What is Salvation, What We Believe, Part 25

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:01

Before we get into this whole doctrine of studying salvation, what I want to do is just lay out this very important thing.

01:08

The word salvation is used both generally and specifically. Generally, it can refer to anything from regeneration all the way to glorification.

01:17

But specifically, we sometimes use it for regeneration, for sanctification. We even could use it for glorification.

01:24

If we're using it specific, we need to know which of those three, regeneration, sanctification, or glorification, which one of those three is specifically being referred to.

01:38

Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:43

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:53

Welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

02:00

Christian Podcast Community. Go to strivingforeternity .org or christianpodcastcommunity .org to find out all about those ministries.

02:08

And I'm here with the one, the only, Bud from the Bud Zone. Greetings, brother.

02:15

How are you? You never know how I'm going to introduce you. I never know. It's like I always pause before I respond because it's like there's going to be something else.

02:22

Hey, I didn't ask you how sunny Florida was doing in the last episode, so I don't want to hear how hot it is.

02:28

It is glorious. We've got the, we've got the smoker going with a brisket downstairs. It's already about,

02:35

I don't know, 8 ,000 degrees. Last week you're telling me there's houses for sale up the street.

02:41

Now you're telling me that you're smoking some meat. My son was climbing a smoker. Yeah. My wife talked him out of it because she said, no, it's carcinogens and they cause cancer.

02:51

So my son didn't do it. I was like, well, like, why are you listening to mom?

02:57

You're an adult now. Yeah, yeah, no. So it's, yeah, it will be a wonderful time later this evening.

03:06

But we did have a house down the street. It was, you know, actually I had been invited to go on Apologetics Live at the time this drops.

03:14

It would have been a few weeks ago, I guess. By the time this drops, you may have just been on. Oh, well, maybe

03:20

I have been. But the first time I was supposed to, and I couldn't get on for a number of reasons. But the first one was because a house two doors down across the street from us just got torched.

03:29

It burned up. I mean, it was serious. Nobody was hurt, but the guy was apparently growing.

03:36

He was raising chickens on his back deck and had a heat lamp for the chickens. Like, you know, it's 8 ,000 degrees outside in Florida.

03:44

I don't know what you need a heat lamp for. Well, the heat lamp got knocked over. Adjacent to the chickens was where he kept his gas cans for his lawnmower.

03:54

No. Yeah, so it was. Why do people do those sort of things? I'm like, come on, you can't do that.

04:00

And he knows now. Yeah, yeah, okay, learn the hard way. Sorry for that excursion.

04:05

You can cut that out. Nah, we'll leave that in. Audience wants to know. So today on the topic where we are, we're in our series, continuing our series,

04:13

What We Believe. This is the doctrinal statement of striving for eternity. Just go to strivingforeturning .org. Go to the

04:18

About section. Click on What We Believe. And open up the section that is called Soteriology. That is the study of salvation.

04:26

That's what we're going to start looking at. And I'm going to tell you right up front, we will probably be in this section longer than any other.

04:33

Because there's a lot here, and it is packed with stuff. I will also say, because I don't want to be accused of latinizing anything, there are sections.

04:44

That's the new term for plagiarism, by the way. It's in my book. Ed Litton thinks that, you know, they,

04:51

I mean, the SBC, look, you'll have been on Apologetics Live by the time this airs, and you'll probably have talked about how they wanted at the

04:59

SBC to actually put a statement out against plagiarism. And they wouldn't hear it.

05:06

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that their two previous presidents have been caught plagiarizing.

05:11

So instead of calling it plagiarism, I call it latinizing. So some of this was lifted whole cloth from Grace Community Church's doctrinal statement.

05:21

Because as I was trying to write this back when I was doing it, I was struggling with wording of some things.

05:27

And there's some sections where I just could not word it any better than they did. And I just said,

05:34

I'm going to take it the way they did because it says everything that I believe. And I think it was accurate and I couldn't word it any better.

05:41

So we're not going to get very far in this because we're going to kind of give an overview on this for this week, for what's coming in the series.

05:48

We're going to get one sentence, bud. Yes. One sentence. And then that sentence is packed.

05:53

So before we get to the sentence, let's, let me explain again, why are we doing this? And I encourage you to go back to the beginning of the series and binge all of that, download all of those so that you can listen to them, share them.

