things, I couldn’t help but notice a difference between total depravity and total inability. In just about everything I studied from the Calvinist side of things, everything was taken to the point that man is unable to respond to the grace of God, unable to do anything related to the gospel unless God first makes it happen, including man’s belief in the gospel. Hence total inability, there is absolutely nothing that man can do to save himself. Though, this is not the same as total depravity which is the fact that man’s nature and faculties are corrupted by the sin nature. As a result, there’s nothing we can do to earn or deserve eternal life on our own merit. With that, God does indeed draw all men (John 12:32; Titus 2:11), and man is able to receive and respond to the grace of God (Matthew 23:37; John 5:24-25; Ephesians 2:8-9). The main difference is that man is a free moral agent that is vested with the responsibility to respond to God’s grace when it is presented to Him (John 1:1-9; 3:16-17). Even though man is depraved, he can still respond to God’s grace and come to Christ and is called to do so (Revelation 22:17). This is a very important distinction to make because Reformed theology hinges on this point. If man is completely unable to do anything, then of course God is forced to do everything concerning salvation, therefore you end up with the extreme view of God’s sovereignty.

But man having a responsibility in salvific experience does not negate God’s sovereignty, not in any way. God was still sovereign when He allowed Satan to fall & rebel, was He not? That’s beside the point, so let’s continue. With total depravity in view, it’s obvious that man cannot merit eternal life, nor can he merit God’s grace. So, yes, election is totally an act of God’s grace (Ephesians 1:4-6), but man is still given a responsibility. Man’s response to God’s grace is to simply believe. The Bible teaches both God’s sovereignty in choosing men for salvation and man’s responsibility to believe. The Bible tells us that God desires for all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4) and that none should perish (2 Peter 3:9). Furthermore, the gospel is a whosoever message, stating that whoever believes in Jesus can have eternal life (John 3:16). Also, with the whole issue of predestination & foreknowledge, the Bible places foreknowledge before predestination (Romans 8:28-30). Nevertheless, those that go to hell go because they chose to reject God’s grace, not because of an inability to respond to it. You see, the problem with total inability is that it says that man is unable to do anything, including believe; yet, the imperative when the gospel is given is always "believe." In other words, the person has the choice whether to believe or deny the offer of salvation. If this were not the case, why would the god of this world be working to blind the minds of the unbelieving if they couldn’t believe anyway without the help of God (2 Corinthians 4:4)? Furthermore, in Paul’s speech at the Areopagus, he even states that God desires for man to seek after God, even to the point of groping Him out and finding Him (Acts 17:27); if we couldn’t seek God, then why are we told that it’s part of God’s reason for making us?

What makes this all the more reasonable is God’s common grace. God gives us everything we need in order to seek after Him, but it’s our choice whether we choose to do so. Passages like Matthew 5:45; Titus 2:11; and Romans 1 all give us a glimpse at the common grace of God, showing how He is impartial to all men. Although circumstances may be different, all receive an equal opportunity at receiving salvation. Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus Christ came to die for all men, not just a specific few; one passage to support this is 1 John 2:2, which is written to believers, and states that He didn’t just die for Christians only, but for the whole world. Other passages would include 1 Timothy 2:3-6 and Hebrews 2:9. The problem is that some choose
not to believe (John 5:40), but those that do believe are saved by grace through their faith in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8, 9) and are immediately made alive spiritually. Yes, Christ’s death was sufficient for all, but only efficient or effective for those who choose to take advantage of it.

From what I see in Scripture, I see God’s sovereignty in that He has executed a perfect plan from Alpha to Omega that includes sinful man and all of his decisions for good or bad, and I also see man’s responsibility to respond to the grace offered by God. Nowhere in Scripture do I see someone who is "made" to believe in Christ; instead, I always see people who are confronted with the truth and then choose to believe. All throughout the gospels we see examples of those who followed Jesus and witnessed His miracles and still chose to not believe in Him as Messiah, while there were others who believed wholeheartedly. The same holds true in Acts and the rest of Scripture. You have some who deny the truth while others accept it, but for each individual the choice was wholly theirs.

That’s what I believe and what I teach. I’m not here to debate it with anyone, although I will examine the Scriptures with my brethren. Indeed iron does sharpen iron, and we can all stand to learn from the Word of Truth, myself included. In terms of this discussion, I will keep comments moderated because, as I stated, this is not something I choose to debate, at least not at this time; I just wanted to share my observations on a prevalent topic. If you desire to debate the topic, there are many other avenues where that can take place and is better suited.

