God's Magnificent Salvation Plan
by Harold Camping
An Indepth Biblical Study of
God's Salvation Plan for Mankind
CHAPTER 4
L = LIMITED ATONEMENT
In this chapter we shall examine the question of limited or
particular atomement very carefully to see if it is a valid
principle set forth in the Bible. First, let's look at Matthew
1:21. There God in very beautiful language is declaring
particular atonement. He declared to Joseph through the angel,
"And she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name
Jesus for He shall save HIS people from their sins." Notice the
phrase, "HIS people." Now who are His people? We saw earlier in
John 6:37 that HIS people are the ones who were given to Christ by
the Father. Thus we know that Christ is the Savior only of those
who were given to Him by the Father. And, of course, to save them
it was necessary that He pay for their sins, even as He did by
going to the cross. There is no suggestion here that He laid down
His life for every last individual in the whole world.
In John 10 Christ speaks about the sheep that He came to seek
and to save. In verse 15 He declares, "I lay down My life for the
sheep." Who are these sheep? In verse 14 He had declared, "I am
the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep and am known of Mine." Now
you see, these sheep are the ones that belong to Him. They are
His. These are the ones for whom He lays down His life. He
doesn't lay down His life for all people according to this
passage, but He lays down His life for His sheep, and they will
know Him..."I am known of Mine." They will come to Him.
Paralleling again what we read in John 6:37.
Secondly, we read in John 17, as Christ is praying to His
Father in verses 9 and 10, "I pray for them. I pray not for the
world, but for them which thou hast given Me, for they are Thine,
and all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine, and I am glorified in
them." While in verse 9 Christ is speaking particularly of the
disciples whom He chose, in verses 20 and 21 of John 17 Christ has
ultimately in view far more than His disciples. In these verses
Christ adds, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also
which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be
one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may
be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me."
That's a significant prayer, isn't it? If Christ had laid
down His life for every last individual in the whole world, we
would certainly expect that He would be praying for them. You
would think, if their sins had been paid for, Christ would also
make arrangements with the Father that they would come to Him.
But here God opens the veil concerning the relationship within the
Godhead, and Christ very clearly indicates He does not pray for
the world. He prays for those who belong to Him and those "which
shall believe on Me through their word." These would be His sheep.
He is interceding only for those who had been given to Him by the
Father. We read in Hebrews 7:25-26, where Christ is presented to
us as our eternal High Priest:
Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.
Here the Bible specifically declares that Christ makes
intercession for those that come to God by Christ; that is, Christ
makes intercession for those whom He is saving. This is precisely
what Christ is doing in His prayer recorded in John 17.
Furthermore, in John 17:2 Christ prays, "Father...as Thou hast
given Him (Jesus is referring to Himself here) power over all
flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast
given Him." Again in this immediate context He is speaking of the
disciples. But He is enunciating a fundamental principle of God's
salvation program. In this statement our Lord Jesus is singling
out those who were given to Him by the Father (John 6:37). As
Jesus discusses these who were given to Him, He emphasizes that He
has provided eternal life for them. Eternal life is a gift to the
believer provided by the atonement. (Must we believe there are
some who have experienced the atonement without receiving eternal
life? This would be the unbiblical conclusion we must come to if
we believe that Christ paid for the sins of every human.)
Further still, when we look at the nature of salvation under
the Biblical word justification, we find also that the idea of
particular or limited atonement must be held as a Biblical
principle. In Romans 5:18 we read, "By the righteousness of one,
the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." In
Romans 5:25 we read, "who was delivered for our offenses and was
raised again for our justification."
Notice in these passages God is very clearly teaching that
those whom He saved, He justified. We read, for example, in
Romans 5:9, "Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we
shall be saved from wrath through Him." Thus God has established
the principle that those for whom He died are justified by His
blood, as the foreging verses clearly teach. Thus if Christ had
paid for the sins of every single human, we must conclude that all
mankind stands justified before God. This is the inescapable
conclusion we must come to if Christ had gone to the cross on
behalf of every single human.
Continuing this line of argument we must recognize that to be
justified means that one has been made just. His sins have been
paid for, and therefore there can be no condemnation. Thus, to
believe that Christ paid for the sins of every human being brings
us to the conclusion that every human being has been made just by
Christ's shed blood.
But this conclusion runs counter to the plain teaching of the
Bible. In Acts 24:15 we read, "That there shall be a resurrection
of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Also in II Peter 2:9 we
read, "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of
temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to
be punished."
These passages very clearly indicate that not only those who
are justified will be resurrected, but there are also the unjust
who will remain so right up until Judgment Day. According to
Romans 5:18 and Romans 4:25 we discovered that when we are saved,
we are justified by Christ's blood. His blood was shed so that we
might become righteous before God. Therefore, if Christ shed His
blood (which brings justification) for every human, how can there
still be those who are unjust insofar as God's holiness is
concerned? This problem disappears when we recognize that Christ
paid only for the sins of those who become saved.
If Christ has paid for the sins of every last individual in
the world (or as some would say, "Yes, for all their sins except
the sin of not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ"), then we have
to ask the fair question, "How can people be judged whose sins
have been paid for?" Now we read very specifically in Revelation
20:13 that those who stand before the Judgment throne will be
judged according to their works, every man according to his works.
Man's works are to be judged to discover if they were done
sinlessly; that is, perfectly in obedience to God's Word. And of
course, since every work of man is at best tainted by sin, those
who stand for judgment will be found guilty of multitudes of sins.
We read in Matthew 12:36, "that every idle word that men shall
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment, for
by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt
be condemned." Of course unsaved men have no good thing within
them. There is none righteous, and therefore everything they will
give an account of will bring condemnation upon them.
In Romans 2 we read, beginning in verse 5, "After thy hardness
and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the
day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who
will render to every man according to his deeds."
There it is, you see. God is insisting that mankind at the
Judgment Throne has to answer for every sin, and every sin will be
dealt with by banishment into Hell. There is no implication in the
Bible that the only sin they will answer for at Judgment Day is
the sin of rejecting Christ. They have to answer for every sin.
Now if Christ has already paid for those sins by going to the
cross (if we hold the view that He paid for the sins of every last
individual in the whole human race), then it would be double
jeopardy if these same individuals whose sins had been paid for
now have to go into Hell to pay for these same sins. That just
does not follow at all, does it?
In Colossians 3:25 God lays this principle down, "But he that
doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong that he hath done, and
there is no respect of persons." Only because Christ has become
the substitute for those who are to be saved is this requirement
of God met. The Bible says very clearly in John 5:24 of the
believers that we do not come into judgment.
In Ephesians 5:25 we read, "Christ loved the church and gave
Himself for it." He gave Himself for the church, not for the whole
world, not for every last individual. He gave himself for the
church. Later in this study we will see that only the true
believers in the church have had their sins covered by Christ's
blood, even though the cross bears some relationship to the church
as a corporate body.
