23 - Salvation, Part 1

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24 - Salvation, Part 2

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. This class is one of many classes.

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You can get more information at strivingforeternity .org. I will be your instructor today.

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My name is Andrew Rappaport. We are in the School of World Religions and the class that we are taking right now is a class on an introduction to the major Western religions.

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The specific lesson that we have for us today is going to be the Doctrine of Salvation.

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This is lesson number 11 and so we are glad that you are with us.

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If you, being that you are with us, we encourage you to go to the store .strivingforeternity

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.org and you can pick up a copy of the syllabus. The syllabus that follows with this is about $25 each.

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They have all the notes and then some that we will be going over so you can get that at strivingforeternity .org.

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Go to the store, order the student version of the World Religions.

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This is one of the few that we actually have a teacher's edition as well so if you wanted to teach this in your church, you can get the teacher's edition, buy a bunch of student copies and teach that in a

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Sunday school or small group in your area. But the other thing you can do is just get a bunch of student guides and let me put you to sleep.

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No, hopefully you are not sleeping at the teaching. Just saying. Yeah, I know.

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Some of you probably are. Anyway. Anyway. Alright. So now this is really, really, really the important lesson.

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When we look at the World Religions, we looked at six of the

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World Religions, the major religions. If you were with us in the beginning and you started at the beginning of the class, you know that we looked at Roman Catholicism, Islam, we looked at Judaism, we looked at Mormonism, Jehovah Witness and Christianity.

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And we looked at six major doctrines within each of them. We looked at what's their authority, their view of God, their view of Christ, their view of man's sinfulness, salvation and times.

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Now we're in part two where we're giving a Christian response to these things and we're in the lesson on salvation.

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Now this is the key because this is what sets Christianity apart from all of the others.

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Every World Religion. You're going to see we're going to get into this. But this is what makes Christianity unique. This is when we study

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World Religions when we see where Christianity is by itself and this is, as we're going to say, this is how you know it's a

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God -made religion. I always argue that there's either man -made religions or God -made religion. We need an objective way to be able to tell the difference.

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This lesson provides that. Today you're going to have the objective way, the objective standard to be able to judge whether a religion is made by men or God.

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It's going to be that easy because we want a religion to believe in a religion that is

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God -made, not man -made. Let us begin that salvation is holy.

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For those who have the syllabus, you have four blanks. It's going to be the same word all four times because I really want to emphasize something.

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Let's see if you guys can figure it out. Salvation is holy of God alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, by the redemption of Jesus Christ alone.

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Kind of get a hint there of alone. Some know these as the sola.

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Sola means is Latin for alone or only. We would talk about the five solas of the

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Reformation. The reason it became such a big deal is because this is what separated the true gospel from the false gospel.

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Do you believe that God is the one who does the saving?

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God alone, not God and man, not man, God alone. By grace alone, not grace plus works, not works, grace alone.

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Through faith alone, not faith plus works, not works, faith alone.

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By the redemption of Jesus Christ alone, not Muhammad, not Buddha, not

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Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ. What He did, His redemption, His uniqueness as we looked at in a couple of lessons ago that He's fully

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God and fully man, the importance of that. As we said in that lesson, that's what helps us to understand that Jesus Christ is unique in being able to offer this redemption.

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In His redemption, we have the merit of His shed blood and not the basis of human merit for works.

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This is really important. Let's take a look at some verses. John 1 .12. Many people think, well,

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I'm a child of God, I'm a child of God, everyone's a child of God. Really? What does John say?

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But to all who did receive Him, speaking of Jesus Christ, who believe in His name,

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He gave the right to become a child of God. See, not everyone's a child of God, only those that have the right to say that are those that received

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Christ and believe in His name. In Ephesians 1 .7, it says, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the first blood of Christ, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

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See, it's through the blood of Christ, what He did when He suffered on that cross. Furthermore, you see in Ephesians 2 .8

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-10, for by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not your own doing.

