Conditional Realities within Unconditional Grace
When God told Abraham, “walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you” (Gen. 17:1-2), he was still unpacking what Reformed theologians call the covenant of grace. For some readers, this may seem to violate the principle set forth in the previous chapters in which this covenant relationship is first introduced. In Chapters 12, 13, and 15, there was no “As for you” (17:9), but rather a repetition of promises that God would simply give to Abraham. Even the nature of the ceremony in 15:12-20 began with the father of our faith on his back sleeping and reached its climax with God moving through the cut pieces of the animals by Himself. Both elements depicted the sovereign grace that would typify this covenant relationship—“That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring” (Rom. 4:16).
The conditions that show up in Chapter 17 can seem like a radical turn of events. Come to think of it, we run into passages all the time that seem to suggest conditions to being saved in the end. What this comes to mean, before we realize it, is that these are conditions on God’s grace.
I would suggest to the reader that the impression, while understandable in our spiritual infancy, is an error. What is more, it becomes a forced error the longer we live as Christians and fail to mature in our thinking. The source of this error can be divided between committing logical fallacies (that is, errors in the form of our thinking) and ignorance of principles (that is, not having learned some more universal subject matter). I will cover both of those sources of the error, and then we will apply the correction to a handful of relevant biblical passages.
Two Opposite Fallacies
There are two fallacies having to do with scope. One is called the part-to-whole fallacy and the other is the whole-to-part fallacy. They operate exactly as they sound. In the first, we infer that something that is true about part of a thing is also true about the whole of that thing; whereas in the opposite error, we infer that what is true about the whole of a thing must be true about each part (or at least the part that is our present focus). Our thoughts about salvation are legion with these two fallacies. They operate both in our reading of Scripture and in our attempts to form a doctrine of salvation.
The good news is that, to the degree that we engage in the business of sketching out a doctrine of salvation (soteriology) we are giving ourselves a fighting chance of graduating from the shallow places where such fallacies bind us in confusion. That is because a doctrine is a unity of some concept. The very nature of a doctrine is the result of reconciling diverse and often mentally taxing scatterings of information into a whole picture that makes sense together.
How do we commit the part-to-whole fallacy here?
Likely we have all heard the expression that we are saved by faith. Is that true? There is one sense in which it is. In other words, it is true in a given context in which our audience has plainly positioned their own righteousness against that of Christ’s alone. However, the place in which righteousness is related to faith versus works in more specifically justification.
Justification is a part of salvation and not the whole. It is a very crucial part—indispensible in fact—so that the Reformers were correct to insist that justification is by faith alone. However, modern Evangelicalism has so devalued thinking about such doctrinal distinctions that we have created a mass of people who live up to Rome’s caricatures about the Reformed doctrine.
There were several ways that the doctrine of faith alone (sola fide) was misrepresented. The one that concerns us is the notion that our faith saves us, rather than our works. Indeed, an irony here is that this turns faith into a meritorious work (as in Arminian doctrine) or some other subjective element of the one who has faith (in more experiential Evangelical thinking) becomes our ground of assurance.
Rightly understood, the grace of God is the efficient cause of salvation as a whole, the righteousness of Christ is the sole material cause of justification (the legal part of the whole), the faith of the believer is the sole instrumental cause of justification (still the legal part of the whole). We could talk further of other subordinate efficient causes, formal causes, and end causes within our soteriology, but this will suffice for our purposes.
What about the opposite error—the whole-to-part fallacy?
Have you ever heard someone snap back, “That’s works!” We might want to ask, with some amount of emphasis on the interrogative word: What exactly is “works”? Is the problem that some-thing is works, as in anything at all? In other words, is the individual concerned that something called “works” even exists? Surely, they cannot mean this! A work simply means an action—some unit of energy, whether spiritual or physical, has been exerted. If we think about it for more than a second, we can see as clear as day that absolutely everything we do is a “work.”
This may seem like a pedantic, or even condescending response. However, this is the whole art of narrowing down to make our crucial distinction. They ought to have said “meritorious work.” We want to convince the person that what they really mean to say (they don’t really mean it yet, but we are both coaching them and disarming them of offense) is that our “works,” that is, our moral efforts, are no part of the ground of God justifying us in His courtroom, or even any part of the cause in God electing us in eternity or regenerating us in time.
