Truth Magazine

By Mark Mayberry

“Calvinism” refers to the doctrines and teachings of John Calvin, a 16th century Swiss theologian who became a leader in the Protestant Reformation. Many of these concepts existed before his time. For example the doctrine of total hereditary depravity originated with Augustine, a Roman Catholic philosopher who lived in the fifth century A.D. However, the five major points of Calvinism were crystallized by John Calvin. Over time, Calvinistic theology has gained widespread acceptance. It found formal expression in many denominational creeds of the early seventeenth century, It still permeates the thinking of many modern denominations. Certainly it is worthwhile to examine this doctrine to see if it is in harmony with God’s word.

A. Total Hereditary Depravity

Defined: This concept is associated with the doctrine of original sin. Many religious leaders teach that the guilt of Adam’s original sin is inherited by each individual at birth. Thus, they say, we are born with a completely corrupt nature. Unregenerate mankind is positively inclined to do evil and totally unable to do anything good.

Exposed: Many plain Bible passages refute this doctrine. Although we suffer the consequences of Adam’s fall, we do not inherit a corrupt nature (Gen. 3:16-19; Rom. 5:12). Sinners stand condemned because of their own transgressions (Rom. 7:9-11), not because of the wrongs of their forbearers (Ezek. 18:20). Far from being depraved from birth, children are models of purity and holiness (Matt. 18:1-3).

B. Unconditional Election

Defined: Calvin affirmed the doctrine of “predestination.” According to his theology, God foreordained that certain specific individuals would be saved, while others would be lost. This choice was not based on any foreseen obedience or virtue on man’s part; it rested solely on God’s sovereign will. Thus the number of the redeemed is fixed and cannot be increased or diminished.

Exposed: Calvin misunderstood the Bible’s teaching on predestination. Whereas the Scriptures speak of group election (Eph. 1:3-5), Calvin thought in terms of individual election. However, this would negate the impartiality of God (Rom. 2:11). It also would nullify the effect of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20; Mk. 16:15-16). If Calvin’s view of election is true, preaching the gospel is a waste of time!

C. Limited Atonement

Defined: The atoning work of Christ was limited in scope to only those specific individuals who were unconditionally elected. Since this number cannot be increased or diminished, if you were not foreordained to salvation, then the atonement made possible through the death of Christ is of no benefit to you.

Exposed: Many plain Bible passages refute this doctrine. To begin with, it ignores the fact that Christ died for all mankind (Heb. 2:9; 1 Jn. 2:1-2). Moreover, God has not set a limit on those who can be saved; he wants all to respond in obedience to the gospel (2 Pet. 3:9).

D. Irresistible Grace

Defined: Calvin taught that the “elect” person is saved “in prospect” in the mind of God by predestination and then saved “in fact” when God sends the Spirit into his heart. At God’s chosen time, the sinner is irresistibly drawn into his grace. This call cannot be rejected, but always results in conversion.

Exposed: There are many errors associated with this doctrine. First of all, it destroys the concept of man’s free moral agency and would make us nothing more than puppets (Deut. 11:26-28; Josh. 24:15). Moreover, it denies the true nature of God’s grace (Eph. 2:8-10). The Bible plainly teaches that we will be held accountable for how we respond to God’s word (Jn. 12:47-48).

E. Perseverance of Saints

Defined.- This doctrine is also known as the “Impossibility of Apostasy.” It affirms that a child of God cannot sin so as to fall from the grace of God and be lost in eternity. Calvin reasoned that all who are chosen by God are kept by his power. If God elected certain individuals to be saved, his will cannot be overthrown by man (not even by those elected). As a result, they will assuredly persevere to the end and be eternally saved. In fact, they must be saved.

Exposed.- Many plain Bible passages refute this doctrine. The New Testament warns against the danger of apostasy (Gal. 5:1-4; 2 Pet. 2:20-21). The Hebrew writer clearly teaches that it is possible to fall from a saved condition (Heb. 6:4-6). Moreover, the doctrine of “once saved, always saved” eliminated the necessity of faithfulness and godliness (Matt. 7:21).

