Kuyperianism and the Future

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

In a fallen world and among a fallen people, one thing we can be certain of is that where grace exists, grace will be abused. That seems to be a recurring theme in literature, in history, and that is to say, wherever grace is present, grace is certain to be trampled upon to some degree or another. The child whose mother serves him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich soon wants tuna fish. The citizen who has been promised freedom of speech soon thinks that his freedom to speak means another’s obligation to listen. From cradle to grave fallen men, abuse the graces that we were given. And this is something with which our society is most familiar as ones who enjoy a host of graces on our own.

We are a blessed people. And whether those graces are common or special, we know that there are too many to count. A free press, for instance, is a really good thing. It helps to keep politicians in check. It also affords them opportunities to lie. The press is still occupied by fallen men who do spend things from time to time to meet their own agendas in their freedom. And it’s a good thing that is abused. Likewise, freedom of religion is necessary for a healthy society, but men may use that freedom to worship Jupiter, Allah, or money. But of course, we have a freedom of religion, And that means that there will be Muslims, atheists, Wiccans, and pantheists worshiping freely among us, or not, right?

Abraham Kuyper would attribute many of these freedoms, our modern conveniences, not just to Christianity, but in particular to the influence of Calvinism. But that too has bred entitlement and abuse. How many of us have grumbled at slow internet speeds, a day’s delay in the garbage pickup, or when the 7-11 has the audacity to sell out a beef jerky. Yet, this sort of entitlement has grown in the soil of Calvinism, whether we acknowledge it or not. With more particular attention to the spiritual climate, Kuiper devotes some attention to the future in his sixth stone lecture, delivered at Princeton in 1898. And so lecture six is entitled, Calvinism and the future.

And it is less concerned with the eschaton, the end. It’s not eschatological per se, and more concerned with now what? What about the next 20 years? And I think that his observations are helpful for us as well. And like I said, Kuyper’s lecture was entitled Calvinism in the Future, but this talk aims at Kuyperianism in the future. And of course, Kuyper probably was not brash enough call his own life system, Kyperian. But by Kyperianism, we mean this. A worldview and a life lived in light of the sovereignty of God and the ubiquitous lordship of Jesus Christ applied across all the various spheres of science, art, politics, education, and more.

So it is an application, a practical application of the sovereignty of God and all the spheres of life. So in this lecture, Kuyper recognized that we have problems. He also argued in the first five lectures that Calvinism, namely the insistence on the pervasive sovereignty of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ, this Calvinism has profound implications and application for Christians who would effect, that is bring about cultural formation. Now near the end of this lecture, Kuyper answers the question, now what? Now what? It’s the last lecture, he’s dabbled in a host of topics and we visited those over the last several months, but going from the theoretical to the practical application, he makes some demands.

In order for Christians to apply what he has been teaching across the spheres, he says that we need to be unblushing champions of Calvinism. And as such, he makes four demands, which will serve as our outline for tonight. So you don’t need to write these down now. They’re going to be, and I’m actually having them projected because these are not exactly parallel points. He didn’t want it necessarily to be like that, but I think they’re going to serve as our outline for our talk tonight. Kuyper’s demands for cultural turnaround and advancement. These are demands. He demands that Calvinism shall no longer be ignored where it still exists, but be strengthened where its influence continues.

He demands that Calvinism shall again be made a subject of study in order that the outside world may come to know it. He demands that his principle shall again be developed in accordance with the needs of our time and consistently applied to the various domains of life. And last, he demands that the churches, which still lay claim to confessing it, shall cease being ashamed of their own confession. Not surprisingly, there’s a fair amount of overlap, especially between the first and the fourth of Kuyper’s demands. But I think this is pretty good, especially for those of us who would say, OK, this is all well and good.

We’re convinced by now that it It is the responsibility of faithful Christians to be used by God in all parts of his domain. So what does that look like? And rather than getting into the brass tacks about art or the sciences or education here, what he talks about is how to perpetuate this mindset properly among Christians. So I’d like to look at them in turn. Let’s look first then at his first demand. Kuiper demands that Calvinism shall no longer be ignored where it still exists, but be strengthened where its influence continues. Now for those of you students of history, you’ll be aware that around the turn of the 20th century, the prevailing philosophy was what?