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It is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. One last one, let's look at 1

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Peter 1 .18 -19, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb, without blemish or spot.

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So what you see here is, the importance is that it is this one doctrine, is the one doctrine that makes

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Christianity different from all other religions. Christianity believes that there is no human work, no human effort, that there is no human work, that there is no human effort, from man, that can save a person or assist

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God in saving a person. The doctrine of salvation is the one doctrine that is, has eternal importance.

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It's both eternally important to get accurate and it is the uniqueness of Christianity.

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All religions are classified into two categories. I always make this argument, there are two religions in the entire world and only two.

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There's the religion of human effort and the religion of divine effort. There's two categories. There's the category where the merit of man, that's works -based salvation, or the grace of God, that's imputed righteousness.

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We discussed imputation in the doctrine of sin, when we looked at that, well just like sin was imputed to us, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, given to us, accredited to us when we don't deserve it.

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Now if you want to literate, you call it the merits of man or the grace of God.

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Another way you could look at it is by the requirement of how to get right with God is it by human effort or divine effort.

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Same thing, wording it different ways, but that's the importance. All religions except for Christianity, every one of them, as we went through some of these major ones you saw, all of those, when we got to the doctrine of salvation, they had some level of human effort, every single one of them.

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Even Hinduism, Buddhism, people say well no, no, no it doesn't, but how do you get into a better life in reincarnation?

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By your behavior in this life. That's works. That's how you know it is based on works.

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Salvation is often confusing though, because even though we use this term, the term salvation is confusing to people because it has different meanings.

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There are several aspects to the word salvation. It could be referring to the whole process of salvation.

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Some people refer to it as just that process of regeneration. Let's go through this and take a look so we get an idea of what this term means.

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It is a term that you see it speaks of people who are, it starts at the point of the

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Holy Spirit convicting a person of their sin and it ends in our glorification and it describes everything in the middle.

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This is the thing, so when people say salvation, what do you mean by that? You have to ask that question because do you mean the regeneration or the sanctification?

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A lot of people confuse that. That's the reason in James 2 people get confused when it says that if you have no works your faith is dead.

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The issue there is it's sanctification not regeneration. Let's start with these and break them down.

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Salvation is a process that starts with the Holy Spirit convicting a heart of a sinner to draw them to repentance.

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As I said it ends in glorification, that's the entrance into heaven. The moment we die and we're translated into our glorified state.

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Now many have a problem because they don't understand the Holy Spirit convicts sins prior to salvation yet that's still part of the process.

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A sinner can reject and resist that convicting work of the Holy Spirit prior to salvation.

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This is not the same as resisting the grace of God when God regenerates a person.

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This is where you get people that argue over these doctrines and because they're using terms and having different meanings of those terms things get messy.

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We have to be specific in our terms because otherwise we commit the fallacy of equivocation where we use one word, in this case the word salvation, and we have two different meanings.

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That convicting work of the Holy Spirit is where the process begins but that's prior to regeneration.

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Regeneration is that process where God changes us, gives us new life, calls us adopted into His family, gives us the right to be called the child of God, creates in us a new heart, that He gives us a right state with Him, that we have faith, that we repent, that we believe, all these things.

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We're going to get those in a moment and look at some of those. But what we end up seeing is that that's the regeneration.

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At regeneration starts a process we call sanctification, being more saint -like, being set apart from the world, being made more holy.

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And there's a process where we're made to be more in the image of Christ while on earth. Do we still struggle? Yes, we do.

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We continue to struggle with sin. However, this is the process after we're regenerated all the way up until the moment we die and we're glorified.

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So you can think about salvation as a past tense. Past tense would be the convicting work of the

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Holy Spirit. And for those of us who know Christ, past tense would be regeneration, the day we got saved.

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The process that as believers we would be in now is the process of sanctification.

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That's present day salvation. And there's a future salvation for those of us who know Christ that we call glorification.

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So salvation can have a past, present, future idea. Okay? Alright.

