Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper. Our goal is to point you to the all-satisfying joy that can be found nowhere else but in Jesus Christ. That’s our mission every day. And as we enter the final month of the year, if we do that for you, consider partnering with us in this precious mission to help us do this same thing for millions of other people. Help offset for others “the cost of free,” as we call it. To help offset the cost of free, consider a one-time gift or monthly gift to help support everything we do, including this podcast. You can make that gift or set up monthly giving right now at give.desiringGod.org.
Friends are good. Like-minded teams united by the gospel are precious. We can’t do this podcast without help. But what doctrines preserve our gospel unity? Pastor John is with us. You have been a member of The Gospel Coalition Council since its founding and were a contributor to its founding documents twenty years ago. One question that comes up over the years is this one: If this is a “gospel coalition,” why does it define itself confessionally as Reformed or Calvinistic? That is what we read in the preamble to the Foundation Documents: “We are a fellowship of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition.” Obviously you don’t speak for everyone on the council or in any official capacity, but what would be your personal answer to that question? Or, maybe more safely, why would any church, school, or ministry devoted to being gospel-centered and gospel-advancing define its identity as Reformed or Calvinistic rather than something broader?
Essentials of the Gospel
You’re right — maybe it would be safer for me to speak, say, for Desiring God or for Bethlehem College and Seminary, rather than directly for The Gospel Coalition. Then people can decide whether what I’m saying applies to that ministry or their own.
So, let me give my answer in one sentence and then unpack it for just a few minutes. I think it is wise and strategic — but not the only legitimate way to define the parameters of a ministry — for a gospel-driven ministry to define itself with a Reformed, Calvinistic vision of salvation because (here’s the key) this vision expresses, guards, and glorifies the grace of God at the center of the gospel. That’s my answer in a sentence.
Paul says in Acts 20:24, “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” That’s a crucial phrase: “the gospel of the grace of God.” Essential to the good news, at the heart of the gospel, is the grace of God. And that gospel of grace stands in the service of the ultimate purpose of God in creation and redemption described in Ephesians 1:6: “To the praise of [the glory of his] grace.” It’s hard to elevate the greatness and beauty and value of the grace of God more highly than to say that the gospel is a gospel of grace, and to say that the universe exists — everything exists — for the praise of the glory of the grace of God.
That’s my starting point. The praise of the glory of God’s grace is the ultimate purpose of all things and is at the center of the gospel. So, Reformed theology, the Calvinistic doctrine of salvation, I argue, exists to express and guard and glorify the grace of God at the heart of the gospel.
Gospel Solas
One expression of this theology is the five solas, or the five alones, of justification. It goes like this: “Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, based on one, infallible source of revelation, Scripture alone.”
“God’s grace doesn’t just bring me to the point where I can produce my own faith. It raises me from the dead.”
Now, that first phrase, “grace alone,” is absolutely crucial because it is intended to express the glory of God’s grace and to guard the glory of that grace from the grace-diminishing claim that fallen man has ultimate self-determination and that such self-determination, not God’s grace, is decisive in man’s conversion and preservation. I regard that position as grace diminishing. “Grace alone” implies, “No, there is no such thing in this fallen world as ultimate human self-determination.” It doesn’t exist; all are slaves of sin (Romans 6:17–20). Rather, grace alone — not human self-determination — is decisive in man’s conversion and preservation.
When Wesleyans and Arminians (that would be over against Reformed theology, over against Calvinism) introduce the idea of prevenient grace, which they say brings all people, in some measure, out of the bondage of original sin, they still teach that at the moment of conversion, the decisive influence that brings about saving faith is man’s self-determining will, not the grace of God. That’s the problem. That’s the watershed issue. Wesleyans that I have interacted with don’t like it when I make this point because they want to emphasize how gloriously full and beautiful and rich is the grace of God that has been poured out in Christ and in so many ways to bring fallen man to the point where he can believe. But that’s simply not the point. The point is that, at the all-important moment of conversion, when a person passes from death to life, Wesleyans and Arminians believe that the decisive influence at that point is the will of man, not the grace of God.
This is why Reformed Christians love to speak of sovereign grace. God’s grace triumphs over all demonic and human obstacles, including that final resistance of my human will, and brings me all the way into life and faith. It doesn’t just bring me to the point where I can produce my own faith. It raises me from the dead. It gives me life and faith. Reformed Christians believe that the Bible teaches that the glory of God’s grace includes the sovereignty of God’s grace.
We love Reformed theology because we love the sovereign grace of God, because we know from the Bible and from experience that we would not be saved without it. It is a very personal, existential matter with us. My life hangs on the triumph of God over my resistance, all the way home. We would have walked away — all of us — like the rich young man, except that Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Amen — thank you, Jesus. That’s our only hope. This is why we pray. This is why we evangelize. This is why we do missions. God does the impossible through the gospel.
TULIP: Guarding the Gospel
Sometimes the Reformed vision of salvation is summed up in the so-called five points, which are different from the five solas. The five points are sometimes called the doctrines of grace. And you can see why, because grace is so utterly essential to the issue. These five points are a biblical expression and protection and glorification of God’s sovereign grace. That’s why they are stressed: They protect, they express, they glorify sovereign grace. For example:
- Total depravity, the T in TULIP, guards the glory of grace by teaching from Romans 8:7 that man is totally unable to submit to God and his word apart from sovereign grace.
- U, unconditional election, guards the glory of God’s grace by showing that, before the foundation of the world, the elect were chosen by grace before any human influence existed.
- The L, limited or definite atonement, guards the glory of God’s grace by showing that, when Christ shed the blood of the new covenant, the new heart of faith and obedience was effectively, sovereignly secured for all God’s people.
- I, irresistible grace, guards the glory of God’s grace by showing that the last stand of human resistance against God will always give way to sovereign grace alone for those whom God saves.
- And finally, P, perseverance of the saints, shows that whatever conditions of final salvation we meet, it is, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “Not [we], but the grace of God that is with [us].” Sovereign grace brings us all the way home.
So, in summary, I think it is wise and strategic for a gospel-driven ministry — like The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, Bethlehem College and Seminary, or hundreds of ministries, hundreds of churches — to define that ministry with the Reformed vision of salvation because this vision expresses, guards, and glorifies the grace of God at the center of the gospel. The Reformed vision is a faithful expression of biblical truth about God’s grace. It safeguards the sovereignty of grace in conversion, and it joyfully joins God in his ultimate purpose, which is “the praise of [the glory of his] grace” (Ephesians 1:6).