What was it? In the American West in particular. Go ahead. Okay, so humanism. So, and modernism we would say, and all of these things dovetail together on the heels of Darwin, making very available to the masses, the theory of evolution. He didn’t come up with it. And then in the latter half of the 19th century, modernism and the humanism that actually played into it, men were pretty full of themselves thinking with their scientific advancements and the rest that they were actually, quite possibly, capable of fixing all the evils of the world. And this is without God. This is because man is amazing. Right. And so this actually had its way and had its feelers creeping out into the churches and into the seminaries, unfortunately, and elsewhere.

So we see this. And it was on the heels of the Second Great Awakening as well in the Holiness Movement. We see it happening in the church too. Arminian theology was on the rise, and the offensive doctrine of the sovereignty of God was on the decline. Kuyper saw this in his day as the skepticism of modernism was taking hold along with humanism. And in the major denominations in America, he was Dutch, but he was a guest in America delivering these lectures. The Episcopalianists, the American Baptists, the northern Presbyterians were all going the way of humanism. and that was creeping into the church. Calvinism was experiencing widespread rejection, increasingly so anyway, which Kuyper found preposterous on a number of levels.

It is unbiblical to reject it. It is actually dangerous intellectually to do so, and it is casting off one of the main instruments of our own heritage. So Calvinism, the very theological and life system that’s squared best with Scripture which had been woven into the very fabric of American and European culture, was now being cast off and very cleverly rejected. A strong cultural temptation to try to reconcile the new, but increasingly popular, Darwinistic evolution, presented problems for those who took a plain reading of the early chapters of Genesis and on and on. So we see these efforts to try to harmonize the greatness of God and science and scripture.

In Kuyper’s day, the Calvinism that had so profoundly influenced various aspects of Western life and progress was at odds with the increasing influence of modernism in the church at large, including most of the seminaries and Arminianism in the church. So, though many of the fundamentalists championed Calvinism less than a generation later, including stalwarts like J. Gresham Machen, one could make the case that the church has not recovered from this, which is why there remains a suspicion of Calvinism today. There is a distrust in the church of Calvinists today. My God is a gentleman and he wouldn’t force himself on anyone, says the modern preacher who is a critic of say irresistible grace.

The Calvinist would say, unless God changes the heart of the dead man, and unless God gives him the faith to embrace the sun, he’ll never do it on his own. Or this Calvinist would say, I’m grateful that God changed my heart, my mind, and my will because I know that otherwise I never would have been saved. Or as Spurgeon has said, if I could fall from grace, I would, like every day. Critics say the doctrine of once saved, always saved, invites licentiousness. What they’re failing to recognize is that licentiousness is not an evidence of saving grace. Or they might say, my God wants everybody to be saved, so Jesus died for everyone, it’s up to us to receive the gift.

And that’s challenged scripturally as well, as logically, and then the doctrine of double jeopardy. Is Jesus, is payment sufficient for, and efficient for the payment of sins for those who are currently paying for their sins and health? And I could go on, these things are not themselves damnable heresies, and I don’t want to make that argument. Though, they are teachings of secondary doctrines that have profound implications for how we live. And at the risk of setting up a straw man, and I don’t want to do that, I do want to be charitable to our Arminian brothers and sisters, a life system even built on Arminian theology would look considerably different from what Kuyper is demanding here.

And I’ll return to this later on. But it is likely that Kuyper was suggesting in his own time something that he would suggest for a day. That is stop a wimp Calvinist. He’d to apologize for subscribing to the life system that got us where we are. Sure, there have been and there remain, even in this room perhaps, jerk Calvinists. Shut up. I’m trying to make a point here. But what theological camp has ever without its jerks. Yeah, I mean silly, none. And Calvinism is not unique and it’s being ignored either. So I mean we’re talking about Calvinism here but generally speaking our culture is theologically apathetic and indifferent.