We see, therefore, that the Bible does not endorse the
doctrine that Christ went to the cross to pay for every sin of the
whole human race, with the only sin that sends us to Hell being
the sin of not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. The sin of not
believing in Jesus as Savior is included amongst all the other
sins and simply adds to our punishment. Our every action is
sinful, and any one of these sins is going to send us into Hell.
And of course it is all these sins that will really bring God's
wrath upon us. How important it thus is that we trust in Christ
as our sin-bearer. Only through Him can we escape Hell.
But aren't there verses in the Bible that say something
different? Don't we read in II Peter 3:9 that God declares, "I
would not wish that any should perish, but that all should come to
Christ"? Doesn't that imply that Christ has paid for everybody's
sins? And what about I Timothy 2:4, where we read that Christ
would have all men be saved? How can He desire this if He has not
already paid for their sins? Again in I Timothy 2:6, doesn't the
Lord declare that He gave His life a ransom for all? Or in I
Timothy 4:10 doesn't God declare He is the Savior of all?
These verses certainly seem to indicate that indeed Christ
paid for the sins of every last individual. But if that is so,
then we are in trouble with the verses that we have already
covered, which very clearly teach particular atonement. How can
we reconcile these passages?
As we look at these verses we see a consistent use of the word
"all"; "...all should come to Christ..." "...a ransom for all..."
"...the Savior of all..." We must understand the Biblical use of
this word, letting the Bible be its own dictionary. He wished
that all should be saved. He gave His life a ransom for all. He
is the Savior of all. Normally when we use that word all, we
think of it as an all-inclusive kind of word. If there were ten
people in the room, and we said, "they all have hats on," then we
immediately get the picture that these ten people without
exception had hats on. But in the Bible, when God uses the word
all it is conditioned by the context.
For example, in Luke 2 God declares, "A decree went out from
Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. We could
conclude that "all the world" would include the North American
Indians and Africa, etc. But the context shows us that the "all
the world" to be taxed was that part of the world that was subject
to taxation, namely, the Roman Empire. In other words, the word
all was conditioned by the context in which it was found.
Likewise we read in Acts 2 , as the Holy Spirit is being
poured out, "In the last days I will pour out My Spirit on all
flesh." We know from the Bible itself that God did not pour out
the Holy Spirit on every last individual in the whole world that
they would become prophets, or that they would prophesy; but He
poured out His own Spirit on those who would believe. The "all"
there is conditioned by the rest of the Bible, which declares that
only those who are elect will believe. So the word "all" is much
less than all-inclusive.
We read, for example, in I Corinthians 15:22, "As in Adam all
die..." From the rest of the Bible we know that "all" is an all
inclusive all. It includes every last individual in the whole
human race. "There is none righteous, no, not one."
But then the next phrase says, "...so in Christ shall all be
made alive." If that "all" included every last individual, then
that verse would be teaching universal atonement, and we know that
is not so. Hell is going to be heavily populated by people who
have not been made alive. They are spiritually dead. Therefore
we must read that second phrase, "...so in Christ shall all (who
are to be made alive) be made alive." That is, God is teaching
that all the individuals He plans to save are saved by Christ's
work. Other passages of the Bible show us that the ones He plans
Likewise, when God uses the language, "He gave His life a
ransom for all," or "He is the Savior of all," or that "He wishes
that all should come to a knowledge of the truth," we know that
the "all" in these verses is conditioned by God's elective
program. Only those whom He has predestinated, those whom He has
elected, are the ones whom He has ransomed, of whom He has become
the Savior. These are the ones that God has in view when He uses
this word "all." He gave His life a ransom for all His elect. He
wishes that all His elect will come to Him.
But then there is a second kind of passage in the Bible that
is frequently offered as proof that Christ indeed paid for the
sins of every last individual in the whole world. We read in I
John 4:14 that Christ is the Savior of the world. Likewise in
John 4:42 we see the same phrase, that He is the Savior of the
whole world.
In I John 2:2 the statement even appears stronger as we read,
"And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only,
but also for the sins of the whole world." My, doesn't that really
underscore the fact that He has paid for the sins of the whole
world, every last individual in the whole world? In John 3:16 and
17 we apparently see the same kind of an idea, where we read, "For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting
life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be saved." This too
seems to indicate that He paid for the sins of every last
individual.
In that regard, we must also consider the dramatic words of
John the Baptist, as he greeted Jesus, and said, "Behold the Lamb
of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." By isolating
these verses from the rest of the Bible, we could conclude that
Christ did come and pay for the sins of the whole world. These
verses, as they stand, certainly give that impression.
However, when we read these verses in the light of everything
else in the Bible, we know that conclusion is not possible. If
Christ had paid for the sins of the whole world, that is, of every
last individual in the whole world, then as we have already seen,
there could not be Judgment Day and Hell. Everyone's sins would
have been paid for, and therefore there could be no such thing as
an unjust person who must be sent to Hell. Since Christ would
have died for every person, He therefore would have justified them
by His blood.
Therefore we must look at these verses more carefully. Let us
look at I John 2:2 more closely. As we do, we must remember that
there is only one sin-bearer in this world, and that is the Lord
Jesus Christ. There is only one way that forgiveness of sins can
be obtained, and that is through the shed blood of Christ. In I
John 2:2 God declares, "He is the propitiation for our sins, and
not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."
If we assume that He had indeed paid for the sins of the whole
world, we run afoul of passages like Revelation 20:13, Matthew
12:36, Romans 2:5-6 and Colossians 3:25, which clearly indicate
the unsaved must give an account of and pay for all their sins.
None of these passages would make sense anymore if Christ had
indeed paid for every single sin of the whole world; so we know
that this cannot be the kind of payment God has in view in this
passage?
Then how are we to understand this passage? We can understand
these phrases if we note that in the first part of verse two God
is simply declaring that Christ is the one who has provided for
the salvation of those who believe. He is the propitiation for
our sins. There is no one else who could provide the way back to
the Father, who has provided Himself as a substitute. Only Christ
is the WAY.
In the second phrase, "and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world," we see that God is simply expanding that
fact by declaring that in the whole world there is no other method
of salvation except through Christ. In the whole world there is
no Savior except the Lord Jesus Christ. All the sins in the whole
world which are to be forgiven are forgiven by the blood of
Christ. This passage is not detailing the extent of God's
salvation program in the world. It is simply indicating that for
those who are to be saved Christ is the only propitiation.
Other passages declare to us who will be saved out of the
whole world. They will be the elect. But in I John 2:2 God is
simply declaring how they would be saved, and that is through
Christ as the propitiation for their sins. Because we know that
the unsaved of the world who remain unjust must stand for judgment
and answer for every one of their sins and pay for their sins, we
know that this verse cannot be teaching that their sins have
already been paid for. God is simply declaring that those who
will be saved out of the world, wherever they are found, can be
saved only through Christ as the propitiation for their sins.
