SPROUL: We come now to a whole new section
in the study of systematic theology, and it’s that subdivision of theology
that we call soteriology. Now, this word may seem foreign to many
people. It’s not your everyday common word that is used in the church, but it
is a very important word because it comprises those matters that pertain to our salvation.
The word ‘soteriology’ comes from the Greek, word ‘sozo’ or ‘sozomai’ is the verb in the New
Testament Greek that means ‘to save’ and the noun of the word ‘savior’ is the word ‘soter’.
And so we have soteriology coming from that. Just a word in passing that in the Scriptures
when the Bible speaks of salvation, it speaks of salvation in more than one way. We are accustomed
to using the term ‘salvation’ or being saved in the ultimate sense of being redeemed by God
and brought into a saving relationship to Him that will last for eternity. But in the Scriptures, for
God to save somebody can mean several different things. The word ‘to save’ refers to any act
of rescue from a serious and dire circumstance or from a calamitous situation. If you are
restored from a life-threatening disease, you are saved. If you are rescued from capture in
battle, you are saved. Any rescue from calamity is a kind of salvation biblically and that will be
important as we will see in a minute why that is. But then there is the ultimate sense of salvation
where in that regard the great calamity from which we are saved is from God. That is, we are saved
from having to face God in His wrath on the day of judgment and we are rescued from that wrath
which is to come, so that God is at the same time the Savior and the One from whom we are saved.
But now in the subject of soteriology when we study the matters of salvation at the center of
our concern (particularly in Reformed theology) is the concept of grace. I can remember when I
was a graduate student in the Netherlands, my professor Dr. Berkhouwer once made the observation
that the very essence of theology is grace and the essence of ethics is gratitude.
And he saw the link between those two, that from the beginning to the end salvation is
of the Lord and it is not something that we earn or that we deserve, but it is given freely
from the mercy and from the love of God. But when we speak of grace, the first thing that
we have in view is the distinction between grace and justice. Justice is something that is
earned or merited or is due to a person by some standard. And, usually when we
think of justice we think of the standard of works. And when Paul writes about our salvation
he makes it very clear that if we were saved by our works then our salvation would not be
of grace. But since it is of grace and that indicates that it is not of works. But justice has
to do with correspondence to some kind of standard of merit or of earning. I say that by way of
contrast that grace is something that is not deserved, that is not merited, that is not earned,
it is something that is given freely by God. Something that He is never obligated or required
to do. We remember His statements to Moses that are quoted by Paul in Romans wherein God said
“I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy.” That grace is always a divine prerogative, never
a requirement and it’s critical that we understand that because it gets in our heads quite frequently
to think that God owes us something. And that if He were really good He would give us a
better life or so on. The minute we think that God owes us something, remember that if you
think it’s owed, you’re not thinking any more about grace. You’re thinking about justice.
Because grace is never owed. And even if God is pleased to be gracious to this person and
withhold that same grace from this person, it’s still a matter of grace to this person and
because He’s gracious to this one does not mean He’s therefore obligated to give the same grace
to somebody else because we’re not talking about obligation here, we are not talking about justice,
we’re talking about sovereign mercy and grace. And so the classic definition of
grace is unmerited or unearned favor. It is when God behaves in a favorable manner
to us in a way where we have no claim to it by virtue of our merit that we are speaking of
grace. Now in theology and in our study of the doctrines of grace, the first distinction that
we have to make in this section (and remember it is the theologian’s prerogative always to make
distinctions) the first distinction here regarding grace is a distinction that’s important and that
is a distinction between what we call common grace and what we call special grace. Common grace and special grace. Common grace is
called common because it is virtually universal. It refers to that grace that God gives to all
people indiscriminately. The mercy and kindness that extends to the human race as distinguished
from the special grace of redemption that God gives to the saved. So common grace is the grace
of God that we all experience in a broad sense. For example, the Bible when it speaks
of the providence of God says that the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. Now
think about that for a moment. How important is it for us to have rain in certain sequences and
periodicies in order for us to survive as people? The crops that we grow are dependent upon rain.