If anything we did caused any of what God does in that work of grace, well, then “grace would no longer be grace” (Rom. 11:6). That, only only that, is the sense in which works are excluded. Wherever works are on a collision course with grace—wherever they are in actual conflict or competing with grace—it is there that works have been excluded.
But there are many places in the Christian life in which works are not excluded, and in fact would make it an absurdity and no life at all if they were excluded. In fact, we were created “for good works … that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). The reason that the failure to understand this involves a whole-to-part fallacy is because there is a whole work of grace that encompasses all of salvation—even those works which are necessary and good.
Because even the good kind of good works we do as Christians are empowered by grace, credited to grace, and so forth, there is an erroneous conclusion that that “totalizing” nature of grace is a smothering, solid circle admitting of no logical distinctions within. If there is a place for “works,” many worry, then that would make it a graceless work. But this is to take what is true about the whole in general, and impose it on all of its parts without further distinction.
Conditions, Necessities, and Anxieties
Although there are “conditions” of the soul that are in play as well, when we struggle with such truths, there is also a fundamental logical blind spot at work. Not all language of necessity and conditionality is referring to actual causality or even to utterly hypothetical scenarios. There are certain words in the English language that signify conditionality such as “if” and “unless” and “or else” and “otherwise.” Then there are words that signify necessity such as “must” and “impossible” and of course “necessarily.”
Now we must admit that when we come to the Bible, we bring to it a very different attention span than we do to other books. What I am about to tell you about these words and concepts is as plain as a potato, and if the subject matter were that of any other book, there would be no struggle. However, when we come to the Bible, our attention and our readiness to take such a correction comes with two strikes against us. First, we are dealing with the realities that most concern our eternal destiny and of those we love. Second, we tend to read it in bits and pieces.
We settle into the compartmentalization of personal devotionalism. We are readers with an exceeding subjective and anxious mission. Often that is because this is all we have time for, or else we do not know where to start. So we start randomly, or else we stay where things are most familiar. The result is that the “terms and conditions” of salvation explode like landmines in the otherwise sanitary playground of the text. We were not prepared to reconcile mental points to mental circles, most of which we have to learn to draw for the first time.
Nevertheless, what follows is true and obvious to the reader in all other books.
Sometimes a necessity can be a reality which is impossible to be otherwise. In other words, the word “necessity” is functioning as a synonym for what philosophers call an analytical truth; and even in everyday language, we speak of something which is true “by definition.” No one would take the necessity in such a truth to be an imposing task which the reader or hearer now has to sweat through in order to make it to the next round.
If I say “everyone who is late for class will have missed the bell,” perhaps you will not think the statement is very enlightening. Of course, those who are “the late” are identical in membership to those who “missed the bell,” since the bell is only the audio marker for the time of the class starting. Perhaps this statement would cause anxiety for you if you were failing in that school and were told by your school counselor that you will be expelled if you are late one more time. In that case, you will be especially sensitive to hearing the bell next time. You may begin to question whether or not there is a bell, or if they are hiding it from you. Do not misunderstand. You would not be wrong to connect the statement which you previously heard as a mere tautology now as a statement that requires immediate action.
My argument is not that your newfound anxiety is utterly irrational. My argument is that our anxieties have no authority to change the meaning of the statement as an object of truth in itself. It is still an analytical statement, and if the reader would like to know more information about the prospects of x students catching the bell, or statistics on how many have, or whatever, then he or she will have to consult additional statements—not that statement on its own.
Thus, contrary to the simplistic polemical habits of many, John 3:16 gives us no resolution whatsoever to the debate over predestination or free will. Every Calvinist, no less than every Arminian, can agree that “whosoever believes” will have eternal life. Everyone in the one class (believers) belongs to the other class (eternal life possessors). One must go beyond that conditional and necessary relationship to where the differences really lie—that is, other texts dealing with who those whosoever are, or how they came to believe, and whether or not they can believe in their old nature.
The statement of a necessary relationship, or even a condition of one reality for another, does not automatically signify either (a) the sequential order of a causal act or (b) an utterly hypothetical scenario. One of these mistakes, or both, are what the anxious reader is committing in making this or that condition conflict with the unconditional nature of grace. Let me take each of these in turn.
