Thomas Jefferson is one of the most studied figures in American history, and his biographers have characterized his religion in almost every conceivable way. Some have claimed he was a Christian, while others have labeled him a rationalist, a materialist, or a Deist. Some polemical writers on the left and right have even tried to portray him as an atheist or as an evangelical believer. (He was neither.) But perhaps one of the most accurate ways to describe Jefferson’s religious beliefs is that he was an anti-Calvinist. As Jefferson put it in a letter to Philadelphia pastor Ezra Stiles Ely in 1819, “You are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.”1

How did Jefferson’s staunch anti-Calvinist views develop? He grew up in a fairly conventional Church of England environment in colonial Virginia. Historically, the Anglican Church definitely had its Calvinist stalwarts, including the revivalist George Whitefield of Great Awakening fame. By the time Jefferson studied at the College of William and Mary, however, he seems to have doubted or denied many basic Christian doctrines, such as the resurrection and divinity of Christ.

Still, Jefferson had a number of companions and political allies in Virginia who were evangelicals or Reformed Christians. He was a lifelong friend of Pastor Charles Clay, for example, and he donated to Clay’s “Calvinistical Reformed” church in Charlottesville during the Revolutionary War. (Jefferson regularly gave money to a range of churches, despite the growing disarray in his personal finances.) Jefferson was also an admirer of certain Calvinist political writers, including the English republican theorist Algernon Sidney, whom Jefferson used as a resource in the Declaration of Independence. In his treatise Discourses Concerning Government, Sidney had written that “nothing can be more evident, than that if many [men] had been created, they had been all equal.”2

“Perhaps one of the most accurate ways to describe Jefferson’s religious beliefs is that he was an anti-Calvinist.”

Thus, Jefferson was not predestined to become an anti-Calvinist (pun intended). So where did his revulsion against Calvinism come from? One factor was political, and the other was theological.

Calvinist Enemies

Politically, Jefferson found that many of his most hostile political adversaries were Calvinists, or at least they came out of a Calvinist milieu, usually in the northern states. Again, plenty of professing Christians supported Jefferson, but those Christians tended to be southerners. The northern Christians who backed Jefferson tended to be from outsider groups such as the Baptists, who still faced the threat of persecution in Congregationalist-dominated states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut. Evangelical Jeffersonians tended to focus more on the cause of religious liberty than on the preferred religious beliefs of a presidential candidate.

Reformed and Calvinist leaders in the North, conversely, prioritized the need for Americans to honor traditional Christian belief and culture. This disposition fed into support for the Federalist Party. For example, the Calvinist minister, Yale College president, and arch-Federalist Timothy Dwight (grandson of Jonathan Edwards) stated in 1800 that if the infidel Jefferson became president, it would “ruin the Republic.”

Jefferson thought that religious beliefs were irrelevant to one’s qualifications for public service. Federalists argued that electing someone of Jefferson’s well-known skepticism about Christian doctrine was inviting the wrath of God on the nation. As one Federalist ad in the 1800 presidential campaign put it, the choice before American voters was between “GOD — AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT [John Adams]” or “JEFFERSON — AND NO GOD.” (Yes, Americans used all caps before Twitter.) Jefferson seethed about the way his Federalist Christian enemies made his heterodox views an issue into the 1800 presidential election. He came to see such tactics as typical of Calvinists in politics.3

Jefferson’s Bible

Theologically, Jefferson would also undergo a major shift in the years from 1800 to 1803. He was stung by Federalist charges that he was an atheist. Also, in 1802 newspapers began printing allegations that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings, allegations that Jefferson experts now generally regard as true. Jefferson would never confront those charges in public, but he was clearly becoming anxious to find a way to present himself to the voters and his family as a Christian, at least of a rationalist sort. This anxiety seems to have precipitated Jefferson’s decision to accept Unitarianism and its ethics-focused version of Christianity.4

Despite his skeptical bent, Jefferson had a lifelong interest (sometimes bordering on an obsession) in the Bible and in the person of Jesus. In 1803 Jefferson read Socrates and Jesus Compared, a tract by the Unitarian minister and scientist Joseph Priestley. It represented a major philosophical pivot for the president. Priestley convinced Jefferson that Jesus’s moral teachings were not just significant, but the greatest the world had ever known. Jesus’s ethic of agape, or sacrificial neighborly love, placed him above the ancient Greek philosophers, whose teachings focused on a person’s interior life more than love for one’s neighbor. Jefferson felt that the Unitarian philosophy gave him a way to affirm Christian ethics, while setting aside doctrinal complexities such as the Trinity, tenets that Jefferson believed Christians had imposed on Jesus after his death.