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So, the specific act of salvation includes many simultaneous aspects of this doctrine that I listed off some.

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But the many aspects of salvation include regeneration, conversion, repentance, faith, justification, spirit baptism, and indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit, adoption. You know, all of these things and they're instantaneous.

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They occur simultaneously, immediately at the point of salvation. There is no ongoing aspects of salvation, okay, that...

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Sorry, there's no ongoing aspects of salvation meaning regeneration.

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So we don't get redeemed again and again and again. Once we're redeemed, we then start the next process which is sanctification.

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That's where those works that we talk about come in. Those works are not for salvation. Those works don't get us saved.

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They come after we're saved. In other words, not before regeneration as a prerequisite for regeneration, but a post...

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So it's post. It's a prerequisite... Pre, pre, post...

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I can't say that word. I don't know why. But it's after. Okay, so it's after salvation during sanctification.

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After regeneration, I should say. It's the sanctification process. That's where works come in.

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Works stop at glorification because, well, we're now glorified. We no longer have a sin nature.

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The sin will be... We will no longer have an influence of sin. We won't be influenced by it. So the ongoing aspect of salvation that starts at the point of salvation is called sanctification.

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It will continue until we're glorified. Sanctification and perseverance are one.

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We're going to mention that a little, but we'll probably get to perseverance next class. The final act of salvation, though, is glorification in heaven where believers receive a sinless existence, both body and spirit.

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Now, the importance is to understand that there is no chronological ordering to the aspect of regeneration or really that point of salvation.

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This is where there's a lot of confusion. We're going to get into this a little bit, but people start to put a chronological ordering and not seeing that there's a difference between a logical ordering and a chronological ordering.

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We understand that certain things logically seem that this should precede this, should precede this, but that's not the way it actually works out chronologically.

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They're all simultaneous. A person does not believe and then get regenerate, nor does

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God regenerate a person and then they believe. Both of those are a problem because they're chronological.

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If either one of them, ask yourself, can a person be an unbelieving regenerate?

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They don't believe in God, but they're regenerate. No. Can a person be a believing unregenerate?

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In other words, they believe in Christ, but God didn't regenerate them. No. See, those are simultaneous, but they're spoken of.

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Now, logically, redemption would happen first. We would have to be redeemed before we could believe because God has to give us a changed heart.

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Now, with that, though, we get into where it's muddy because you and I cannot comprehend this.

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To God, it seems to make perfect sense. To you and I, we go, wait, wait, wait. One has to cause the other.

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There's a cause and effect. Not so with God, okay? And that should not cause us dilemmas, okay?

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God is greater than our ability to understand. And because of that, we're not going to fully understand everything there is to know about God.

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So, let's not get too wrapped up on the fact that God knows, well, more than we do, alright?

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So, these acts are simultaneous. Humans may not have an ability to fully understand these acts, how they can be simultaneous.

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However, the Scripture clearly teaches this. Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 10. And I will be saying this throughout this lesson.

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But if you go to strivingforeternity .org, under resources, there is a paper on Romans 9 and 10.

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I encourage you to read it. We put it out there to explain these issues that many people argue over.

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Some call it Calvinism, Arminianism, God's sovereignty, human responsibility, however you want to phrase it.

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There is a tension in Scripture. And we try to provide what we think at Striving for Eternity is the answer to that tension.

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So, moving on in our syllabus. When considering the many different aspects of salvation that we've been talking about, it's good to think of them in the following terms.

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One, where does the activity take place? Heaven or earth? Where is the activity for all believers or just the church age?

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Now, whoa, some are saying, wait a minute. There is no church age believers versus, you know, because some see a separation between Israel and the church and some don't.

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However, I'm going to make the case that there's some things that we see different with church age believers that was the foreshadow.

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It was the promise to the Jews, the nation of Israel. It is what they look forward to with the new covenant.

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We're going to look at some of those. Third, who is the agent of the activity?

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Is it God that's the agent or is it man? And then fourth, what type of activity, what is the type of activity?

