John Stott On Sovereignty, Responsibility, And Calvinism

Many people will abuse the sovereignty of God to minimise and deny our human responsibility. Others use our responsibility to minimise God’s sovereignty. This is a major part of the argument between Calvinists and Arminians. John Stott showed us in this quote that you do not have to deny one to defend the other:

Predestination is said to foster apathy. For if salvation is entirely God’s work and not ours, people argue, then all human responsibility before God has been undermined. But again this is not so. On the contrary, it is abundantly clear that Scripture’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty never diminishes our responsibility. Instead, the two lie side by side in an antinomy, which is an apparent contradiction between two truths. Unlike a paradox, an antinomy is ‘not deliberately manufactured; it is forced upon us by the facts themselves … We do not invent it, and we cannot explain it. Nor is there any way to get rid of it, save by falsifying the very facts that led us to it.’ A good example is found in the teaching of Jesus, who declared both that ‘no-one can come to me unless the Father … draws him’ (John 6:44) and that ‘you refuse to come to me to have life’ (John 5:40). Why do people not come to Jesus? Is it that they cannot? Or is it that they will not? The only answer which is compatible with his own teaching is, ‘Both, even though we cannot reconcile them.’

. . . Predestination is said to foster narrow-mindedness, as the elect people of God become absorbed only in themselves. The opposite is the case. The reason God called one man Abraham and his one family was not for their blessing only, but that through them all the families of the earth might be blessed. Similarly, the reason God chose his Servant, that shadowy figure in Isaiah whom we see partly fulfilled in Israel, but specially in Christ and his people, was not only to glorify Israel but to bring light and justice to the nations. Indeed these promises were a great spur to Paul (as they should be to us) when he courageously broadened his evangelistic vision to include the Gentiles.¹⁶¹ Thus, God has made us his own people, not that we should be his favourites, but that we should be his witnesses, ‘to proclaim the glorious deeds of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’.

So the doctrine of divine predestination promotes humility, not arrogance; assurance, not apprehension; responsibility, not apathy; holiness, not complacency; and mission, not privilege.

Stott, J.R.W. (2001) The message of Romans: God’s good news for the world. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press (The Bible Speaks Today), pp. 251–252.

There are other teachers who also show us you can believe in both God being in charge and man still being responsible. We see this in the meeting between Wesley and Simeon, in several quotes from Spurgeon.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and *whoever* comes to me I will never cast out. John 6:27

Divine sovereignty AND human responsibility.

If your theology rejects one half of this verse or the other, your theology is incorrect not Jesus:https://t.co/z34z4dxfZz

— Adrian Warnock (@adrianwarnock) January 7, 2019