What a great day to be in the house of the Lord! This morning, we are going to continue our walk through the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Nazarene. We have already looked at:
I. The Triune God
II. Jesus Christ
III. The Holy Spirit
IV. The Holy Scriptures
V. Sin, Original and Personal
VI. Atonement
This morning, we are going to move to our seventh Article of Faith, which is:
VII. Prevenient Grace
Here is the description of this 7th tenet of our faith:
We believe that the human race’s creation in Godlikeness included ability to choose between right and wrong, and that thus human beings were made morally responsible; that through the fall of Adam they became depraved so that they cannot now turn and prepare themselves by their own natural strength and works to faith and calling upon God. But we also believe that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is freely bestowed upon all people, enabling all who will to turn from sin to righteousness, believe on Jesus Christ for pardon and cleansing from sin, and follow good works pleasing and acceptable in His sight. We believe that all persons, though in the possession of the experience of regeneration and entire sanctification, may fall from grace and apostatize and, unless they repent of their sins, be hopelessly and eternally lost.
I think that the first thing that we should get out of the way is, what is ‘prevenient.’ Most of us church folk understand grace, but prevenient is a word that most of us have never used or even seen. Prevenient is a word that means ‘goes before.” So prevenient grace is the grace that goes before salvation. When we are talking about prevenient grace, we are speaking about the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of non-believers. This grace works on their hearts and minds so that they may come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior, Without the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and minds, no one can come to Salvation.
The first part of our explanation of prevenient grace states that part of what God did when He made us in His image was to give us free will. Mankind was made with the ability to choose between right and wrong and good and evil. God told Adam and Eve that they were free to eat of every tree of the Garden except from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He told them that if they ate from that tree, they would surely die. Since they were given free will, they chose to disobey God and therefore brought sin into the world.
Free will is one of the most important pieces to our theology because it is where we differ from Calvinists, but I will come back to that a bit later.
As we have seen in our Bible studies, mankind consistently chooses evil. No matter how many miracles God showed the Israelites and no matter how much He blessed them, they consistently grumbled and complained. And we are no different from them. Genesis 6:5 says:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.
Because of the fall of Adam and Eve, mankind will always choose their own way, rather than God’s way. This is what the Apostle Paul speaks about when he talks the ‘carnal man.’ In Romans 7:15-20, Paul tells us:
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
The flesh inevitably does the things that the spirit does not want it to do because it is permeated throughout with sin. You might recall that on the night that Jesus was to be arrested, he asked Peter and John to watch and pray for so that they would not fall into temptation. However, they repeatedly fell asleep. Jesus said “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” We cannot, by our own will, choose to do right because original sin, which we talked about previously, is already at work within our flesh. It is only through prevenient grace that God sends His Spirit out so that we can come to Him and turn from our sinful ways.
Now we come to the last part of our statement and this is where we separate ourselves from Calvinist (Baptist…) theology. We believe that everyone can fall away from God if they choose to do so. In other words, you can ask Jesus into your heart and later reject Him. Peter puts it like this (2 Peter 2:20-21):
For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them.
The Calvinist doctrine tells us that once you have accepted Jesus, you will never give up that salvation. So you could be saved at 7 years old and then when you were 20, go out and rob banks and kill people and you are still saved. The Calvinist would say that they were never truly saved, but I think that smacks of rationalization. They don’t know the person’s heart and can’t really say that they weren’t saved before. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way (Hebrews 6:4-6):
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.
Since this is the point where many of your friends might disagree with you, I want to make sure that you are able to explain our stance on what is often referred to as the doctrine of “eternal security.” I can tell you that it was the very first question that I was asked during my first ministerial candidate interview, since I had come from a Southern Baptist background.
In his book (and video) called A Case for Christ, author Lee Strobel interviews a former evangelist that used to travel with Billy Graham. He was nearly as popular as Billy and they were fast friends, even rooming together quite often. However, Charles Templeton battled doubt and finally proclaimed himself an agnostic, which means that ‘there may be a God, but I don’t want anything to do with Him.’ Templeton denied the very same God that he had previously loved and preached about. I do not believe that he was destined for heaven, no matter what he thought about God at the time.
For us, it is a matter of free will. If you ask a Calvinist if they believe in free will, they will say that of course they do. However, what they really believe is that free will ends when you make a decision and that once that decision is made, you no longer have any free will. In other words, once you have accepted Christ, you are completely bound to Him, no matter what happens for the rest of your life.
This is the way that I like to explain it. The Bible says that nothing can separate you from the love of God, which is absolutely true. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot separate yourself from Him. (pick someone) You love ***** very much, right? You have vowed to love her until death do you part, right? There is nothing that she could do that would cause you to stop loving her, is there? But what if she decides to file for divorce? You’re still going to love her, aren’t you? But your relationship with her, whether you like it or not, would be null and void. The same is true with our relationship with God. He will never let go of you, but you can decide to let go of Him. He will still love you, but your relationship with Him will come to an end because your free will continues until the time that you leave this earth, one way or another. No outside force can negate your relationship with God. Only you can.
There is a great example of this free will life in the OT. In the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, God set up Cities of Refuge. In these cities, someone that killed another person by accident and it had been judged that it was an accident, could live out their life in a City of Refuge. If, however, they chose to leave that City of Refuge, a person wanting to avenge the death could kill that person without incurring any guilt. You see, they were only protected for as long as they chose to be.
The Apostle Paul tells the church of Colossi (Colossians 1:21-23):
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.
In other words, it’s your choice. Keep to the faith that you professed and were taught and be kept safe in His arms, or discard your faith in Christ at your peril. Free will. This doesn’t mean that if you sin you will lose your salvation, like you lost your keys or your glasses. It means that it is your choice to stay with God or to decide that you don’t want Him in your life. It was the same for the Israelites. It was their choice to follow Yahweh or turn to Baal, or Asherah, or Dagon, or any of the other gods that the other peoples of their lands worshipped. But there were harsh consequences awaiting them if they decided to leave Him for another.
If Calvinists are right and my eternal security is assured, no matter what happens after I accepted Christ, then all I have done is attempted to live a holy life and be obedient to God’s Word when I could have piddled my life away seeking the desires of my own heart.
If Wesleyans are right and it is possible to walk away from God, then there may be people that are in jeopardy of spending eternity without God because they were told there wasn’t anything that they could do to change their relationship with Him.
Keep your faith and your relationship with Christ what it should be. Vital. Intimate. Loving. You will never have to worry about that relationship and you will never go through any of the hardships of this life alone.
(Invitation)
(Prayer)
*All scriptures are in NRSV unless otherwise stated.
