Since my last three posts were on the Omnipotence of Love, I figured this would be a good follow-up to those given it’s a masters class on how God’s love is omnipotent.
For much of my Christian life I wasn’t a fan of Christian testimonies. Many people that come from the Reformed tradition I embrace tend to think of testimonies as too subjective. What counts, they say, is the objective truth we find about our salvation in Scripture. I agree, but human beings are not objective creatures; we are subjective creatures. We are us! What we experience and feel and think and wonder about and doubt and hope, and so on, is important to us. Insisting that only the objective declaration of truth counts doesn’t take into account the full orbed nature of life lived as God’s highest form of created being, and the full orbed nature of God. We can only experience him subjectively. And as I’ve learned from literally every testimony I’ve listented to, each person touched by the Spirit of God goes directly to Scripture. All of a sudden they know they need to read the Bible, and they want to!
For some God ordained reason, and I praise him for it, a few years ago I decided to take advantage of the 21st century Gutenberg Press, and started listening to testimonies on the Internet. It’s blown me away. One of the things it has confirmed for me is that my Reformed perspective on the faith is very well founded. I can sum up that perspective in two words: God saves. He doesn’t ask our permission. He saves us. He doesn’t cajole us or try to persuade us, or even give us a choice: he saves us. This is why Jesus was given his name, because he would save his people from their sins. When I learned about Reformed theology for the first time at 24, I began to see how true the title of the 19th century poem was about my faith journey: The Hound of Heaven. From a very young age, I thought about God and death and hell and eternal life. When I was presented with the gospel as a freshman in college, I tried to run away; he wouldn’t let me. And no matter how much I’ve messed up in life, he has continued to “hound” me. Praise God!
I always think of this poem when I’m listening to testimonies. A recent morning as I was listening to yet another story, this of a young woman coming to trust Christ as her Lord and Savior, the Hound of Heaven metaphor was especially powerful. I had a hard time seeing the eggs and Canadian bacon through my tears. The omnipotence of God’s love was perfectly exemplified in her coming to Christ. As a confirmed Calvinist, I believe in all the letters in TULIP, but I especially believe in the L in the middle many people find most difficult: Limited Atonement. Simply, Christ died for the elect, for those he chose to save, not for everybody who would ever live. Also simply, if he died for everybody, everybody would be saved, and no orthodox Christian believes that. It is God choosing us that makes salvation actual, not just possible.
This means Christ actually accomplished redemption for his people on the cross; he redeemed them. An actual transaction was made, not a possible one; he purchased us! We were bought with a price, not an offer if we should choose to accept it. We don’t have a choice! Thanks be to God. He died to fulfill the reason he was given his name, to save his people from their sins. Not to try to save them or give them the option. We call what Jesus did on the cross redemption accomplished. The testimony of this young woman, and all the testimonies of every saint who’s ever lived, is redemption applied. Her name is Adrienne Johnson, and I think if you listen to her testimony, how broken and hopeless and in despair she was, you might just cry too when you hear how God rescued her from the dominion of darkness, and brought her into the kingdom of the son he loves. The video is a brief overview of her story, and you can hear the extended version I listened to at the Side B Podcast.
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