“Jefferson literally cut out most of the supernatural content from the Gospels, including the resurrection of Christ.”

His Unitarian settlement also prompted Jefferson to compose the first version of the so-called Jefferson Bible. The Jefferson Bible (the second version of it, composed in the late 1810s, is the only version of the text that has survived) was Jefferson’s idiosyncratic compilation of the Gospels. It mostly featured Jesus’s moral teachings and parables. Jefferson literally cut out most of the supernatural content from the Gospels, including the resurrection of Christ.

Anti-Calvinist

Drawing upon his Unitarian convictions, by the time of his retirement in the 1810s, Jefferson increasingly cast his religious beliefs as anti-Calvinist. A number of the Congregationalist churches of New England (the old denomination of the Puritans) were turning Unitarian, and Harvard also appointed a Unitarian professor of divinity in 1805. All this elicited a ferocious print debate between the Unitarians and the traditional Calvinists, a debate Jefferson followed. Jefferson became increasingly adamant that Calvin and his followers had done terrible damage to the simple message of ancient Christian teachings.

Jefferson told New Hampshire congressman Salma Hale in 1818,

Calvinism has introduced into the Christian religion more new absurdities than its leader [Jesus] had purged it of old ones. Our saviour did not come into the world to save metaphysicians only. . . . It is only by banishing [the] subtleties, which they have nick-named Christianity, and getting back to the plain and unsophisticated precepts of Christ, that we become real Christians.

Here Jefferson suggested that Calvinists were not “real” Christians. He also averred that the traditional Protestant view of salvation was wrongheaded. Jefferson’s view was “the reverse of Calvin’s” — namely, “that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power.” Jefferson rarely spoke about the need for salvation, but he thought that if salvation was needed, it would be earned by good works.5

Cut-and-Paste Christianity

Even as the Second Great Awakening was turning American religion more evangelical than ever during his retirement, Jefferson was optimistic about the eventual triumph of Unitarian faith. “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US who will not die a Unitarian,” he wrote in 1822. This was laughably inaccurate. (We might argue, however, that pop versions of Unitarianism, and casual belief in salvation by works, command great appeal in America through the present day.)

His prediction also spoke to Jefferson’s naivete about the power of reason — defined by Enlightened men such as himself — to be the final arbiter of truth in politics and religion. Calvin, had he been alive to respond, would no doubt have cautioned Jefferson that while unaided reason has some value as part of God’s common grace, it is of secondary importance when understanding divine truth and the way of salvation. For such matters, we need an authoritative word from God, not a word that we cut and paste to suit our concept of what is reasonable.6

When I talk about the nature of saving faith, I share the Protestant and Reformed zeal to magnify the majesty and glory and all-sufficiency of God in Christ.

My heart leaps with joy when I read how Calvin exalted the glory of God as the main issue of the Reformation. He wrote to his Roman Catholic adversary Cardinal Sadolet, “[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God” (A Reformation Debate, 52).

This was Calvin’s chief contention with Rome’s theology: it does not honor the majesty of the glory of God in salvation the way it should. He goes on to say to Sadolet that what is needed in all our doctrine and life is to “set before [man], as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God” (Ibid.).

“Saving faith glorifies Christ by looking away from self to Christ alone.”

The ultimate issue in saving faith is the glory of Christ. How, then, does saving faith glorify Christ? One answer is that faith is divinely suited, as a receiving grace (John 1:11–13; Colossians 2:6), to call all attention to Christ. Saving faith glorifies Christ by looking away from self to Christ alone — to his all-sufficiency, including his blood and righteousness, without which we could have no right standing with God. To which I say, with all my heart, Amen! Let us be willing to die for this. As many have.

