I wanted to write this for all the people who might be in the same situation as my wife and I had been in.

When our marriage was young, we were married in 1996, we would read and study the Bible and for the most part we were content with the preaching we heard. This along with our childhood teachings guided us to believing in the Bible a certain way, even though we couldn’t completely defend that view by the Bible. I know that sounds weird, but when we actually laid out our inherited beliefs, they were full of gaps and vague assumptions that didn’t connect with actual biblical truths. I kept thinking that the pieces were there in the Bible and I just hadn’t discovered them yet.

My wife, through the years, became more and more frustrated and she didn’t know why. Other people in the church seemed perfectly content with the preaching and were comfortable in their knowledge, progress and current biblical standings. Why were they “getting it” and what were they “getting” that she wasn’t?
Switching churches only intensified the frustration for my wife because we met more people that were the same way, just in a different denomination. I was no help to her because I was still trying to get the Bible to line up to what I believed.

There was no doubt in my mind that the Bible was without error and sufficient. So, in trying to resolve her frustration, and completely justifying my beliefs, I searched more intently through the Bible. This way I could bring all the puzzle pieces together and we could see the big picture and finally “get it” too. My efforts weren’t working out and I started understanding my wife’s frustration. It’s impossible to move forward or study and ask questions about something when you don’t know what that something is. My wife was starting to believe it was hopeless and felt like giving up, but she didn’t know exactly what that meant. To give up church? To give up on salvation?

She found some sermons online by Pastor John MacArthur that really grabbed her interest. That eventually led her to Paul Washer, R.C. Sproul, Voddie Baucham, Justin Peters, and others. I listened to some of them but didn’t like what they were saying. They were going against what I had been taught.

With the tension coming from the church, between us and these new sermons my wife was listening to, we eventually quit church. My wife did stop listening to them for a while, because of me; then in time began listening to them again and I am so glad she did. She would tell me, from time to time, what they were saying, but I really didn’t want to hear what they had to say. So, while I was at work she would text me questions. These questions were about the sermons she heard from these pastors. She knew I would search for the answers in the Bible. Somewhere along the way in my searching the Holy Spirit began opening my eyes to the scriptures.

I began listening to them, mainly because up until then I couldn’t prove them wrong. I would constantly disagree and then turn to the Bible, only to see it was the truth. We listened more and more and when we looked into these preachers we found a common belief. Though they considered themselves biblical teachers, the words Reformed Theology kept coming up. So we checked out what this was:

We learned that before the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church taught a very warped view of scripture. To protect their authority, they kept the Bible and their services entirely in Latin. By locking the truth behind an academic language that the common people couldn’t understand, these local people became completely dependent on the church. Having a complete monopoly on the truth, the church grew incredibly powerful and wealthy, raking in money for numerous unbiblical actions.

While courageous men had been pushing back against the church for centuries, with deadly consequences, the turning point came in the 16th century. Men like Martin Luther openly questioned the church’s theological principles and the church responded again with violent opposition. These men became known as reformers and the movement they ignited became known as the Reformation. Knowing the common people needed the truth, these men risked everything to translate the Bible into local languages. The Roman Catholic Church retaliated with deadly force, and many men gave their lives just to hand out small portions of translated scripture and to preach against the church’s false teachings.

Eventually people broke away from the church and became known as Protestants. The two main groups were Lutherans from Martin Luther and then a second formed, Calvinists from John Calvin. A few decades later a new Protestant group arose, Arminians from Jacobus Arminius. They formed to oppose some Calvinism beliefs.

Each of these groups held to a specific set of biblical beliefs, known as doctrines. When the Arminians challenged certain teachings, Calvinist believers responded by clearly laying out their beliefs backed by strict biblical proof. This detailed defense became known as the Doctrines of Grace, or the Five Points of Calvinism. To this day, these five points continue to be a defining and dividing line among churches.

My wife and I studied the Bible to see if these doctrines were biblical or not. It’s hard to put aside your own human understanding, misguided beliefs and traditions for the truth of the Bible, real hard. But when you let scripture purely interpret scripture, they were true.

Below are these 5 doctrines and a very simple biblical reasoning for them. (In a later article I will expand on these).

1: Total Depravity – We are dead in our sins and in this state we will never seek after God (Ephesians 2:1) (Romans 3:11). We are enemies of God and under His wrath (Romans 5:10) (John 3:36). Every part of man is corrupted by sin and incapable of doing any good work (Romans 3:12).

2: Unconditional Election – With us being unable and unwilling to seek God for our salvation, God is the one who calls us (2nd Timothy 1:9) (John 6:44). We were predestined before the foundation of the world to be called and saved by God’s own sovereign will (Ephesians 1:4-5) (Romans 8:29).

3: Limited Atonement – Jesus lived a perfect life so that His life will be credited to us before God (2nd Corinthians 5:21) (Romans 3:22). Jesus died on the cross bearing our sins, so that our sinful debt is paid (Galatians 1:4). Jesus lived and died for those the Father called before the foundation of the world, His elect, not all the people of the world. (Acts 13:48) (John 6:44).

4: Irresistible Grace – No person that God has chosen to be saved will go unsaved. The Holy Spirit regenerates these people and gives them a new nature and He also gives them gifts of faith and repentance. Anyone truly granted this will gratefully, humbly and thankfully come to Christ. Jesus will lose none of these who the Father has called (John 6:37) (John 6:39) (John 10:16).

5: Perseverance of the Saints – Once you are saved your salvation is eternal and that is because you did not and would not have chosen to be saved to begin with. It is God’s will, not yours (John 10:28-29). Once you are called out of sin to salvation nothing at all can separate you from His love (Romans 8:35-39).

There is so much more to add to the history of the reformation and these doctrines, but I just wanted to give you an overview.

Through our studies, we finally saw God’s absolute sovereignty in everything. Nothing was left up in the air, waiting on our human decisions. Nor did God have to act like a time traveler, peering into the future to see who would believe in Him before making His choice. He made His choice according to the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:5). Everything finally made sense. It put God back in total control, which is how reality truly is, regardless of our own personal thoughts.

I accept the Bible’s truths and let the Bible lead the way instead of foolishly trying to get the Bible to line up to what I think. The Holy Spirit will continually reveal and teach to you the realities in the Word of God as He helps you grow in your Christianity and to seek Christ out (John 14:26).

The confusion that we had, that was driving my wife and then me crazy, was simply this: a wrong understanding of the Gospel and the Bible as a whole and having this conflict with certain truths of the Bible the Holy Spirit had let us understand.