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In other words, is it experiential or is it judicial? Now, the reason I say this is because when you ask me how did

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I get saved, I'm going to tell you what I experienced. What I experienced is I chose God. I repented. I put faith in Christ.

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I'll use terms like that. But if you ask me theologically, I'm going to say God chose me. God redeemed me.

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God elected me before the foundation of time. We're going to get into that hopefully today. Election, I'm going to explain that.

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Don't jump off the handles thinking, oh, he's a crazy five -point Calvinist. Election is in the scriptures, so you're going to have to deal with it, okay?

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What does it mean? Let's deal with that. All right, so what type of activity? Is it something that we as humans experience or is it something that God declares?

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That's the point. These many areas help us to help us see these many areas of salvation.

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Let's put that chart up that I have. This doesn't help you if you're not watching live, but we'll go over it and I'll explain through it.

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So you have, if you look down the left side there, you have your many different aspects of salvation.

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Election, regeneration, conversion. Now, notice I'm saying conversion is repentance and faith.

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That's two sides of that coin. Then we have justification, adoption, spirit baptism, indwelling.

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That's indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification, perseverance, glorification.

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These are all the aspects. Now I'm going to go across each one of these. Let's look at election. Where does election happen?

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Well, that happens in heaven. And that happens for, and I know, I'm giving away,

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I'm saying a dispensation of activity, right? Because I'm a dispensationalist. But you want to say covenant, that fits fine here too.

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The point here being is election is for all believers. Not just Israel, not just the church.

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All believers are elect. The agent of election is God. It's a divine agent.

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And what type of activity is it? Well, this type is judicial. It's God declaring, God decreeing.

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So let's look at the next one, regeneration. Regeneration, where does that happen? Well, that happens on earth. And that too is for all believers in all time.

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Now the activity, the agent of this activity is divine. God does the work.

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But notice the type of activity you and I experience. We experience regeneration even though it is a gift from God.

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It's something God does. He regenerates us. But we can experience this. Now conversion is often seen as the flipped coin of regeneration.

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This happens on earth as well and through all of the different periods of time.

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But the agent of this one is human. So where regeneration is the divine act, the conversion is the human act.

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And again, we experience that. Now what that leads to is this justification.

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That's the next one. Justification actually happens. This one happens in heaven.

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And it happens for all time. But this is a divine act.

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And it's judicial. God declares us justified. God decrees.

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As in a courtroom, you're now just. So this is

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God making a decree. God being judicial. But then we also have adoption.

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Adoption is kind of interesting because it happens kind of on earth and in heaven. We're not fully adopted until heaven.

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But as we read in John 1 .12, we now have the right to be called the child of God now. We're adopted into his family now.

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That's also one of the reasons I argue we can't lose salvation because were we adopted into God's family and then kicked out?

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When we look at this, this is why I say that the idea that we can lose salvation is hard to believe when you look at all that happens at that moment of salvation.

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Many of the people that believe that you can lose your salvation are arguing that basically because they're confusing regeneration with sanctification.

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That's why that happens. But let's go on. So we're at adoption.

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Adoption happens in heaven and on earth for all time. Everyone that's a believer in Christ, whether Old Testament Israel or the church, will be adopted into the family of God.

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And it's a divine act. God is the agent. And it's a judicial one.

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We kind of experience it in heaven. We'll experience it more. But it's God who decrees it.

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God who declares this that we're adopted. Spirit baptism. This is really the moment we get saved.

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This is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in a sense. But this is that moment where we're plunged into the

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Spirit. Where the Spirit baptizes us. This is not the charismatic baptism.

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Let me be clear. I'm saying this because I understand that people are not always having the same use of words that we're using.

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They've grown up in different kind of Christian cultures. Spirit baptism is the moment you get saved that the

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Holy Spirit indwells you. Okay? And it is when we're being plunged with the

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Spirit. Alright? And the indwelling is that He dwells within us.

