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“…that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). Correct doctrine matters. It matters to God and it matters in one’s walk with God. For most of my forty-one years as a Christian I lived under the mistaken understanding that, as a result of the fall, mankind is not totally depraved - dead in trespasses and sin. Furthermore, I believed that God does not unconditionally elect mankind, but rather, I believed that Christ died “to make men savable” and to make salvation available instead of efficacious to those God gave to the Son before the world was created. Moreover, I believed that one could resist God’s sovereign grace by the exercise of free will. And, I believed that with a little help from God one could persevere to the end. I was seriously mistaken. This mistaken theology exalted me and, correspondingly, diminished God’s glory. It exalted me because I believed that I had chosen to let Christ come into my life and that I was allowing Him to work through me to serve God. I believed that I was in control and that my will determined my relationship with God. God’s grace was not sovereign, but was resistible by my free will, and I believed that if this were not true, then I would be reduced to nothing but a robot controlled by a capricious God. I was blind to the biblical truth that although I had free will to choose whatever I desired, my desires were corrupted by my sinful nature. Therefore, I had the liberty to choose only that which seemed good to me, but fell short of the good that is efficacious to salvation. I was blind to the fact that by nature I was dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2:1 & 5. ESV). My worship of God was affected by this mistaken view. I had come to believe that everything I did was worship as long as I was working to win one more soul for Jesus. I believed that doing mighty works for God was true worship. My focus, even in the presence of God in corporate worship, was not on God’s holiness, sovereignty, and grace, but rather, on how the service was impacting a “seeker” who might be turned off by too much emphasis on holiness, repentance of sin, and total surrender to Jesus as Lord. I was concerned that, if the music did not meet the expectations of a “seeker,” he or she might not come back. I was constantly evaluating the worship service through the eyes of a non-regenerated person. Thus, I saw too much churchy talk, décor, and liturgy as putting a hindrance in the way of someone coming to Jesus, to making a decision to let Jesus come into his or her heart. I was uncomfortable with too much preaching about judgment, God’s wrath, man’s depraved heart, and the command to live a holy life in this world. With good intentions, I had exchanged worship in spirit and truth for a form of evangelism that does not proclaim the whole counsel of God. What I did not realize was that I had lost my “first love” for God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. Sadly, I had become ashamed of the full truth of the gospel of God’s sovereign Grace. I thought the gospel must be minimized to be acceptable. I believed it would turn people away to proclaim a holy sovereign God who commands all men to repent of their sins and who has set a day in which He will judge sin and pour out His wrath on all unrighteousness (Acts 17:30). I wanted my unsaved friends to hear a gospel that had the offense removed and that presented a win/win proposition that no one could refuse. I believed it was up to me to remove all hindrances for “seekers” so that they would see the gospel as attractive and decide to give Jesus a try by giving Him permission to come into their lives. God’s grace, I believed, made “the abundant life” available to anyone who would decide by faith to accept it. It was not, as Scripture teaches, God’s sovereign grace regenerating a spiritually dead soul so that faith was possible as a gift (Eph. 2:8. ESV). The gospel of God’s sovereign Grace alone was neither the message nor the expectation when the invitation was given. Instead, I believed the “seeker” must be helped to make the decision to receive Christ by his or her own free will, and then God will act and regenerate his or her heart. I believed that my faith preceded regeneration as an act of my will. Happily, by grace I have repented and now believe that Scripture clearly teaches that no man seeks God unless God draw him. God is the only true seeker and “…the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23.ESV).” Moreover, being overwhelmed by God’s sovereign grace changes everything. It changes how one sees oneself after regeneration in the presence of a holy God. It changes one’s understanding of living by faith through sovereign grace. And lastly, it changes how one proclaims “the gospel of the grace of God”. _____________________________________________________________________________________
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