In a crazy, unexpected, surprising (but welcomed) left turn, the group of folks that I’ve been doing Doubt Night with have agreed to study through the book of Romans with me. One of the nights led to a conversation about predestination, and so now we’re pausing our discussion through Keller’s book and will take a few weeks to study Romans. How cool is that!
In preparation for that, I’m reading R.C. Sproul’s Chosen by God. It’s a highly accessible, easy-to-understand read about predestination. Anyway, I was immediately arrested by a paragraph from the introduction where Sproul talks about his journey towards reformed theology. My own experience resonates with a bunch of what he described.
The ninth chapter of Romans was the clincher. I simply could find no way to avoid the Apostle’s teaching in that chapter. Reluctantly, I sighed and surrendered, but with my head, not my heart. ‘OK, I believe this stuff, but I don’t have to like it!’
I soon discovered that God created us so that the heart is supposed to follow the head. I could not, with impunity, love something with my head that I hated in my heart. Once I began to see the cogency of the doctrine and its broad implications, my eyes were opened to the graciousness of grace and to the grand comfort of God’s sovereignty. I began to like the doctrine little by little, until it burst upon my soul that the doctrine revealed the depth of the riches of the mercy of God.
I no longer feared the demons of fatalism or the ugly thought that I was being reduced to a puppet. Now I rejoiced in a gracious Savior who alone was immortal, invisible, the only wise God.
They say there is nothing more obnoxious than a converted drunk. Try a converted Arminian. Converted Arminians tend to become flaming Calvinists, zealots for the cause of predestination. You are reading the work of such a convert… Chosen by God, p. 13.
7 Mile Road Church
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