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So the baptism is that moment. It's that one moment where the Holy Spirit comes into you as a believer.

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And the indwelling is the continued, during that period of sanctification, that continued indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit. Now when we talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit, that's the controlling influence. That's something that kind of comes and goes where the

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Holy Spirit does a work in us to control us. So those are the terminologies. That's how

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I'm using it. So baptism, that moment we are saved, we're baptized in the

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Spirit. That happens both on heaven and in earth. Because the Holy Spirit's in heaven and yet we're on earth.

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But this is only for the church age. Not for all believers. Jeremiah 31, 31 and following.

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Ezekiel 35 and 36. Talk about this. This is the new covenant that Israel looked forward to.

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That the Holy Spirit would indwell every believer. And we no longer would need priests to tell us

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God's Word. That we would have God Himself indwelling us and teaching us

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Himself. So because of that, this is something unique to the church age.

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So the Spirit immediately enters into us. It's a divine agency. God is the one who does it.

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And it's a judicial act. God declares. God does this. But the experiential side is the next one.

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The indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It happens on earth. Again, this is only for the church age. It is a divine.

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God's a divine agent because the Holy Spirit indwells us. He chooses to do that. But it's experiential.

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This is what we experience. We experience the Holy Spirit indwelling us to illuminate

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God's Word to our minds. To bring it to application. To guide us. To direct us through His Word.

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Okay? Now those are the only two that are not for all believers.

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And are specific to the church. Next is sanctification. So now all of these that I mentioned beforehand happen instantaneous.

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Now election. Okay, we're going to get into election. When did election happen? Well, before the foundation of the time.

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But what does that mean? We're going to look at that in a moment. But regeneration, conversion, which again includes repentance and faith.

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Justification, adoption, spirit baptism, spirit indwelling. All of those are instantaneous acts. But once that happens at regeneration, we then get into sanctification and perseverance.

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And we continue in that until glorification. So sanctification is something that happens on earth.

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It is for all dispensations, all time. It's a divine... This is God doing the work.

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God sanctifies us. God makes us more holy. And yet we experience it. Perseverance though is the flip side.

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Perseverance happens on earth for all people in all times. But that's the human act. We still experience. But you see, are you noticing how there's this flipping, right?

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You have sanctification and perseverance. Sanctification is God being the agent. God working in us so that we can't take credit even for the works that we do.

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We can't say, oh, look at the work I did as a believer. No, God did that. Yet we persevered.

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We're the agent in the perseverance. So when we fail, that's our fault. And then lastly is glorification.

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Where does this happen? Well, in heaven because you kind of have to be dead to get there, right? So this happens for all believers of all time.

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It's a divine act. A divine act. And we experience it, all right?

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So I hope that was helpful, that little chart. Just so we kind of wrap our heads around some of these things.

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All these things that happen all simultaneous. It can be confusing, all right?

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So I want to make sure that we have that clear. Let's look at the next thing in our syllabus there, the doctrine of election.

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Ooh, not the nasty E word. That's right.

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We're going to deal with it. Election. What does this mean? Now, this again shows you a difference between the true doctrine, the true religion that comes from God and all the others.

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Because every other religion is going to teach that man can work his way to heaven.

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The doctrine of election is what sets Christianity apart. Okay, because if God does the choosing, you had nothing to do with it.

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Now, in Islam, if you remember, they would say that Allah is most merciful. And you're trusting in God's mercy, but your works play into it.

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So what they're really saying with that is that it is completely of God's choosing, but he's choosing based on the work that you do.

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And so therefore, it's not true election. It's not where God chooses, because remember,

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God is a free agent. In other words, God is not influenced by anything outside of his nature.

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And because of that, if our works played a role in God's choosing us, then he's not free to choose us.

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He's now bound by our choices and our works. God is free, so he chooses us apart from our works.

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Let me define it. Election is the act of God which, before the foundation of the world,

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God chose in Christ those whom he graciously regenerates, saves, and sanctifies.