Our Christian culture tells itself that theology introduces unnecessary division and it’s hard to defend this sort of conscious agnosticism when it comes to theology is anything but lazy. No creed but the Bible says the evangelical. And what do you get when you steer clear of theological teaching? It’s like asking what would happen if we removed the teaching of logic from our schools? Exactly what you see when you turn on the news. That’s what it looks like. What do you get? You get a watery foundation on which to build your life. And Kuyper would say that our culture is gullible and skeptical because of its disdain for theology, or at least lack of appetite.

When was the last time you had a conversation with a convinced Arminian? And again, I’m not trying to be mean, but I can think in my life of, I can think of two. And about the last 15 years or so, 18 years, I have walked in largely Calvinistic circles, it is true, but I have had opportunity to interact with a lot of Armenians and teachers from Armenian churches. And I’ve also talked to a lot of Calvinists, no, no, I’ve talked to a lot of people who attended Reformed churches who had no idea what the tenets of Reformed theology were. So most Christians today sort of stumble into their life system, and not to be the case.

They sort of stumble into their theology, and it’s because they’re not taught. And where Calvinism is not ignored in our culture, where there’s an awareness of it, It’s commonly disdained. I just thought of a third. All right, that was with another local Arminian pastor who is like, oh yeah, reformed.

Most of us have had conversation with people who have taken serious offense at the notion that God would require us to produce or to be marked by something that we cannot produce on our own. And that’s not a new offense. Pelagius had that offense with Augustine’s teaching. Lord, command what you will and will what you command, said Augustine multiple times in Confessions. And Pelagius says, far be it from God, to require of us something that we can’t produce on our own. So, that was the fourth century. I have a feeling that Kuyper would have been really excited about the New Calvinism that has gained a foothold in our generation.

I’m excited about it. Yeah, largely to the influence of teachers like R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, John Piper, Albert Mohler, and others. This is an exciting time where a generation of worshippers is awakening to the sovereignty of God and the doctrines of grace. But many still stumble at the low view of man that is part and parcel to Reformed teachings. The low view of man. And what I mean by that is the low view of man’s autonomy. I would argue that actually is the highest view of man because only Reformed teaching recognizes man as he actually was created, the purpose for which he was created to exist. That is to give God glory, not to be glorified by God.

But the low view of man, they say, is a stumbling block. While ours is a Christian culture that does disdain theology, we still owe and must acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the reformers and their theology. I admit that Arminian theology squares more with human reason. It’s more palatable. It’s like something that I would think of. That is not necessarily a vote of confidence.

If it were invited by men, it would also be something that was square with human reason. And it’s not really surprising that Arminianism is more normal than Calvinism in America today. Nevertheless, without the theology of the Reformation and without the influence of the reformers, Armenians would not have their churches today. Modern evangelicalism would not exist as a movement were it not for the reformers with their mostly Calvinistic theology, for which most modern Christians have little appreciation. That doesn’t mean that the reformers got everything right. But it is silly to suggest that the lines that they drew were unnecessarily divisive.

So we should have no creed but the Bible today. Calvinism is still in existence. So Kuyper would argue, would demand that we no longer ignore it. And it always will be as long as there are lovers of the Bible and the sovereign goodness of God. So we should stop ignoring it. Second, Kuyper demands that Calvinism shall again be made a subject of study in order that the outside world may come to know it. So yeah, again, we’re talking about now, not just in the church, but by our behavior, by our teaching taking that understanding to the outside world. If Kuyper is right that our modern culture is owing largely not to just a Christian influence but to Calvinistic influence, then it is ironic that so few in our culture even know what Calvinism is.

But at the same time, it’s also not really surprising. I mean, this is part of what I opened with. This is a hallmark of grace, right? Where it exists, it’ll be abused. Our culture at the same time is, our culture is trying to divest its young people, for instance, of their ethnic heritage, to make us all the same. Consciously take out any texts from the curriculum that will show them what Americans used to think, or how we got to where we are, historically or otherwise. And they’re doing the same thing, theologically, trying to divest our people of our, Yeah, religious culture and heritage. So it’s not really that surprising.

Our culture’s working hard to separate us from our heritage and especially if it’s peppered with white males like Abraham Kuyper and myself or John Calvin. Applied to the church it’s easy, it’s even tempting to dismiss theology as unimportant. I think that too is a very great mistake. It’s been said before, the one thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. In other words, men repeat the same mistakes over and over again when they ought to know otherwise. They have no excuse for not knowing otherwise. This is a preventable foolishness. We would do well to learn what has happened when we’ve come so, well, I’m sorry, where we’ve come from, so that we can know where we’re headed.

