Both Arminians and Calvinists turn salvation into a transaction dependent on man’s response. Arminians credit man for believing; Calvinists credit God for enabling belief. Both make salvation depend on the sinner’s response, rather than Christ’s finished work. One thanks man for believing, the other thanks God for helping him believe. In both systems, the gospel is obscured, for salvation is not in anything the sinner does, but in what Christ has done. Salvation is not secured by the act of believing, but by the obedience and blood of Christ. In essence both the Arminian and the Calvinist misunderstand the very nature of the gospel. The Arminian imagines he pleased God by choosing Him; the Calvinist, with more polished theology, and cloaked in the language of grace, thinks God helped him meet a condition, faith, repentance, or some inward act, &c., by which he now stands accepted. In both cases, the sinner imagines the gospel as a transaction between himself and God. This is not the gospel! The gospel reveals a transaction not between God and the sinner, but between the Father and the Son. “He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” Isaiah 53:11. MPJ