How Not to Be a Pelagian

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In 2011, the filmmaker Terrence Malick came out with a film entitled “The Tree of Life.” It's not for everybody, but it's one of my favorites. It tells the story of a man named Jack O'Brien and his two parents, who are played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. And this movie follows in the tradition of Augustine's “Confessions.” Augustine was an early Church theologian living at the end of the fourth, beginning of the fifth century, and his “Confessions” were essentially the first spiritual biography. And so, in a similar way to the confessions, the film tells the story of how one single individual is drawn into relationship with God. At one point, Jack asks, “When did you first touch my heart?” Throughout the film, he reviews and recounts his past in order to ask questions like, when did God begin to first draw Jack into a relationship? When did Jack become aware of God's presence? And when did Jack at last open himself up to the reality of God?

So ultimately the film is the story of two contrary movements: It's about the upward movement of being drawn into relationship with God by grace (which is represented by the figure of Jack's mother) amidst the downward pull of human nature (which is represented by the figure of his father). So early in the film, Jack's mother explains the difference between the way of nature and the way of grace. She says there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself; accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked; accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself and get others to please it, too. It likes to lord it over them, to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it, and love is smiling through all things. They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. Well, in my mind, there's nothing more important than understanding the difference between nature and grace. And in many ways, this is what the message of Christmas and of Christianity is all about.

So during this Advent season, we are exploring the meaning and the significance of the Incarnation. What does it really mean that God became a human being in the person of Jesus, and why does it matter? I've suggested that if we don't stop to consider serious questions like this, it's very likely that we might slip into embracing ancient heresies without even realizing it — ancient heresies that had been debated and rejected a long, long time ago. So we're having a little fun this Advent season, and we have begun a series which we have entitled, somewhat tongue in cheek, How Not To Be A Heretic. As I said last week, I'm imagining you going to cocktail Christmas parties and debating your favorite heresies. The heretic of the week is Pelagius. So far we've considered how not to be an Adoptionist, how not to be a Docetist, how not to be an Arian, and today we'll consider how not to be a Pelagian. Now I'll come back to Pelagius in a minute, but let's begin by turning our attention to 1 Timothy 1. As we do, I'd like us to consider three things: 1) The problem of the human condition, 2) The solution of the gospel, and 3) The gift of grace.

¹²I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, ¹³though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, ¹⁴and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. ¹⁶But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. ¹⁷To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

1 Timothy 1:12-17

The Problem of the Human Condition

First, the problem of the human condition. Let me begin by sharing a word about Pelagius. You might not have ever heard his name before, but he was at the very center of one of the most important theological controversies in the entire history of Christianity. And this is not a matter of esoteric interest; rather, this is a matter of deep, practical value and ultimate concern. Because this debate brings us to the very heart of the gospel. So here's what you need to know about Pelagius.

Pelagius was a theologian who lived an austere and disciplined life. He was born somewhere in Britain around the middle of the fourth century, and then around 380 AD he moves to Rome, and he becomes a kind of spiritual advisor to members of the Roman elite. And one day, around 405 AD, he's part of a group of people who listen to a public reading of Augustine's “Confessions.” And at one point they come to book 10, where Augustine writes this prayer, which he offered to God: “Give what you command, and command what you will,” which is another way of saying that whatever God asks of us, whatever God commands, his grace will provide. But when Pelagius heard this prayer of Augustine, he lost it. You see, Pelagius was essentially a Christian moralist, and he was horrified by the ways in which many Christians in Rome at the time were living their lives, because they seemed to show no interest in living a life of integrity, no interest in living a life of moral purity. And Palagius therefore concluded that a prayer like that from Augustine would only encourage moral laxity among these casual Christians in Rome.

You see, apparently, some of these Christians were suggesting that as long as you were baptized, as long as you just profess mere faith in God, you were good to go and nothing more was required of you. They were happy, therefore, to make excuses for why they were unable to live a life that befits a follower of Jesus in response to his gospel. They would say things like, well, we're only human. To err is human. We're too weak to live any differently. And therefore Pelagius thought that Augustine's prayer was only going to encourage that permissive attitude which seemed to suggest that we're not capable of living a life of virtue on our own; God has to give it to us. Well Pelagius overreacted to this permissive approach to the Christian life in at least three different ways, which we could sum up in terms of human nature, free will, and divine grace. So here's how he overreacted.

