TULIP: The Five Points Of Love

Introduction

The acronym TULIP stands for Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. Sadly, many today have never even heard of these Doctrines of Grace, while others revile these beautiful Biblical truths by calling them ungracious and unloving. They think of God as an unaffectionate despot rather than the essence of love Himself.

Most who revile the Doctrines of Grace hate God’s sovereign election of sinners. The reason for this hatred is straightforward: man from the very beginning has wanted to be God. The tempter caught our first parents with the lie that “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). The same weakness persists today as man desires to be in control of his own salvation.

Let us walk through each point of the acronym TULIP to demonstrate how to encounter God’s lovingkindness in these great Doctrines of Grace, also known as Calvinism.

Total Depravity

The first letter in TULIP stands for Total Depravity. This doctrine teaches that all aspects of human nature have been affected by sin. It does not mean that man is as sinful as he can be, but rather that everything in man has been so influenced by the fall that he is utterly devoid of any love for God. He does not seek Him or desire His fellowship.

Man hates God. He would rather serve idols than the living God. His utter hatred for the Being and Person of God leads him to gladly and knowingly run headlong into every kind of evil, and ultimately into eternal damnation (Rom. 1:18-31).

Even though such is the plight of man, God is the God who saves. The depravity of sin cannot separate God’s people from God’s Love. The first elect, Adam and Eve, were sought by God in the Garden of Eden after their sin; in the same way, he desires to reconcile all that He has chosen for himself. Nothing can separate God’s people from God’s Love (Rom. 8:39).

For this very purpose, God sent His only begotten Son Jesus into this wretched and sinful world to die for undeserving sinners (Rom. 5:5-10). If your family and friends would somehow learn about all of your sins, they may not love you; they will probably despise you. But God, although He knows all of your sins and even the sins that you deem as the most heinous ones, He loves you in such a way that no one else will ever be able to love.

When we consider the doctrine of Total Depravity and try to contemplate the Love of God, we should be amazed to think that God would take human flesh and die for selfish, self-centered, God-hating people who are His enemies. John MacArthur once said, “You have not offended anyone more than you’ve offended God.” Dr. MacArthur’s statement is true and yet, according to the Scriptures, nobody loves those who have offended Him more than God.

Understanding the magnitude of this depravity leads us to truly appreciate the love God has for his people. Rather than revealing an ungracious, unloving, unaffectionate despot God, the doctrine of Total Depravity reveals a God whose Love is beyond measure. You cannot turn a blind eye to God’s Love when you think about God’s Compassion and Mercy in the light of your depravity. This rightly displays God’s Love as immense and beautiful.

Unconditional Election

The second letter in TULIP stands for Unconditional Election. The doctrine of predestination unto salvation or Unconditional Election can be defined as God, in His sovereign purpose, having chosen some people unto salvation, not because of their merit but by His Grace and for His own Glory (Eph. 1:3-6).

At this point in the conversation, the anger rises from many. That old temptation to be like God raises its ugly head. Many deem God unloving and unfair for choosing to save certain people. If we consider the total depravity of man and his complete hatred for God, then we will have to conclude that man will never choose God, since God is the one who has to choose him and save him. If God does not choose, then no one is saved.

The Scriptures portray God’s election of His people as an act of grace. Paul writes that God has blessed us “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love, by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,” (Eph. 1:4 -5).

We see the specific statement “He chose us,” which speaks about election. God says that His choice was unto adoption. This is like the king of a nation making the most miserable and poor beggar in the whole kingdom his son. How magnificent is the thought that the living and Holy God would choose to make undeserving sinners like us his children!

The concept of predestination is mentioned nearly thirty times in the New Testament. Paul writes elsewhere that “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29).

To “know” in the Scriptures, in this case, to foreknow is understood to mean an intimate knowledge. For instance, the Bible speaks of Adam “knowing” his wife (Gen. 4:1). He already knew who Eve was, her name, and where she lived, but the “knowing” here gives the idea of an intimate coming close in love.

God foreknows his people such that He loves them greatly and in His Love, He has chosen them for salvation and adoption. God’s relationship to His people is exemplified in the relation between wife and husband (Eph. 5:32), and the figure of speech used in Romans brings to our attention that God intimately loves His people and has chosen sinners for salvation.

When you think of unconditional election, you can think of God as a loving Father who is deeply personal in His Love for His people rather than an impersonal cruel ruler.

Limited Atonement

The third letter in TULIP stands for Limited Atonement. Simply put, the doctrine of Limited Atonement is the statement that Jesus’ propitiatory work on the cross was only intended for God’s elected people. In other words, Jesus’ sacrifice has the potential to save all of mankind but is only effective for those who would put their faith in Him for salvation. The only people who will come to faith are those whom God predestined to believe because all of mankind hates God before they are regenerated.