First, about that sequential order, the Bible is not communicating to us at every turn that we must relay foundations under our feet at every turn. Most of the time, it is just pointing to what is up ahead. Thus the language of “Walk” to Abraham. Why up ahead? Because that’s the way we walk—forward. That’s the way time works—that way, in front of you. You already believe this. You already think this way.
You already want to know, “What does this look like? Does God love me? How will I know? What will become of my kids?” Which way do you find those out? In front of you. But notice that the question is not: “How did I get here? Who gets the credit? Whose idea was this?” That’s all behind us, at the cross and empty tomb, and all the way up to eternity. Hopefully the reader can keep in mind that these are two very different sets of questions.
When we confuse them, we hear texts saying, “the gate is narrow” (Mat. 7:14) or “with fear and trembling” (Phi. 2:13), and so forth, as if some alien set of chains has been hurled down at us by a heavenly taskmaster. We forget that we are already feeling crowded (narrow) and we were already freaked out (fear and trembling). What these passages are bringing is the antidote, “Look ahead … Come to me … I’ve got you.” What do we hear? “Lay some more bricks under your feet with no straw!” Simply put, a necessary or conditional relationship is not the same thing as a cause to the thing. The narrow way is the normal way that all believers are on; not a way to cause the way. “Fear and trembling” is an expression for the desire to find assurance, which only the saved do feel—Your feeling this is your feeling this, not a shovel to get you to dig down to some other more mystical feeling.
Secondly, I am using the expression “utterly hypothetical” to signify a hypothetical state of affairs in which no other relevant data subordinates the conditionality of the hypothetical form to a more antecedent cause rendering a more certain outcome. Since God ordains all that comes to pass (Eph. 1:11, Rom. 11:36), it follows that there can be no such thing as an “utterly hypothetical” state of affairs, since there are always antecedent causes to each outcome which ultimately come from Him. There are many relative hypotheticals—that is, states of affairs implying numerous causes and consequences unseen by us—but these are relative to the infinite amount of causes and consequences that God both knows and ordains to perfection.
You may object and say, “But we readers of the Scripture cannot see that whole matrix of causation!” You do not need to. Nor can you, since you are not God. In the Bible, God gives us the superior causes that matter to properly rest all of the hypothetical texts in the wider context of gracious outcomes that are certain.
The hypothetical is itself conditioned. It is contextualized. Its target is a reader who needs to know only that which pertains to walking forward. Other texts talk about how the ground got there and who got your feet moving and gave you eyes to see.
Confusing “walk” and “look” texts with “this is what I did in eternity” or “this is what my Son provides for you in the courtroom” texts is just that: a confusion. The Bible is not confused at that point. Its reader is.
Let us test these principles in the kind of passages that we are talking about.
Five Categories of Condition Texts
Perhaps someone has compiled an exhaustive list of different categories of biblical conditions for believers. That would exceed our purposes. It is more important, at first, to grasp the principle for reconciling conditional reality to the unconditional character of grace. We can look at different categories only to strengthen our grasp of that principle. Let me suggest five categories that are usually the most troubling: (1) calls to examine or confirm your salvation; (2) calls to persevere to the end; (3) warnings about falling away; (4) warnings that the unforgiving will not be forgiven; and (5) the necessity of good works, love, or holiness.
First, passages teaching the necessity of examining yourself are teaching a practical necessity that answers to a subjective need. The believer has it by nature. Answering that call is one primary way to receive confirmation. 2 Corinthians 13:5, 2 Peter 1:10, Philippians 2:12-13 are among such passages. They are in imperative form. Recall that such language does not imply sequential causation or utter hypotheticals. Neither of the Apostles here would have us “test” or “confirm” so as to cause God’s grace, nor perform an examination with no clear standards. For the causal explanation and for those clear standards, we must go to other texts. These texts are not designed to do that, so we cannot complain that these texts “fail” to do that.
Second, passages calling us to persevere to the end are indeed presenting both a condition and a necessity—“the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mat. 10:22). But observe that all those who persevere to the end are necessarily the same as are saved. In other words, it is one of those analytical truths: “if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12). But is it not also a condition to “be performed”? Of course. But that is like saying that all those who enter the heavenly city will perform that entrance. You want to do that, do you not? It would seem that the gaining of ultimate good has been turned on its head here. The receiving of the ultimate reward is viewed negatively because of the human action element. “We will be the ones who have to do the walking!” Would you rather enter heaven with no legs? I am not merely being facetious. Such a one has become so spooked by conditions that they have developed a dread of the conditions of being a human.