There’s a very lather, rinse, repeat rhythm to history. And when you get to lather, you know that rinse is next. And we need to correct our course, or maybe rinse with distilled water or something, I don’t know. It’s a disdain for history and for theology that causes many in the church today to poo-poo these sorts of discussions, to dismiss theology as unnecessarily divisive. Christ unites doctrine divides, ever heard that?

Which I heard spool. Or no, let’s say Jesus unites doctrine with Jesus who? Now be careful, because as soon as you, what you say next will be theological. So, yeah. We must remember the teaching of Paul who insisted in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians on those matters which were of first importance, namely those doctrines of the gospel, we must agree on those where we can’t call ourselves brothers, so those are our primary doctrines. However, there are, as you’ve already said, a host of secondary doctrines that do have profound implications on how we live and on which we may disagree. It’s another great mistake, I would say, to reduce Calvinism to five points.

It actually is ignorant of history to say that it is summed up in five points. Calvinism is about the sovereignty of God in all arenas of life, and the five points of Calvinism are largely so terriological. They have to do with the doctrine of election. And if he is sovereign overall, then of course he is sovereign in this teeny corner of theology, which is significant, don’t get me wrong, but it’s only one piece. I mean, it’s like calling a Christian school an anti-gay school. What?

We’re anti-sin, but we’re actually more pro-Christ and truth and love. And so we tend to, as humans, like to pick out the one thing that we do, we do it all the time in arguments as well, that’s red herring. Right? We will pick out the one thing we wanna go after and then say, aha. Well, it’s the same sort of behavior to try to simply reduce the reform doctrine of Calvinism to five simple points. So, it of course includes the doctrines of grace, but it doesn’t stop there. It also means that God ordains and effects history. He brings history about, he makes history happen. He raises and deposes kings. He commands hail and thunder.

He knows every thought that you’ve ever had. He’s the creator and the boss of every molecule. And it includes the five points, sure. And though the term Calvinism is a nickname, the doctrines of grace saturated the confessions of most of the major denominations in the first three centuries after the Reformation. The vast majority of Baptists, Episcopalian, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and many Methodists would have affirmed, again, even many Methodists, would have affirmed the total depravity of man, the sovereign election of God, and more. Some of the most Calvinistic hymns we’ve seen today are by John Wesley, or Charles Wesley.

Yeah, today relatively few of these denominations would affirm these doctrines, and I believe they’re considerably weaker, and they are less alluring to the unbelieving world as a result. Where liberalism creeps into the church, the church has less of a compelling draw. If morality is subjective, for instance, then there is, then the minister has no grounds to make an appeal to a congregant to even show up on a Sunday, right? And more and more and more, the churches of America are becoming like the world, and it’s not surprising that the liberal denominations are dying. Kuyper says that we should go ahead and study Calvinism.

Study Calvinism. Call it Calvinism when you’re doing it. We should teach it theologically, we should teach it outright, but we should also show the outcome when it is cast aside. Multiple times, for instance, in this sixth lecture, he actually juxtaposes the democracy of the French Revolution and the democracy of America. It’s actually pretty interesting, and it’s not complicated. The democracy of the French Revolution was largely humanistic, and the democracy of America was at its base at least cognizant of the total depravity of man.

The humanists of the French Revolution were convinced of the greatness in autonomy and the potency of humanity. Strangely, that led to a lot of death and destruction and poverty, and an object lesson for Western posterity versus the American experiment in democracy at its foundation was the notion not that humanity was autonomous and great, but rather that humanity was fallen and needed lots of outside help. Our fathers understood the depravity of man and that it was total. So they instituted not a pure democracy, but a rep, well, actually a democratic republic is what we are with wise men appointed ideally to represent us.

And whether the wise or not, the ones that we ask for. So we appoint people to represent us. And even a democratic experiment built on Arminianism, and get this, even a democratic experiment built on Arminianism would have had a greater optimism about man’s capabilities than the one that we have. It would have had a greater optimism about what man was capable of doing.

