I Thought I Had No Part In Salvation
The resurgence of Calvinistic doctrine in the last fifteen years generates an enthusiasm for God’s sovereignty. The knowledge that God rules all things and that he uses his power to save sinners has been a beacon for many of us trying to escape the evangelical murk.
But the resurgence has also stimulated autodidactic reflexes, jolting believers to study up for battle. In order to vanquish the Arminians one has to teach himself verses that prove TULIP, develop rhetorical strategems for putting predestination in the best possible light, and above all pile up arguments to show our inability to save ourselves.
A friend of mine mastered these arts. He convinced himself that even our redeemed wills are too corrupt to contribute anything to sanctification. Our wills must be utterly broken by God. Any suggestion that we should rouse ourselves to be like Christ he rejected as so much free-will legalism. God does all.
Theological amateurism, with its stacks of half-read Puritan books, does not serve well in a passage like 2 Peter 1.1-11 with its explicit calls for human initiative. Peter allows none of this quietism.
The apostle has plenty to say about God’s sovereignty. We “received” faith itself “by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (1.1). “Everything pertaining to life and godliness” came from “his divine power” (1.3). The doctrine of election is explicitly in view (1.10).
Christ’s sovereignty focuses in his promises, which save us from sin (1.4). “I have said I will change your heart. I have said I will give you an escape from the corruption that is in the world through lust. I have said it and I will do it. Now believe.”
Peter has no difficulty in 1.5 commanding us to take action on this basis. “Now for this very reason . . .” Christ has delivered all you need. Take his promises and put them to work “applying all diligence”.
The strenuous effort Peter describes in 1.5-7 – climbing step by step up the ladder of virtue from faith, to moral excellence, to knowledge, to endurance, all the way to love – is nothing but a conscious reliance on Christ. This reliance is based on what Jesus has promised us explicitly. The decision we are commanded to make is to rely on our savior’s sovereignty.
God’s sovereignty is the fountainhead of all human initiative. Human beings truly cannot do anything on their own. But with the glory and virtue of Christ himself summoning them, with his promises carrying them, human beings can partake of his nature by faith.
Classic Calvinism did not teach that human beings are passive in response to the gospel. But historically Calvinists have tended to decline into resigned stoicism: “God has decreed that my life be full of pain and sorrow. He has not deigned to remove my sinful habits. I accept it. I’m not going to fight him. Whatever.” This tendency is strong and we need to resist it.
So sweeten your pallets with a little of Calvin himself, from his sermon on Ephesians 4.23-26 :
“Just as our Lord Jesus is the second Adam, so he must be like a pattern to us, and we must be fashioned after him and his image, that we may be like him. Now it is true this will not come about by our own strength, but yet this exhortation is by no means superfluous, because when the holy Scripture brings us to our Lord Jesus Christ, it does not mean that we should be like blocks of wood, but that we should come and offer ourselves to God that he may work in us.”
Our role in salvation is to offer ourselves, consciously to yield up our minds, hearts, and bodies to the sovereign grace of Jesus Christ. Try it. The faith it requires is anything but passive.
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