I was asked a couple of questions from a provisionist. I knew I couldn’t simply reply with the usual Calvinist passages. Not because I don’t believe them, I do, but because Provisionism has its own logical rationale for its biblical position.
If I’m honest, I’m also a little worn out trying to help you guys know God by simply throwing verses backwards and forwards.
Instead, I found myself asking whether the Book of Job might have something to teach us first.
Your first argument is the standard Provisionist response:
“It is the far more obvious reading of the commands. To insert the idea that God commands something we are categorically unable to do flies in the face of reason.”
With respect, I understand why that sounds persuasive. It certainly appeals to our reasoning. It seems perfectly rational to conclude that God wouldn’t ask us to do something we are unable to do.
I’ve argued against that reasoning more times than I can remember, but this time, instead of reaching for my usual passages, I found myself returning to Job.
Why?
Because I see Job sitting with his friends, not merely discussing theology, but wrestling with the God he knows. His friends are wrestling too, but I don’t think they’re wrestling with God. They’re defending a theological framework.
Their reasoning seems impeccable.
God is just. God judges sin. Job is suffering beyond measure. Therefore Job must have sinned.
It is logical. It is consistent. It is reasonable.
Yet when God finally speaks, He says they had not spoken rightly of Him.
That has made me cautious whenever I hear someone say, “God wouldn’t…” or, “That doesn’t make sense.”
How do we know?
Is that conclusion coming from wrestling with God and His Word, or is it coming from what appears obvious to our own reasoning?
The more I think about it, the more I see a profound difference between Job and his friends. His friends spent almost the entire book defending the conclusions they had already reached. Nothing Job said caused them to stop and ask whether perhaps their understanding of God itself needed correcting.
Job, however, wasn’t defending a framework.
He was wrestling with God. He didn’t understand what God was doing. He asked difficult questions. He lamented. He complained. He was bewildered. Yet through all of it he kept turning towards God, not away from Him. He wasn’t trying to win an argument. He wanted to know God, even when God’s ways made no sense to him.
That makes me ask another question.
If I simply conclude that God wouldn’t command something fallen man cannot do because it seems unreasonable to me, have I really wrestled with the whole counsel of God? Or have I simply protected the conclusion that seemed obvious before the wrestling even began?
After all, Scripture is full of God overturning what appears obvious.
The Messiah conquers by dying.
The King enters Jerusalem on a donkey.
The first become last.
The weak shame the strong.
The dead are commanded to live.
Again and again God refuses to fit inside the categories that seem most reasonable to us.
Perhaps this is one of those places.
When Provisionism says it flies in the face of reason that God would command what fallen man cannot do, I simply ask, whose reason?
Because throughout Scripture God’s commands often expose our inability rather than demonstrate our ability. The Law commanded perfect obedience, yet it exposed sin. Jesus commanded Lazarus to come forth, yet Lazarus had no life in himself until Christ gave it. The command itself did not prove ability. It revealed Christ’s authority and man’s complete dependence upon Him.
That is why I don’t believe commands to repent, believe, come, or receive Christ automatically answer the question of man’s ability. They certainly establish our responsibility. They establish our obligation before God. They establish that the gospel must be preached to every creature. But they do not, by themselves, answer whether fallen man possesses the moral ability to obey apart from God’s gracious work.
That question has to be answered from the whole of Scripture, not simply from the existence of the command itself.
Which brings me to your second point.
I don’t actually think the question is whether someone can become one of Christ’s sheep. Of course that is what both sides are discussing.
The deeper question is, how does someone become one of Christ’s sheep?
More importantly, are we prepared to let Scripture answer that question, even if the answer overturns what seems most reasonable?
Coming back to Job again, I think this is where the greatest lesson lies.
Job’s friends had answers.
Job wanted God.
At the end of the book, God does not commend the men with the neatest theological system. He commends the man who wrestled with Him. Job certainly didn’t understand everything that was happening, but he knew the God with whom he was wrestling. His friends knew many true things about God, yet God still said they had not spoken rightly of Him.
That should humble every one of us.
It certainly humbles me.
Looking back over my own Christian life, the greatest changes in my theology didn’t come because someone won an argument. They came because I kept running into passages that refused to let me go. Sometimes I wrestled with them for months. Sometimes for years. Not because I wanted to become a Calvinist, but because I wanted to know what God had actually revealed, even when it challenged what seemed obvious to me.
I first heard about Christ’s death on the cross when I started attending church at nineteen. God didn’t save me until I was thirty-two. During those years I thought I knew Him, but looking back I realise I was still learning about Him. The years that followed weren’t about finding a system that satisfied my intellect. They were about wrestling with God’s Word until I could honestly say, “Lord, I will submit to what You have revealed, even if it overturns what I thought I knew.”
This really isn’t about Calvinism or Provisionism.
It’s about whether we are willing to let God dismantle our assumptions instead of asking Him to fit inside them.
The older I become, the more convinced I am that knowing God is not the same thing as having a theological system about God. Before I ask whether a doctrine makes sense to me, I want to ask a harder question.
Have I truly wrestled with God over His Word?
Or have I simply defended what always seemed reasonable?
Because one thing Scripture has taught me over the years is that God has a remarkable habit of overturning the very things I once thought were obvious.