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Now, let's take a look at some passages that talk about this, and then let's dig into this and explain.

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There's some that are just going to jump off the deep end, because I said that word election. Let's go through it and see what

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Scripture actually says. Someone once told me that I'm a five -point

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Calvinist. I hate people and all these nasty things that he was saying about me because I believe in election.

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And I said, you know, can you tell me where you're getting this information? And he quotes in Ephesians, we're going to get to it, don't put it up yet, where it says that God elected before the foundation of time.

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I said, that proves I'm a Calvinist? And he says, yes, it does. I said, then Paul was a Calvinist.

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Furthermore, so was God, if just that quote was enough to prove it, because it's direct from Scripture.

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So what does the Scripture say? And the importance is, what does it mean? That's the issue we have to get to.

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All right, so let's put up Romans 8. Romans 8, I'm going to put a, I have a number of passages here, so we'll see how far we can get through this.

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And we know that for those, this is, sorry, Romans 8 verses 8, 28, sorry,

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Romans 8, 28 to 30. Romans 8, 28 to 30. And we know that for those who love

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God, all things work together for good. For those who are called, according to his purpose, called.

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For those who he foreknew, he also predestined to be confirmed to the image of his

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Son. In order that he might be firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called.

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And those who he called, he also justified. And those who he justified, he also glorified.

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And you see this process in this. Now here's the thing. You see in this where it says he foreknew? Verse 29, for those who he foreknew.

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Some try to argue that that means that God looked down the tunnels of time, knew who would call on his name, and because he knew that, he then predestined them.

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A couple problems with this. One, it puts God, he's then bound by time.

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He can't know what you know until he looks into time. He's got to look through time to figure out what choices you're going to make.

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What does that mean? You're the ultimate. You're the superior. You're the one that God has to submit to.

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God has to look through time to figure out, oh, you were going to do this? Okay, I'm going to choose you. Alright?

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That puts God in time. Furthermore, it makes God not omniscient. Because God doesn't know what you're going to do unless he looks through time.

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This is the problem with that because God knows everything. God's outside of time, and he knows everything.

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This has the flip side as well. Some people say, well, because God predestined you, he did that in eternity past, therefore, you were called in time.

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So then you had to believe because he did this in the past. Again, what does that do? That puts God in time. God can work within time.

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But the reason that we end up seeing this is that you're going to see that people fail when they try to say it's one side or the other, and they put it in a chronological ordering.

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What they end up doing is messing with the character, nature, and attributes of God. Okay? In those two.

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The fact that he's eternal, he's outside of time. The fact that he's omniscient, that he knows all things.

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Alright, let's look at Ephesians 1. This is Ephesians 1, 4 -11. This is a little bit of a longer passage, but let's take a look at it.

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Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

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So, I mean, that's the issue. Chose us is election. Some translations say he elected us before the foundation of the world.

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So let me just stop there and just, before we go on, I want to explain this. This is

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God speaking baby talk to us. And that's really what it is. God is infinitely more knowledgeable than us, more intelligent than us.

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But just like we have to talk down to our children when they're young and infants and toddlers, God has to speak down to us.

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So he's trying to explain to us what we cannot possibly comprehend. And he's using language that kind of helps us.

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In other words, the fact that God chose us before the foundation of time just basically means you had nothing to do with it.

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That's what it means. It is a work of God that he did the work.

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That's the emphasis. It's not trying to put a chronological ordering to it. It's trying to show the priority that God did the work, not human effort.

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This is what makes Christianity unique from all the other religions. Let's go back to it. I'll read verse 4 again,

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Ephesians 1, 4 -11. Even as he chose us from before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the

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Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

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In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works according to the counsel of his will.

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Do you see the emphasis? What's the emphasis? God. The emphasis on that is all on God and what

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God does. That's the point there. There's some other passages you can look up in your syllabus.

