Work Like an Arminian, Sleep Like a Calvinist?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, there are some fairly common
00:00:06.280 | and popular phrases that we hear occasionally.
00:00:08.320 | Phrases like this,
00:00:09.880 | work like an Armenian, sleep like a Calvinist.
00:00:12.540 | Or sometimes it's said, pray like an Armenian,
00:00:14.700 | but sleep like a Calvinist.
00:00:16.100 | Or sometimes it's said, evangelize like an Armenian,
00:00:19.000 | but sleep like a Calvinist.
00:00:20.720 | What do you make of these phrases?
00:00:23.040 | - Well, each one of those is a little bit different.
00:00:27.520 | I don't like any of them.
00:00:29.760 | And let me focus on the first one.
00:00:32.080 | I think it was first when you said,
00:00:35.160 | work like an Armenian, sleep like a Calvinist.
00:00:39.420 | The other two, I think, have the same kind of simple answer.
00:00:45.960 | You know, evangelize like an Armenian
00:00:47.960 | and pray like an Armenian, not like a Calvinist.
00:00:51.000 | Sort of imply that poor Calvinists,
00:00:54.120 | they don't have any motive for evangelism and prayer
00:00:57.940 | because God rules everything.
00:01:00.080 | But I think in answering the first one,
00:01:02.640 | the others will be more clear.
00:01:05.620 | The reason I don't like saying,
00:01:07.760 | work like an Armenian and pray like a Calvinist
00:01:11.840 | is because I just think it's unhelpful and misleading,
00:01:16.440 | both historically in the effect
00:01:19.040 | that the reform vision had on the world,
00:01:22.440 | and biblically, it's just misleading because of many texts.
00:01:26.080 | But what occurs to me is that there are listeners
00:01:29.620 | who may not even know what those terms mean.
00:01:31.940 | So let me sketch that out and then try to tackle it.
00:01:36.940 | So get this term, Arminian and Calvinist.
00:01:40.380 | And here's the key difference for me.
00:01:42.840 | Historic Arminians believe, with Calvinists,
00:01:47.060 | that people are so sinful and rebellious
00:01:51.020 | that they can't believe in Jesus without divine grace.
00:01:54.820 | We both agree on that.
00:01:56.420 | But Arminians say that God gives this grace,
00:02:00.380 | prevenient grace, coming before grace,
00:02:03.940 | to everybody so that now they have the ability to believe.
00:02:08.940 | And in this way, the decisive cause of faith is us,
00:02:15.060 | and not God.
00:02:16.660 | God gets us started, puts us into a position
00:02:19.220 | where we can do the necessary believing,
00:02:21.580 | and then waits, and we provide
00:02:24.900 | the decisive awakening of faith.
00:02:28.820 | Now, Calvinists agree that you can't believe
00:02:33.820 | without divine grace, but we say that the function
00:02:38.740 | of that grace is decisive.
00:02:41.580 | It doesn't just make it possible for a man
00:02:45.500 | to decisively produce his own faith,
00:02:49.260 | but God decisively defeats all obstacles
00:02:53.420 | and makes Christ compelling and beautiful
00:02:57.020 | so that the heart is decisively moved
00:03:01.180 | to embrace Christ freely on the basis
00:03:04.600 | of what the eyes of the heart see.
00:03:07.300 | So one of the corollaries of the Arminian view
00:03:10.500 | is that a person can be a genuine believer
00:03:18.080 | with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
00:03:19.920 | and lose that standing and be lost.
00:03:24.920 | Now, Calvinists don't believe that.
00:03:28.280 | Don't believe that a person can believe,
00:03:31.640 | be decisively brought to faith by God,
00:03:35.000 | have his rebellion decisively overcome by God,
00:03:40.000 | and then God switch around and stop providing
00:03:44.660 | that decisive victory.
00:03:47.180 | God's faithfulness to those whom he called
00:03:51.080 | out of darkness into light is the ground
00:03:53.400 | of our confidence in eternal security.
00:03:57.460 | And my guess is that one of the reasons
00:04:00.580 | at the street level that people are inclined
00:04:04.380 | to think Arminians work harder than Calvinists
00:04:08.020 | is that Arminians have this kind of motive
00:04:11.480 | that if I don't work harder, then I might lose my salvation.
00:04:17.080 | I'm not saying that sophisticated, historic Arminians
00:04:21.800 | commend that kind of motivation,
00:04:23.800 | but I was talking to a man last Sunday, Tony,
00:04:26.560 | at the church that we're visiting here in Knoxville,
00:04:30.660 | and he was telling me that that's one of the reasons
00:04:34.220 | he converted to a more Reformed vision
00:04:37.520 | is because that all his life growing up,
00:04:40.160 | he was tormented by the fear of losing his salvation,
00:04:44.600 | and it was taught that he could lose it,
00:04:46.320 | and it had an effect on the way he went
00:04:48.360 | about doing his work.