Conclusion

It is entirely appropriate that we examine the teachings of men in light of the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). From beginning to end, Calvinism is a false system. Let us diligently strive to speak where the Bible speaks and remain silent where it is silent.

Guardian of Truth XXXVI: 21, pp. 650-651
November 5, 1992

By Mike Willis

Christianity has experienced many aberrations. Perhaps none has been so unique as that of those who sought to escape the world by becoming hermits. Part of one’s service in Christ is administering to the needs of others, especially his own brethren (Gal. 6:10). Peter wrote, “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1 Pet. 1:22). The Lord has not called us into a closet, monastery or abbey. He has called us to be light of the world. Nothing displays Christ’s influence in us quite so much as brotherly love.

Brotherly Love Is Commanded

Peter commanded, “See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.” The Lord commanded that we show “unfeigned love of the brethren … .. Love of the brethren” is translated from philadelphia. This love of the brethren fits these three qualifications:

1. It is to be unfeigned. That means that our love for each other is to be unhypocritical. Hypocritical love shows itself in such things as fawning praise in one’s presence but knifing him in the back when the brother is absent. The love which Christians show to each other is to be genuine. John wrote, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 Jn. 3:18).

2. It is to be from a clean heart. This indicates that one’s love for each other is not selfishly motivated. Sometimes the rich have those who love them from the hope of what they will receive in return. Love from a clean heart has no such selfish motives.

3. It is fervent. The word “fervent” means “boiling” (in contrast to cold indifference). We speak of “warm” affection; this is the kind of love which Peter commanded Christians to show to each other.

Expressions of Brotherly Love

Brotherly love expresses itself. It cannot be concealed. We can see expressions of brotherly love in such things as the following:

1. Affectionate greetings (Rom. 12:10; 16:16; 2 Pet. 1:7). Paul told Christians to greet one another with a holy kiss. The kiss was the manner in which Orientals greeted one another; we display the same affection by a handshake or a hug. I have witnessed Christians who felt such ill will toward each other that they would not speak as they entered the house for worship. Do you think they could offer acceptable worship?

2. Helping in time of need (1 Jn. 3:16-18; Acts 4:32-37; 6:1-2; Heb. 6:10; Jas 1:27; Lk. 10:25-37). The heart of a Christian should be tender toward the sufferings of his fellow man; this is the trait of compassion (1 Pet. 3:8; Phil. 2:1). Witnessing the suffering of another, the Christian should respond to relieve the afflictions of him who is in need. The good Samaritan was moved with compassion when he saw the man who was beaten and left to die; he ministered to his needs.

Christians should especially rally to each other’s help in the days of affliction. We have been encouraged by the fellowship extended the saints who were suffering from the damage of the recent hurricane in Florida.

3. Pray for each other (Acts 8:24; 12:5; Rom. 1:9). Brotherly love can be shown by taking a brother’s needs to God in prayer.

4. Encouraging one another (Gal. 6:2). We need to bear one another’s burdens. Barnabas was the “son of consolation” (Acts 4:36) because he encouraged his brethren. We can lift the burdens of our brother by encouraging words, a card, telephone call, and other ways.

5. Restoring the fallen (Gal. 6:1). Sometimes men think that there is an absence of brotherly love when a person does what he can to restore the erring. If a brother steps into sin by forsaking the assembly, we generally recognize that brotherly love tries to restore him. However, when a brother steps into sin by teaching false doctrine, some cannot see that brotherly love responds to correct his error. Rebuttal is equated with animosity and hatred. How sad! James said, “Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (Jas. 5:19-20).

6. Hospitality (Heb. 13:1-2; 1 Pet. 4:9). Christians are commanded to be hospitable. Our homes should be open to our brethren. One of the best ways that a Christian has to minister to the needs of his brethren is to open his home for them to visit. In such relaxed sittings, the brother frequently opens his heart to express his problems.

Unfortunately, many Christians have become too busy to be hospitable. Some churches of well over 100 people have trouble filling a meal list for a visiting evangelist. There is little visitation between brethren in some congregations. Visitors to the worship services sometimes perceive the lack of affection and never return. How much different would the visitor’s reaction be if some brother invited him into his home?

7. Forgiveness. Brotherly love is shown by one’s willingness to forgive those who sin against him. Peter said, “And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8).