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We don't have time for all of it. There's many passages. This is the point. You can look those up. But some argue that election is the first step in the process of salvation and to an extent they're correct and to an extent they're not correct.

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When discussing election, it must be understood that the doctrine of God, he's not bound by time.

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He's omniscient. Therefore, God, when he uses phrases like elect before the foundation of time or chosen before the foundation of time, it is to explain something to you and I that we cannot understand.

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Election occurs outside of time. That's the point. Therefore, it cannot truly be placed in a chronological ordering.

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Sovereign election does not contradict nor negate the responsibility of man to repent and trust in Christ as Savior and Lord.

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You can look at many passages. You can look at John 3, 18 -19.

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John 5, 40. You can look at Romans 9, 22 -23.

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We're not going to turn there. Nevertheless, since sovereign grace includes the means to receive the gift of salvation as well as the gift itself, sovereign election will result in what

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God determines. All whom the Father calls to himself will come to faith and all who come to faith will receive.

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The unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners is not related to any initiative, initiation of their own part nor to God's anticipation of what they might do of their own will but is solely the sovereign grace and mercy of God.

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So what I'm trying to say there is that God gives us this favor that we don't earn, we don't merit. It's an unmerited favor.

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It's grace. He gives us this grace. He gives us while we're in a state of being sinners and His enemy.

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It's not by something we initiate. It's not by our initiation that starts the process.

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It's by what God does. He doesn't anticipate what we're going to do. He knows what

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He's going to do. Elections should not be looked upon as a basis merely on abstract sovereignty.

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God is truly sovereign but He exercises His sovereignty in harmony with His other attributes, especially

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His omniscience, His justice, His holiness, His wisdom, His grace,

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His love. You can see this in Romans 9, 11 -16 when

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He talks about it. God wanted to put His attributes on display. This sovereignty will always exalt the will of God in a manner that's totally consistent with His character as revealed in the life of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. You're going to see that. I have some passages there in the syllabus. Again, I recommend that you go to the website

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Striving for Eternity. Look up the paper we have on there in Romans 9 and 10.

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I think the title of it is it might be Sovereignty of God and Missions or God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility.

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I think it might have been retitled. I encourage you to look there. We don't have time. I do want to try to get to regeneration if possible and see if we can get through some of this.

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This doctrine is important because the focus on election is all on what

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God does. We're going to get to conversion. We're going to get to man's responsibility.

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Understand that God is the one that gets all the credit and that's what makes Christianity unique.

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What makes Christianity unique is the fact that God does the work. Let's move on to number two in your syllabus.

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Number two in your syllabus is regeneration. I love this one.

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This is a great doctrine. Regeneration is the supernatural. That's your blank there. It is a supernatural work of the

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Holy Spirit by which a new nature of an eternal life is given.

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Isn't that beautiful to think about? You and I were enemies of God. We hated Him. We wanted nothing to do with Him.

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He regenerated us. He adopted us into His family. He gives us new life. We now have eternal life at that moment in time.

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It is this new life that is implanted into the heart of the believer and its restoration of the original

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God -given tendencies toward God before the fall. After the fall, man had a will to sin.

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After regeneration, man has a will to glorify God. We cannot truly glorify

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God without God indwelling us and giving us that. This is what regeneration does.

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We can see this. We'll just put up Titus 3 .5. Titus 3 .5

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says, He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to His own mercy by the washing and the regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit. See, who does it? It's God who does that work. God who gets the credit.

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The whole thing that makes Christianity unique is that man cannot in any way, shape, or form take any credit or responsibility for this act of regeneration.

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God gets all the credit. That's what makes it divine. I said, there's an easy way, an objective way to know is a religion man -made or God -made?

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Very simple. Take a look in this doctrine in any religion. How do you get right with God?

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Or what we would say is, how do you get saved? How do you get in a right state with God? If they add human effort, if they raise any human works to be coinciding, to be assisting, or even replacing what

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God did, it's man -made. It's just that easy. So, are there any religions where God says

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He does all the work and man can't take any credit? There's only one. Christianity.