When John the Baptist declared, "Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sins of the world," he was simply declaring, this
is the Lamb whereby salvation is possible. John the Baptist isn't
going into the whole detail of that salvation. He is not
indicating that there are God's elect, that there has to be belief
on Him, and so on. He is simply making the declaration that
Christ is the Savior who has come into the world. He is the only
means whereby the sins of the world which are to be covered will
be covered.
We see this truth very beautifully in John 3:16, where we
read, "For God so loved the world..." He loved the world, His
creation, and therefore He gave His only begotten Son, that out of
this world whosoever believeth on Him should not perish. The
declaration "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish"
automatically excludes the rest, does it not? That is the
condition that God lays down. There must be belief on Him! And
unless there is belief on Him they still will perish.
Why do they perish? They perish because of their sins. God
had declared, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). And so
when God speaks of Christ as the Savior of the world, if we
conclude that every last person's sins have been paid for, that
will not be in agreement with all the other doctrines that point
to the fact that there will be a vast company of people in Hell,
paying for their sins.
Earlier in this study I indicated that there are those who
believe that Christ paid for all our sins except the sin of not
believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. This doctrine is suggested by
John 3:18, which declares, "He that believeth on Him is not
condemned, But he that believeth not is condemned already, because
he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
This verse seems to indicate that the reason people are condemned
is that they don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But even this passage will not withstand that kind of
conclusion, because verse 19, which immediately follows, declares,
"and this is the condemnation...the light is come into the world,
and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are
evil." Their sin, you see, is the love of darkness; and the love
of darkness involves them in every kind of sin that is involved in
the kingdom of darkness.
Verse 19 agrees altogether with those other statements of the
Bible that indicate that men go to Hell not because they are
sinners. Because they stand guilty before God, their failure to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ simply indicates that they have
no covering for their sins. In Psalm 85:2 the Bible declares that
"thou hast forgiven the iniquity of Thy people, Thou hast covered
all their sin." Christ's blood provides the covering whereby our
guilt has been removed.
Moreover, when we conclude that Christ paid for the sins of
the whole world, with the exception of not believing in the Lord
Jesus Christ, then we have developed a gospel of grace that is
again bordering on grace plus works. We're really saying that
when Christ went to the cross, there by His grace He covered all
our sins except one...the sin of rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ.
That implies, then, that if the sin of rejecting Christ has
not been covered by the blood of Christ, then the fact that I do
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ becomes a good work of mine that
is meritorious in saving me. We thus are declaring that God's
grace covered all the rest of my sins. But because I have done
the good work of believing on Christ, therefore I merit this
salvation and all the grace that God applies to my life. We thus
have placed ourselves in that terrible condition of developing a
gospel of grace plus works, and that will send us to Hell for
sure!
We must keep in mind, whenever we study any verses in the
Bible that relate to salvation, that it is all of grace! Even the
faith with which we believe is a gift of God. Actually it is not
our faith that saved us, but the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Only because He was faithful in going to the cross for our sins
can we be saved. And the faith that we experience in our lives is
really a reflection of the faith that Christ first demonstrated in
paying for our sins. Both the faith which we see in our lives
when we are saved, as well as the works that we do in our lives,
are gifts of God. They are not meritorious in any way whatsoever!
But there is one last group of verses that we ought to look
at. They appear to indicate or at least can be misconstrued to
teach that someone who is definitely unsaved still appears to be
in a condition in which his sins have been paid for. The first of
these is found in I Corinthians 7:15, where God declares, "The
unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving
wife is sanctified by the husband." Similarly, in Hebrews 10:29
God is discussing a man who knew the way of salvation and never
did become a child of God. Then he deliberately turned away from
the Gospel. And yet, in speaking of him God says, "Of how much
more punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under
foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant,
wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing."
These two passages are speaking definitely of unsaved people
who are sanctified. It is this word "sanctified" which suggests
that somehow a work of grace has been done on behalf of the
unsaved who remain unsaved.
Let us examine this question more closely. The word
sanctification means to be set apart for the service of God.
Certainly born again believers are set apart for the service of
God. But what about those who are in the congregation, and thus
are corporately of the Body of Christ, yet who are not true
children of God? What about those unsaved members of a family in
which there are saved individuals, which would identify that
family corporately with the Kingdom of God? Did Christ pay for
their sins?
A third verse that is similar to this is II Peter 2:1. There
God is talking about false prophets who are among the people.
That is, they are members of the congregation. And they are
bringing in damnable heresies, "even denying the Lord that bought
them and bring upon themselves swift destruction." The phrase
"that bought them " certainly would seem to indicate that Christ
had gone to the cross to pay for their sins.
We must look at these verses in the light of the discussion
that we had earlier in this study, in which we saw that those who
face Judgment Day must give an account of every sin. Because they
must give an account of every sin, we know that they are not
eternally Christ's people. They are not His sheep.
Certainly if we isolate these verses from the rest of the
Bible, we might conclude that Christ had paid for their sins, as
He did for the believers. Thus they would not go to Hell. And
yet the very context of Hebrews 10:29 indicates that Hell and
damnation must still be endured by this person...in spite of the
fact that these verses speak of him as having been sanctified.
Likewise, the language of II Peter 2 is very clear that the false
prophets mentioned in this context are subject to eternal
damnation.
Thus we see that while God speaks of certain individuals as
being sanctified or having been "bought" of the Lord, they are
still subject to eternal damnation. How can this be? How does the
Bible reconcile these apparent contradictions? Let us continue to
investigate this problem.
We must remember, as we look at these verses, that God is
concerned about the church, in its corporate sense, as in its
eternal sense. Those who have become born again believers are
eternally members of the body of Christ. They belong to Him, and
their sins have been paid for by Christ's blood. They are eternal
members of the church Christ came to build. The organization in
which these born from above believers are found is the
congregation which is part of one denomination or another. And
these congregations are the corporate expression of the Kingdom of
God. The congregation is an organized, visible body of those who
profess Christ.
Even though all those within the congregation profess Christ,
they are not all necessarily believers. This is shown to us by the
very verses we are studing. the false prophets of II Peter 2 were
members of a congregation of believers. But they themselves were
not saved.
An outstanding example of a congregation that had many
unbelievers within it is that of national Israel. While there was
a remnant chosen by grace within that congregation, the major part
remained in unbelief. Thus they were still under damnation, even
though as a whole body they were the corporate representation of
the Kingdom of God here on this earth throughout the 2,000 years
which preceded the coming of Christ.
Likewise in the New Testament God began to represent Himself
organizationally or corporately in this world by the churches and
the denominations that began to spring up after Pentecost. Each
of these officially is identified whith Christ, and yet each of
these is composed of both believers and unbelievers.
We see this clearly as we read the first three chapters of
Revelation, where God talks about the seven churches of Asia
Minor. Each is represented in Heaven by a candlestick because
they are Christ's church. Yet we see that God warns that in one
church there is a Jezebel. And in another one they are following
the Nicolaitans, who are heretics of some kind. This mixture of
believers and unbelievers can be expected in every congregation
even though, corporately speaking, those same congregations
identify with Christ.