But it gets even better. There is more glory to give to Christ as we receive him for justification.

Sight of Spiritual Reality

There are good reasons to think that Paul and other New Testament writers understood saving faith as a kind of spiritual sight of spiritual reality, especially the self-authenticating glory of Christ. For example, Paul contrasts believers and unbelievers by what they see and don’t see in the gospel of the glory of Christ:

If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. . . . For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3–6)

Unbelievers are blind to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” But for believers, “God . . . has shone in our hearts” to give that very light. Both groups hear the gospel story. Both grasp the historical facts of the gospel. But unbelievers can’t see what believers see in the gospel. Unbelievers are still walking by (natural) sight, not by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7). And natural sight looks at the gospel with no spiritual awareness of the glory of Christ in it. The natural mind (1 Corinthians 2:14), with its natural eyes, does not see what faith sees in the gospel.

But the case is very different with believers, who are described in verse 6. They experience the miracle of God’s light-giving new creation. They see what unbelievers do not see. God said, as on the first day of creation, “Let there be light!” And by that faith-creating word, God gives “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). When this happens, unbelievers become believers. This is the grand and fundamental difference between believers and unbelievers. Hearing the gospel, believers see the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Awakened from Boredom

Before the miracle of 2 Corinthians 4:6 happened to any of us, we heard the gospel story of Christ and saw it as boring or foolish or legendary or incomprehensible. We saw no compelling beauty or value in Christ. Then God “shone in our hearts,” and we saw glory.

This was not a decision. This was a sight. We went from blindness to seeing. When you go from blindness to seeing, there is no moment to decide whether you are seeing. It is not a choice. You cannot decide not to see in the act of seeing. And you cannot decide not to see as glorious what you see as glorious. That is the miracle God works in verse 6. Once we were seeing the gospel facts without seeing the beauty of Christ. Then God spoke, and we saw through the facts of the gospel the beauty of divine reality.

This seeing in 2 Corinthians 4:6 is conversion. It is the coming into being of a believer. Verse 4 describes “unbelievers,” and verse 6 describes the creation of believers. One group is blind to the compelling glory of Christ. The other sees the glory of Christ as it really is — compelling. Or to put it another way, believers are granted to see and receive Christ as supremely glorious. This is the meaning of becoming a believer, or having saving faith.

‘We Have This Treasure’

Now, how does Paul describe this experience in the next verse (2 Corinthians 4:7)? He says, “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” The most natural meaning of this “treasure” in a jar of clay is what God has just created in us in verse 6: “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The word this in verse 7 makes the connection specific. “We have this treasure.” He is not speaking in broad, general terms. He is referring to a specific treasure, “this treasure,” the one he just described.

It is not strange that Paul would use the word treasure to describe the glory of Christ in the human heart. Nothing would be more natural for Paul. He loves to think of Christ as the believer’s wealth, his riches, his treasure. He speaks of the “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8), God’s “riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19), “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7), and “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). This was the heartbeat of his ministry, the meaning of his life. He saw himself “as poor, yet making many rich” (2 Corinthians 6:10) — rich with Christ!

What this means for our question, then, is that 2 Corinthians 4:6 describes the way a believer comes into being, that is, the way saving faith comes into being. It happens when God removes spiritual blindness and replaces it with a sight of the glory of God in Christ — the beauty of Christ, the worth of Christ, the divine reality of Christ. This miracle of spiritual sight is believing. That is, it is the receiving of Christ as true and glorious. In this miracle, the believer is simultaneously united to Christ. We “have” Christ. He is ours and we are his. Then to make things crystal clear, Paul calls this a “treasure” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

All-Sufficient, All-Satisfying

How, then, does saving faith glorify Christ?

It does so, to be sure, by turning us away from self to his all-sufficient blood and righteousness, without which we could have no right standing with God. Yes, the glory of Christ is at stake in protecting his righteousness from any intrusion of our own righteousness, compromising the sufficiency of his. So let the glory of Christ blaze in the all-sufficiency of his perfect obedience unto death, as the only ground of our acceptance with God.

