Salvation, page 5

Provision, election, atonement, faith, security. Most of the argument lives here.

121 questions answered, showing 18 on page 5 of 7. About this doctrine · All topics

• Whosoever WillWhat does "chosen us in him before the foundation of the world" mean (Ephesians 1:4)?Whosoever Will, The Address of Election: Read the election verse to the end of its sentence. “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4) Three things are on the page. Chosen. In him. That we should be holy. A location and a purpose, and no stated basis in us. Nobody is chosen for being good. Both sides say that, and both sides say election is in Christ. So the question is what “in Christ” means when God chooses, and this is the position I hold, in plain words, so you can hold it too. Election in this letter is corporate. God chose a people in His Son before the world, and the people is the Church, the Body of which Christ is the Head. A person enters the Church as an individual, by faith, in time. Once he is in it, everything said of the chosen is said of him, because he is in the One it was said of. Chosen in him means chosen as a member of the Church that is in him. Scripture, King James Version: Ephesians 1:4, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:".
• Whosoever WillWhat does "if thou seek him, he will be found of thee" mean (1 Chronicles 28:9)?Whosoever Will, Why Would He Look?: If. And then the other if. Two roads, both real, laid in front of a real person who will really walk down one of them. A father does not say “if you seek Him” to a son whose seeking was settled before the foundation of the world. He says if because the seeking is genuinely Solomon's to do or not do. “He will be found of thee” is a promise conditioned on a search that Solomon has to actually perform. And the second half is just as real: “if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off.” That is not a hypothetical that can never happen. It is a fork with two live branches, spoken to a son who could take either one. Scripture, King James Version: 1 Chronicles 28:9, "And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does "many are called, but few are chosen" mean?Matthew 22:14, King James Version: "For many are called, but few are chosen." Whosoever Will, God Chose Judas: That line closes the parable of the wedding feast, and people quote it as if “few are chosen” means a small pre-selected list. So read the parable it closes. A king invites many to his son's wedding. They refuse. Some of them kill his servants. So he sends his servants out to the highways to invite everyone they can find, “both bad and good,” and the hall is filled. Then the king walks in and finds one man who came without a wedding garment. He asks him how he got in without one. The man is “speechless.” He has no excuse. And he is cast out. Now, who are “the chosen” in that story? The ones who came, and came clothed. The “called” were everyone the servants could find on the roads. The “chosen” were the ones who responded rightly to the call. The man thrown out was not thrown out because he was never invited. He was there. He was thrown out because of how he came. In Jesus's own parable, “chosen” is a word for the ones who answered the invitation, not a word for a list drawn up before the invitation went out. Scripture, King James Version: Matthew 22:14, "For many are called, but few are chosen.".
• With Chuck SmithWhat does "My spirit shall not always strive with man" mean?Chuck Smith, The Unpardonable Sin (Matthew 12:22-32): There comes a time when God spirit will cease to strive with man with and individual when God say’s “that’s it. Pray no more for there good I will not hear you. Leave them alone I have given them up.” God spirit does strive with man and for that we are so thankful. And it may sort of needle you a bit that God’s spirit is striving with you. You may try to silence the voice of the spirit in your heart but believe me if God’s spirit is striving with you be thankful it means you haven’t yet gone to far. It is possible to go over the line to go so far that God’s spirit will no longer strive with you. God warned Noah of this “My Spirit will not always strive with man.” Scripture, King James Version: Genesis 6:3, "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.". From Chuck Smith's books, used by permission of The Word For Today.
• Whosoever WillWhat does "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me" mean (Psalm 81:13)?Whosoever Will, The Road Not Taken: Psalm 81. Read the refusal first, because it comes first. “But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust” (81:11-12). Then the lament, in the next breath: “Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries” (81:13-14). Then more of it: He “should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee” (81:16). Four things God names that He did not do. The hinge is already on the page, three verses up. Would not. Isaiah 48. The speaker is named without ambiguity: “Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer” (48:17). Then the lu: “O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: Thy seed also had been as the sand” (48:18-19). Peace like a river. Seed like the sand. A name not cut off. None of it came, and the verse says why: thou hadst not hearkened. Scripture, King James Version: Psalms 81:11-16, "But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels. Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee."; Isaiah 48:17-19, "Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.".
• With Chuck SmithWhat does "Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe" mean?Chuck Smith read 1 Timothy 4:10 as provision for all and reception by faith: "He provided salvation for all men, but not all have received it." The verse holds both halves together: "the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." Read Chuck on 1 Timothy 4:10 in the reader. Chuck Smith commentary used by permission of The Word For Today.
