New Calvinists: Unregenerate and Singing Joyfully About It
“But our ongoing Potter’s House studies in the book of Romans reveals something else even more incredulous: the song is a self-described depiction, according to the apostle Paul, of the unregenerate response to the law.”
One of the more popular songs in our New Calvinist nation is “More Like Falling in Love” by antinomian heartthrob Jason Gray. Like all anti-law proponents of our day, he has been allowed to own the dialogue which usually results in winning the argument. In his own bio about the song, he states the following:
Is it weird to anyone else that we’ve made salvation a matter of who has the best information?
Notice how Gray trades the word “truth” for “information.” Switch the words in his sentence, reread, and he is exposed for the wretch that he is. When heretics are allowed to own the dialogue, they can write their own metaphysics. Here are the lyrics to the song:
“More Like Falling In Love”
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them
I need more than
A truth to believe
I need a truth that lives
Moves and breathes
To sweep me off my feet, it’s gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love
Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
‘Cause all religion
Ever made of me
Was just a sinner
With a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free, it’s gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in
Love, love, love
Deeper and deeper, it was
Love that made me a believer
In more than a name
A faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought
The change in me
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love
It’s like I’m falling
(Falling in love)
It’s like I’m falling
Much could be contested here once you get past the initial shock of the song’s brazen anti-truth stance, especially the idea that love-feelings verify authentic truth. But our ongoing Potter’s House studies in the book of Romans reveals something else even more incredulous: the song is a self-described depiction, according to the apostle Paul, of the unregenerate response to the law. In the song, Gray posits the idea that the law merely provokes sin. For the lost person that’s true:
Romans 4:15 – For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
Romans 7:7 – What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
Notice Paul is speaking in the past tense. Before he was saved, the sin that he was enslaved to utilized the law to provoke sinful reactions. And like Jason Gray states in his song,
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them….
Give me words
I’ll misuse them [right, like switching “truth” with “information”]
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
Throughout Romans, Paul describes this state as being “under the law” as opposed to being “under grace”:
Romans 6:14 – For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
You are either “under law” or “under grace.” When you are under law, sin has “dominion over you,” κυριευω (kyrieuo) has both the idea of lordship and control. Paul further explains in Romans 8:7-9:
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Again, exactly as Gray proudly boasts:
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them….
Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
However, when one is “under grace,” their minds are enslaved to the law:
Romans 7:25 – Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
The word for “serve” is “δουλευω (douleuo), a verb form of doulos which is a bond slave. Hence, as believers, our minds are enslaved to the law though we don’t keep it perfectly. Nevertheless, the law is now inclined to incite us to obedience rather than disobedience. Paul states it this way in Romans 8:3-4:
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Furthermore, when we don’t seek to love God by learning and doing, we become ignorant in regard to the law and the likes of Jason Gray can propagate this New Calvinist antinomianism unfettered. And again, the dialogue is not challenged as well. Paul stated,
Romans 6:17 – But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
But Jason Gray states:
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
“Allegiance”? Paul called it a commitment to a “standard of teaching.” We are now slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification (ROM 6:18-19).
That’s New Calvinism: singing praises to Jesus as they draw nearer and nearer to a day of reckoning where they will give an account for their false gospel.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
By the way I originally found this sight from another blog that mentioned an article on here about Voddie Baucham that I was interested in reading. I then because to check out your sit and try to determine your Biblical view. So far all I can tell is that you are anti-Calvanist, which so far we are in agreement.
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Nope, I’m good. Thank you for clarification! That makes sense and is my understanding as well but you worded it much more clearly than I did (I’m not good at putting my thoughts into words). Our justification is completely separate from our sanctification. The last 3 sentences are especially clear – excellently said! I am assuming when you say metaphysical you are talking about the spiritual reality. No pictures needed. haha
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By the way I said the “keeping the letter of the law” not keeping the law “to the letter”, to different things.
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I have one more question, what is your definition of sanctification? To me the simple definition is being set apart from this world unto God and His work, and to be made holy and pure. Justification I understand to mean being viewed by God as “just as if we had never sinned” because of Jesus’s righteousness being imputed unto us. I see the two words being related but not the same. Once you become justified you are then sanctified – set a part to God. Our we are made holy in the sight of God but we are still enslaved to righteousness and still sin. Thus sanctification also describes the process of God making us more righteous in our action.
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The two words are NOT related. Hence, missing from Romans 8:30. Definitive sanct. and Prog. sanct. are related; one is purpose, the other fulfillment of the purpose–but prog. sanct. is not powered by justification but the new birth. Just. and DS are monergistic–prog. sanct is synergistic.
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Thank you for explaining! But I am not used to using all these technical terms like monergistic and synergistic, can you explain this stuff in layman terms? That’s why it has been so hard for me to even read and ascertain your stance in your articles. I have no seminary educations and while I like learning new words and ideas, unless they are explained I don’t know what they mean. Which makes me wonder what audience your blog is written too. If it is the the average person that is seeking the truth, I think much of this would be going over their heads…and this is coming from someone that is very analytically minded.
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Protestantism is predicated on a dumbed-down congregant. It came from the exact same spiritual caste system as Catholicism. Catholics barley bother with Scripture at all, protestants are to use it for gospel contemplationism. Protestantism is monergistic substitutionary sanctification. WE DON’T SEEK TO MEET AMERICAN CHRISTIANS WHERE THEY ARE AT–WE SEEK TO MOVE THEM FORWARD INTO THE SAME EFFORT THEY PUT INTO THEIR ANALYTICAL CAREERS.
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Right, I totally agree we can’t that is a BIG problem in American Church is the idea that we need to meet people at where they are at. We need to see where they are at and help them move forward and encourage and inform. My point is if you are going to use technical terms please explain them in simple form as well. To many churches are either using words like “sanctification” without explaining what it means or the don’t use these words at all…and thus dumbing them down. I am trying to teach myself these things, and seeking this out myself.
Can you explain what you mean by “Protestantism is monergistic substitutionary sanctification.”?
While rain and landscaping are not the same thing they are related though!
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Joshua,
Email me your address at pmd @inbox.com I am going to send you a copy of “False Reformation.” All of your question are laid out in detail in that book and all of the terms are explained. it’s 126 pages and spells out my position point by point.
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Wait the new birth and justification are related though right? You can’t have one without the other, can you?
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You can’t have a pond without rain and a landscape depression. But that doesn’t make rain and landscape the same thing.
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That would be great Paul, I have emailed you.
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