But there is more glory to break out into view because of God’s design for faith alone to unite us to Christ. Second Corinthians 4:4–7 is one passage among many showing that what is at stake is not only the sufficiency of Christ’s work, but also the worth of it, the beauty of it, the all-satisfying glory of it. Or to be more accurate, what is at stake in the way we are justified is the shining forth of the worth of Christ himself, the beauty of Christ, the glory of Christ reflected in the justifying faith of his people.

In other words, God ordained for faith to be the instrument of justification not only to magnify the sufficiency of Christ’s living and dying obedience, but also to magnify his infinite beauty and worth. Faith is not an expedient acceptance of an all-sufficient achievement that I use to escape hell and gain a happy, healthy, Christless heaven. God did not design faith as the instrument of justification in order to turn the righteousness of Christ into a ticket from self-treasuring misery in hell to self-treasuring pleasure in heaven.

“Saving faith is not only the acceptance of Christ as all-sufficient, but also the embrace of Christ as our treasure.”

No. God designed faith as the instrument of justification precisely to prevent such utilitarian uses of the work of Christ. This is why saving faith is not only the acceptance of Christ as all-sufficient, but also the embrace of Christ as our treasure. Faith perceives and receives Christ — the sole ground of our justification — not only as efficacious, but as glorious. Not only as sufficient, but as satisfying.

Treasuring Trust

God is glorified when he is trusted as true and reliable. He is more glorified when this trust is a treasuring trust — a being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. God designed saving faith as a treasuring faith because a God who is treasured for who he is is more glorified than a God who is only trusted for what he does, or what he gives.

Therefore, that God would design saving faith to include affectional dimensions, which I have summed up in the phrase treasuring Christ, is no surprise. For in this way, he built God-glorifying pleasure into the Christian life from beginning to end. It is there from the first millisecond of new life in Christ, for it is there in saving faith. Not perfect, not without variation, not unassailed, but real. And it will be there forever because in God’s presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. We start this new week off with a solid Bible question from a listener named Andrew. “Pastor John, hello to you! My question is about who will judge the world finally — Jesus, the Father, or the word of Christ? Of course, John 3:17 and John 12:47 tell us that Jesus did not come into the world the first time to play the role of judge. I understand that. That comes later. And as John 5:22 says it, it’s not the Father who judges in the end, but Christ. But then other passages, like 1 Peter 1:17, seem to actually say, no, the Father judges in the end. And then John 12:48–49 says final judgment comes from the word of Christ, under the authority of the Father. Can you help me understand all this? In the end, who judges the world?”

I think if you put all the pieces of the New Testament together, the answer goes something like this (it’s kind of a complicated answer, but I’ll unpack it): God the Father judges the world through Jesus Christ, the God-man, sharing that judgment in appropriate ways with apostles and Christians and with the confirming indictments of sin and truth. So that’s the sentence that answers the question as I see all the pieces going together. But before I give the building blocks and unpack those pieces, let me say why I think this is worth talking about.

“Every single human being will be held personally accountable before the Maker of the universe.”

I mean, I think this is really important. And the reason is because every single human being, every single individual listening to our voices, will be held personally accountable before the Maker of the universe for the way each of us has responded to the measure of revelation that each of us has concerning God, concerning his ways in the world, and for the way we have lived our lives — including our attitudes and our words and our actions in response to the witness of God in nature, in Scripture, in our own conscience (which is just another witness to God’s reality). “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” Paul says in Romans 14:10.

So that’s why it matters. And I think there should be a kind of trembling seriousness about it over against the superficiality of most of what happens in the world.

Judged by Father and Son

Now, here are the building blocks of that complex answer that I summed up in that sentence about who judges the world. There are biblical passages that say, plainly, that God judges the world — the Father judges the world. First Peter 1:17: “If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.” So there it is, clear. The Father judges, impartially, all of us. Or Romans 3:5–6:

If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world?

So that’s the first building block. The Father judges the world.

Here’s the second one. You have biblical passages about Christ judging the world. So, 2 Timothy 4:1 says, “. . . Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom” — he judges the world. So, you have Christ at his second coming described as the judge of the living and the dead.