Enemies of Brotherly Love

If we can identify expressions of brotherly love, we can also identify some of its enemies. Consider these:

1. Selfishness (Phil. 2:3-4). Sometimes brethren become so wrapped up in the affairs of their own life that they neglect everyone and everything else. Sometimes they make up for their lack of interest in their brethren by practicing 44proxy” religion – “I don’t have time for you but here is $20 to solve your problem! ” Brotherly love takes time and effort, a willingness to put others’ needs above our own.

2. Indifference. When a person reaches the condition that he does not care about his brother, he lacks brotherly love. Someone has said that the greatest enemy of brotherly love is not hatred but indifference.

3. Bitterness, anger, malice, and hatred (Rom. 1:29; Eph. 4:32). When a brother reaches a condition of having enmity toward his brother, he is treading on exceedingly dangerous ground. John wrote, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 Jn. 4:20-21).

Conclusion

There is a joy which a person receives from brotherly love. We need to learn the joy of serving, the joy of having God’s approval, the joy of being thanked for a kind deed, the joy of being loved, and the joy of watching a loving group of Christians grow in number and spirit.

Guardian of Truth XXXVI: 21, pp. 642, 663
November 5, 1992

By Louis J. Sharp

This is a question that has been fraught with controversy over the years, even among members of the body of Christ. Is it because the Bible has nothing to say on the subject? To the contrary, the Bible has much to say in reference to the question. The careful Bible student is fully persuaded that there will be a bodily resurrection. Jesus said: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn. 6:44). The word, “resurrection,” signifies a “restoration to life.” The effects of death are reversed.

Man is a twofold being; body and spirit or soul. Our Lord warned: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Paul informs “. . . but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). What part of man is mortal? The answer is simple. It is the body that dies. James informs: “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (Jas. 2:26). This is the Bible definition of death, i.e., the separation of body and spirit. Only that which has died is susceptible to the resurrection.

The mass resurrection narrated in Ezekiel 37:1-10 is a prophecy of the revival of the Jewish nation following their captivity in Babylon. Even so, the truth behind the prophecy is indisputable. The bones and sinews and flesh and spirits of those who once lived are returned to life. It is a lucid example of a bodily resurrection. Other Old Testament passages speak to the same thought. “Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the dept of the earth” (Psa. 71:20). “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead” (Isa. 26:19). We believe the testimony of the Scriptures.

Jesus Christ also acknowledges the same. In John 5:28-29, we read: “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” Either we believe him or reject him, which? John, the revelator, says: “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it” (Rev. 20:13). Now, whether this is symbolic or prophetic, the import is the same. The physical body of man, lost at sea and buried therein, will be resurrected.

What does Paul teach in 1 Corinthians 15? He asks two distinct questions: (1) How are the dead raised? (2) With what manner of body do they come? Paul answers both questions. The first question deals with whatever mystery there is connected with the resurrection. No doubt, you have wondered just how God is going to accomplish this! Much to our disappointment, Paul does not tell us how God proposes to raise the dead. He used the “seed” illustration, demonstrating the dead will live again, just as God causes life to spring from a seed. How does seed produce life? I know not except that it is God’s immutable law. We plant the seed, and properly nurtured, it will grow. God will see to that, whether we understand the process or not. And this is the point that Paul makes. “But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body” (15:38).

Paul begins to answer the second question at verse 42. “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. “We submit that until and unless there be a physical resurrection, there can be no resurrection, for the definition of the word is to “cause to rise,” “to make to stand.”

Remember, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (15:26). “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immorality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 0 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (15:54-57). It is the physical body that is buried and is to be raised. In this way, death will be destroyed.

And we shall be fashioned anew. “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself” (Phil. 3:20-21). Yes, our God is able! Our trust is in him!

Guardian of Truth XXXVI: 20, p. 617
October 15, 1992

By Paul K. Williams

“Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14, NASB) In the margin of the NASB there is a note concerning the words “bound together” which states, “Lit., unequally yoked, ” and this is how the phrase is translated in the King James Version.