• Whosoever WillWhat does "sufficient for all, efficient for the elect" mean?Whosoever Will, Bought, Then Perished: The Synod of Dort grants more than most quotations of it let on. The death of Christ, Dort says, “is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world” (II.3). The limitation in Dort is not the size of the payment. It lands one article later, in the will behind it: God willed that Christ “should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation” (II.8). So the old line, sufficient for all, efficient for the elect, is a claim about the payment’s worth, and on worth we do not disagree. The question here is design. Not “was the cross enough for all,” but “was it meant for all.” Put that way, the difference is real and it is small enough to name in one sentence: we agree the cross is sufficient for all; we agree only believers are saved; we differ on whether God intended the provision for all, or only for those He had already chosen.
• With Chuck SmithWhat does "the sins of the whole world" mean in 1 John 2:2?Chuck Smith took John at his word: "Jesus is the propitiation for our sins and for the sins of the whole world." The text says "not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). Read Chuck on 1 John 2:2 in the reader. Chuck Smith commentary used by permission of The Word For Today.
• Whosoever WillWhat does "they are not all Israel, which are of Israel" mean (Romans 9:6)?Whosoever Will, The Grammar of Romans: The first hard verse is 9:6: “they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” The other side reads this as God secretly picking some Israelites and not others. Read two verses further. Paul defines his own terms: “they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” (9:8) Two Israels. One by blood. One by promise. The true Israel was never the bloodline. It was always the people of promise, and everywhere else Paul writes, the people of promise are the people of faith. That is not God sorting individuals inside Israel. That is God telling you what Israel always was. Scripture, King James Version: Romans 9:6, "Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:"; Romans 9:8, "That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does 1 Peter 2:8 mean, "whereunto also they were appointed"?Whosoever Will, The Decree That Isn't Written Down: The verb behind “were appointed” is an aorist passive of tithemi. No agent is named. The relative that governs “whereunto” is neuter. It cannot refer back to “the word” or “the stone”. The appointment in the grammar is to the stumbling. “being disobedient” is a present participle describing their state. It is the same disobedience already named in verse 7. Peter does not write: God appointed these men to unbelief, and then damned them for the unbelief He appointed. He writes that the disobedient stumble at the word, and that they were appointed to that stumbling. Set the control beside it. “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” There the construction names God. There the object is salvation. Peter can name God as the one who appoints when the object is mercy. In 1 Peter 2:8 he uses an agentless passive for the appointment of the disobedient to stumbling. The asymmetry is in the text. The imported reading supplies the missing agent and then supplies unbelief as the decreed object. The verse supplies neither. Scripture, King James Version: 1 Peter 2:8, "And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed."; 1 Thessalonians 5:9, "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,".
• Whosoever WillWhat does 2 Chronicles 16:9 mean, "the eyes of the LORD run to and fro"?Whosoever Will, Why Would He Look?: We read it as comfort, and it is comforting. But stop on the first image and let it be strange for a moment. God's eyes are running to and fro. Ranging. Roving. Scanning the whole earth. The Hebrew verb is a restless, sweeping motion, back and forth across the entire world, and the sentence tells you what He is doing it for: to find a certain kind of heart and to throw His strength behind it. Here is the question that image forces, and it is the one nobody asks. Why would God search? You do not scan the earth for something you have already fixed in place. You do not rove to and fro looking for names you wrote down yourself before the world began. A search implies the outcome is genuinely open. It implies the thing being looked for is really out there to be found, or not found. The God of this verse is not reviewing a list He drafted in eternity past. He is looking. And you only look for what you have not already predetermined. Scripture, King James Version: 2 Chronicles 16:9, "For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does 2 Thessalonians 2:13 mean, 'God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation'?Whosoever Will, There Is No Calvinist Election in the Bible: 2 Thessalonians 2:13. “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” Chosen to salvation, in English, and this is where the confessions' phrase comes from. The verb is heileto, from haireo (G138), an ordinary word for choosing that is not the family this essay counts, which is why the verse is on this page and not in the table. Now read the sentence to its end and the verses around it. The means are in the same breath: through the Spirit's sanctifying, and belief of the truth. Three verses earlier, the perishing are named: they “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2:10), and “believed not the truth” (2:12). One verse later: “Whereunto he called you by our gospel” (2:14). The passage draws its own line between the saved and the lost, and the line is belief of the truth against refusal of it. The “you” chosen to salvation is a church, and it is chosen through the very belief the perishing withheld, and two verses on it is commanded: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions” (2:15). “From the beginning” I hold. What the verse does not say is that God chose who would believe. It says the chosen are the believers, and it says who the others are. Scripture, King James Version: 2 Thessalonians 2:13, "But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:".
