The New Calvinist Mega-Lie: Obedience and Truth are Separate
“Therefore, Christians don’t obey for the purpose of maintaining our just standard; it is a finished work by Christ that needs no further maintenance. We obey for other reasons….”
Have you ever noticed? The Scriptures NEVER call “obedience” works salvation. We are never told that people are trying to earn their way into heaven through “obedience.” Obedience, in the Scriptures, is ALWAYS associated with the truthful application of God’s word to our lives in how we think and what we do. It is the truthful application of our role in sanctification which is putting off the old self and putting on the new creature (Ephesians 4:20-24). In the Scriptures, truth is always assumed in obedience.
This is New Calvinism’s greatest deception, the idea that one can sincerely seek to apply God’s word to their lives in a truthful way, and at the same time do so to maintain a just standing before God without realizing they are doing so. This invokes a dependance on them, a don’t try sanctification at home mentality. Though they claim that obedience is motivated by fear within the evangelical community, their sanctification formula propagates an unfounded fear that obedience is nothing more than works salvation, in and of itself. The fact of the matter is that works salvation is always based on falsehood.
Unlike the Bible, New Calvinists don’t associate obedience with truth, a love for the truth, and faith. They separate the two, specifically by separating “law” and “gospel.” Law is obedience, whether practiced in truth or not, and gospel is truth. There are many examples of this, but here is the best one I have seen of late:
This is fundamentally no different than Islam! The Gospel offers us freedom from our sin-stained hearts and our obedience-stained garments and bids us rest in the finished work of Christ which is better than us being better!!!” (Jean F. Larroux, III, Green Grass of Grace Southwood blog).
Notice: obedience is obedience whether it is Christian or Islam. Truth isn’t the issue. But the apostle Paul clearly unites the two:
They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:19-24).
Obviously, Paul is calling on Christians to learn truth, and put off what we learn to put off, and put on what we learn that is to be put on. The Bible calls this “obedience” when it is done as biblically prescribed. If I tell my son to take the trash out to the curb, but instead he leaves it halfway down the driveway, that’s not obedience. Unless you’re a New Calvinist. With them, truthful obedience is neither here nor there because it is impossible for Christians to accomplish anyway:
The bad news is far worse than making mistakes or failing to live up to the legalistic standards of fundamentalism. It is that the best efforts of the best Christians, on the best days, in the best frame of heart and mind, with the best motives fall short of the true righteousness and holiness that God requires [notice that there is no distinction between this sentence and the one prior (legalistic standards verses true righteousness)]. Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice. Yet the good news is that God has satisfied his own justice and reconciled us to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. God’s holy law can no longer condemn us because we are in Christ (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity p. 91).
It is also extremely important here to notice the crux of New Calvinist error in this statement; specifically, the supposed need to maintain justification: “….the best motives fall short of the true righteousness and holiness that God requires…. Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice.” But in sanctification, God no longer requires a just standard to maintain salvation, that has already been accomplished as a finished work. God no longer “requires” perfection that maintains our just standing. Therefore, Christians don’t obey for the purpose of maintaining our just standard/standing; it is a finished work by Christ that needs no further maintenance. We obey for other reasons—to glorify God, to experience the reality of our new birth, to show others the abundant life, and to destroy evil works, to name just a few. And also, our God-given love for the truth compels us to apply it to our lives.
Therefore, New Calvinism fuses what shouldn’t be fused and separates what shouldn’t be separated, turning orthodoxy completely upside down. They fuse justification and sanctification, and separate obedience from truth, while fictitiously calling obedience “law” (whether Christian or Islamic), and encapsulating truth in the “gospel” which is supposedly distinct from “law.” But what would we know about the gospel apart from Scripture? Christ said man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Wouldn’t that include the law? Paul told Timothy that we are fully equipped for every good work by ALL Scripture. Wouldn’t that also include the law?
This fusing of what shouldn’t be fused and separating what shouldn’t be separated is the basis of their Gospel Contemplationism. Law (any effort to obey, whether according to the truth or not) is separate from gospel and impossible for us to obey perfectly in order to maintain a salvation that doesn’t need to be maintained to begin with. The formula? Contemplation on the truth that results in a “Christ formation” within totally depraved, dead jars of clay. Doubt that? reread Larroux’s quote; our hearts are sin stained as well as any obedience we may perform.
The truth: we are declared righteous and are righteous, though hindered by the flesh. Though our striving falls short of perfection, we know that can’t affect our righteous standing that has already been declared based on the finished work of Christ. And that cannot be revoked. As we strive, we also long for the day when we can obey our Lord perfectly without hindrance. So like Paul, we cry out, “who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Our striving creates that thirst, experiencing both the blessings of that truth and the failures that prevent the full experience. Peter states clearly that we are to strive for a “rich entry,“ not the beggarly entry that comes from let go and let God theology.
paul
The New Calvinist Takeover of Southwood Presbyterian Church: Part 19; Bachman – Turner Overdrive
Cruising down the highway as a young man, I was feeling pretty good listening to my rock music on the awesome new technology that replaced 8-track tapes, cassettes. One of my preferred bands was Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and one of my favorite songs was “Taking Care Of Business.” Sure, I knew a particular statement in the lyrics made no sense at all; “We love to work at nothing all day,” but I really dug the song man, and at that time of my life, trust me, the tune was way more important than the truth.
