What I Mean by Reformed

People hear "Reformed" and brace for a fight. I get it. I've met the guys who want to win. I don't want to be one of them.

I came to these doctrines because the God I had been managing kept getting contradicted by the Bible. He was smaller, nicer, and more useful than the One on the page. Romans 9 through 11 didn't end in a chart for me. It ended with my mouth shut.

Sovereignty

If God isn't sovereign, my children's future is luck, my repentance is a self-help project, and church is a club with hymns. If He is, then the worst day I know isn't outside His hands, and new birth isn't something I can fake.

I don't use this to win comments. I use it in the night I cannot fix what I broke. A God who rules is a God who can save.

Grace has to be grace

The pieces hang together. If I'm dead in sin, I don't need a coach. I need to be raised. If justification is by faith alone, I can stop handing God my résumé. If He keeps His people, I can obey without panicking that one bad week unwrites my name.

Some folks say this makes evangelism pointless and holiness optional. They haven't sat in the passages very long. The God who chooses a people also sends preachers. The God who keeps a people also tells them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, because He is at work in them.

Old words

I don't want to be more Reformed than I am Christian. The confessions aren't Scripture. They're a help. They keep me from inventing a private religion in the shower.

I'm Baptist. That isn't a team jersey either. The people I see baptized in the New Testament have heard the gospel and believed it, and they go down into the water. Immersion. Buried and raised with Christ. I don't sprinkle, and I don't baptize babies. I still love my Presbyterian brothers. I just can't find their practice in the text I keep telling my kids is enough.

I want a faith that can still sing, "Oh, the depth," without turning the song into a badge. If these doctrines have become a way for you to feel above other believers, put them down. If you've only heard them as a rumor, come and see. God is not smaller than I feared. He is better than I was willing to admit.