I will never forget when we had the problem in Florida of the drought that created the wildfires
that were life threatening where a whole county was evacuated – every single person in that county
had to be evacuated. And I remember living nearby those fires and people had been praying for rain
and I happened to be at a golf course one day in the lunch room when all of a sudden this mass of
people started yelling and shouting and cheering as they came in off the golf course soaking wet
because there was this cloudburst and that’s something you – I’d never seen in my life at a
golf course – golfers cheering when it started to rain! Usually they’re all grumbling and mumbling
if they’re forced off the golf course because of the storm but on this occasion the drought
had been so severe that everybody was cheering. Well, rain is something that we tend
to take for granted but the Bible says God sends His rain to the just and to the unjust.
You may have two farmers in the same town. One may be devout and committed to the things
of God. The other person may be utterly profane, as pagan as he can possibly be. Both of them
need the rain for their crops and God in His goodness waters the earth, and so both profit
from the shower. Not because they’ve earned it. Neither one of them really deserves the rain to
nurture their crops but God’s showers and rains falls upon the just as well as on the unjust. As
the old cliche that it rains on the just fella and the unjust fella. The problem is that the unjust
fella usually has the just fella’s umbrella. But, in any case, common grace refers to the
kindness and benefits and the favors that God pours out liberally to people whether
they are believers or not believers. But we’re not just talking here about
rain. We are talking about a multitude of favors that are enjoyed by people who are not in
fellowship with God through personal redemption. And we see that these things that God – gifts
of life and health and safety and order and all the rest that we need to survive is something
that God does in order to preserve His creation. From the fall of man, God did not utterly destroy
the whole human race but He has preserved the human race even to this day. And we have seen a
progress in history of the impact of God’s grace on just simply the standard of living of people.
I know that not everyone in this world enjoys an equal standard of living. Not everyone in
American has the same standard of living and certainly the basic standard of living in America
is much greater than in other parts of the world where people live in abject poverty and severe
deprivation. Nevertheless, even in those areas the life expectancy and the quality of life
tends to be significantly better than it was for the masses of the populated areas of the world in
centuries past. And so, that just life itself has become easier and better as it were
as the progress of history. And not the least of the reasons that has provoked the
improvement of life and the conditions of life (which many people will attribute simply
to science or to the secular enterprise of education) we have to look to the influence
of the Christian church on the world over the past two thousand years. You realize that the
orphanage movement in history was stimulated and made in main by the Christian community. That
the hospital movement, the educational movement of early centuries was sparked and stimulated by
the church and even the development of science in many ways was stimulated by the Christians who
were convinced that they had a responsibility to dress and till and keep the earth and to be good
stewards of this planet that God has given to us. And so if we would chart the history of the
influence of the Christian church on law, on ethics, on mercy, on education
and all these different spheres, we would see that quite to the contrary of those
who decry the impact of religion on the world that really the general quality of life on this
planet has been vastly improved by the influence of Christianity. Now why is that? One of the
reasons that is is that the church is always called, and the Christian is called to imitate
Christ as Christ imitates God. And as Christians engaged in the Christian life, we are called
to be imitators of God. That’s what it means to be made in the image of God. And if God is
concerned about common grace, the general welfare of the human race, what is our responsibility?
We are also called to be concerned about the general welfare of the human race. In fact, Jesus
says if your neighbor (or even in this case if it’s your enemy) is naked, you clothe him, if
he’s hungry, you feed him, and if he’s thirsty, you give him to drink, if he’s in prison, you go
and visit him, if he’s sick, you minister to him. And we see Jesus demonstrating in His ministry
(for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan) indicates the priority that Jesus gives to
His church to be concerned not only in the special grace realm of evangelism, but also to be
concerned about the general welfare of the human race. What does James tell us but the essence of
true religion is the care of orphans and widows. Now, I labor this point for
a reason. That there has been a strange divorce that has taken place in the last
hundred or so years in the Christian community. A crisis occurred in the 19th century with
the advent of 19th century liberal theology, which by and large rejected the supernatural
aspects of the Christian faith, denied the virgin birth, denied the resurrection, denied
the atonement, the deity of Christ and so on. And they had a crisis because they had basically
rejected historic Christianity and yet they had tons of money invested in careers and in church
buildings and programs and institutions all over the place, and so in order for them to remain
viable – from a social perspective – they had to create a new agenda for the church. Well,
they said we already have an agenda and it’s the humanitarian outreach concerns, the ministries
of mercy, and they began to put their emphasis on taking care of the social agenda at the expense of
evangelism. And orthodox Christians were saying, “Wait a minute! The church is still about the
supernatural questions of personal reconciliation and we’ve got to almost double our efforts for
evangelism to make up for the repudiation of it that is coming from the liberal wing.” And this
unnatural schism took place where evangelicals began to say, “Oh, social action, social concern,
concern for the general welfare of the human race that’s a liberal matter. That’s a liberal agenda.
