TULIP, or the five points of Calvinism, summarizes God’s work of salvation, and it highlights the omnipotent love of God. Christians can rest assured that if they believe, it is because of the work of God, and that work cannot fail because His love cannot fail.

What do tulips, the love of God, and a centuries-old understanding of salvation have in common? They are all reflected in what has come to be known as the five points of Calvinism.
How are these things interconnected? The word tulip forms an acrostic that summarizes a particular understanding of salvation that has at its center the love of God. Let’s see how this works.
Total Depravity
T stands for total depravity, which describes how sin affects human beings. But to understand this, we have to start before sin entered the world. Our triune God from all eternity has existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory, enjoying a never-beginning and never-ending relationship of holy love. This holy love motivated God’s free decision to create the universe and to create man and woman in His own image to love Him and each other. However, Adam chose to reject our Creator, and, through Adam’s disobedience, humanity fell into sin (Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12–21). Total depravity says that sin has so twisted us that apart from grace, we love other things more than we love God. Our minds, our bodies, our affections, our spirits—every part of us has been affected by sin, and of our own accord, we cannot escape this predicament. God has not stopped loving His creation, however (John 3:16). And in His love, He restrains sin, keeping us from being as bad as we possibly could be. Thus, even those who do not know Christ can do things that are outwardly good. They can be good neighbors, love their children, and so on. However, outside of grace, none of us does these things with the right motivation to love and glorify God.
Unconditional Election
U stands for unconditional election, which is part of God’s solution to our total depravity. The fall into sin, of course, did not surprise God. He knows the end from the beginning and has ordained history as part of the outworking of His plan and purposes for all things (Isa. 46:8–11; Eph. 1:11). The Lord would have been just to keep us in our state of sin and estrangement from Him, but He decided to set His special love on His people, choosing to redeem them and restore to them their status as God’s children. Unconditional electionis God’s loving choice of specific sinners for salvation without respect to any good in them(Rom. 9:1–29). His saving love for us isnot conditioned on our intelligence, our looks, our kindness, our social status, or anything else. He loves His people not because they are less sinfulthan others. Everydescendant of Adam and Eve (except for Christ) is a sinner. Unconditional electionsays that God chooses to save some people and to pass over others. He has a love for some people that He does not have for others. If you are a Christian, it is because in eternity past, long before you were born, God chose to love you with His saving love. He did not choose youbecause you were better than others. He did not choose youbecause He knew you would choose Him if He gave you the chance. He simply chose to love you, and since His love is not conditioned on anything in you, He will never stop loving you.
Limited Atonement
L stands for limited atonement, which describes God’s intent behind the death of Christ in providing salvation. The question is, Did Christ intend to atone for the sins of all people who have ever lived, or did He intend to atone for the sins of the elect only? Another way of putting it: Did God love people generally, without reference at all to them as individuals, and send Christ to die to provide a possibility of salvation?
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As is often the case, we need some care, wisdom and discernment as to when and how we might deal with the sin, error or failings of others. But contrary to the views of some, there certainly is a place for public rebuke – even for naming and shaming. It is interesting to see this with the Apostle Paul for example. There seem to have been at least eight individuals who were publicly named by Paul as having failed him or gone off the rails. Whether for betrayal or for sinful activity, Paul had no problem in calling them out in public.

