Paul's Passing Thoughts

As posted yesterday, accepting any rewriting of history is a very dangerous precedent, especially in regard to the gospel, and the New Calvinist crowd works hard at rewriting history. The Resolved series of conferences sponsored by John MacArthur Jr. focused heavily on rewriting history, often representing Puritans as martyrs when many were executed for political intrigue. The Fox’s Book of Martyrs is a shameful and egregious rewriting of history; specifically, it omits the fact that Protestants were guilty of the exact same persecution towards those who disagreed with them. The book has no credibility whatsoever.

This brings us to the rewriting of history in regard to the Pharisees by New Calvinists. The narrative goes like this:

The Pharisees were really, really good at keeping the law, but at the end of the day, Christ said that you need a righteousness that exceeds theirs! What to do? Answer: cling to faith alone which imparts righteousness to us not our own. When Jesus said “your” righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, he was really talking about His own righteousness imputed to us.

So, saving faith is defined as knowing you are wicked. The unregenerate are defined as those who think they possess righteousness. The new birth is therefore defined as a different knowing—not a different person. If you think you are a different person who possesses a righteousness that is part of you, well, you don’t “need a physician.”

Hence, you must see Christ’s role in justification as ongoing and not finished, and you must continue to appropriate the imputation of His righteousness by simply believing and not “anything we do.” The New Calvinists of our day use the exact same lingo as the Australian Forum did, and that is why they are running from that history:

Christ’s doing and dying—not ours.

This truism was uniquely Forum, as well as many other truisms authored by them and used by the New Calvinists of our day. However, let us not miss the fact that this idea of  an ongoing need for a justification physician is fundamental Calvinism whether the theologians of our day know it or not. If you are going to call yourself a Calvinist, you really ought to read Calvin for yourself.

So, in Matthew 5:20, when Christ referred to “your” [our] righteousness, “your” really doesn’t mean “your,” He meant “His” [my]. Therefore, according to New Calvinists, a better rendering would be:

For I tell you, unless you have my righteousness which exceeds that of the Pharisees who are really, really good at keeping the law, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Supposedly then, only those who know they are wicked inherit eternal life. Hmmmmm, really? Actually, there are a couple of huge problems here, and what is at stake is the true gospel. First, the Pharisees were not really, really good at keeping the law—they were horrible at keeping the law. Christ said they were “lawless” on the inside and the outside. They also edited the law with their own traditions. This whole, the Pharisees were really, really good at keeping the law is a rewriting of history.

Secondly, the Bible states in many, many places that Christians possess righteousness that is part and parcel with their being. We are not only declared righteous, we are righteous, and only the righteous will inherit the kingdom. Pastors, I warn you: when you hear a fellow Christian say they “have no righteousness of their own,” you better qualify that. Righteousness, albeit a gift, is ours because it is gifted to us, and certain attitudes about works in sanctification reveal what we believe about justification; e.g., the Parable of the Talents.

The reason we are considered righteous, and are righteous regardless of the fact that we still sin is a matter of proper understanding about law and gospel. Suffice to say for purposes of this post that we have this treasure in jars of clay, but yet, that doesn’t take away from the value of the treasure—it is still a treasure. In 1John, we are told God’s seed is IN us. End of argument. Moreover, Paul uses a double emphasis to state the fact that Christians possess a goodness that is part and parcel with their being:

Romans 15:14 – I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.

What part of “you yourselves” do we not understand? When Christ said “your” righteousness, he meant “your.” Christ said, “You must be born again.” This isn’t a rebirth of mere awareness that James railed against; this is a rebirth of your being.

Another reason New Calvinism wants to separate itself from the Forum is because they lacked the same nuance that New Calvinists like John Piper and Al Mohler have mastered. The Forum wrote an article titled, “The False Gospel of the New Birth” footnoted by one of its participants and leading authority on New Calvinist hermeneutics, Graeme Goldsworthy, who was invited to lecture at Sothern Seminary in 2009. The clear argument of the article was that the new birth was true (as are shadows, but do not have the sun’s life-giving source), but any emphasis on it would take away from the “best thing” which is Christ. In other words, the new birth is true, but irrelevant—even damaging because it puts the focus on us and not Christ. This gets into the whole subjective gospel versus objective gospel that there is no room for here.

I fear that New Calvinism is one of the wide roads that lead to hell that Christ warned us of. It redefines the new birth as a mere awareness devoid of new creaturehood. It is a movement that heralds the total depravity of the saints and denies the new birth.

paul