00:04:50.840 | And so I don't want people to work like Arminians.
00:04:54.840 | So, you know, when I hear the mantra,
00:04:59.160 | work like an Arminian and sleep like a Calvin,
00:05:01.880 | I say, no, I don't want people to work that way.
00:05:06.580 | So it's a detraction, I think,
00:05:11.760 | from the truth, the biblical truth of Calvinism
00:05:16.720 | to say that there's a superior way of being motivated
00:05:21.720 | by something that's less biblical.
00:05:25.920 | So I think the ground of our work as Calvinists
00:05:30.920 | is far greater, more peaceful, more motivating
00:05:39.160 | than any other view provides.
00:05:42.400 | And here's the kind of text I have in mind.
00:05:45.960 | First Corinthians 15, 10,
00:05:48.920 | by the grace of God, I am what I am,
00:05:51.440 | and his grace toward me was not in vain,
00:05:53.540 | but I worked harder than any of them,
00:05:57.600 | yet it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
00:06:01.400 | Now that's a precisely Calvinistic drivenness
00:06:06.400 | from a grace standpoint.
00:06:09.600 | Grace came to Paul, it didn't come in vain, he said,
00:06:13.320 | it produced the hardest work imaginable,
00:06:15.720 | and then he pauses and says,
00:06:17.920 | but that hard work was not me, it was God.
00:06:21.640 | So it's the sovereignty of grace in my life,
00:06:25.600 | empowering me, that produces the kind of work
00:06:28.900 | that gives God glory and gives me a sense of peace
00:06:31.920 | that I'm being carried along by grace,
00:06:34.940 | even as I work very hard at it.
00:06:38.680 | Or another one would be Philippians 2, 13,
00:06:42.960 | work out your own salvation,
00:06:45.200 | because God is at work in you.
00:06:47.400 | Or later Philippians 3, 12,
00:06:49.280 | I press on to make it my own,
00:06:52.560 | because Christ has made me his own.
00:06:55.660 | So both of those texts in Philippians,
00:06:58.520 | in both of them, the stress falls on God's sovereign
00:07:03.520 | initiative producing our vigorous efforts.
00:07:08.340 | And then there's Colossians 1, 29,
00:07:11.440 | for this I toil, he's talking about producing maturity
00:07:15.040 | in believers, for this I toil,
00:07:17.160 | struggling with all the energy
00:07:20.520 | that he powerfully works within me.
00:07:24.920 | So Paul's toil and his struggle
00:07:27.440 | are with the very power of God that is working in Paul.
00:07:32.440 | That's the heart of Calvinism.
00:07:34.880 | God is the sovereign initiative taker,
00:07:37.640 | God is the sovereign worker and producer,
00:07:40.200 | God is the sovereign empower and enabler.
00:07:43.920 | And so when it comes to human living and human working,
00:07:46.640 | what we're doing is trusting, resting,
00:07:50.600 | and being empowered by what God does
00:07:53.600 | so that God gets all the glory,
00:07:56.280 | which is another hallmark of Calvinism.
00:07:58.520 | First Peter 4, 11, let him who serves,
00:08:02.160 | or you could say let him who works,
00:08:04.760 | work in the strength that God supplies
00:08:07.800 | so that in everything God gets the glory.
00:08:12.120 | So it's precisely working like a Calvinist
00:08:16.800 | that gets God glory.
00:08:18.080 | So you can see how I get bent out of shape
00:08:20.520 | if I hear somebody say, don't work like a Calvinist.
00:08:23.320 | What, working like a Calvinist is precisely
00:08:27.120 | the kind of work that is restful
00:08:30.160 | and trusting and being carried.
00:08:34.160 | My yoke is easy, my burden is light,
00:08:37.120 | and then God, the great sovereign initiative taking,
00:08:41.520 | sustaining God is getting all the glory.
00:08:46.240 | Let me just say one last thing.
00:08:47.880 | (laughs)
00:08:48.720 | This is long.
00:08:49.560 | It's historically just plain false
00:08:55.280 | to imply that Calvinism, when it came into being
00:09:00.120 | in its more systematic refined form,
00:09:03.920 | produced less work than others.
00:09:06.500 | The Protestant work ethic was begotten
00:09:10.560 | by the reformed vision of reality
00:09:12.560 | and it built the modern world we know.
00:09:16.400 | So my preference would be a slogan like,
00:09:19.440 | work like a Calvinist, play like a Calvinist,
00:09:22.960 | sleep like a Calvinist, outproduce, outplay,
00:09:25.800 | outdream everyone by trusting in your sovereign God.
00:09:30.040 | - Thank you, Pastor John,
00:09:30.880 | and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:09:32.520 | Email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org
00:09:36.400 | You'll find thousands of free books, articles, sermons,
00:09:40.240 | and other resources from John Piper.
00:09:41.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:42.640 | Thanks for listening.
00:09:43.680 | (upbeat music)
00:09:46.260 | (upbeat music)
00:09:48.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]