Since each congregation was established, was set apart to
serve Christ, every member of that church is looked upon as
sanctified; that is, he is set apart for the service of God. Even
a false prophet who is a member of the church is spoken of as
having been bought by Christ. By this language God is indicating
He went to the cross not only to save and pay for the sins of the
born again believers, those who are His elect, but also in order
to establish His corporate body, His churches, His congregations.
In that sense, those who are members of the congregation have been
bought.
But individually their sins have been paid for only if they
personally have become believers. We saw this very clearly when
we examined the Bible's teaching concerning the nature of Judgment
Day. But corporately they are part of that body which has been
bought as an organization by God (using the language of II Peter
2:1). Therefore, God can say that He has bought these false
prophets.
In the same manner, the unsaved husband who is married to the
saved wife is spoken of as being sanctified (I Corinthians 7:14).
Because of one parent having become an eternal member of the
Kingdom of God, the whole family has become corporately a part of
the Kingdom of God even though the other family members may still
be unsaved.
Thus, these verses that speak of unsaved persons being
sanctified or having been bought are not teaching in any way that
Christ has paid for their sins by His shed blood. They have been
bought or have been sanctified only in the sense that they are
members of the corporate body (that is, the organized church).
And that organized church was established and exists because
Christ shed His blood for the believers within those
congregations.
I am convinced that when we examine everything that the Bible
offers, we must conclude that limited atonement or particular
atonement is the only answer that will correspond with all of
scripture. You see, God has a very well-detailed and defined plan
of salvation. He named those who were to be saved before the
foundation of the earth and put their names in the Book of Life.
He came to seek and to save those who were His sheep. It is all
one complete design. It is true that the Gospel goes out to the
whole world; and as we saw in the early part of this study, if
anyone at all responds to Gospel, he WILL be saved. But we saw
very clearly that nobody will respond except the Father draw him.
And God will draw those whom He has elected in order that God's
salvation program will maintain total integrity.
Having completed our consideration of the first three letters
of our five letter acronym TULIP, let's go on to the fourth letter
which is "I" and stands for "Irresistible Grace."
I = IRRESISTIBLE GRACE
What does the Bible tell us about Irresistible Grace? Is it a
fact that man can NOT resist the will of God; or on the other
hand, is it a fact that man CAN resist the will of God? If God
really wants somebody to be saved, is there anyone powerful enough
to resist His will?
Now of course we know that we can never pit man against God,
since God is infinite and omnipotent, all powerful; e.g., He
speaks and the universe comes into existence...while man is a
finite creature. There is no man who could frustrate the will of
God. Everything that we know about God tells us that He is
absolutely in control of every situation. BUT; Is it possible, as
some would teach, that God is the type of "gentleman" that
wouldn't force anyone to be saved against his will?
If we hold the position that we can resist the will of
absolutely nobody would be saved. Why is this so? Remember, we
learned earlier in our study that "there is none that seeketh
after God." We have already looked at the principle of TOTAL
DEPRAVITY and discovered that man is dead in his sins and would
never come to God. Even if the Gospel were preached for a
thousand years or longer, nobody would come to salvation by his
own choice. And so the idea that God is a gentleman and would not
impose His will upon man's will is contrary to the Bible.
It is a fact, however, that thousands, and even millions, of
people thoughout history ARE saved. God speaks of the saved as
being as numerous as the stars in heaven, and as the sand on the
seashore in number. This indicates that God has indeed imposed
His will upon mankind in some way! And that is what we want to
look at now, under the topic Irresistible Grace.
In John 6:37-39 we read the significant truth that the Father
has given to the Lord Jesus Christ certain ones who are to be
saved. Verse 37 reads, "all that the Father giveth Me shall come
to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." In
this verse the Bible teaches us first that there are certain ones
whom the Father has given to the Lord Jesus. The second truth is
that they "shall come to Him." That is, it is God's plan that
nothing can frustrate His will. Those whom God plans to save are
given by the Father to Christ and they shall come to Him. There
is no suggestion that these who were given to Christ can avoid
being saved.
The fact is, John 6:39 states very implicitly, "This is the
Father's will which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given
Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last
day." In this verse Christ is declaring with absolute certainty
that there will not be any defects in Christ's salvation program.
Every individual God planned to save will be saved. God is giving
us a solemn promise and declaration that His salvation program, in
which He has decided whom He would in His sovereign will save from
before the foundations of the world, would be accomplished.
Nothing would or could frustrate the will of God! And so He
irresistibly would have to draw us to Himself.
Philippians 1:6 states, "Being confident....He which hath
begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus
Christ." Again God promises, God commits Himself to complete what
He has begun. Can you see that the work that Christ began to do
started even before Christ became SIN for us! Our names were
identified with Him at the cross. Therefore, even before we were
born, He had already begun His work of grace! As we are presented
with the Gospel, and as God opens our spiritual ears and hearts to
respond to the Gospel, God is continuing His plan of salvation for
us. Philippians 1:6 declares that which He has begun will be
completed. He will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
God's plan will not be frustrated. It is an irresistible plan that
is under the irresistible will of God.
Remember, in Matthew 16:16 Christ declared, "I will build My
church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." What
is the condition of the unsaved person before he is saved? He is
a slave of Satan. He is under the dominion of darkness. He is a
bond slave of his own sin. But Christ said, "I will build My
church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail..." `Hell cannot
hold these that I plan to save. No one can stop Me from what I
intend to do.' And that is the reason that men and women are being
saved. God is irresistibly drawing them.
Remember that Jesus said in John 6:44, "No man can come to Me,
except the Father draw him." Again, we see that it is required
that God draw us to Himself. This is so because spiritually we
are dead. As dead people we have nothing to offer for or against
our salvation. Christ has set up His plan, and the Father draws us
(yes, irresistibly) so that plan cannot be frustrated.
It is true that many, when they are first brought face to face
with the Gospel, are offended by the Gospel. But every once in a
while one of these will finally give in and admit he is a sinner:
"Yes, I know that I am a sinner, and I know that I need
salvation." -- What has happened? Who can resist God's will?
When God wants to save a person, God begins to do His work of
salvation within that person so that his heart is inclined to be
obedient to the Gospel command...to believe on Him.
You see, we have as much to say about our new birth in Christ
as we did about our first birth from our mother's womb. (Think
about that for a moment.) Remember when you were born the first
time? What did you have to do with it? Could you select your
parents? Could you decide when you were going to be born? Could
you decide if you wanted to be born? The answers to these
questions are obviously and absolutely NO! You had nothing at all
to do with it! You simply came into this world completely apart
from your will.
Now, do you recall what Jesus said in John 3:6, as He talked
to Nicodemus? He said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." He is talking
here about the NEW BIRTH and indicating that it is just as real a
birth as the first birth. We had nothing to do with our first
birth. God is the one who inclines our hearts. If left of
ourselves we would never seek after Him, as we have so frequently
seen in this study. We would go our own way, right up until the
moment we die.
