It's All About Grace

http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/what-grace/


If you love me, you will keep my commandments.-John 14:15


As you will see, when you follow the link, the excellent Dr. Sproul has hit the nail on the head again.

If you quibble with the doctrines of grace, the notion of God's choosing those "on whom I have mercy (Romans 9:15)" may seem odd, strange or even repulsive to you. As it did to me at one point.

Having been raised in church, I felt I knew the Bible and all about God. I had been taught that we may choose to love Jesus and felt that I had so chosen.

Very commendable but quite illogical since there wasn't much in my life to indicate that choosing. Even more illogically when I began to run up against the (opposite but necessary) notion that one could just as freely choose eternity in hell, I balked.

Calvinists who read this might conclude that I was quite likely unsaved (or unregenerate as we prefer to put it). I began to prove this by first judging God for His meanness in sending people to hell, and them by rejecting the notion of the biblical God altogether.

Oh, I retained the notion of a god. Emily Dickinson, I think, summed up my theology:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182809


I had made a deliberate left turn onto the broad and crowded highway to hell. 

Now you would think that, sometime during the next thirty years, the God I had rejected would have obliged my choice by removing me from among the living.

But as I have stated, it's all about grace. God, you see, mercifully extended my life as I did what I pleased and piled up proof upon proof that I was totally undeserving of any mercy.

Yet here I stand today, in total agreement with what you will read in Sproul's article.

And if the gratitude given in response to grace seems incomplete and at times nonexistent, God is merciful.

Jesus noted that "the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41)."

Thank God for His grace.