First of all, Pelagius took a very positive view of human nature. He looked at the story of Adam and Eve in the opening chapters of the Bible and concluded that the actions of our first human parents do not affect us at all today. At most, Adam and Eve gave us a bad example by disobeying God. But in his mind, he believed that human nature was inherently good, and every human being is born with a blank slate. Each of us has the ability to choose either virtue or vice — to do good or to do evil. And so this led to his second emphasis, which had to do with free will. He believed that every human being had the ability to choose the good or not at every moment. And therefore, he believed that it was at least theoretically possible for you to live a sinless life. If human beings ought not to sin, then human beings must be capable of not sinning. So theoretically he considered it possible to live a sinless life. How's that going for you? I myself am having a little difficulty living a sinless life. But you see, if it was possible to live without sin, then there's really no need for forgiveness unless you just happen to slip up and make a mistake every once in a while. But for Pelagius — as well as many modern intellectual thinkers today — there's no real reason for Jesus to come to Earth at all, other than perhaps to set a good example in contrast to Adam and Eve, who gave us a bad one. But all of this had massive implications when it came to divine grace.

So you see, for Pelagius, God's grace is not absolutely indispensable to the Christian life. In his mind, what is far more important is human nature. In his mind, the real gift that God gave us was the natural equipment to do good. The greatest gift he gave us was our human nature. And maybe every once in a while, we might need a little assistance to do the good. But that's why God gave us the Law, and our own conscience, and the positive example of Jesus to essentially reveal what is good for us to do, to give us a little leg up, to be a little bit more successful in carrying it out. But nothing more was needed. And so in his mind, the goal was simply to rely on one's willpower, to try real hard in order to be a good person, and then you could merit God's favor. You could win God's love and acceptance.

So you could sum up Palagius’ thought like this: God helps those who help themselves. Now that's a very popular expression. Maybe you've used it before. But let me just tell you, you're not going to find it anywhere in the Bible. And in fact, that expression, “God helps those who help themselves,” is the exact antithesis to the message of the gospel. The gospel runs in exactly the opposite direction.

Just look at what the Apostle Paul says about himself prior to the moment when Paul met Jesus on the Damascus Road. You see, Paul didn't just vote for the wrong team. He wasn't just on the wrong side of a debate. No, he says that he was there when a group of people formed a mob and stoned a man named Stephen to death because of his faith. We can read about it in Acts 7. Paul approved of the execution, and then he played an active role in the persecution of the early Christian movement. He ravaged the Church. He was like the Gestapo. He was the one that was going house to house, actually looking for followers of Jesus in order to drag them off to prison. And that's why he describes himself as a blasphemer here in 1 Timothy 1. He spoke evil of Jesus, he was a persecutor, he caused harm to Jesus' followers, and he was an insolent, violent opponent to Jesus in the early Christian movement. And yet what does Paul tell us here? “The grace of the Lord overflowed for me with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus.” Like a river that breaks its banks and just can't be stopped, the grace of our Lord overflowed to Paul because of the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus.

God doesn't just help those who help themselves. God doesn't just give a leg up to people who are already doing well. No, he picks us up and he turns us around. That's why Pelagius could never sing a hymn like: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” Paul could sing a song like that; Pelagius never could.

The Solution of the Gospel

That brings me to my second point. Let's turn from the problem of the human condition to the solution of the gospel. Let's consider how Augustine would have responded to Pelagius with respect to those three areas of overemphasis.

First, let's consider human nature. The main issue, from Augustine's point of view, is that the problem of sin is much more radical than we often recognize. Meaning that it affects us at the radix. It affects us at the very root, the very essence of our being. Sin is so much more than individual, isolated acts of doing wrong. Rather, sin is a condition. It's a state of being. So the problem is not our little sins in the plural with a lowercase “s.” No, our real problem is the condition of sin in the singular with a capital “S.” Just think about it. If your body breaks out into hives, your doctor does not need to inspect every little bump on your skin in order to figure out what's wrong with you. No, the doctor simply needs to diagnose the root cause of your condition that is leading to all these other symptoms. In a similar way, the problem is not that we human beings do individual, isolated acts that are wrong, but rather, the problem is that there's something wrong with human nature that needs to be changed.