Grace and peace.

I don’t know what it is, but I have a pretty good feeling about this week. It’s funny to think about because this morning was a complete mess of things. I woke up on time, but the morning just seemed to drag and we didn’t get out of the house on time for church (we usually leave by 8:45 at the latest, and didn’t leave until about 9:10-9:15). Then, on the way to church, I seemed to hit every red light possible, making us that much later for church. Now, remember, it takes about 40 minutes for us to get to church, with service starting @ 9:30. Well, we got there at 9:55 or so. Luckily I didn’t miss any of the notes on the slideshow, and I can catch any teaching I missed via MP3.

That aside, the rest of the day went very well. I think the best part was the Pastor’s Ministry Workshop. We’re discussing the Plan of God and tonight the subject was primarily focused on the humanity of Jesus Christ. That was some interesting discussion and really brought out a lot of doctrinal details that a lot of Christians don’t spend too much time thinking about. I even spent a few minutes after class talking to Pastor Bob about things that we didn’t have time to discuss in class.

The events of the day have me in a good mood though, although I’m not sure why. Of course, I’m amazed at the depth of Scripture and all that the Lord has done, but in general I just feel good without really having a reason. Either way, the upcoming week should be good. The new year of language courses start, as I’m taking 2nd year Greek on Tuesday nights & 1st year Hebrew on Thursday nights (with midweek service sandwiched between on Wednesdays). I’m really looking forward to those because if I can get through those two classes this year, I should be able to feel really confident about my ministry training and the progress I’m making, especially if I can handle Greek & Hebrew simultaneously.

I also feel pretty good about work this week, for whatever reason. I’ve got another Bible (interlinear) that I’m working on, which should be finished sometime this week. It’s come together pretty quickly, and it should be a nice product for the customers to have in hand.

Last but not least, I got Windows 7 32-bit beta installed this weekend and everything seems to be going smoothly. My computer didn’t blow up, so things must be going good.

With that, I’m going to vibe out to some jazz as I get ready for bed and anticipate a new day, Lord willing. Shalom!

It’s only January 3, but I’ve been pretty busy. Over the past couple days, I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on Trailblazin Ministries, getting things in order for the upcoming year. For starters, one of the more important things I did was update the mission statement for this ministry & website. When I changed the name of this ministry to its current name back in 2005, I distinctly made urban & hip-hop culture a focus. In the three years that this site has been around, we really haven’t done a whole lot to target that focus group, outside of a few items here & there; so, with that in mind, I changed the mission statement to reflect a more centralized vision, which is to simply teach the Bible, with a very minor emphasis on the urban culture (i.e. hip-hop devotions & album reviews).

Before that, though, I did some cleaning up by pruning some old users from the forum. The community forum had well over 500 registered members to its name, but only a small percentage (and I do mean small) of them actually log in & participate on the forums. I really didn’t mind this too much until I decided to send out a mass email via the forum and got a significant amount of bounced emails. So, I went in and removed all of the accounts with invalid email addresses. After that, I decided to do more cleaning, eventually getting to the point where I deleted everyone who had never logged in or hadn’t logged in at all in 2008. That brought the final number of registered users down to 60 or so, down from 500+. My goal in doing that was to have the forum reflect a more accurate user base, having only those who are active participants.

After completing that task, I moved on to the Steps DTM portion of the site, since I knew I had a new class coming in this month. I wanted to rearrange the classes a bit and finish publishing the later lessons. This actually worked out well because I used some material that I had just gotten in the past few weeks as part of one of the lessons; it seems that was the missing piece all along. In a matter of a couple hours I had that job completed. I celebrated that victory by emailing all of the new Steps disciples of their acceptance and getting them all setup for the course of study.

Then there’s the whole bookstore thing, which you can read about in the news section of the main site. That was a few hours of work, but well worth it. It’s nice to know that people can now purchase physical copies of my writings if they so choose.

To round things out, I also helped Garrett & George get setup for their upcoming devotion series, and welcomed aboard a new album reviewer. All in all, I’d say that we’re ready for 2009; I just need to get on the ball and start cranking out these 1 Thessalonians devotions, but that will come in due time. I’m excited to see what the Lord has in store for this year, and I’m going to do my best to rejoice in every single day.