• Whosoever WillWhat does 2 Timothy 2:13 mean, "if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful"?Whosoever Will, Three Men Who Cannot See the End: You expect the symmetry to hold. You expect: if we are faithless, He will be faithless to us. That is what the previous three have trained you to expect. It is not what Paul writes. He writes if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, and then he tells you exactly why the symmetry could not hold: he cannot deny himself. That is the hinge of the whole passage. Your faithlessness cannot produce a matching faithlessness in God, because His faithfulness is not a response to your performance. It is an expression of His own nature. For God to become unfaithful to what He has promised in Christ, He would have to stop being God. That is the one thing omnipotence cannot do. Scripture, King James Version: 2 Timothy 2:13, "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does Acts 13:48 mean, "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed"?Whosoever Will, God Chose Judas: First, it contains no election word at all. Not chosen, not elect, not predestinate. The word is “ordained,” Greek tasso, which means to arrange, to set in order, to dispose. It is not in the 251 verses because it is not one of these words. It is here because I went and got it anyway. Second, the Greek form is one where the passive and the middle voice look identical. “Were appointed” and “had set themselves in order toward” are the same letters. The grammar does not decide it. Third, read two verses earlier. “ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.” The people who are lost in this passage are shown doing something to themselves, actively: judging themselves unworthy. Then the Gentiles, who “were glad,” are described as set in order toward the very thing the others judged themselves unworthy of. The passage is a contrast between two responses to the same word. Can you read it the Calvinist way? Grammatically, yes. Can one verse, with no election word, in an ambiguous voice, standing next to people who judged themselves unworthy, carry a doctrine that 251 other verses never state? No. It is the hardest verse they have, and it is exactly one verse, and it is not clear. That is the honest whole of it. Scripture, King James Version: Acts 13:48, "And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does Colossians 2:14 mean, "blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us"?Whosoever Will, The Word That Needs No Receipt: This is the same point the apostle makes without the legend. Paul says God took the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, the actual record of debt, and nailed it to the cross (Colossians 2:14). There is your receipt, and it is real, and notice that it is not the word tetelestai doing the work, it is the cross itself cancelling the certificate. The image the receipt sermon was reaching for is true. It simply lives in Colossians, in plain theology, not smuggled into a Greek verb that never carried it. Scripture, King James Version: Colossians 2:14, "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;".
• Whosoever WillWhat does Hebrews 10:26 mean by "if we sin wilfully"?Whosoever Will, The Pastor at the Door: Again the English “if” is carrying weight the Greek does not give it. The construction is a genitive absolute with a present participle, “we sinning wilfully,” a path walked on purpose, not a single stumble. And again, “we.” The author writes himself into the sentence. “[t]he knowledge of the truth” is the full knowledge of the truth, not a passing acquaintance. Then the crux, verse 29: a man has “trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing”. The question is who was sanctified. The natural reading is the man who trampled, the nearest subject, and the writer has used that verb, hagiazo, of real sanctification sixteen verses earlier: “we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10), “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb 10:14). Two counters must be named honestly, not hidden. “Sanctified” can mean set apart in a covenant sense without meaning new birth; Paul can call an unbelieving spouse sanctified (1 Cor 7:14). And a minority reading takes the “he” who was sanctified to be the Son, sanctified by His own blood, rather than the apostate. Both are grammatically available. Neither is the first thing the clause says as it stands, next to 10:10 and 10:14. Scripture, King James Version: Hebrews 10:10, "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."; Hebrews 10:14, "For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."; 1 Corinthians 7:14, "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does Hebrews 11:6 mean, "he that cometh to God must believe that he is"?Whosoever Will, The Book With No Name: Then the hinge of the whole book, the verse that makes the door theologically load-bearing: “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb 11:6). He that cometh. Not he that was chosen to come. Not he whose coming was written before he drew breath. He that cometh, whoever he is, must believe two things, that God is, and that God rewards the seeker, and the promise runs to every seeker without exception. That is Hebrews’ own “whosoever will”. It is the invitation of Revelation 22:17 stated as doctrine: the one who comes is the one who is welcomed, and the coming is real. Scripture, King James Version: Hebrews 11:6, "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."; Revelation 22:17, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.".
• Whosoever WillWhat does Hebrews 12:17 mean, that Esau "found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears"?Whosoever Will, The Pastor at the Door: The pronoun decides the verse. “[h]e sought it carefully with tears”, and “it” is auten, feminine accusative. Its candidates are “the blessing,” eulogian, feminine, and “repentance,” metanoias, which stands in the genitive. Auten agrees with the blessing. So the sentence reads: he sought the blessing with tears. Not repentance. The blessing. Genesis confirms it beyond argument. “Esau lifted up his voice, and wept... Bless me, even me also, O my father” (Gen 27:38). He weeps twice for the blessing and asks twice for the blessing, and he never turns to God. He had already “despised his birthright” (Gen 25:34) for one meal. So this stone is not a salvation text at all. What Esau lost was a birthright and a blessing, an inheritance and a standing, sold for a bowl of stew and never bought back, not even with tears. That is a warning about forfeiting an inheritance, and Hebrews states it as exactly that. Use the verse for what it says. Do not drag Esau across 6:4-6 and turn the whole letter into a machine for losing heaven. Stew is not the order of salvation. Different image, different loss. Scripture, King James Version: Genesis 27:38, "And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept."; Genesis 25:34, "Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright."; Hebrews 12:17, "For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.".