You could think of a little acorn. That little acorn contains within itself the power not only to become an oak tree, but that one acorn contains the power to create a whole forest of trees. But if that one acorn goes wrong in some way — if there's some kind of defect or mutation — well, more likely than not, that defect will be reproduced in every tree that is emerging from it. And so in a similar way, Augustine showed that what the Bible teaches is that Adam and Eve, our first parents, didn't just set a bad example for us, but rather they're the source. They're the representatives of the whole human race, and therefore we inherit from them the same nature. You're only going to get certain kinds of trees out of certain kinds of seeds. And in a similar way, if we have inherited this nature from our first parents, the problem is that this nature, human nature, is twisted. It's bent out of shape. It's turned away from God, and there's really nothing that we can do about what we have inherited. We've inherited this condition of sin with a capital “S.”

Now we're not suggesting that as a result of that, human beings are as bad as they could possibly be. We know that's not true. There are so many worse things we could do. We human beings are not as bad as we possibly could be, but every aspect of our being has been affected by sin. Sin affects our mind, our emotions, our will. So you could put it like this: Imagine that sin were the color blue. We're not saying that we're blue through and through, but we are saying that every aspect of our being — mind, emotions, will, actions, words — everything is tinged with a little bit of blue. Sin affects us at the core. And so the upshot of all of this is that we're not sinners because we sin, because we commit isolated acts of sin. Rather, we sin because we're sinners, because we suffer from this condition of sin.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne was a pastor living in the 19th century who once said, “The seed of every sin known to man is in my heart.” And that's true. He's not saying, “I'm guilty of every sin known to man,” but he's saying that the seed of every sin known to man lies in my heart, too. Now that little seed, it may not have been watered or cultivated as much as in the life of another person, or maybe simply not enough time has gone forward yet, and that's why that seed hasn't sprung out or burst into life. But the seeds are all there nonetheless. So you see, the bottom line is that there's something wrong with human nature. We're not the people that we're supposed to be, and if we're honest, we know that that's true from our own experience, because we see it in ourselves, and we see it in other people.

G.K. Chesterton once said that original sin is the only part of Christian theology that we can prove, because we see it every day in our experience. I mean, just think about kids. What are the first words that kids learn? Well, they learn how to say “mommy” and “daddy” and “mine” — right from the beginning! So on the one hand, we have to acknowledge that we human beings, we're capable of acts of love and generosity and sacrifice, but we human beings all are also capable of acts of selfishness and pettiness and cruelty. There's something wrong with us at the very root of who we are. The question is, what can we do about it?

Well, Pelagius’ answer was free will. You've got the power within you to do the right thing, so just exert your will, try harder, be really, really good and you can merit God's favor. You can win God's love through your own efforts. But Augustine said hold on, not so fast. It's not that easy, because things are a little bit more complicated than that. Now, Augustine also did believe in free will, but what he said was, of course we have free will. We're always free to choose whatever it is that we most want. Ah, but therein lies the problem. The issue is not with our will. Our will is always free to choose whatever we most want. The problem is with our desires. We don't always want the right thing. Our desires are all mixed up. Our loves are disordered. We don't love the right things in the right order. God told us that our first love, the first commandment, is to love God as He is with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love one another as ourselves. But our loves are all mixed up. We don't love the right things in the right way.

So we're always free to choose whatever we most want, but in our sin, we don't want God. Not really. Not in the way that he reveals himself. We might want things from God, or we might love what God can do for us, but we don't love God for who he really is. And part of the problem is that sin blinds us. Sin blinds us from being able to see God for who he really is, and therefore he doesn't seem attractive to us. He doesn't seem desirable to us. Why would you want to worship God and allow him to rule over you? We don't trust God. We don't believe that he's good. We think that God just wants to keep us under his thumb. And so while our will is perfectly free to choose, we don't see God as desirable to us, and therefore we don't choose him. We don't want him.

