An Arminian Transcript: “I hope the Lord will bless us as we come together in His name. Try to do the Lord’s will. That’s the main thing in this life, doing the Lord’s will. And His will is that not any should perish, but that all should come unto repentance. Jesus paid the way for every man, boy, woman, and girl at the age of accountability to get to heaven. He shed His blood, the only way from earth to heaven. And we can come to Him, and all that do come to Him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit gets born again. When you give up yourself, you give up sin, you give up the world. You want the Lord above everything else in this world. I tell you, and you pray through, out of your own heart, talk to God, reason with God out of your own heart. You’ve got to have forgiveness of your past sins. And I tell you, the Lord will transform you and change you on the inside like He did me over 30 years ago. I tell you, it’s a joy to be saved. I’ve already made my peace, my calling and election for sure. The Bible says if you do that and you rebel against the Word of God, then you’ll be cut off and that without a remedy. But you just need to come to the Lord and while there’s time, while the door is open, while He’s extending His salvation to you, like we’ve always said and like the Bible says, that God always offers mercy before judgment. And thank God He’s got mercy upon me.”
The above is the first paragraph, without any alteration, of a sermon transcript that was featured on SermonAudio this week, broadcast by some Baptist “Church” in Georgia. As I began to listen, one thing became immediately crystallized in my mind, which is the undeniable fact that a “great gulf fixed,” Luke 16:26, separates the gospel of Christ from this message! This is no variation of the gospel, but its reversal. It replaces the promise of God with the possibility of failure. It tells the sinner that he is not helpless but whole, not guilty but capable, not ruined but repairable, so long as he tries hard enough. Such a message is not merely weak, it is anti-Christ. It is a “gospel” of self-redemption, man exalting himself in the place of Christ. II Thessalonians 2:4. It’s idolatry in religious dress, a golden calf built from the fragments of human will, and is as opposite to the gospel as light is to darkness, as life is to death. Isaiah 5:20.
Just as the Lord described the impassable chasm between heaven and hell, so too there is an unbridgeable gulf between the grace of God in Christ Jesus and the man-centered religion of Arminianism. One proclaims what Christ has done, finished, effectual, eternal. The other proclaims what man must do, conditional, uncertain, and dependent upon his own contribution. This “gulf” is not only doctrinal but personal, for it exposes the way a man regards himself before God. Matthew 12:34. It’s the difference between a beggar who cries for mercy and a boaster who prescribes remedies. And so it is with all who trumpet such sermons, (blind guides leading the blind,) because they do not see themselves as ruined sinners, every word flows with blind confidence about what man must do, what man can offer, what man must decide. But this is the exact opposite of how the gospel addresses us. The gospel does not flatter the strong, but lifts the beggar from the dunghill. Psalm 113:7. Not only does it not come to the “whole,” it’s not even addressed to them. Luke 8:10. Christ declared, “they that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:31-32. Those who imagine the way to life is “trying harder,” “praying through,” or “making peace with God” have never been silenced before God. Job 42:6. They speak as if sinners were not ruined and undone, but as if they were moral agents, capable of negotiating peace terms with the Almighty. This ‘poisons’ the very well of salvation. A “gospel” for the “whole” is nothing but poison to the sick. “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom… their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.” Deuteronomy 32:32-33. MPJ