Balancing biblical truths is always a tough gig. We can easily go off into one extreme while trying to avoid another. Consider the issue of dealing with other believers. On the one hand we are told repeatedly in Scripture that we are to be kind to others, forbearing, patient, forgiving, gentle, humble, and so on.
A main reason for all this is because we tend to be guilty of the same things we dislike in others. We all can be just as proud and rude and impatient and unloving and unfair as the next person. So we need to offer grace to others, just as God offers us grace. Let me share just three verses on this.
Paul in Ephesians 4:32 puts it this way: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” And Galatians 6:1 speaks about how we should consider ourselves while we deal with others and their sin.
He says this: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” That verse does deal with the issue of rebuking others and calling out sin – but more on that in a moment.
A third text we should bear in mind is Matthew 18:21-22: “Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times’.” That is actually one of the most encouraging texts in all of Scripture. I fail the Lord every single day, and yet he still forgives ME. So I need to extend that much forgiveness to others as well.
But on the other hand, Scripture tells us repeatedly that we are to call out sinful behaviour and false teaching. It tells us often about the need to challenge one another, to rebuke, to warn, and to sound the alarm. We are not to be indifferent or careless about the need to hold others to account, just as we are to hold ourselves to account.
So how are we to reconcile these two seemingly opposing sets of commands of Scripture? How can we love and be forbearing with others, yet at the same time uphold high standards and call out sin? One way to understand this is to keep this oft-heard principle in mind: private sin, private rebuke; public sin, public rebuke. I have discussed this elsewhere: here.
As I explain in that piece, there is in fact a place for calling out others – but it depends on when and where and how we do this. If a person I know of has some sin problem, I am to go to him alone, as in Matthew 18:15-20. The whole world does not need to know about the matter, and a private conversation will do, hopefully.
But if, say, a person writes a book for the whole world to see, and it contains some rather unhelpful and even unbiblical material, then one can publicly deal with that book if needed. Some years ago a noted Australian Christian leader put out a quite bad book with the title, You Need More Money. It was so bad that I penned a review of it, and also shared that review with other Christian publications.
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Modern Liberalism is just as heretical as was the theological liberalism of the early 20th century. It is heresy to deny the necessity of sanctification for believers as much as to deny the authority of scripture. To deny that Christ truly transforms his people in this life is as much heresy as it is to deny that he came to save.

There’s a new liberalism making its way through our churches and transforming our denominations. No, this liberalism doesn’t deny the virgin birth or the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. This liberalism is steeped in biblical exegesis and historic-Reformed categories. Today’s liberalism attempts to use the common creeds and confessions we know and love, and it emphasises the importance of using scripture to defend our ideas. This liberalism has a foothold in virtually every major Reformed seminary and denominational group. Like the liberalism that Machen fought, this liberalism isn’t simply an aberration away from biblical Christianity; it’s an entirely different religion. Using the same language, borrowing from the same history, often preached side by side with orthodoxy, this liberalism poses no less a serious threat to orthodox Christianity than did the liberalism of the early 20th century.
The theological liberalism of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy dealt primarily with doctrinal categories. The liberals of the early 20th century wanted to keep the form and trappings of Christianity while also stripping it of any doctrinal content that flew in the face of a rationalist view of science and the world. They wanted the moral authority of a religion without the dogmatic content of biblical Christianity. Today’s liberalism, however, is a different category all-together. Modern Liberalism accepts the validity of miracles, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the authority (at least in theory) of scripture, the resurrection, and the substitutionary nature of Christ’s atonement. Today’s liberalism isn’t theological; it’s ethical.
Today’s liberalism addresses not what we believe but how we act. Of course theology is always behind our ethics, but examining the doctrinal statement of today’s Modern Liberals will turn over little that’s concerning. It’s in their practice that the concerns are shown. The theological liberals of the early 20th century professed faith in a real Jesus while denying that he ever lived. They claimed to believe the whole of scripture yet consistently undercut every significant doctrine. So today, Modern Liberals profess faith in the same theology as orthodox Reformed Christianity, yet their practice is profoundly different to that of New Testament Christianity.
Good truths are being twisted. Those who emphasize God’s grace and Christ’s love to the neglect of a fully biblical emphasis on the absolute imperative of Christians to live a life of repentance and pursue holiness today demonstrate the theological component behind this rising Modern Liberalism. Those who teach only on justification and the love of God, those who openly deny or tacitly undercut the necessity of sanctification are fuelling the ethical dimension to today’s Modern Liberalism.
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