We don't want to turn to God. Our whole life is in rebellion
against Him. But God decided to save us, in His own timetable.
It may be when we are at middle-age, or it may be as an elderly
person, close to our death bed. But if it's God's plan to save
us, you can rest assured, He will draw us at the appropriate time.
He will give us a will to believe, and a desire to turn away from
our sins. Nobody can frustrate the will of God. Christ declared,
"I will build My church..."
Remember what we read in Romans 9, where God said in verse 16,
"Then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but
of God that shall have mercy." Our will, ultimately, has nothing
to do with it. What we think is an action of our will as we do
respond to the Gospel is simply the fact that God has already
imposed His will upon us and is irresistibly drawing us to
Himself.
May I quote again from John 1:13, where God is speaking of
those who have become sons of God? There He declares, "Which were
born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God." Could God be any plainer? If God waited for
us and for our will to respond to the Gospel, we would never be
saved! We would try everything possible to frustrate the Gospel
because we, of ourselves, don't want to be saved. But when God
says He is going to save us, you can rest assured He will save us!
He will draw us irresistibly to Himself.
Let's look again for just a moment at Lazarus in the tomb. He
is dead. And Christ decides to resurrect him. And so Christ
stands outside of that tomb and says, "Lazarus, come forth!" Now
let's entertain an unreasonable notion for a moment. Picture
Jesus hoping that Lazarus would really will to come forth, the
idea being that if Lazarus didn't so will, he wouldn't come forth.
NO! That isn't what happened at all! Jesus stood outside of
that tomb and said, "Lazarus, come forth!" And Lazarus did come
forth! He came forth because Christ also gave him a will and
inclined it with a desire to respond to that command. It was
Christ's intention to raise Lazarus, and neither Lazarus nor
anyone else was going to be able to frustrate Christ's plan to
raise him.
And there we see dramatically a picture of our salvation.
When Christ comes with the Gospel, as He comes to seek and to save
that which was lost, you can depend upon it that everyone that He
comes to save will be saved! There is no way that we can
frustrate the will of God! Isn't that a marvelous doctrine?
Think about this...Suppose you had an unsaved loved one who
was particularly rebellious against God, very wicked, and very
hardened in sin...oh, so sinful! And you were hoping and hoping
for this person's salvation, because you loved him dearly! You
tried to witness to him, but he loved his sin so much that he
didn't want to hear any of the Gospel.
And yet you know that God will not be frustrated by the wicked
will of man. If God should decide to save this loved one, He
would impose His will on the will of the loved one so that in due
time this person would come to the Lord Jesus Christ. He would
have a desire to come!
Isn't that a wonderful, wonderful blessing to know? Otherwise,
you look at your friends and loved ones who are hardened in their
sins, and you say, "Why pray for them? They'll never respond!
They're far too wicked! Their consciences have been seared! How
can it be that they would ever come to the Gospel?"
But praise God! God has given this avenue of prayer! And God
has promised that the "effectual fervent prayer of the righteous
man availeth much" (James 5:16).
God expects us to pray for the unsaved. And we are to pray
without ceasing. And God works through our prayers! We don't
know if this loved one is elect or not; that is God's business.
But we know that if he is God's elect, God will work through our
prayers and God will impose His will upon the wicked, hardened,
rebellious will of our loved one, so that his spiritual eyes will
be opened, and there will begin to be a response to the Gospel.
Oh, it is so marvelous! It is so heartening to know that God is
in complete charge of the salvation program, and ultimately there
is nothing that man can do that might frustrate Him in any way
whatsoever!
And so this beautiful, beautiful principle that is laid down
in the fourth part of the acronym, TULIP, Irresistible Grace, is
so comforting to us! It gives us such great assurance when we
know that Satan can never, never hold anyone in such terrible
bondage that he would never be able to come to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Nobody can resist the will of God when He wants to save
someone. God gives the faith, the repentance. Satan is absolutely
helpless when he is up against the powerful intentions of a
gracious Sovereign Almighty God! What blessed assurance we have!
Praise God!
Once again a warning must be voiced. If we believe that man
can resist God's will to save those whom He plans to save,
effectively we have arrived at a gospel of grace plus works. For
we are declaring that God has done what He must do and now it is
up to us to take action, to do a work, that will complete this
salvation plan for us. That work is to believe or accept what God
has offered to us. This is our work, for presumably God will not
impose His will upon us. We can receive credit for this action of
ours. Thus God has done His part and we have done ours. Together
we have accomplished our salvation. Christ indeed has done the
major work because He has paid for all our sins. But only because
we of our own free will have accepted Christ does God's salvation
program become effective for us. The very fact that we can
frustrate God's plan to save us indicates the importance of the
work we have done in accepting christ.
But this whole line of reasoning will lead us to Hell. Our
work has no bearing on our salvation. We are saved by grace
alone. As we have seen repeatedly in this study, any salvation
plan that includes even the smallest work on our part is not the
salvation plan of the Bible. The only reason we turn to Christ is
that the Father is drawing us. God is giving us the spiritual
ears to hear and the regenerated heart to believe. It is of
eternal importance that we understand that it is God who has
irresistibly drawn us to Himself.
Well, this brings us to the last letter of the acronym TULIP,
which is P and which stands for Perseverance of the Saints.
Sometimes we refer to this concept as Once Saved; Always saved.
Is this doctrine Biblical? In our next section we are going to
focus our attention on this whole matter of what we could also
call Eternal Security.
P = PERSERVERANCE OF THE SAINTS
Can one lose his salvation? This is a nagging question in the lives of many. Let us see if we can discover the Biblical teaching concerning the subject of eternal security, which is somethimes called the perseverance of the saints. In answering the question of the security of our salvation, we should begin by an understanding of the nature of the salvation God has provided for us. The Biblical picture of unsaved man is that he is a sinner. He is a slave of Satan both in body and soul. He is altogether rebellious against God. In his whole being he is perverted and spiritually destitute (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:11-20, Ephesians 2:1-3). As a result of his sin, he is under sentence of death. The Bible declares "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). The nature of that death is not only physical death, but also being eternally under God's wrath. There is no way to come into God's holy Heaven unless the penalty of sin, eternal damnation, first has been paid.
This brings us to the nature of the salvation God has provided
for those who are saved. Christ has come as the Mediator, as the
Redeemer, as our substitute to pay for our sins. In order for Him
to do this it was necessary that He be a man like we are because
it was man who sinned, and therefore it is man whom must pay the
penalty for his sins. It was necessary for Him to be God because
the wrath of God is so overwhelming and so terrible that, had He
been any less than God, He would have been utterly consumed as He
sought to pay for our sins.
As our Mediator, He became sin for us (II Corinthians 5:19).
That is, He took upon Himself all the sins, the whole sinful
nature, of those who have placed their trust in Him. As our
substitute, burdened with our sins, He stood before the judgment
throne of God and was found guilty.
