The Certainty of Salvation

I think one of the most interesting ways of studying church history is by focusing on our attention on the people we think immediately of the role that was played by this Augustinian monk from Wittenberg, Martin Luther. And you don't get more of a real person than Martin Luther.

To understand Luther, you have to understand this enormous burden of guilt that haunted him in the monastery. He would say, you ask me, do I love God? Love God?

Sometimes I hate God. And it wasn't until he realized the power of the gospel. The righteousness that God demands is not a righteousness that I produce, but that is alien to me. And that alien righteousness comes to me solely and exclusively because of what Christ has done. The Legacy of Luther, edited by R.C. Sproul and Stephen J. Nichols.

To obtain your copy, call 800-435-4343. Today, on Renewing Your Mind, the evangelists will say, come forward, make a decision for Christ, and you will be born again. Whereas Jesus says that unless you're first born again, you'll never come.

That it's rebirth that is the necessary condition for ever having the ability to come. In John chapter 15, Jesus says, you did not choose me, but I chose you. But the common explanation of salvation today is that we must choose to follow Christ.

So which is it? Does God sovereignly make dead sinners alive, or do we make the choice ourselves? We continue our study of predestination today, and as we'll discover, the common methods of modern evangelism are entirely inadequate. In the 17th century in Holland, a controversy arose over doctrines related to the concept of predestination. And a group of people who were members of the Dutch Reformed Church, who were called Remonstrants because they protested or remonstrated against the Reformed doctrine of predestination, created this controversy that was finally settled at the Synod of Dordrecht. But out of that controversy came what is known as the five points of Calvinism, because the five points of contention among the theologians of that day were summarized later on by the famous acrostic Tulip. I'm not going to get into the five points here today, but just remind you of the five points abbreviated by the letters T-U-L-I-P, and maybe I'll play tiny Tim here for a little while and tiptoe through the tulips.

But what I'm concerned about for the moment is the U in tulip, which stands for unconditional election. Now again, what was in view here was the controversy that we've been talking about in this series on the debate between the classic Augustinian view of predestination and the prescient view of predestination. And again, I'll define that. The prescient view of predestination is that view that says that God looks down through the corridor of time and knows in advance who will positively respond to the gospel and embrace Christ. And on the basis of that advanced knowledge, God then chooses those whom He knows will respond to the gospel for salvation. In other words, God only elects those who meet the condition for salvation, namely faith. So that view of election could be called conditional election as distinguished from the historic Augustinian view, which is unconditional, that is that God without foreseeing any particular conditions that are met by us sovereignly and eternally chooses us unto salvation. That doesn't mean that there aren't any conditions for salvation.

There are conditions. You have to have faith in order to be justified, but unconditional election means that God unconditionally chooses to provide or create within the elect the faith that meets the necessary condition for salvation. Now, I've heard two metaphors by prominent evangelists who want to steer a careful course between two dangerous concepts. They don't want to teach that man saves himself, nor do they want to say that salvation is totally of God. They want to avoid those two poles in their thinking, and so the two images or metaphors that I've heard frequently are these. Well, first of all, it is said by the evangelists that God does 99% of the work in salvation, but we have to do that 1%.

Which 1% is absolutely decisive for our salvation? And the two metaphors that are used are these. One is that of a drowning person. The person can't swim, and he's in over his head, and he is going under for the third time, and even his head is submerged below the waves, and the only thing that is still left above the surface of the water is his hand. And he cannot possibly save himself from drowning unless God throws him a life preserver, and God throws that life preserver exactly where the man needs to have it thrown right up against his hand. So God has done everything that God can do to save that drowning man, but at the last second that man must either grab a hold of the life preserver or let it pass by. He must take his fingers and grip it, or he will sink to the bottom of the sea. But man still has this power or moral strength left within himself to either grab hold or not grab hold. The other metaphor that I've heard used frequently is that of a dying person who has an incurable disease, a fatal disease, and is in its last stages, and the person is almost comatose there in the bed. And God comes into the room with a medicine, which is the only possible medicine to save this man from dying, and God pours the medicine on the spoon and reaches the spoon to the dying man's lips.