There's a pastor who lived in Philadelphia years ago who offered this example of a lion. So consider this analogy. A lion, by nature, is a carnivore. Lions like to eat meat. They're not herbivores. They don't like eating oats and hay. So let's say you try to feed a lion oats and hay, and you keep putting the oats and the hay in front of the lion's face, and you say, “Eat, eat, eat,” and he doesn't want to. It's not because he can't; it's because he doesn't want to. And let's imagine that this lion could talk, and you could ask the lion, “Well, why don't you want to eat the oats and hay? There's nothing wrong with this.” And he would say, “I'm not going to eat that stuff. I hate it.” He's free to choose whatever he most wants. He doesn't want it.

But now let's extend the analogy a little bit. Let's say someone somehow casts a spell over this lion. So now this lion has been transformed from a carnivore to an herbivore. Now, against its nature, what it really loves is oats and hay. And so now you try to feed it meat, and you stick it in front of his face and say, “Come on, eat it. This is great. This is what you should want.” And if that lion could talk, the lion would say, because of this spell, “I don't want to eat that stuff. I hate that stuff. I don't want it.” And you see, in a similar way, it's almost like sin has cast a spell over us so that against our true nature, we don't see God for who he is, and then, because he's not desirable to us, because he's not attractive to us, we say, “I hate him. I don't love him. I don't want him.” Now, we might create a God of our own imagining that we like, but if we create a God of our own imagining, very likely this God is going to just stroke our egos or indulge our worst impulses. A God of our own imagining is not going to place any demands upon us. But when it comes to the real God as he is, left to our own devices, no one seeks God. No one longs for God. No one finds God. No one wants God. No one loves God, because our sin blinds us from seeing him for who he is.

The Gift of Grace

That's why we need divine grace. That's why God's grace is absolutely indispensable. We can't live without it. It's impossible to become a Christian apart from his grace. We always are free to choose whatever we most want, but in our sin, we will never choose God. And therefore we need God to open up our eyes to see him for the beauty of who he is, to unstop our ears to actually hear the true message of the gospel, and to soften our hearts so that we might receive him. We'll never receive him except through the intervention of his grace. But as my old seminary professor George Hunsinger used to say all the time, God's grace is never coercive of our will. We can never choose God apart from the intervention of his grace, but his grace is never coercive of our will. We're always free to choose whatever we most want, but apart from his grace, we'll never choose him because we can't see him. But if he opens up our eyes to see him as he is, we'll choose him every time.

And that's what Paul is telling us in verses 15 and 16, because this is what the message of Christmas is all about. This is why Jesus came. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” We need someone to come in to lift that spell off of us, to lift that curse from us, so that we might return to our true state of being able to desire God over self. But we can only do that through His grace.

So as we close, very quickly, let's think through some of the implications of this. Let's consider the gift of grace. We can sum it up like this: Jesus rescues us by his grace, Jesus humbles us by his grace, and Jesus inspires us by his grace.

First of all, Jesus rescues us by his grace. Pelagius, like so many modern intellectuals today, would say we don't need a savior, because there's nothing that we need to be rescued from. All we really need is a good example, and then through our own hard work and effort, if we try real hard to be good enough, to be devout enough, to be spiritual enough, to be religious enough, to be observant enough, or, short of that, if we screw up and make mistakes and fail, if we're sincere enough, or if we're remorseful enough, well then we'll be good enough for God, and we can win his acceptance and his favor. But no, if sin prevents us from seeing and appreciating God for who he really is, then what we fail to see is that we're dealing with an infinite and holy God. And what would ever be enough? There is no amount of doing, no amount of striving, that would ever be enough. We need to be rescued, and that means that salvation is a pure gift of grace.

The true message of the gospel is that there's nothing that you can add or contribute to your salvation. You have to be saved by grace or not at all. People often define grace as unmerited favor, and that's a pretty good definition as far as it goes, it just doesn't go quite far enough. Because, yes, it's true that God's grace is unmerited, but it's even more than that. It's not just neutral, but rather the grace that he shows us is demerited favor, not merely unmerited favor. The love that he shows us is the exact opposite of what we deserve, and the Apostle Paul is the perfect example of that. But the lovingkindness that the Lord shows Paul is meant to be an example to all of us of his patience toward us, and that in itself is meant to draw us toward him in love.