This verse does not mean that a person married to an unbeliever is sinning by being married to him. This is clear from what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:12-13: “But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, let him not send her away. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, let her not send her husband away.” Paul’s instructions to the one unequally yoked to an unbeliever are: “Therefore, ‘come out from their midst and be separate. “‘ However a believer yoked to an unbeliever in marriage is to remain in that marriage if the unbeliever is content to allow the marriage to continue. Therefore, being married to an unbeliever is not, in itself, the unequal yoke Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 7:14.

However, marriage to an unbeliever can become an unequal yoke. This is what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7:15: “Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.” Under certain circumstances a Christian married to an unbeliever must choose not to continue in that marriage. This happens when the marriage is an unequal yoke.

I know a young woman who is planning to marry a man who opposes the church of the Lord and has told her that he will not allow her to go to church after they are married. If she marries him she will have entered into a yoke which will require her to do evil in order to stay married. If she marries the man under these circumstances she will be rebelling against God. If after she marries she repents of her sin, and the man will not change his opposition to the Lord, she will have to insist on going to church even if it means he leaves her. Following Christ is more important than keeping a marriage together!

In Columbus, Ohio I called on a member of the church who had not attended services in the years she had lived in that city. She explained that she was married to a Roman Catholic. He insisted that the children be reared as Catholics and did not want her to go to church. She explained to me that since it was important for her to obey her husband she was sending the children to a Catholic school and not going to church herself. That woman was doing evil in order to obey her husband even though the apostles said, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). What she should have done was to choose to obey God. If her husband would not then allow her to live with him, she should have “let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace” (1 Cor. 7:15).

Therefore 2 Corinthians 6:14 applies to marriage just as it does to any other relationship. When a Christian is forced to do evil in order to keep any relationship from breaking up that Christian is unequally yoked, and if a Christian is unequally yoked he or she must come out of that relationship. If you have to lie in order to keep your job, you must refuse to lie and must let your boss fire you. If your parents command you to do wrong, you must refuse even if they disown you. If your husband demands that you not follow Christ, you must follow Christ even if he divorces you.

I knew a woman in Columbus, Ohio who was fired when she refused to give to the Community Chest. I know a young man in South Africa who refused to lie for his boss over the telephone and was fired on the spot. I know a number of young people who have had to leave home because their parents will not let them stay at home unless they worship ancestors. A young girl had to leave her mother because her mother insisted that the girl commit fornication with a certain man. These Christians obeyed God rather than man and came out from unequal yokes. Working for a boss is not an unequal yoke unless it causes you to do wrong in order to keep the job. Having parents does not cause an unequal yoke unless the parents insist that the child does evil. Marriage is not an unequal yoke unless one partner insists that the other disobey God. But when any relationship becomes an unequal yoke, the believer must obey God rather than man even if obeying God destroys a precious relationship.

Paul wrote: “the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace” (1 Cor. 7:15). The woman who obeyed her Roman Catholic husband by sending her children to Catholic schools and staying home from church misunderstood the nature of her bondage to her husband. We are not under bondage to anyone that we should sin. We have never been under such bondage. Even in marriage we are not under bondage to keep the marriage together at the price of sinning against God.

But don’t read more into what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:15 than what he actually wrote. The verse does not say that the believer is free to remarry if the unbeliever departs. The only thing Paul says is that the believer must not feel guilty if, by following the Lord, he or she causes the unbeliever to leave. Paul already told the Corinthians what the divorced person must do. “But to the married I give instructions, yet 1, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not send his wife away” (1 Cor. 7:10-11). The only time a divorced person has the right to remarry is when that person divorces his or her mate for the cause of fornication (Matt. 19:9). All other divorced persons do not have the right to remarry and must “remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband.”

How careful we should be, therefore, when we plan to get married. We must understand thoroughly that no matter what happens we must obey God. If this leads to trouble in the marriage, we have no choice. God must come first. Therefore we should be as careful as we can be to marry one who will assist us in obeying God, not hinder us. It is sinful foolishness to think that love will overcome all obstacles. If you marry an obstinate unbeliever, you are either going to disobey God or be left by the unbeliever. Be as sure as you can. Don’t enter into the yoke of marriage if there is the likelihood that it will become an unequal yoke.

Guardian of Truth XXXVI: 20, pp. 622, 630
October 15, 1992