Maybe you have heard the phrase, “Pray like a Calvinist, Work like an Arminian.”  Such a statement, while seeking to reconcile these two schools of thought, actually does violence to both.  This was brought home to me again, as I concluded a re-read of When Grace Comes Home by Terry Johnson.

If I am a Calvinist or an Arminian I am so because I have the conviction that the Scriptures reveal a certain understanding of God, humanity, salvation, and life.  This understanding is based in the preponderance of the biblical text and is to be applied to all of life.  Therefore, if I am a Calvinist when I pray, I must also be a Calvinist when I work.  If I am a Calvinist when I preach, I must also be an Calvinist when I evangelize.  If I believe that Calvinism is nothing more than a consistent expression of the Christian faith (or as Spurgeon said, “a nickname for biblical Christianity”) then there is not one area of life where I am not to seek a consistent outworking of my Christian faith (aka Calvinism).

While I do not hold to Arminian teachings, if I did I would be offended if someone told me that my Arminianism is good to work by but not good enough to pray by.  Furthermore, when someone says that I should evangelize like an Arminian, they are saying that Calvinism is not consistent with biblical evangelism.  Huh?

No offense to my Arminian brothers and sisters, but as a committed Calvinist, I am not seeking to be Arminian in any of my approaches to the Christian life.  I would expect them to say the same thing.  I not only pray as a Calvinist, but I also preach as one.  I not only raise my children as a Calvinist, but I evangelize as one as well.   In summing up this idea, Terry Johnson quotes B. B. Warfield as saying:

“The Calvinist is the man who is determined to preserve the attitude he takes in prayer in all of his thinking, in all his feeling, in all his doing… Other men are Calvinists on their knees; the Calvinist is the man who is determined that his intellect, and heart, and will shall remain on their knees continually, and only from this attitude think, and feel and act.”

Right!  To say that we pray like Calvinists is to say that we pray with total dependence upon God.  I not only want to pray like that, but I want to live like that at all times.  I want to preach like that.  I want to share the Gospel like that.  I want to disciple like that.  I want to love my wife and raise my children like that.  I want to be a Calvinist at all times because I want to be a Christian at all times.