Since I have been studying New Calvinism for nearly five years now, that song has constantly been triggered in my mind. As I was perusing Southwood’s blog this morning, stopping to read “Green Grass of Grace,” by Jean (pronounced “ Jon”) F. Larroux (don’t forget: “The Third” hereafter; “JL3”), I observed the opening sentence: “Grace is difficult. It is harder than trying harder.” Then it happened in my head:
“People see you having fun
Just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It’s the work that we avoid
And we’re all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day
And we be…
Taking care of business every day
Taking care of business every way
I’ve been taking care of business, it’s all mine
Taking care of business and working overtime.”
In another post, JL3 said, “I’m not arguing for NO EFFORT or WORK I am arguing for GREATER EFFORT and MORE DIFFICULT WORK, the work of humbling ourselves, being broken, repentant, prostrate before God, looking past our ‘symptomatic sins’ to their root causes and being faced with such horror over my depravity that I am left with no other options than Jesus” (not sure, but I think the comment was pulled down).
Tullian Tchividjian, JL3’s obvious mentor stated it this way in “The Tyranny of Accountability Groups”:
The bottom line is this, Christian: because of Christ’s work on your behalf, God does not dwell on your sin the way you do. So relax and rejoice…and you’ll actually start to get better. The irony, of course, is that it’s only when we stop obsessing over our own need to be holy and focus instead on the beauty of Christ’s holiness that we actually become more holy! Not to mention, we start to become a lot easier to live with!
Oh really? I would think that people who focus on Matthew 7:24 with the result of their life being built on a rock would be the ones easier to get along with. And of course, I am constantly told by New Calvinist hacks that for me to say that these kinds of statements insinuate that Jesus obeys for is “reading into their statements.” Whatever. We see four things in Tchividjian’s statement: 1; Christ has done the work of sanctification on our behalf (ie., sanctification’s work was part of the atonement). 2; Doing less results in being “better,” productivity for the sake of the kingdom is conspicuously absent—per the usual. 3; Holiness comes by focusing on Christ’s holiness and not our own, resulting in more holiness. And I am often accused of “reading things into their statements” regarding the “Gospel Contemplationism” charge. Again, whatever. 4; The either/or communication technique, It’s either Christ’s holiness or our holiness, it can’t be both.
JL3 continues:
We are allergic to resting in the finished work of Christ and the hardest ‘trophy’ to lay down is that trophy of obedience I have been working for my whole life. To make the shift from an life driven by fear to a life motivated by love is very, very painful.
Notice that the finished work of Christ pertains to both justification and sanctification. Accuse me of reading into to this if you will, but what else can be surmised? Also, we gain see the either/or hermeneutic: we are either motivated by love or fear, it can’t be something else—it’s either/or. But the contradictions in JL3’s posts are too massive to document; for example, the Scriptures are clear that at times, God does motivate us by fear. Like all New Calvinists, JL3 validates love as something that is always (as stated by, of all people, John MacArthur) “always sweet, never bitter-sweet.” This removes the self-sacrifice aspect of love through obedience. And it brings us back to Bachman-Turner Overdrive theology as well: they only worked hard at what they loved, which was doing nothing.
Most of us have obeyed because of fear of reprisal from God. To know that we are loved apart from our obedience or disobedience is a truth that is elusive. This is why it must be pounded into our souls week after week.
This is a bunch of boloney, and notice JL3’s New Calvinist us against them mentality. “Most” obey from fear? Anybody who does counseling knows that isn’t true—fear of God is never been more lacking in recent church history.
We have purposed to drive deep into those fields ripe with the green grass of the grace of God, not into the rocky crags of fundamentalism, legalism and pietism hoping that some nourishing shoot of grace will emerge every now and again. The sheep cannot be sustained on a sparse diet of occasional grace.
Either/or: it’s either grace, or rocky crags. Nuff said, like all New Calvinists, his whole realm of speech is fraught with deceptive communication techniques.
Everything in Christendom tells them to weave for themselves garments of obedience and performance to wear before the Great White Throne of Judgment as ‘jewels in their crown.’
This hearkens back to JL3’s ancestors of the Australian Forum (the cradle of New Calvinism) who mixed Reformed teachings with SDA investigative judgment theology. Christians fear no future judgment concerning our righteousness—the righteousness of God has already been accredited to our account in full.
This is fundamentally no different than Islam! The Gospel offers us freedom from our sin-stained hearts and our obedience-stained garments and bids us rest in the finished work of Christ which is better than us being better!!!’
So, obedience in Islam is no different than obedience in Christianity? Sure it is. Christian obedience is based on T-R-U-T-H. The fundamental difference between Christianity and all other religions is our God given love for truth (2Thess. 2:10), which translates into applying it to our life. Hence, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” You can’t separate love for the truth from wanting to learn more about it, and then making it part of you. We are promised blessings if we do that (James 1:25).
