ANNOUNCER: Why is the Calvinist understanding an explanation of John 3:16 misleading? Such a vital verse for evangelism, John 3:16, let’s have a discussion about it all. Stay with us for the next few minutes here on Grace In Focus, a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. We office in North Texas and our website is faithalone.org. One thing you will find at that website is information about the Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary. It’s an online seminary with full scholarships available for students who maintain good academic standing. You can study with us and earn an MDiv degree. Application and registration are open for our fall semester. We invite you to come get the information and go through the process and be ready to study with us when the fall semester begins. Everything you need at faithalone.org/seminary. 

And now let’s get into our discussion for the day. Here are our leaders Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: Alright everybody, welcome in. We are continuing our discussion on Calvinism. This discussion kind of sparked from Bob reading this book, Whosoever Will. This episode we are going to talk about Jerry Vines’ chapter in that book talking about John 3:16. So we’re going to talk about the Calvinist understanding of John 3:16, and we’re going to break it down word by word like we would our own understanding. Because we look to John 3:16 as one of, if not the clearest, presentation of the promise of everlasting life. It contains the promise, the person, and the result or the life part of how we would explain the promise of everlasting life. So it’s very, very important to GES and it should be important to all believers. So we’re going to explain why the Calvinist understanding is incorrect and how we can better understand what Scripture is really saying. 

BOB: Okay, and Jerry Vines was a leading Southern Baptist pastor. But the beginning words of John 3:16, we’re not going to disagree with Calvinists, “For God so loved.” We’re going to agree that’s talking about God the Father. We’re going to agree that’s talking about the great way in which He loved. This is the manner in which He loved, that He gave His only begotten Son. But what we are going to disagree with Calvinists, which is the words “the world,” “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” According to Calvinists, the word “world,” or cosmos in Greek, here refers to all of the people that God supposedly elected before the foundation of the world. Calvinism can be remembered by a five letter acronym. What is that? 

SAM: It’s TULIP. 

BOB: TULIP. And so this point about the world comes from the second point, the U. The unconditional election is the idea that in eternity past before God created, he elected a certain number of people, which Calvinists say was a small percentage of the entire mass of humanity, to have eternal life, some Calvinists would say he also elected the remainder to be eternally condemned. Those are called double predestinarians. Or other Calvinists would say he didn’t elect the others, he just bypassed them. And so those people are going to be condemned because God didn’t elect them. 

So they understand the beginning of John 3:16 to say, “for God so loved the elect,” or the world of the elect, which, I don’t know what percentage Calvinists would put on the number of people that are elect, but let’s say it’s 10%, which would be a high number for most Calvinists, but let’s say 10% of humanity. So that would mean that of the current world’s population, about 800 million people are elect and over 7 billion are not elect. And the 7 billion that are not elect, God didn’t love. And He didn’t send a Son for those people. Jesus didn’t die for those people. No matter what they do, those people can’t have eternal life. So that’s the first difference. 

The second difference is the word “whoever,” “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him.” According to the Calvinist, whoever doesn’t mean whoever. We used to sing a song at First Baptist Dallas, I worked there one year in the high school department under then high school pastor Robert Jeffress, who’s now the senior pastor and back then W. A. Criswell was the pastor. And we used to sing a song that said, “Whosoever surely meaneth me.” 

Well, that’s a Baptist position, a Southern Baptist position, but that’s not a Calvinist position. According to the Calvinist, whosoever refers to whosoever of the elect, whosoever of the world of the elect, so that the Calvinist has a problem with assurance because they don’t know if they’re elect, they don’t know if Christ died for them. 

Also according to Calvinism, the unregenerate person can’t believe. So according to Calvinism, first they have to be born again. And then they have to be given faith as a gift because otherwise they view believing as a work. And so they say that you don’t know if God has given you the gift of faith. And so they go through life with this uncertainty. 

The third area of confusion with the Calvinist is “believes.” “Whoever believes in Him,” well, they’re going to agree about the “in Him” part. “Will not perish.” They’ll agree that that refers to will not be condemned, but has everlasting life. Well, they’ll agree with that to some degree, but many Calvinists will say “whoever believe” is in the present tense. They’re actually a participle, “the believing one” or “the believer,” but they say it refers to ongoing faith. And so Calvinists will say, you must continue to believe your whole life. If you’re an old Calvinist, to prove you are really saved, if you’re a new Calvinist, to win final salvation. 