It would have had fewer checks and balances against the corrupt nature of man. The democracy of the French Revolution, again, resulted in death and destruction and poverty. The democracy of America is far from perfect, but its principle of total depravity has enabled it to survive for over 200 years. Now, Kuiper accurately attributes this to the founding fathers’ Calvinistic understanding of men, even if they were not all faithful Christians. I’m not making the case that every drafter of the Constitution was a faithful Christian. What I’m arguing is that the prevailing notion of man at that time was more biblical than it is now.

And so then that governed their decision making and their writing, their political decision making. So Kuyper would say, like, let’s go ahead and teach it. Let’s teach it that the world may know. What else does he say? Kuyper demands that Calvinist principles shall again be developed in accordance with the needs of our time and consistently applied to the various domains of life. And I suppose some people in our culture may think that we, as modern sophisticates, have outgrown Calvinism. A doctrine of a sovereign God is fine for primitive cultures, but we’re sophisticated and intelligent moderns. We certainly don’t need religion.

Well, I mean, I think that Calvinism does have application for us today in lots and lots and lots of ways, and not just theoretically, but in all sorts of contexts. And really, that’s what Kuyper’s lectures are about. This is theological, this is theology and philosophy that has application. Guys, Calvinism’s handy. A Calvinistic businessman, for instance, recognizes that God will grow his business or not according to his will, but the man’s duty is to be faithful in his work. The alternative would be a man who believes that his cutting of corners or taking advantage of others is good business. As Calvinists, we know that God is sovereign in the marketplace and that his sovereignty has worked out in a thousand different ways, and the exchange of goods and services among a civilized people in cooperation with one another is a means that God uses to bring good to a people.

Stated differently, the Calvinistic businessman does not need to take matters into his own hands in order to turn a profit. He needs to be faithful and responsible and do the right thing, and then he can expect the blessing of God whether that comes monetarily or not. A Calvinistic educator has a reason to educate his pupils that goes far beyond training them to get good grades, to get into a good college, to get a good job and make lots of money. A Calvinistic educator, rather, is conscious of his duty to equip his pupils to be used by God to bring good to a culture as they are his ambassadors and his instruments for use, however he sees fit in all spheres of influence.

And that’s going to result in a pretty good education if they’re training them for that. A Calvinistic scientist recognizes that because God is in control, creation operates according to knowable and consistent laws. In order that we may better image him in the world and take dominion of the world in obedience to Genesis 1.28, we should go ahead and try to learn what those laws are and how harnessing of the power of nature can bring about good for humanity. The Calvinistic parent recognizes that his children are a stewardship from the Lord, and their salvation is in God’s hands, Though he, that is the parent, is to image God well before his children.

Although most Christians come from Christian homes, it’s true, it’s often in spite of our parental shortcomings that the church grows in our own homes. God is the one bringing about the growth which at once energizes and frees up the well-intentioned parent. The Calvinistic politician recognizes that he is an instrument in the hand of God to bring good and safety to a people. God raises up and deposes dictators and governments bear the sword for a reason. We could go on, but you probably get the idea. The Calvinist in every sphere operates as the conscious instrument of a sovereign God. Our faithfulness to what God has said may be the means that he uses to bring about his ends, but in the end, he’s sovereign, not us.

That’s actually tremendously freeing. We are to be faithful, but we can trust God with the outcome. Can that too be abused? Yes. And that actually is part of the fair bad rap that Calvinism has gotten. So the doctrine of hyper-Calvinism, for instance, would argue that evangelism is actually not necessary if God is going to save whoever he wants anyway, but that is actually, that’s misguided and it’s unbiblical on a couple of levels, which I’m not gonna go into tonight. But yes, all of these things can be abused. But it’s also worth noting that many They’re the greatest evangelists of all time have been card carrying predestinarians.