Because He had become quilty for our sins, God poured out upon
Him the wrath that we should have suffered by spending an eternity
in Hell. Only because He was the God-man could He suffer so
intensely that in the three days and three nights of the atonement
He was able to completely pay for all our sins. What a wonderful
Savior He is!
We, therefore, who have experienced this salvation, now stand
before God as if we had just spent an eternity in Hell paying for
all the sins we had ever committed.
The criminal who has just come out of jail after paying in
full the sentence demanded by the law for his crime now stands
without any further guilt before the law for his crime.
Likewise the law never again can make any demands upon us for
our sins. Never again is there any way that we could stand guilty
before God, for every sin that we had ever committed or would ever
commit has been atoned for by our Savior. He ransomed us from
Hell by paying the price of Hell in our place. Therefore the
Bible declares that there is "no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). We are in Him because He was our
substitute. When our Lord Jesus went to the cross it was as if we
were hanging there experiencing the wrath of God for our sins.
Since Christ has paid for all our sins, there is no way that
we could commit a sin that would cause us to lose our salvation.
Any sin we would do was already anticipated by Christ when He paid
for our sins. As John 5:24 teaches, we do not come into judgment.
Therfore we are eternally secure in Christ. Once we are truly
saved, we can never lose that salvation because each and every sin
we would ever commit has been covered by Christ's blood.
Moreover, the Bible teaches that as a result of our salvation
some changes have occurred in us that have everlasting consquences
and which further emphasize that we could never lose this
salvation. John 5:24 teaches that we "have eternal life." If
Christ had gone to the cross just to give us life, conceivably we
could commit a sin and lose that life; but because He has given us
eternal life, by the very nature of something that is eternal, it
must be forever and ever. Thus there can be no sin that we could
commit that could cause us to lose eternal life. This very
statement, eternal life, implies that we can never lose this life
that God has given us. We can never lose our salvation.
The phrase eternal life is not a philosophical term of some
kind, thus having no real substance. Rather it is speaking of
something that has become very substantive and real in our lives.
It is related to the fact that in a very important part of our
personalities we who are saved have become new creatures. We have
been resurrected from being spiritually dead into eternal life.
Let us see how this is.
The Bible teaches that in our essential beings we are body and
soul. The Bible sometimes uses the word "spirit" in speaking of
the soul or spirit essence of man. When man has conscious
existence, as we all do on this side of the grave, we cannot see
the soul of man. We are a completely integrated personality.
However, it is upon the death of an individual that a
separation of soul and body does occur. At one moment there is a
whole perosnality consisting of both body and soul. At the next
moment there is only the body, which has no life in it whatsoever.
Something has left that body. It is the soul, as real a part of
that individual as his body, that has separated from the body and
has left the body.
An example of the separation of soul and body is seen in the
death of the thief on the cross. Jesus told the thief next to Him,
"Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." A bit later Jesus
declared, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit." Shortly
thereafter the body of Jesus was placed in a tomb. The body of
the thief was also buried. But both Jesus and the thief were
present with the Father in Heaven. They went there in their soul
existence.
The apostle Paul speaks of this separation as he, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, emphasizes "willing rather to be
absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (II
Corinthians 5:8). Again, in Philippians 1:23,24 he confidently
asserts "having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which
is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful
for you." Furthermore we read in Revelation 20:4 of the "souls of
them that were beheaded...; they lived and reigned with Christ..."
The reason the believer can and does go immediately into
Heaven upon death is that at the moment of salvation he receives
the resurrection of his soul. Before salvation both in body and
soul he is spiritually dead. We saw this so clearly in the chapter
on Total Depravity. This is why I Peter 4:6 declares, "for this
cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead."
Obviously the Gospel is not preached in a cemetery where bodies
lie. Rather it is preached throughout the world to those who are
spiritually dead. But when he becomes saved, he experiences a
resurrection. This glorious fact is taught so incisively in the
Bible. In Colossians 3:1 God declares, "If ye then be risen with
Christ, seek those things which are above." Our Savior experienced
the resurrection when He arose from the grave. Since we are risen
with Christ, we too must have experienced the resurrection.
In Ephesians 2:4-6 God insists, "God, who is rich in mercy,
for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead
in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace are ye
saved; and hath raised us up together..." How beautifully God is
teaching that we have been raised with Christ . Since He arose,
that is, He experienced the resurrection, and since we arose with
Him, therefore we too have experienced the resurrection.
But in which part of our persons have we experienced the
resurrection? It was not in our bodies. That can be seen so
readily. Our bodies go into the tomb at death to await the
resurrection of the last day. The whole Chapter 15 of I
Corinthians discusses the wonderful event of the resurrection of
our bodies.
Rather, it was in our soul or spirit essence that we
experienced the resurrection. This is why at death the believer
can go immediately into God's presence. While he cannot go into
Heaven or be with God in his body until his body is resurrected a
perfect spiritual body (cf. I Corinthians 15:42-44), in his soul
or spirit he can go immediately into Heaven at death. His soul
was already resurrected from the moment of salvation.
This resurrection is called the first resurrection in
Revelation 20:5, as God is explaining why the souls of the martyrs
can live and reign with Christ. These martyrs have already
experienced the resurrection of their souls, the first
resurrection, and therefore can go into God's holy presence
immediately upon death. In this connection, in Revelation 20:6
God emphasizes five characteristics of those who have experienced
the first resurrection. They are (a) "blessed", (b) they are
"holy", (c) on such the second death has no power (cf. Revelation
20:14, where God teaches that the second death is Hell), (d) they
are priests of God: and (e) they reign with Him.
All five of these characteristics apply to those who have been
saved. We are the blessed. Think for example of the Beatitudes
of Matthew Chapter Five, where our Lord speaks of the various ways
believers are blessed. We are holy (I Peter 2:9, "Ye are a holy
nation"). We are those who will not come into the second death,
He.. (Romans 8:1 reads, "There is no condemnation for those who
are in Christ Jesus.") We are priests of God. (I Peter 2:9 reads,
"Ye are a royal preisthood; cf. Revelation 5:10.) We reign with
Him. (Ephesians 1:20-22 shows us that Christ is seated at the
right hand of God reigning over everything in this age as well as
that to come. And Ephesians 2:6 declares that we are seated with
Him.)
Therefore, we too are reigning as we serve as His ambassadors
on this earth (cf. Revelation 5:10). Thus we can know that the
first resurrection applies to the one who has experienced
salvation.
This explains, also, why the believer has within himself a
great love for God and an earnest desire to do God's will. We
read in I John 3:9, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin,
for His seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is
born of God." You see, it is in our soul that we have experienced
the new birth, that we have been born from above, that we have
experienced the resurrection, that we have become a new creation.
Therefore, in our soul existence we will never wish to sin again.