Judged Through the God-Man

And then, if you ask how these two threads of Scripture — that talk about Christ and talk about the Father judging the world — fit together, how those threads are woven together, the clearest answer is that God the Father judges through God the Son, the God-man, Christ Jesus. And the New Testament expresses that relationship between the Father and Son in different ways.

For example, Luke in the book of Acts expresses it by saying that God appointed Christ to be the judge of the world. “[Christ] is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). We see the same thing in Acts 17:31: “[God] has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” So that’s about the clearest statement you could get of God judging by a man, Christ Jesus. So God judged through Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus expresses this relationship between the Father and the Son in judgment with the same kind of emphasis, with focus on the God-man — that God intends to do his judging through a man, an incarnate Son. John 5:27: “[God] has given the Son authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.”

So, I think when Jesus says in John 5:22–23, which is just a few verses earlier, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” — I think when he says that, he doesn’t mean that the Father is not involved at all in judgment, but that he’s not involved in judgment without the Son. “The Father judges no one” means, I think, “The Father judges no one apart from the Son.”

And I say that because eight verses later, Jesus says, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). In other words, both God the Father and God the Son say, “I don’t judge anyone without perfect harmony between my will and my Father’s will,” or “my will and my Son’s will.”

Judged by Apostles and Saints

Now, besides the judgment of the world through the Father and Son, the New Testament also speaks of the involvement of the apostles and the saints in the judgment of the world. This is really amazing. For example, Jesus says to the twelve apostles in Matthew 19:28, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” And then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:2–3 to the church, the whole church,

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!

Now, if that sounds incredible, which it does, it gets even more incredible in Revelation 3:21, where Jesus says, “The one who conquers [that is, the one who triumphs over persecution and temptation by keeping the faith — the one who triumphs], I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” That’s just breathtaking.

“To be part of Christ’s body, his bride, is to be part of his rule.”

In other words, to be part of Christ’s people by faith — simple, childlike trust in the infinitely worthy Christ — to be part of his body, his bride, is to be part of his rule. That’s what he said. And part of his rule includes part of his judgment. So, if we sit with him on his throne, in some sense sharing in his rule, we then share in his judgment, just like Paul said.

Judged by Sin and Truth

Now, there are two more building blocks in that sentence that I gave. So besides God, Christ, apostles, and Christians, listen to the way Jesus describes the judgment in John 3:19: “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” In other words, it is our own sin, our own love of darkness, that will be our judge at the last day.

And then Jesus says in John 12:48, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” In other words, at the last judgment, the truth that Jesus spoke — and that we knew and did not follow — will rise up as our judge. So, the truth and our sin will also be our judges.

What Judgment Means

Now, let me draw in one last cluster of a different kind of building block to use when we’re building our biblical theology of divine judgment. There are not only six judges, so to speak: God, Christ, apostles, Christians, truth, sin. There are at least six meanings of the word judgment. And we should ask, each time we’re talking about it, Which one are we talking about?

Judgment is an expression of the highest and final authoritative decision about our destiny by God (Romans 3:6).
Judgment is an expression of the immediate execution of the act of judgment (Acts 17:31).
Judgment is an act of final and decisive separation from God for non-Christians (Matthew 25:32).
Judgment is an act of meting out various rewards to Christians (1 Corinthians 3:15).
Judgment is any effect of truth that has been believed or rejected (John 12:48).
Judgment is an effect of sin in response to truth (John 3:19).

So, we should always clarify what we’re talking about when we ask about particular texts concerning God’s judgment.

Christ Judged for Sinners

So, to give the summary answer once more: Who will judge the world? God the Father judges the world through Jesus Christ, the God-man, sharing that judgment in appropriate ways with apostles and Christians, and with the confirming indictments of sin and truth.

And I think, Tony, that the note we should end on is the distinctive Christian reality. Lots of religions believe in the final judgment of God. There’s nothing distinctively Christian about final judgment.

The distinctive Christian reality is that God’s Son came into the world in order to take on himself the judgment that we deserve when he died on the cross, so that these words from Jesus in John would be gloriously true. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). That’s the distinctive Christian message.