They’ve recognized that God’s the one who saves and if he ordains means, so I’m gonna go and preach the gospel as widely as I can and maybe be used by God to save some. Calvinism is not outdated or irrelevant, it is not. And if we would affect cultural change, we should set about our intentional application of it to all areas of life. Kuyper’s fourth demand was that the churches, which still lay claim to confessing it, shall cease being ashamed of their own confession.” I don’t know what the creedal counter is for the PCUSA, but it’s high, the number of creeds that they’re affirming. And they’re not alone. I’ve been to congregational churches before that are ashamed of any sort of Calvinism in a part of their heritage.

A sign in the men’s room one time of one that I was at said, a church that takes the Bible seriously but not literally. Go you, it’s creepy, creepy. We’re talking about churches that have a heritage that would not have been ashamed of this. Kuiper is demanding that they cast off their shame and start, well, embracing it once again. Still they claim to confessing it, which sees being ashamed of their own confession. And this is, like I said, similar to his first demand as he circles back around to this message of courage. While I don’t share Kuyper’s absolute insistence that we preach Calvinism and call it Calvinism today, I mean, the more I spend with Kuyper, the more I think he’s got a point.

I think I know where he’s coming from. Our reluctance to identify as Calvinists and to call our teaching Calvinism and our readiness to just teach the truth is actually paved the way for ambiguity. Today the term Calvinism does have baggage to be sure, but we would do well maybe to champion Kyperianism.

That’s not something Kuyper argued for. Any more than Calvin argued for his teaching to be called Calvinism. If his joy in heaven or either of them could be disrupted, they would probably twitch in their graves. But if we use the term Kyperianism, I was talking to Sean about this this morning. It actually is a, we could call it a subset of Calvinism that actually does get to what we’re trying to scratch at. That is the application of the lordship of Christ in all spheres of life. Our theological sissiness, however, and our refusal to make distinctions has gotten us to where we are now in this age of theological confusion.

And I do think that in the name of unity, perhaps, we have so narrowed our list of essential doctrines that we don’t recognize that some of the secondary doctrines are actually big deals. For instance, a belief that God is sovereign in election actually influences how we evangelize. This isn’t on my notes, but anecdotally, with Campus Crusade for Christ in 1997, I went on a short-term mission trip right about the time I got saved. I could recite the gospel and a presentation from the four spiritual laws pretty well before I actually affirm them myself. And went to share the gospel with the drunk college students on Panama City beaches.

Okay. So, I mean, they had nothing to do but drink beer and get tan, and then there was a lot of discretionary time. So we would walk around and share the gospel with them. And I mean, there could be a lesson of to try and share the gospel with a drunk person, but nevertheless, had some really good conversations. And at the end of the day, we would come back together and share how it had gone, celebrate what had gone well, and maybe pray for some people who we’d gotten to share with by name and so on. And lo and behold, I had some pretty good conversations and I pleaded with people to trust Christ. And I don’t know that any, who knows what seeds were planted, but I don’t know that I was effective in communicating the gospel or not.

I can’t really speak to that. But I do know that at the end of the day, multiple times throughout the course of the week, the ones who had actually seen the most people place their faith in Christ were Calvinists. And I didn’t realize that, I didn’t even know what that meant until years later. And they were the ones who were able to go in with the confidence that it actually didn’t depend on the eloquence of their presentation. It didn’t depend on them breaking down every intellectual obstacle. They laid it out there and it was alluring and they were clear and then they left the results of the Lord and lo and behold.

So those of us who actually were trying to be as clear and eloquent and articulate and persuasive as possible failed by comparison to those who actually trusted God with the outcome. A belief that he ordains whatever comes to pass will cause us to like Job, put our hands on our mouths when we’re given to grumbling. A belief that nobody can snatch us out of the Father’s hand enables our assurance of salvation as well as the ability to sleep at night. If I actually, kind of like Spurgeon, if I thought that I could lose my salvation, I’d feel guilty for sleeping because I probably should feel so guilty that I couldn’t sleep, right?

I would be in a constant state of terror or I’d be the holiest human ever and maybe that ought to be the case. A belief that God does not make mistakes keeps us from bitterness when a loved one dies or when a wicked man prospers. A belief that God’s sovereignty has no boundaries gives us a reason to get involved in all spheres of influence. A belief that we are utterly incapable of choosing God produces in us a profound humility. Why are you saved? If your answer starts with you, that’s a problem. But if you recognize because God has done a work in my life that I could not do myself, and that I did not deserve, the effect there ought to be humility and worship.

