Calvinism is the Gospel?

You may have a preconception that such a declaration is wrong; I invite you to inspect it in the light of Scripture.

It has been said, “Calvinism IS the gospel,” but what this means is largely lost on a society and culture that is so ready to forget the fact that the gospel was recovered during the time of the Reformation, and so ready to deny the glorious truths that were recovered then, in favor of a church that is ecclesiastical, all encompassing of all peoples, even non-believers, according to the way the world sees things, and not as that gospel that God sovereignly brought back into focus from the apostate medieval church. Those who call themselves Christ’s are so ready to say using labels other than Christian is wrong, (unless those labels include other faith’s worldviews); very well, then, when we say Calvinism we mean none other than that New Testament, Biblical faith, with it’s body of doctrines, which IS Christianity, and so is the gospel – the faith which our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles and prophets preached and taught. Any other faith is not of God, for in Jesus Christ our Lord alone we have the Name by which salvation is given, Who is the exact representation of all truth, life, and the only way to the Father; Who alone shows us the Father. An all inclusive ecclesiastical faith cannot represent Him who said “no one comes to the Father but through Me,” and “no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” Those who rail against such foundational truths in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ deny His right to do exactly what He said in these statements, and persisting in such may very well be giving one’s self to “a different gospel, that is no gospel at all.”

Such a gospel is exclusive and separates – those who do not agree with it do not like it, because it compromises their personal liberties in favor of immorality, and they desire to compromise God’s freedom in administering His creation as He wills to do so. Our Lord Jesus Christ rejoiced that the gospel was hidden from some, and thanked His Father for such, calling it good (Matthew 11:25-27), right before He offered the gospel to all who were “weary and heavy laden” (Matthew 11:28-30). This is one place in the gospel according to Matthew where election, judicial blinding to the gospel message, and the gospel message go forth, all together – this is the only infinitely righteous, good, holy, holy holy God of Scripture declaring that He has, and always will, do according to His good pleasure, and it is right of Him to do so, for He is the only One who is truly good – even with a Christian who has been born again of the Spirit, any good derives from the Father of lights, whose every gift, whatever it might be, is perfect (Psalms 115:3; Mark 10:17-18; James 1:16-18).

Such is the sovereignty of God – to say it is absolute is redundant; to declare that He bows at any time to the will of man is proof of not reading the Scriptures as they are, but reading into them the empty philosophies of man, ignoring the historical grammatical manner of interpretation, or worse, being completely ignorant of these things (which is the case with most Christians in the camp of “evangelicalism” today (not to be confused with being evangelical, though the latter has come to mean what the former does, sadly).

To say that God is not fair according to traditional biases that most people who call themselves Christians have learned without even understanding that they were learning them is blasphemous, but the ones most to blame are those who teach them without informing them of the true meaning of the Scripture.

Understand, the title of this article is not about controversy; at least, in any manner that the gospel has not always been controversial. Our Lord was crucified by God’s specific plan to redeem a people for His name (Acts 4:24-28; cf. Isaiah 53:10-11), His prophets and apostles and countless martyrs were put to death, and the truth of this gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has fueled countless conflicts of the less violent kind within those churches which desire to be associated with His name.

In other words, this is not about John Calvin, or Martin Luther, or Zwingli, or any of those men the Lord providentially used, according to that same sovereign will that sent His Son to die to redeem, or ransom, many by His death – it is about the gospel that our Lord proclaimed, His apostles proclaimed, and which has been proclaimed always as the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is a two-edged sword, surely, and a rock of offense that will crush those who disagree with it, but will lead to brokenness for those who fall upon it in mercy. This gospel tells us that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved, and though there is a process to such a calling upon the name of the Lord of glory which is not completely defined in every passage where it is mentioned, I dare say you will find the body of it completely encompassed in Matthew 5:3-12, among many other places. This gospel confounds the wise (in the ways of this world), makes the simple see clearly by the Spirit and Word of God, and in no way can actually, as to the eternal effectiveness of it, be compromised by men – God, infinitely good and holy and righteous, yet gracious to those He will be gracious to, insured before the beginning of the world that His Word would go forth and carry out His purpose, which is, and has always been, to show those who confess His name with their lips but not their heart, to judge His church first in these matters, the world of unbelievers, and call His elect from all the four corners of the globe.

This is the glorious gospel of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that is what we are speaking of when we declare that which this article is entitled, so look to the Scriptures, not the fact that God sovereignty used certain men in the era of the medieval church to recover His truth for ages to come; read them, understand them, and be thankful, worshipful, and praise Him, for truly, though in man there is nothing praiseworthy, He is worthy of all praise, the God of all creation.

To the glory of God alone - Bill Hier