ANNOUNCER: The Grace Evangelical Society’s recently published Old Testament Commentary, Volume One is now available. Find it at faithalone.org/store. It’s where you can also find Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, as well as many other titles by Grace Evangelical Society authors. Please come by and have a look today. You’ll find the GES store at our website, faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s topic.

BOB: And so Calvinists will say, you must continue to believe your whole life. If you’re an old Calvinist, to prove you are really saved, if you’re a new Calvinist, to win final salvation. But their definition of believing is not simply being persuaded that by faith in Jesus, I’ll never perish, but I have eternal life. For them, belief is both persuasion of the fundamentals of the faith, and they have to lay out what those fundamentals are. And, it’s turning from your sins, commitment of your life, and perseverance and obedience until death. 

SAM: Right, as be genuine belief in their view, which genuine belief has to be accompanied by repentance, good works, some level of faithfulness, but it’s all subjective. 

BOB: But it also has to continue, right? 

SAM: And it has to continue. 

BOB: Now, let me say, an odd thing about this book, even though they’re not Calvinists, and even though they don’t believe you must persevere in good works in order to get into the kingdom, they do believe you must persevere in faith. And they say that if a believer were to apostatize, to commit apostasy, that believer would prove that they were never born again in the first place, because according to these Southern Baptists, you must continue to believe. So that’s one area where they kind of agree with Calvinism on perseverance, is at least the faith has to persevere, not the works. 

SAM: And that’s the old Calvinism. 

BOB: That would be the old Calvinism, right. Because the new Calvinism wouldn’t say it that way, but basically what you have in terms of this Calvinist understanding of John 3:16 is, we should not think that mere intellectual assent is going to give us eternal life. We should not think that at a point in time something we have believed, we’ve been persuaded of, is giving us everlasting life. Instead, the Calvinist would say, no, this must be something which perseveres over the course of our life, both the faith and the good works. And of course, that would include, since for them faith includes repentance, that means ongoing turning from my sins. And it includes commitments, so ongoing commitment, and it includes obedience, so ongoing obedience. 

And so for the Calvinists, they can’t know where they’re going until they die, and it leads to the odd form of evangelism that goes something like this: “Did you know that God so loved the world of the chosen ones, the world of those whom He chose to be saved, He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave Him to die on the cross for the sins of the people He chose. Now, I don’t know if you’re one of the elect. I don’t know if Christ died for you. In fact, I don’t know if I’m one of the elect, and I don’t know if Christ died for me. But what I do know is that if you or I are one of the elect, and if Christ died for us, then God’s going to give us the gift of faith, which means we’re going to turn from our sins, and we’re going to commit our lives to Christ, and we’re going to obey Him and follow Him until we die. And we’re going to persevere in that until death. And our hope or our confidence that we’re going to heaven when we die and that we’ll be in Jesus’ kingdom is going to be based on the fact that we see in our lives evidence that we’re going to persevere. Are you with me so far?” 

And the unbeliever is going to say, let me see if I’ve got that. You don’t know where you’re going when you die. No. 

SAM: But you want me to follow you.

BOB: But you want me to follow you, and so if I accept what you’re saying, I won’t know where I’m going either. But I can try hard my whole life, and I still may go to hell, right? Correct. And so, let’s say I am elect. If I’m elect, is there anything I can do to keep me from going to heaven when I die? Well, if it’s the new Calvinist, they would probably say, no, but if you’re truly elect, you will follow Him. And say, but if my fate is sealed, and there’s nothing I can do about it, why am I listening to you? What difference does it make? I ought to just go out and live my life, and whatever’s going to happen is going to happen, because I can’t change it, can I? 

SAM: And why do we need the Bible to tell us these things? 

BOB: Right, yeah. And why do I need you to tell me this wonderful good news that I can’t know where I’m going when I die? I mean, see, a much better evangelistic approach is Jesus said we can be absolutely certain that we have everlasting life, and that we’re going to spend eternity with Him. He said that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but has everlasting life. That’s good news. 

So, this chapter on John 3:16 by Jerry Vines has a lot of good things in it that are helpful. John 3:16 is a vital verse for evangelism, and let’s not misinterpret it. Let’s make it clear for people. Calvinism confuses the simple meaning of John 3:16. And if you have any doubts about your own eternal destiny, please pray about it and read the Gospel of John, and meditate on John 3:16. 

And in meantime, let’s all keep grace in focus. Amen.

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On our next episode: how much did Jesus emphasize hell in His evangelism? Join us again tomorrow and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.