A belief that our God, that our love of God is itself a gift from him does energize our worship. An assurance, one of the hallmarks of a redeemed person is a love for God that he cannot manufacture. If you love the Lord, where do you think that came from? That is a grace. And we may know these things, but we don’t always believe them. And our lives look differently when we believe what we know. A high view of God does provide a humbling, though intellectually satisfying answer to questions surrounding the destruction of the wicked, or the glorification of the elect. Really, the very reason for our existence. Humanism has no satisfying, it’s actually, it’s scary and morbid.

This is Calvinism. This is what I’m talking about. And this is what we must champion, whether we call it Calvinism or not. God’s ways cannot be thwarted and his plans cannot be frustrated, and we are on his side. These things do offend the mind of the natural man, and they offend the mind of many modern Christians actually, but they also magnify the nature of the God of scripture. So we must kyper demands that we confess them without apology, and doing so would honor his fourth demand here. Our Christian culture is taking cues from the culture at large. that’s prone to apologize for where we’ve come from. If I were to go on Facebook and declare my pride and my delight at being a white male, we can only guess a sort of vitriol that would invite.

If I were to write a letter to the editor of Christianity Today and declare my pride at being a Calvinist, the reception would be largely the same if it would get printed. Kuyper would say both those things are silly. A beggar need not apologize for what he’s received. We do not deserve the grace that we enjoy and the grace that we abuse right here in the West. And as Calvinists, we acknowledge that if we have ever chosen or loved God at all, it’s only because he has first loved and chosen us, taking us from death to life. And that too is a cause for boasting in him. It is only boasting in God and not in ourselves.

And in fact, I would insist that it requires or boasting in him. And the more we fathom our absolute inability to save ourselves, the full extent of our spiritual deadness, the more we will praise God and boast in his grace in saving us. Then we live and go about our lives as though he’s in charge, as though we are being used by him to execute his plan in this world for the display of his glory, for his genius to be on display in the cosmos, and as though we are guaranteed to win, as though as the church we are guaranteed to reign with him, as his bride in his millennial reign here on earth, as though we’ll have a front row seat when we see his name fully vindicated and when Christ crushes his enemies to his great glory because we will.

We will see that, we will be there. Meanwhile, our faithful living here and now will bring about our great blessing and happiness, which is not measured by money. It’ll bring about the jealousy of the world as they see God blessing us when they want in the right kind of jealousy. The jealousy of the Jews as they see Gentiles enjoying the blessed status that should be theirs and can be theirs if they would but embrace the Savior they have previously rejected. It will bring about the completion of the salvation of the elect, the names of which God only knows.

Beyond all this, it will bring about in the world cultural advancement as faithful Christians take dominion in science, technology, and commerce. It’ll bring about commercial flourishing as Christians run businesses and according to biblical morality. It’ll bring about the flourishing of life as Christians have children and value life in the way that God does, as opposed to a culture like ours that would make Moloch wish that he had come up with the idea of women’s healthcare. It’ll bring about the general flourishing of humanity as we live life and treat creation according to the manufacturer’s directions, which will in turn force the unbelieving culture to acknowledge that it must be attributable to God.

It’ll result in the increasing bitterness and animosity of the children of the devil. It’ll result in, almost certainly, a further suppressing of the truth and unrighteousness as godlessness becomes more stubborn and vessels of wrath are increasingly fit for destruction. But it will also result in the happy domination of the faithful followers of the God of scripture. That’s a reason for us to be excited about the future. So may God find us faithful. Let’s pray. Father, we are grateful that you are sovereign, that you have been kind to choose us, and may we have a proper view of ourselves that produces humility.

May we have a proper view of you that produces our courage, and may we be faithful to speak your name and to share with those around us. And may they look at our lives and just, again, scratch their heads in disbelief that we can be joyful in the midst of cultural and moral chaos and confusion. And may we then be able to point to the work that you have done and continue to do in our lives. May we teach these things to our little ones. May we be faithful to live them out. And may our culture be profoundly blessed by the work that we do. We pray this now in Christ’s name, amen.