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That's what makes it unique and that's how we know that Christianity objectively is the only right religion.

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It's not me claiming this. It's God who claims it. God says He does the work.

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God says man will want to lift up their works. Isn't that exactly what we would see?

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Man would say, but look at me, look at me, look at me. Look at the works I do. God, I know you died on a cross, but look,

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I walked that old lady across the street once. Really?

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You want to compare that to what God did? God paying the eternal debt? God dying on a cross paying an eternal fine?

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And you want to compare walking an old lady across the street or something? I mean, really? Really? That's pretty disingenuous, isn't it?

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That's exactly right. And that's why God says He looks at our works, sees them as filthy rags.

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Genuine regeneration is manifested by fruits worthy of repentance and demonstrated in righteous attitudes and conduct.

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Good works will be the proper evidence and fruit and will be experienced to the extent that the believer submits to the controlling power of the

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Holy Spirit in his life through faithful obedience to the Word of God. So this is the point.

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These works that we talk about, they happen after regeneration, not as a prerequisite.

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Post -requisite only. Prerequisite, you can't do anything.

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There are no prerequisites. God does it. Once we are regenerate, now those works, that's the evidence.

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That's the fruit. That's what we look to to see. Do we have genuine repentance? Genuine regeneration?

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This obedience causes the believer to increase, to increasingly conform to the image of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Such conformity is climaxed at our glorification. So the point is that I'm saying there is when we are doing this, we're doing these works, these works that we look to, that is the sanctification process.

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We're going to look at that next class, that sanctification. That's where the works come in.

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And it ultimate is in the glorification. We're going to look at that. Hopefully next class we'll be able to finish with that.

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So what we're going to look at next class, we're going to look at conversion. We're going to look at justification.

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We're going to look at sanctification. We're going to look at perseverance. We won't look so much really at glorification other than, actually glorification will be the last class, the last lesson when we talk about the eternal state.

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That's glorification. But we're going to talk, conversion is going to be that human aspect of it. So I really didn't want to break up the regeneration and conversion because those are flip sides.

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You're seeing flip sides of a coin in a sense. Regeneration is what God does.

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Conversion, you're seeing that aspect of it. Our repentance. So you see this throughout.

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And so I hope this is helpful. Please, please, please don't jump off the handle just because you're hearing words and you have your definitions for those words.

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Understand how I'm using these terminology and the meanings of them.

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And then say, okay, is the meaning consistent with Scripture? But again,

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I just want to close with this. There's an objective way to know whether a religion is a true religion or not.

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A true religion is going to be a religion that is going to be based on God doing 100 % of the work.

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And you can compare and look at any religion and say, okay, do they add any human effort to this work?

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If they do, then we know it is not divine. It's a man -made religion, okay?

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That's how you can objectively tell the difference. All right, so with that, if you have any questions about this or any of the other classes, you can email us, academy at strivingforeternity .org.

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Academy at strivingforeternity .org. You can go to our store where you can pick up the syllabus. Store .strivingforeternity

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.org. You can also, while you're there, pick up my book, What Do They Believe? That is, we spent the first part of these classes on that we covered, looking at the different world religions.

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You can also come out and host one of our Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars. Those are available for you.

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Those classes are eight hours of training, six sessions. We come to your church, your group, and we will train your people to rightly handle the

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Word of God. And then lastly we have is, Ohio Fire is coming up pretty soon, so I want to encourage you with Ohio Fire.

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The Ohio Fire is in Columbus, Ohio, April 8th and 9th of 2016.

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Phil Johnson, Thomas White will be the main speakers of the keynotes. We'll be talking on the doctrine of the

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Word of God. Some great topics that are going to be coming up there on the doctrine of the

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Bible. And so I want to just end with that and encourage you again next class. We'll continue with looking at this doctrine of salvation, the uniqueness of Christianity, and how this sets

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Christianity apart from every other world religion. And until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.