1. Why doesn't God save everyone even though He loves everyone?
2. On Charity and AffectionNot everyone will believe the gospel. Why?“God desires all people to be saved,” 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us. “God does not take pleasure in the death of anyone,” Ezekiel 18:32 says. Then why are there some who refuse to trust in Jesus and therefore die lost in their sins?There are two different answers to this question.But we should understand that these two answers go beyond making sense of God’s will of decree and will of command. Those “two wills” in God describe a biblical distinction that’s been expressed various ways in the Scriptures and throughout the centuries. God’s “two ways of willing,” writes John Piper, “implies that God decrees one state of affair while also willing and teaching that another state of affairs should come to pass” (Does God Desire All to Be Saved?, 16). This means that though God desires all people to be saved (his “will of command”), only those chosen in Christ will believe the gospel and be saved (his “will of decree”). But true as it is, this explanation still falls short of getting to the why. Why is this the case? Why does God not decree all that he prescribes?And here is where we face those two different answers.One answer is that there is something more powerful than God that is able to frustrate his will. It says that God is nice to desire all people to be saved, but he doesn’t have the strength to make it happen. The second answer says, in Piper’s words, “God wills not to save all, even though he ‘desires’ that all be saved, because there is something else that he wills or desires more, which would be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all” (emphasis added, 39).The second answer is one that both Calvinists and Arminians can affirm. Both say that God doesn’t save everyone because he is committed to something more than saving everyone. The difference between Calvinists and Arminians is seen in what that higher commitment is.Piper explains,The answer the Arminians give is that human self-determination and the possible resulting love relationship with God are more valuable than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious grace. The answer the Reformed give is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and mercy (Romans 9:22–23) and the humbling of man so that he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Corinthians 1:29). (39)So one explanation says that the higher commitment is God leaving the destiny of our eternal souls up to our own decision-making. The higher commitment is God securing our right to let our choices be the decisive factor in where we spend eternity. The other explanation — the Calvinist answer — says that God’s higher commitment is the full display of his glory. God’s glory wins, which means that his just wrath is poured out on all unrighteousness, and his mercy is lavished on all whom he loves.
God’s highest commitment — beyond his moral will that all people everywhere repent —is that the full panorama of his glory shine forth. That glory is his mercy, grace, steadfast love and faithfulness, and his refusal to by no means clear the guilty . . . so that the vessels of his mercy might know the riches of his glory (Exodus 34:6–7; Romans 9:23).
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/god-s-glory-wins
3. On the Power of imaginationThough Christian charity sounds a very cold thing to people whose heads are full of sentimentality, and though it is quite distinct from affection, yet it leads to affection. The difference between a Christian and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or ‘likings’ and the Christian has only ‘charity’. The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on—including people he could not even have imagined him- self liking at the beginning.
This same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them: afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them. The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become — and so on in a vicious circle for ever.Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.
Dragons and Holiness
by Tony Reinke
The incredible imaginative power of the human mind connects us. If I mention standing ankle deep in the ocean, many of you can picture this image (and maybe feel the dizziness as you watch the water rush past your feet and back). Or if I mention the feeling of floating free under water in a swimming pool with eyes open, many of you know this feeling, too. Or if I mention the muffled silence that blankets a neighborhood in a thick snowstorm, you can probably imagine it. Thousands of other scenarios we can enjoy together. This is the work of our imagination.The imagination is a necessary component for reading fiction books, nonfiction books, and, of course, for reading the Bible. God’s book engages our imaginations by the parables of Jesus, the poetry of the Psalms, the adages of the Proverbs, and, of course, the apocalyptic language of the prophets. But what makes human imagination even more incredible is how we experience in our minds things we did not, have not, or cannot experience ourselves. The book of Revelation is one example.In Revelation, we read about the Son of Man dressed in a robe, with a voice like the great falls, and a two-edged sword for a tongue, with a face bright as the sun. Then we see a throne in heaven, surrounded by a rainbow of brilliant color, with lightning and thunder pealing off the throne. On each side of the throne are six-winged angelic creatures in flight, ceaselessly singing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Rev. 4:8). Bowls are filled with the prayers of the saints. And a Lamb stands as though it had been slain, whose blood makes white.Can you see all this in your imagination?Then behold the dragons, full of power and rage. A red dragon with seven heads is followed by another beast that has a nasty scar on one of its seven heads and a mouth full of blasphemies calling forth for idolatrous worship on earth. And then there’s another beast that speaks like a dragon, with the power to command fire from heaven. Finally, there’s a scarlet beast on whom rides a woman, the mother of all prostitutes and sexual sin, carrying a cup of sexual immorality.Late in the story, one breaks in on a white horse. The rider’s name is Faithful and True, and the Word of God, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He makes war. Under His crown blaze eyes like a furnace. His robe drips with blood, and from His mouth He bears a sword to strike down beasts and rebels. He treads the winepress of God’s fury. The images of Christ permeate the book.So why all this imagery?Imagination is what one theologian calls “the power of synoptic vision” (Vanhoozer). It allows us to order the world, and to see things collected together as opposed to the fragmented way we typically perceive the world. Dragons embody evil. He who is called Faithful and True embodies holiness and justice. Revelation engages our imaginations until we see reality through radical images, images that push us past the dominant worldly ideologies we simply assume and naturally ingest daily just like the air we breathe.The images in Revelation expose us to the world again, but they stun us in new and shocking ways. They break into our imaginations (sometimes with violence), but they also give to us new and alien ways of looking at the world that enable us to transcend our loud cultural environment. This cultural transcendence is possible because God has given us imaginations. Revelation works to purge and refurbish those imaginations, providing us with a profoundly fresh theological angle on the world that we have grown comfortable with. Here in Revelation, our imaginations are engaged to see the evil in this world, not as a scattered random acts of evil, but as a collective whole. By collecting the evil, we see the superiority of Christ over all. And we see that all victories of Christ over evil are tied directly to his death.How do we respond to such imaginative literature? We read and heed. This is called forth at the beginning and end of the book (1:3; 22:7). Through the imagination, we are called to wake up and to put off lukewarmness. Revelation invites us to see ultimate reality through our imaginations in breathtaking, earth-scorching, mind-stretching, sin-defeating, dragon-slaying, Christ-centered, God-glorifying images intended to change the way we think, act, and speak.Irrespective of the literal meaning of these imaginative dramas in Revelation, and irrespective of their literal timing and prophetic fulfillment, they remind us in stark images that the times are too evil and time is too short for us to slumber lazily. Our imaginations are stretched, awakened, and shocked from spiritual lethargy. Such is the life-altering power of imaginative imagery for those perceptive readers who understand our desperate need to see dragons.
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/dragons-and-holiness/
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