Only because our bodies have not experienced the resurrection
are we still troubled by sin. In our bodies, which are as real a
part of us as our souls, we still lust after sin, and therefore we
are commanded to crucify the flesh and its desires. In our soul,
wherein we have already experienced the resurrection, and which is
as real a part of us as our body, we never wish to sin again. God
speaks about this struggle in the life of the child of God through
the apostle Paul, as we read in Romans 7:21-24:
I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man (in his soul, where he has become born from above); but I see another law in my members (in his body, where he has not yet experienced the resurrection) warning against the law of my mind ("mind" in this context is a synonym for soul) and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
When we realize that the child of God had experienced the
resurrection, not only can we understand the conflict that
continues in the life of the one who has been saved, but we can
also understand why the Bible declares in I Peter 4:6 that those
who were preached to when they were spiritually dead might "live
according to God in the spirit." In our "spirit" or "soul" we
experienced the resurrection, and therefore we can live to God.
Now we can understand, too, why God declares in I
Thessalonians 3:13 that when Christ comes He will come with all
His saints. In I Thessalonians 4:14 this truth is further
underscored as God promises at the coming of Christ that "them
also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." Those who have
been saved eventually die; that is, they fall asleep (to use the
Biblical language). But while their bodies are placed in the
graves to await the resurrection of the last day, in their souls
they continue to everlasting life. Death is simply the time when
they change residence. At death they leave their bodies and
continue to live and reign with christ in Heaven.
All these marvelous truths and promises are certain and sure
because at salvation we receive eternal life. How wonderful is the
grace of God that He has provided such a magnificent salvation.
Surely we should be able to see that one who is truly saved is
eternally secure.
Before I leave the subject of eternal life I should comment on
the future of the unsaved who remain dead in their sins. When
they die there is likewise a separation of soul and body. But
they in their soul existence cannot go into the presence of God.
They cannot go there because they have not experienced the
resurrection of their souls. The Bible tells us they go to a
place of silence (Psalm 115:17). They will not have conscious
existence again until they are raised at the end of time to stand
for judgment. God speaks of this in Revelation 20:5, "the rest of
the dead" (the unsaved) "lived not" (did not have conscious
existence) "until the thousand years were finished."
In other words, when unsaved persons die, the next thing they
will be aware of is the resurrection of the last day when they are
raised to stand for judgment. How awful that judgment will be!
How eternally important it is that we become saved while it is
still the day of grace. "How shall we escape if we neglect so
great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3)
Returning to the matter of the eternal security believers
enjoy, we find many other passages which teach this grand truth.
In John 10:27-31 God declares that we shall never perish, and no
one shall snatch us out of God's hand. In Ephesians 1:12 we have
the promise that God has given the Holy Spirit to the believer as
the guarantee of his inheritance. In Phillppians 1:6 the Bible
faithfully promises that God will complete His work within us. In
the closing verse of Romans 8, God promises that nothing in all
creation can separate us from the love of God. Specifically, we
read these beautiful promises:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Verses 35 and 38-39)
Here we have the very confidence of salvation. As we consider these verses, how can we think even for a moment that we can lose our salvation?
But aren't there verses that seem to indicate beyond the shadow of a doubt that, after all, we can lose our salvation? What about such passages as Hebrews 6:4-8 or Hebrews 10:26-27 or II Peter 2:20 or John 15:2,6? If we read these passages superficially, isolating them from the rest of Bible, we can indeed come to a conclusion that a believer can lose his salvation. However, when we read them and study them as we should, that is, viewing them in the light of everything else the Bible teaches, we know that under no circumstance could they be teaching that we can lose our salvation. If they are teaching this, then we would have a major contradiction concerning all the other passages of the scripture that indicate the nature of our salvation and the promises of God concerning the eternal character of our salvation.
But these passages that seem to teach the possibility of the
loss of our salvation must be faced. They, too, are part of the
Bible. We can understand them if we will keep in mind, as we saw
earlier in our study, that the Bible presents the body of Christ
or the church in two ways. Somethimes, when the Bible is talking
about Christ's body or the church, it is speaking of individual
believers who personally have become born again. These
individuals are, of course, eternally secure in Christ, as we have
seen from the foregoing passages.
The Bible also, however, presents the body of Christ as a
corporate body, that is, as an organized membership of those who
have declared their desire to serve God. This corporate body is
seen in the congregations and denominations and groups of
believers which have been formed throughout the New Testament
period and who declare that they will serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
But within this corporate body of church members there are many
who are not born again. Corporately they have become citizens of
God's Kingdom by virtue of their church membership.
But personally they have not become new creatures in Christ.
Personally, their sins have not as yet been paid for. They have
never personally accepted the fact of their spiritual bankruptcy
and the fact that it is only by grace that they can be saved.
They are those who believe that because they have joined the
church, because they are seriously attempting to live a holy life,
therefore they are worthy before God. They have a knowledge of
many things that the Bible teaches. They know the Bible declares
that mankind is sinful and is under the wrath of God. They know
that Christ is the only way, But personally, individually, this
has never become an intrinsic, intimate part of their lives. They
are yet in their sins.
Israel of old is an excellent example of this. Every Israelite
was convinced he was saved, that he was acceptable to God. He
believed this in view of the fact that Israel was the chosen race,
in view of the fact that He kept the ceremonial laws. But the
Bible teaches that most of Israel at any time in its history was
unsaved.
Hebrews 3:15-19 declares this most graphically, as God states
that they could not enter into His rest because they believed not.
This passage remembers ancient Israel in the wilderness on the
way to the land of Canaan. They were intimately associated with
God as He guided them in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire
by nigtht. They drank the water that miraculously come from the
rock. They tasted of the manna that came from heaven. They were
enlightened concerning the will of God. They were under the
personal leadership of that great type of Christ, Moses. But most
of them were not saved. The Bible sadly records "that they could
not enter in" (Hebrews 3:19). It explains further that "the word
preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them
that heard it" (Hebrews 4:2).
Corporately they were members of Christ's body. Corporately
they had become identified with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Corporately they were the bride of Christ. Corporately they were
well acquainted with the promises of God. Corporately they
experienced many blessings of God in their lives. But personally
they were not saved. They individually had not trusted God with
saving faith. Therfore they were still subject to Hell.
So is the case in the church today. There are those who are
members of the congregation in good and regular standing. They
may teach Sunday School. They may be pastors. They may pray
fervently. They may read the Bible. They may do all the things
that true believers do. But if they have not become new creatures
in Christ, they still are not saved. These are the people whom
God has in view in such passages as Hebrews 4:4-8, Hebrews
10:26-27, II Peter 2:20, and John 15:2,6. Like Nicodemus, who was
a faithful member of the Jewish congregation of his day, they must
still be born from above before they can enter Heaven.
Obviously, those in the congregation who have not experienced
the new birth and yet believe they are saved rightly should
believe they can fall from grace. The salvation they are
following is one in which they are expecting to be declared worthy
before God because of their church membership or because of their
actions as seemingly committed Christians. When they stop living
this way, they no longer are identified with the body of Christ.
The fact is they were never saved.
