Is It A Sin To Not Like The Doctrine Of Election?

Below I have pasted an article from Piper answering the question, "Is it sin for me to not like the doctrine of election?"

Now the question is a very good one and the answer is as well, so take a moment and think through all the far reaching implications of this issue. Please understand the issue is not just election, but everything else that we may wrestle with concerning...God...as well.

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

"I believe in the doctrine of election, but I don't like it much. Is it sin for me not to like the doctrine of election?

It's sin not to like the true doctrine of election. It's sin not to like what God likes. I want to say it like that because many people have conceptions of doctrines—all kinds of doctrines—that are inaccurate. And therefore their good hearts dislike them.

So you could say, "I dislike election," and be a good person, because you don't see election clearly. And what you're disliking should be disliked. Or you may be a person who is starting to see it clearly and your old self, which is bad, is rising up and not liking what ought to be liked.

So I don't know whether this person should be chastised or not. The principle would be, "To the degree that you see biblical truth clearly, you should like it."

Hell is a biblical truth. So when I say, "You should like hell," what I mean is that you should like it the way God does.

God, it says, "is not willing that any should perish." God "does not delight in the death of the wicked." God "afflicts us, but not from his heart" (Lamentations 3). So there is in God himself a willing that hell be and a liking that it exists in that big picture. And yet he grieves over sending anybody there.

So the word "like" is just a little bit difficult here, because you're going to have to do double perspectives again.

If God ordains that Jerusalem be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, should we like that? My answer is both yes and no. We should not like women boiling their children, but we should approve of God's decision that it happen.

And so there's a double perspective in which the things that you see in the small lens should be disliked, whereas what you see in the bigger lens of how God runs the world should be liked."

Why Are You Called A Christian?

Why are you called a Christian?

“Because I am a member of Christ by faith and thus share in His anointing, so that I may as prophet confess His Name, as priest present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him, and as king fight with a free and good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter reign with Him eternally over all creatures.”

- The Heidelberg Catechism

(HT: Of First Importance)

Be Careful To Reserve The Word Heresy!

I have longed believe that the word heresy should only be used when orthodoxy has been broken when specifically concerning the doctrine of the person and work of Christ and the Trinity. This morning Al Mohler takes up the issue when he discusses the current state of the Episcopal Church.

Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori is the presiding Bishop and she addresses their national convention by declaring that all who profess that Jesus Christ can save them and put them in a right relationship with God are caught up into the web of a Western heresy. Of course, she is flip flopping the issue. She claims that those who actually embrace an individualistic approach to the saving work of Christ are heretics. The irony!

But I wanted to highlight Mohler's paragraph that deals with what heresy should specifically concern.....it is below.

"In the history of Christian theology, the word heresy has been most properly applied to what the church has recognized as false and unbiblical teachings concerning the doctrines most closely related to Christ and the Trinity. The word heresy should properly be reserved for teachings that directly reject what the Bible reveals and the Church has confessed concerning the person and work of Christ and the reality and integrity of the Trinity. There are any number of false teachings and erroneous doctrines, but the term heresy should be restricted to those most central to the Gospel itself."

You can read the article in its entirety by clicking here.