And all the person has to do is open their lips and receive this medicine that will restore them to fullness of health, but that person has the power to either keep their lips clenched tightly shut or open their mouth to receive the medicine. And again, the idea is God does 99% with His grace, and without that grace there's no hope of salvation, but that 1% that is left to man's ability is the pivotal and decisive factor. Now, the reason why I say this differs dramatically from the classical Augustinian view and one of the reasons why Augustine taught that election or predestination is unconditional is because prior to treating the doctrine of predestination, Augustine was very much concerned with studying the biblical view of the fall of man and probing the depths of that fall.

To what degree have we been corrupted in our human nature? And Augustine came to the conclusion that the fall of mankind is so great that even though we still are able to make choices, nevertheless all of our choices proceed from a heart that is gripped in bondage to sin so that we are in a state of moral inability. And the idea that Augustine taught was this, that the sinner has no inclination or desire within his heart for the things of God unless God first changes his soul, changes the disposition of his heart through the supernatural work of regeneration. And of course Augustine also taught that all of those whom the Holy Spirit regenerates come to faith and that this regeneration affects what it was designed to affect. And unless a person is regenerate, they if left to themselves will never incline themselves to the things of God, and so if the sinner is destitute of regeneration, that sinner will never willingly embrace Christ. And so the whole point of God's work of regeneration is that God not only designs the ends of salvation, but He also ordains the means to bring about salvation in people's lives, and God sovereignly determines to quicken to spiritual life those whom He has chosen, and all who are so quickened come to faith.

That is again, God supplies the condition that is necessary for the sinner to respond. Now, I've often used this simple illustration with people, as I mentioned in passing recently. When we get through all of the abstractions of debate about election, I'll say to a person, you are a believer and you know people who are your friends who are not believers, and I want to know simply why it is that you have responded positively to the gospel and your friends have not. What did you do to fulfill this one percent? Why did you open your lips to receive the medicine?

Why did you grab the life preserver? I just had a conversation recently with a fellow along these same lines. Before the fellow answered the questions, I asked him this. I said, did you respond to the gospel because you were more righteous than your friends who have not? He said, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

That wasn't it. I said, well, was it because you were more intelligent than your friends who said no? Of course, if he said yes, then I'm going to say, where did you get the intelligence? But he began to feel the weight of those questions, and he realized what I was driving at. And he sort of danced around it a little bit and finally said, well, I just understood my need better than the other people. I said, well, why did you understand your need? Is it because you were more humble than that other person? And finally he finally said yes, and I said, well, isn't that a virtue?

And he finally said yes. And in the bottom line, this fellow really did believe that he had done something righteous that his friends had not. He had made the right response the righteous response, and his other friends had given an unrighteous response. And I said, well, then I guess you have something of which to boast, which boasting, however, the New Testament clearly excludes. The New Testament teaches that the work of salvation is utterly gracious and that it is accomplished by the sovereign grace of God. Now, one of the most controversial texts about this we looked at in passing earlier on in another series, but I want to return your attention to it, where we read in the sixth chapter of the book of St. John, Jesus makes this comment. He said, no man can come to me unless it is given to him of the Father. And I labored this text before, and I want to do it again.

And let's tear it apart. No man, he begins by saying, and what we have here in this phraseology is what we call in the science of logic a proposition that is defined as a universal negative proposition. It says something negative about all people. So, no man, that's an absolute universal, no person. And then the next word is the most crucial word, can come. Jesus doesn't say that no man does come, no man will come.

He says no man can come. Now, the word can, if you recall, is a word that describes not permission but ability. Remember when you were in school and you raised your hand and said to the teacher, teacher, can I sharpen my pencil?

And every teacher in America answers that question the same way, I'm sure that you can. The question is, may you? And the teachers labored to explain to us the difference between the words may and can. May is permission. Can has to do with ability. And so here in this text Jesus says there's something that nobody has the power or the ability to do.

And what is it? No man can come to me. See, what the prescient view when we really analyze it deeply and carefully comes down to in most cases is an abbreviated, aborted view of the fall. It still looks at fallen man as having what I call an island of righteousness left in his soul. Which island of righteousness can be exerted and can manifest the ability to come to Christ without being regenerated by the Holy Spirit? Again, the evangelists will say, come forward, receive Christ, choose Christ, make a decision for Christ, and you will be born again. Whereas Jesus says that unless you're first born again, you'll never come. That it's rebirth that is the necessary condition, the prerequisite for ever having the ability to come.