This Limited Atonement is the most hated of all the points in the TULIP. This doctrine in many people’s minds spoils their beloved teaching of Jesus’ sacrificial atonement. They ask why Jesus did not die for everyone. There are even those who cut this point out of the TULIP to call themselves four-point Calvinists. In doing so, just like removing petals from real tulips, they are left with a lopsided creation that is no representation of God’s love for his people.

God is a God who saves. This proclamation is heralded throughout Scripture: “God is to us a God of salvation; And to Yahweh the Lord belong escapes from death” (Ps. 68:20). He comes and does not just provide a potential atonement, but an actual one.

Jesus did not come to this world hoping in vain that someone might value His sacrifice. He in His sovereign Love provided such an atonement that will definitely save His people.

Consider a lifeguard who sees someone drowning. What would be more loving for him to do: throwing him a life jacket or jumping into the water to save him? We all know the obvious answer: the lifeguard leaping into the water would be more compassionate to the predicament of the drowning man. What kind of love sees his beloved suffering and does not actively provide his loved one with support?

Which is more loving: to provide help that might work only by the effort of the receiving one, or to provide help that is conscious of the weakness of the receiving one? God saves sinners such that He regenerates them and then applies His Son’s work of atonement in order to wash away their sins.

God is active in saving. The Love of God cannot be thwarted in the saving of His people.

Irresistible Grace

The fourth letter in TULIP stands for Irresistible Grace. God saves by grace: this is a reality that all Christians confess, no matter if they are some flavor of Arminian or Calvinist, but what distinguishes the opposing view is how this grace functions.

What does the grace of God do? Does this grace lack power unless aided by the acceptance of the creature, or is this grace the powerful changing act of God into the lives of unbelievers that will make them surrender all to Him? Many here will argue that love is letting the other person make a choice willingly, but man’s conundrum is that he is not willing to love God and render his devotion to Him.

God is the one who has to provide both the willingness and the ability to do His will (Phil. 2:12-13).

When we speak of this doctrine, we do not mean that God drags the unwilling man into salvation. The teaching asserts that God regenerates man in such a way that He gives him a new heart that is willing to bow down to the sovereignty of God (Ezek. 36:26). We do not need to reach out to this grace for this grace to be effective: this grace is so strong that our resistance is overcome and in love, God supplies the power to change us (Eph. 2:9-10).

God bestows us with grace and love even when we are utterly undeserving, and even when we do not want them. Paul says “But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved-“(Eph. 2:4-5).

When we look at the depth and the wickedness of our sin, which is so great that if other people could know their multitude and heinousness then they would hate us, we rightly see ourselves as completely unlovable. Yet we hear the glorious words “but God,” which introduce us to the greatest news our ears can ever receive: that God would provide us with grace for salvation, stemming from His lovingkindness.

This God, whose ultimate word on our condition matters the most, is more than willing to save us, even though He knows about all of our unwillingness to love Him. God in His lovingkindness and by His grace is our Savior and makes us His own people.

Such grace cannot be expressed in any way other than in the expression of love.

Perseverance of the Saints

The final letter in TULIP stands for Perseverance of the Saints. When we say Perseverance of the Saints, we mean that God by His grace so preserves His people that they persevere in faith. Saints can fall into various sins, but they do not remain in them: God brings them out of the power of their sins. God not only saves them but helps them to progress in sanctification until the day they die and are taken up in glory (Rom. 8:30-31).

You might have faced rejection on many levels for the multitude of your shortcomings and sins against God and others. On a very basic human level, perhaps your girlfriend rejected you, your friends left you, or perhaps your own parents disowned you. Our experience with other people is pretty much the same and is often marked by rejection.

Jesus is not the same. He is not a Savior who will save you to some extent and then let you be on your own. The Scriptures declare “He is able also to save forever” (Heb. 7:25). He never forsakes us (Phil. 1:6). When He saves, He saves to the uttermost.

God is not a human. He is God, as proven in the way He loves wretched sinners. The lovingkindness of God is eternal like all of His other attributes. Saints can act unfaithfully, but our God is faithful. Again this truth crescendos from Scripture: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself“(2 Tim. 2:13).

We all know the pain of betrayal and unfaithfulness by others, and how we may stop loving those who have wronged us, but God faces way more unfaithfulness from His people than we could ever encounter by other people, yet still, His lovingkindness does not diminish.

When His children sin, He disciplines them, sometimes allowing various afflictions to befall them, all out of love (Rev. 3:19). Parents often put restrictions on and punish their children for the purpose of leading them in the right path since children are not mature and do not have the wisdom required to navigate life. Parents discipline and guide their children out of love. God, the loving Father, similarly saves us from many sins and temptations so that we might persevere in salvation until our glorification.

I pray that after reading this article your love for God may be increased and your thoughts, when you hear of these Doctrines of Grace, would be more of love than of divisions.

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