Whereas concern for souls and personal salvation, that’s the real concern of the church.” If
Christ would hear that, He would say ‘A pox on both of your houses’. Because the church is
called not only to the ministry of special grace but also to the ministry of common grace. And that
means as Christians we have to be concerned about poverty, we have to be concerned about hunger, we
have to be concerned about people having the basic necessities of life in terms of housing, in terms
of clothing and reaching out to their misery. I can remember when the AIDS epidemic first
started out and I heard people who claim to be Christian saying that they weren’t going to
do anything to support the victims of AIDS. And I said, “Why would you say that?” And they said,
“Well, because AIDS is contracted out of a wicked, sinful lifestyle either through drugs
or homosexual activity and so on, and we can’t be supportive of
it.” And I said, “Wait a minute! If you find somebody sick and dying in a ditch,
you don’t ask them how they got in that ditch. The love of Christ is to constrain you to pull
them out of that ditch and do everything you can to – and that’s what this story of the Good
Samaritan is all about.” It’s not that anybody is qualified to receive the ministry or the mercy
of God. I’m not qualified. If somebody who’s contracted AIDS is not qualified to be helped by
the mercy of the church, then neither am I. And neither are you. Because all of us receive the
benefits of this mercy on the basis of grace. And particularly those of us who have received
what we might call uncommon grace or special grace should be the last people in the world to
eschew the granting of mercy commonly to people. Now, another point I want to make about this
point of great conflict in the Christian church. When can a Christian join hands or stand shoulder
to shoulder with pagans or with contrary religions or even apostate religions? Francis Schaefer once
said that when it comes to common grace matters, the Christian must be a co-belligerent
with all kinds of people who are not Christians. You have a march for the rights of
the unborn. Before you protest abortion on demand, do you check out the membership card of the
person who is standing with you? This is a common grace issue. And I will stand next
to New Age people. I will stand next to demon worshippers if I have to if they have a
concern about the general welfare of the unborn and I will stand shoulder to shoulder with those
people in such a public protest. Because that’s an arena of common grace where we commonly
are to reach out and be supportive of people. Now, if it’s a worship service, am I going to
stand shoulder to shoulder in a worship service with members of a Satanic cult? Am I going
to stand shoulder to shoulder in a worship service or in a prayer breakfast with Muslims?
No. I can’t do that because that’s the realm of special grace. And so we need to understand
the difference between these two. One last point as our time is running out,
and that has to do with the love of God. We hear in Romans that (in Romans 9) that Paul
makes the observation (which we’ll explore more in our next session) “Jacob have I loved, Esau
have I hated.” Now, whatever that text means, as problematic as it is, obviously there is one sense
in which Jacob is loved in a way that Esau isn’t. So what does that do with our popular
concept that God loves everybody and He loves everybody unconditionally. Well,
He doesn’t love everybody unconditionally but here again we make a distinction
between God’s love of benevolence and His love of complacency. Now, that word is
derived from an older form of the word. When we say that somebody is complacent today we mean that
they are smug, you know, that they really kind of above it all and somewhat arrogant. That’s not
what is meant here. The love of benevolence has to do with the general kindness that God has
and His concern for the general well-being of human beings. In that sense it can be said that
God loves everybody, in the sense in which we’ve been talking that He makes the sun to shine on
everybody. He gives the gift of air and breath and life and nutrients to everybody indiscriminately.
The love of complacency has to do with His redemptive love. The love that is
focused chiefly on His beloved Son, Christ, and which spills out to those who are
in Christ. That God has a special love for the redeemed that He doesn’t have for the
rest of the world. And that’s another part of the distinction between the common grace of God
and the special grace of God because there’s an astonishment in the Scripture about the special
love of God that we experience in salvation.