Jesus says, no man can come to me unless it is given to him by the Father. And we see this again in the second chapter of Ephesians, in the first verse of Ephesians chapter 2 where Paul writes these words, And you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sin and trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And in verse 8, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

This is the chapter that immediately follows Paul's introduction of the concept of predestination in chapter 1. And now he's laboring the point that God quickens people while they are still dead spiritually, while they are still dead in sin and trespasses. That's why I'm not happy with the metaphors that I hear so often in evangelism. The idea of the drowning man, that drowning man, no matter how desperate his situation is as he's about to sink for the third time and only his fingers are above the waves, is still alive. That's not the metaphor of Scripture. The metaphor of Scripture is that that man is already drowned. He is at the bottom of the ocean.

He's stone cold dead. And what I read in the New Testament is that God the Holy Spirit dives to the bottom of the sea, pulls up that dead person from the bottom of the sea, and breathes into that man life so that he awakens and then can grab any life preserver that's handy. And likewise, the dying man in the hospital who has to open his mouth to receive the medicine, if you took that medicine to the coroner's office, to the morgue, and offered that medicine to a corpse, that would be an exercise in futility.

No corpse can open its mouth to receive a healing medicine. And the biblical view is that that person is not just desperately ill, critically ill, he has died. And only God can make him alive. You see, my problem with the foreknowledge or prescient view of election as this is that it has God looking down through the corridor of history at dead people who respond in spiritual life. And I ask this question, if God looked at people who were dead in sin and looked as long as he wanted to, how many would he find responding positively to the gospel?

He would have no one to elect, no one to predestinate because he would see all of them perishing in their unbelief. Jesus said to Nicodemus, unless a man is born of the Spirit, he can't even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter the kingdom of God. Again, let me turn your attention to chapter 6 of John's gospel where in verse 61 we read this. When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained, he said to them, Does this offend you?

What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. Then verse 65, Therefore I have said to you, no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father. Luther, in his debate with Erasmus, cited this text where Jesus, as he had said to Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and fallen people who are unregenerate are only in the flesh, and Jesus says the flesh profits nothing. And Luther said that nothing is not a little something.

It is not a one percent. The grace of our salvation is a hundred percent God's. All the more reason that we should look upon our salvation with humility and gratitude. What a powerful message from Dr. R.C. Sproul on this important doctrine of election. This is our focus all week here on Renewing Your Mind, and as R.C. said today, this is one of those issues that has caused a great deal of controversy in the church.

Therefore, it's important for us to understand the biblical roots of this doctrine. This series is a helpful place to begin. You can request all ten messages on four CDs. Just give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, and we'll be glad to send it your way.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, so many of our team members are away for the upcoming holiday weekend. Telephones are closed, but you can still make your request online by going to renewingyourmind.org. The doctrine of election requires us to think biblically. If you'd like to continue your study of this doctrine, let me recommend Ligonier's monthly magazine, Table Talk. Every issue contains articles by trusted pastors and theologians, plus daily guided Bible studies. And we're offering a three-month trial subscription if you've never subscribed before.

You can find out more at tritabletalk.com. Before we go today, R.C. has a final thought for us on the doctrine of predestination. I've often said if the Bible never mentioned the word predestination or never mentioned the word election, I think we would be driven to conclude that concept simply from the abundant references that we find in the Scriptures about the state of our moral condition apart from saving grace, apart from regeneration. And I think the biggest obstacle that we have, the biggest hurdle that we have to get over before we are ready to assign the fullness of grace to our salvation is that hurdle of thinking that we really do have an island of righteousness left in our soul, unaffected by the fall, unpolluted by sin, so that we're not really dead in sin and trespasses. We're only sick in sin and trespasses, but we still have the capacity to revive ourselves once we hear the gospel. I don't think we understand the sinfulness of sin or the graciousness of grace, and that's what we have to understand if we're ever going to be able to get over these hurdles. We will continue our study tomorrow, and we're going to focus on a question that inevitably comes up. It's a concept called double predestination.

If God elects some to salvation, does that mean He elects everyone else to damnation? We hope you'll join us tomorrow as R.C. answers that question here on Renewing Your Mind. .