If your real question—which it should be—is whether God has guaranteed that He will keep every believer’s feet from stumbling, well, yes He has: “he will keep your life” (Ps. 121:7); “and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (Jn. 10:28).
Instead of looking at statements where perseverance is in the context of imperatives, where our anxieties would turn a promise into another mirror of our worst fears, look instead to other texts, and “to him who is able to keep you from stumbling” (Jude 24).
Third, passages that speak of those who fall away. These are called “warning” passages and “falling away” passages, and so they are. Matthew 7:23 and 1 John 2:19 explain what is happening with a reprobate whose apostasy is final. Note, for example, that Jesus says “I never knew you,” not that I once knew you but now I don’t. So that passage teaches perseverance, not falling away. Such never were saved, and fell from (1) the visible church and (2) a merely professed faith. The same is occurring with those in the Parable of the Sower who fall away. This helps us with the two go-to passages for Arminians from the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 6:4-6 is indeed a warning passage. It does indeed speak of a class of persons who can “fall away” and are hardened beyond hope of repentance. However, some context is in order. Like all New Testament letters, this one is written to a mixed multitude. In every church in this age, there are believers and unbelievers. This “falling away” is speaking of the reprobate, and since they are “in the house” too, that is reason enough for them to be addressed.
These are not to be confused with true believers who may fall away for a season. Even the context of the end of the passage gives a strong clue in (1) the contrasting imagery of the two soils (vv. 7-8), and (2) the punchline, “Yet in your case beloved…” (v. 9). That they “tasted” of the powers of the age to come—much like those who experienced “knowledge” in 2 Peter 2:20—and then fell away, means only that knowledge or tasting belonging to the visible church member who has made a false profession, and is partaking of the means of grace without true faith.
I do not include what is perhaps the most troubling passage in this category, that of the unforgivable sin, only because it requires larger exegetical work and the reader can access where I have written about it elsewhere.
Fourth, those warnings of Jesus about unforgiveness in Matthew’s Gospel follow the same principle. He says,
“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mat. 6:14-15).
The punchline to the parable of the unforgiving servant, is a comparison between the severe punishment of the wicked servant by the master and Judgment Day: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Mat. 18:35). The anxious reader repeats the same ground: “Aren’t these conditions?” Yes, again, no one is denying that the conditions are conditions. What we are denying is that (a) you or I could ever fulfill the condition to God’s standard of perfect righteousness, (b) that therefore these are descriptions of a sinless performance, (c) that therefore such performance of the condition either causes or maintains God’s grace in our salvation. These warnings are aiming at a basic, discernible orientation in the believer, as well as at repentance to anyone who is insisting on and persisting in unforgiveness.
Fifth, passages that make good works, love, or holiness conditions for being true Christians are exactly that. Hopefully the treatment of the warnings about unforgiveness give us a clue here. Jesus made statements like this: “every healthy tree bears good fruit” (Mat. 7:17) and “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn. 14:15). Again, we take these at face value. We reject the antinomian reading of Paul’s words, “you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). The orthodox have always understood this to mean that our relationship to the Lawgiver has changed, not that we are now lawless. The legal demands of the law are no longer an obstacle between believers and God because Christ has taken the whole legal burden (cf. Jn. 19:30; Col. 2:14).
Yet while the “evangelical use of the law” shows us our inability in the flesh and therefore our need for the Savior (cf. Rom. 7:7; 8:3), the “directive use of the law” shows us how to live. We do want to live, right? Love and holiness are that which makes a human soul perfected as human. These are good news passages when read this way. There is no good reason to read them as weights sinking us to hell, since neither will be in hell.
So when we are told to strive for that “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14), or else, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8), here it is the same as in the other categories. Everyone who is a true believer will love God and fellow believers. Everyone of the same will desire to be like God, that is, to be holy.
Will we experience either pursuit perfectly? No believer will. But what we are talking about here is a basic shift from death to life, a discernible marker for the road ahead. Even the discontent we feel at our trajectory is itself a spiritual longing, an evidence of grace. Paul wrestled with the same, so finally consider the implication of his words for running into conditions within unconditional grace:
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Phi. 3:12-16).