The doctrine that we can fall from grace or lose our salvation
is indeed very dangerous in the sense that effectively it makes
our works a ground for salvation. If we believe that somehow by
God's grace we are saved, but now, being weak in ourselves in
departing from the law of God we would stand guilty before God,
effectively we are declaring that a condition of our salvation is
our good works. In other words, we think we are saved by God's
continued grace in some sense, but in actuality we are attempting
to gain salvation by living some kind of holy life.
We therefore have effectively designed our own salvation plan
whereby we can merit God's continued favor and salvation by our
acts in doing good works. Our salvation, therefore, is no longer
a gracious bestowal of God's grace, God's unmerited favor upon
hopelessly bankrupt sinners, but is something we have earned
because of our holy lives. We have then fallen into the snare of
the Jews of whom God speaks in Galatians 5, who were insisting
that a requirement of salvation was circumcision. There God
declares that those who believe this are then not under grace but
under the curse of the law. Ephesians 2:8-10 clearly indicates
that by grace we have been saved, not of works.
That our works could never save us is clearly indicated when
we realize that the Bible teaches our best works are as filthy
rags in God's sight (Isaiah 64:6). In James 2:10 God declares
that if we have broken one of the smallest points of the law, we
are guilty of the whole law of God. In other words, if we think
for a moment that we can be saved by doing good works, we have
elected to follow a salvation plan whereby we would have to be
absolutely perfect before Him. If we deviate in the slightest
from the perfection of God's law, we immediately come into the
condemnation of sin and will be cast into Hell. Praise God that
our salvation is of grace! The works that we do are a result of
God's grace in our lives.
Some are afraid that if we teach that we cannot lose our
salvation, someone who is a believer will become a very profane,
wicked person in the security of believing that every sin has been
paid for. He therefore will wish to enjoy the pleasure of sin.
Anyone who has become a true child of God will realize the
impossible nature of this statement. He is a new creature in
Christ, living with an eternal resurrected soul. Sin has become
abhorrent to him. He doesn't require the threat of God's
condemnation to be motivated to live a holy life.
In the eyes of an unsaved person, who lusts after sin both in
his body and soul, sin is very attractive. But in the life of the
true believer, who has received his resurrected soul, there is a
severe conflict within his own personality when he sins. In his
new soul he feels violated if he gives in to the lusts of his
sinful body. He finds that his highest pleasure is in obedience
to God because this is the kind of life in which his soul has
pleasure.
Moreover, God indwells him. He has become the property of
God, in view of the fact that he was ransomed by Christ. God
therefore will begin to deal with him if he continues in sin. It
is thus impossible for a born from above believer to backslide, to
again live as the unsaved person that he was before he had become
a new creature in Christ.
We therefore see very conclusively that there is no question
at all about the eternal security of our salvation. What a
tremendous comfort to us who have experienced God's saving grace
in our lives! We never have to live with that feeling that
possibly we might commit a sin of which we are not aware, or for
which we have not specifically asked forgiveness, and thus end up
in Hell in spite of the fact that at one time we were saved. We
live with the peace of God in our hearts that we eternally are
sons of God. We live with that tremendous joy that all our sins
have been paid for. We will never have to answer to God for our
sins. We will never stand before the judgment throne of God. The
Lord Jesus Christ, as our substitute, as our Mediator, has already
stood condemned before God on our behalf. As our sin-bearer He
has already borne the wrath of God we so rightly deserved. What a
magnificent salvation God has provided for us!
On that note we conclude our consideration of Eternal
Security, which is also referred to as the doctrine, Once saved,
always saved. We have considered it under the topic of the
Perseverance of the Saints, which was the P part, or the last
letter of our acronym, TULIP. This finishes our study of TULIP.
CONCLUSION
This shows us that God is sovereign in these things, and nothing can frustrate God's eternal will. Again the question ought to be raised, "Where do I stand if I am unsaved and an not one of God's elect? Is there any possibility that I can be saved?" The answer we must come to is that the election program of God is God's business rather than ours. If we are unsaved, there is only one way to become right with God, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. By recognizing our sins and throwing ourselves on the mercies of God, trusting in Christ as our Savior, whether we think we are elect or not, whether we think we are predestinated or not, we will find the only hope there is, in the precious blood shed by Jesus at the cross.
If a person is elect unto salvation, God will incline his will, and so he will want to be saved. He won't ever want, in his born again soul, to sin again. and if a person is not predestined unto salvation, he will not be the least bit interested in God's salvation program. He might try to design one of his own, but he won't care about God's plan.
I am reminded of the time that the reformer Martin Luther, when he was still a young lad, read St. Augustine's writings concerning election and predestination, which in turn were based upon the Biblical writings of Paul. Luther struggled in anguish with the horrible thought that perhaps he was not one of the elect who were predestined unto salvation...as much as he wanted to be faithful and saved...just think of it! What if he wasn't one of the elect?
He brought this concern in anxiety and tears to his beloved pastor, who told him, "Stop worrying, Martin, about these lofty theological matters! Instead, look to the precious shed blood of Jesus at the cross, which was shed for your sins! That is where forgiveness lies! Look to the blood of Jesus shed at Calvary for the forgiveness of your sins and for your salvation!" Yes, it is true, that is where salvation is to be found. So keep your eyes upon your precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! Find your salvation and forgiveness in His shed blood at the cross of Calvary!
The advice given to Luther is also good advice for us when we struggle with such questions. You see, at the point where we are feeling anxiety, God is in fact calling. At that point, don't worry about predestination and election! Just trust Jesus! He came to seek and to save that which was lost. When you recognize that you ought to go to Hell for your sins, and yet you don't want to, but would rather spend eternity in joy praising our wonderful God in the fellowship of the saints, then simply throw yourself on the mercy of God and cry out to Him for His loving salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. You can depend on the fact that YOU WILL BE SAVED!
God clearly teaches that if you seek with all your heart, you will be saved. "Seek and ye shall find." "Knock and it shall be opened unto you." "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power (right, privilege) to become the sons of God; to them that believe on His name: which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
After you are saved, you will want to study the Bible; and when you read it, you will realize that when you wanted to be saved it was really because God was drawing you. He elected you. He did His work of grace within your heart. (You had become "born again...of the will of God.")
The doctrine of election does not frustrate the Gospel call in any way at all. It is rather the insurance program that guarantees that the Gospel program of God will be successful. In a deeper sense of speaking, actually, it is the shed blood of Jesus that guarantees that the Gospel program of God will be successful.
To be saved, you must yield, as God turns you from your own salvation program to make you a part of His salvation program. If you do yield your will in repentance to God through Christ, as God empowers you to do so, then the blood of Jesus shed at Calvary in accord with God's program of election and predestination will absolutely guarantee that you will be saved.
I trust that this study will have helped us all to gain a greater appreciation of what a great and wonderful loving God we have! He is sovereign in every area of our lives. Praise God for His magnificent salvation program!
by Harald Camping
[End]