JL3’s New Calvinistic teachings also has another tone shared by Bachman-Turner theology: the song demeaned people who supposedly wasted their life by doing things they didn’t like to do. New Calvinists often refer to our striving to obey as “rats on a treadmill” etc. Like MacArthur, we are told by JL3 that we should strive for a life that is “sweet, never bittersweet.” The fact is rather this: in pursuing truth, it will often collide with life, and other times it will bring joy. But when the experience is “bittersweet,” that’s not works salvation, it’s called “self-sacrifice.”
The apostle John reminded us that the Lord’s commands are not “burdensome.” We need to be reminded of this, because his commands are truth, and we love the truth. Sometimes the truth is hard, and it calls for us to reject the tune in exchange for the truth. Whatever the tune may be, whether, “resting is better than being better,” or a “love to work at nothing all day.”
paul
New Calvinists Don’t Play Well With Others
For some time, this blog has been harassed by a New Covenant theologian from Costa Rica. He has not only harassed me which I am accustomed to anyway, but he has also harassed my readers with endless circular arguments that are typical of New Calvinists. He has also showed hostility towards those who disagree with him which is also part of the New Calvinist mode of operation.
This post is sort of an apology as well to my readers. I am a layman and not much of an IT guy, so between working/writing/husbanding/fathering and not knowing all the ends and outs of web stuff—it took me awhile to figure out how to blacklist him from the site. I know, moderating mode is easy, but that’s also TIME that I don’t have. We will see if my new tweaking of the blog settings will work.
However, this all brings back to mind how hostile, condescending, and elitist New Calvinists are in general. This comes from two sources: One; New Calvinists think they are completing the original Reformation. In their minds, literally, today’s gospel narrative in the “ongoing redemptive drama” is the same as it was during the great Reformation. They are Luther’s children and I will give you three wild guesses as to who we are. Secondly; they resent the fact that evangelicals have supposedly led myriads into hell because of the separation of justification and sanctification; specifically, some of their own relatives. When they talk about “justification by faith,” let me give you a heads-up fellow evangelical—they are talking about sanctification also: “The same gospel that saves us also sanctifies us.” What do you think they are saying when they say that? Please, words mean things—start listening to them and stop assuming you know what they are saying!
Look, this mentality came directly from the Australian Forum. Everything is either Rome or the Reformers—the subjective gospel or the objective gospel. Listen to the contemporary NC crowd carefully and you will hear them say it all the time. Piper said it while commenting on Goldsworthy’s lecture at Southern seminary. On the one hand, they’re Reformers that will go down in church history, on the other, Roman Catholicism is behind every bush. It’s visions of grandeur on steroids.
This mentality is driving the hostile takeover of many ministries, ie, Coral Ridge as one example, and rampant elder abuse of parishioners. Parishioners in New Calvinist churches may rape pillage and steel, but don’t you dare question doctrine. In one particular case in a well-known NC church , a parishioner sent a letter to an excommunicated individual (same church) who questioned doctrine; the parishioner stated that she knew why he was targeted, and that she was not only a member in good standing, but living with her boyfriend out of wedlock under the full knowledge of the elders. I saw the letter. After all, we are all totally depraved anyway, right?
This mentality can be seen among their leaders on a national level. The wagons have been circled around CJ Mahaney for the exact aforementioned abuse I am talking about. It is my understanding from people who follow that venue that the website SGM Survivors . Com has been up for four years while John MacArthur, Al Mohler, and others clamor to hold events with him. His heavy handed squashing of detractors is irrelevant; “He has the gospel right.” Not that it mattered that much as I had only been there three times in about four years, and that at the behest of others, the Pyro blog blacklisted me for pointing out that Piper often flip-flops between justification and sanctification in his messages without any transitions. Frank Turk, a Pyro contributor, rebuked me for daring to “slander” Piper and said “to know Piper is to grasp Piper.” He also aped the often used you can’t criticize a NC unless you have read everything they have written routine. Of course, that would exclude any criticism of Piper because he has written about 600 books—all concerning the eternal depths of joy and proofs that God is a happy God which is supposedly a primary theme of Scripture as opposed to discussion about His holiness. The author of the blog, the insufferable Phil Johnson, bemoaned the fact that women had the audacity to criticize a teacher of “Piper’s stature” rather than being in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.
I was in a Christian bookstore the other day and it occurred to me that other people telling Spirit filled Christians what God is saying to them is big business. The New Calvinists are making big bucks selling the idea that they are the new Reformers here to finish what Luther started (by the way, Luther’s contention with Rome was on a moral issue, [indulgences] not salvation by grace alone). And you’re either with them, or you are with the Romans. Character doesn’t matter, if CJ draws a crowd, CJ is too big to fail. Follow the money.
Enough is enough—Christians need to take the church back from New Calvinism. And by the way, Christ said, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” So, sometimes I wonder about this whole “Reformation” motif to begin with. Had Rome temporarily prevailed against God’s church? Don’t know, but I can tell you that I don’t believe it because a bunch of men say it’s true. And the “new” Reformation? Well, that’s definitely a stretch.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
55 comments