So Jesus must rescue us by his grace, and for that reason, he also humbles us by his grace. You see, if Jesus freely chooses to rescue us, to open up our eyes and to reach into our hearts with his love despite who we are and despite what we've done, then that means that we have nothing to boast about. We can't take any pride in our faith. It's all because of him. And you see, for grace to be grace, it has to run all the way down. Even our faith is a gift, and that's why every week when I pray for the children, I pray the same thing. Have you noticed what I say? I say, “Father, open up our eyes to see you for who you really are, and help us to know that you love us with a love that never stops, that never ends, that never fails, that never breaks. And there's nothing that we could ever do to win your love, because your love is a gift. So help us to receive this, the greatest of all gifts, by simply putting our trust in you, and then teach us to love you in return with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love one another too.”

You see, even our faith is a gift. We can't take any credit for it. And you know, that explains something. If someone were to ask you, well, why do you believe? And your roommate, let's say, doesn't. You may have a roommate that doesn't share your faith. Why is that? Why do you believe, but your roommate doesn’t? Is it because you are just more open to God, more in touch with the divine? Are you more humble? You're more willing to submit yourself to God? Or is it because you're smarter? It was easier for you to sort of piece these theological questions together? No, there's nothing in you that makes you better. The only reason why you have come to faith is because he's drawn you to himself. He's opened up the eyes of your heart.

And I would say that deep down, whether we realize it or not, every one of us believes that this is true. Every one of us is an Augustinian at heart. You know why? Because if you have someone in your life who doesn't yet believe — a family member, a friend, a neighbor — what do you do? What do you do if they don't believe? You pray. And what do you pray? You pray that God would open up their eyes. You pray that God would unstop their ears, that they could hear the true message of the gospel. You pray that God would soften their hearts to be able to receive them. You see, we're rescued by grace, and we're humbled by grace. We don't add or contribute anything to our salvation. We can't take credit for it at all. Grace has to run all the way down, and if it does, it means it doesn't leave a leg for us to stand on, to look down on anybody else, regardless of what their beliefs or their doubts might be. We know it's all a gift.

But then finally, Jesus also inspires us by his grace. See, many people would say, “Well, if God relates to us on the basis of grace rather than merit, if God accepts me not because of who I am or what I've done but because of who Jesus is and what he's done for me, well then this is a great deal, because it suggests that I can live my life however I want now without any consequences, because it's not up to me, it's up to him.” That's what Pelagius thought. He thought that grace would lead to a permissive lifestyle. But no, if you think that God's grace gives you license to do whatever you want, then you haven't understood it. You haven't experienced it at all, because God's grace always leads to a changed life.

Consider the message of Christmas. Jesus has come to us. He's become like us. He's taken on humanity. He's become like us in every way, except for sin. And Jesus chose the way of grace rather than the way of nature. He didn't seek to please himself. He accepted being slighted, forgotten, disliked. He accepted insults and injuries, and why? He did it all for us. Jesus lived the life we should have lived. He died the death we deserve to die, in our place, as our substitute, in order to forgive us and to make us new, to give us a new nature, to lift that spell from us, so that we might become our true selves. You see, the way in which you grow in the Christian life is the same way you begin. It's not by working real hard and trying harder, by wailing on your will to be a good person to win God's love. No, it's all about asking yourself, have I sensed in my heart the depth of Jesus' love for me, the lengths that he's gone to to make me his own. And once I realized the depth of his love, why would I want to continue in sin? Why would I want to do this thing? Why would I want to live this way? I want to live my life for him, not because I have to, but because I want to — because Jesus changes the desires of our hearts.

So this Christmas, hold on to the true message of the gospel. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world not to help those who help themselves, but to save sinners like you and me.

Let's pray.

Father, we acknowledge that we are dealing with the deep mysteries of the faith, but help us to see the practical value of these matters and how they are of ultimate concern, because they lead us to the very heart of the gospel. We thank you that Jesus rescues us by his grace, that Jesus humbles us by his grace, and that Jesus inspires us by his grace to progressively become more and more like him. Do that work in us, because we know we can't do it without you. Your grace is absolutely indispensable. We pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermons

How Not to Be a Heretic: How Not to Be a Pelagian

Related Resources

The Problem of the Human Condition

The Solution of the Gospel

The Gift of Grace