06:04

That is really helpful. By the way, I don't know if you guys know, but it's because of you sharing it and people following it, the way you get up in the numbers in the, in the podcast ranks is the number of people that are following or subscribing.

06:16

You subscribe for free, but it's when you, when you say, Hey, I'm going to follow or subscribe to this podcast. And that's what counts.

06:23

And we're in the, we're usually in the top hundred. We were in the top 50 in America for Christian sub category of Christianity, which is pretty good.

06:32

Yeah. And so, but that's from you guys sharing it and other people going, I like this content and I'm going to follow it.

06:38

So that helps. And nothing helps us doing reviews. It doesn't help for people to, it helps us.

06:44

It helps no one else but us because we like to read what you have to say. And if you leave a review, we'll read it on air usually.

06:51

So, and if you want to look in the show notes, I have a link to love the podcast .com slash rap report. That's rapid two

06:57

P's and you can leave a review there. So as we look at this, there's a doctrinal statement that we have and what it's doing is telling you what we believe, but it also tells you what we don't believe.

07:11

And as you've been seeing throughout the series, you can read through these 10, 12 pages of our doctrinal statement relatively quickly, but you see, we've been going on for many, many episodes and you go, well, why is it taking so long then?

07:25

If you're having takes very short time to read good question, because what we're doing in this is helping you to see all what's behind what we've wrote.

07:37

I mean, this is episode 25 in this series. We've done 25 episodes and we've only made it through the doctrine of Holy Scriptures, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of angel, the doctrine of men for, and it takes a short time to read it.

07:50

Why are we spending on us? Because there's a lot behind this. But a lot of what we're saying is what we believe, but a lot of it's also saying what we don't believe.

07:56

If you go to a church where you're trying to check out a church and they have like a, you know, one pager for their doctrinal statement, it's probably a problem.

08:04

Oh, it's definitely a problem. It could be. I mean, a lot of churches don't think through it or it's been there for a long time.

08:11

I mean, look, Hey, Ed Linton had heresy in his doctrinal statement. They just didn't know was there wrong definition of Trinity for a while.

08:19

Right. Some churches don't put enough emphasis on their doctrinal statement, but if you see a long doctrinal statement,

08:25

I was sent to church. You know, someone asked me to look at and I saw like a one page or this is what our beliefs are.

08:32

And I'm like, okay. And then they said, if you want more, go here and here and here. Well, one of those was like a,

08:38

I think a seven or eight page. I said, that's better. Then they go into another document that's 25 pages.

08:44

That's pretty good. Then there was another that's there like practices and it's over a hundred pages. I went, okay, they're being really clear in what they believe now.

08:52

They might be more legalistic could be, but at least they're being clear on what they're, what they're about. And so you want to have some detail here.

09:00

So let's get into the doctrine of soteriology, which is the study of salvation.

09:06

And, but I'm going to ask you to read this first sentence. It's a long one. It's a long one.

09:12

All right. Brace yourself. Here we go. Salvation is Holy of God by grace, because of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the merit of his shed blood and not based on human merit or works.

09:26

Okay. So let's look at the first word salvation. This actually is taken for granted and causes a lot of confusion because the word salvation is actually a very general word.

09:39

And yet it's often used in a very specific way. So let's take it in three time periods, salvation, past salvation, present, salvation, future.

09:49

We can refer, well, what might be salvation past when you went from being an unregenerate to regenerate person, you know, regeneration, you think about that.

09:58

You went from being an enemy of God to a child of God that's regeneration, but that's in the past to you.

10:03

If you're a believer, I mean, as soon as it happened, it's now in the past. So we will sometimes say that's salvation past.

10:10

That's that regeneration what follows that. And what we call salvation present is sanctification with sanctification is sanctification starts at regeneration and continues until the day we die.

10:24

And it is the process of us being made more and more in the image of Christ at the end of sanctification.

10:32

Once we die, it is salvation. Future is the idea of glorification.

10:38

So you have regeneration sanctification, which is a process that lasts from regeneration to glorification.

10:44

You die, you have glorification. Now why spend the time explaining these distinctions?

10:51

Because many of us, when we hear people say, are you saved, but what are they referring to? Oh, I think they're referring to their born again experience, correct?

10:59

Regeneration, the salvation past. And though many people end up seeing work out your salvation in fear and trembling and they go, see, you have to work for your salvation.

11:11

Well, that's speaking of salvation present, which is sanctification.

11:16

So you have, and this is something you'll always find with the cultures. They mix up. So you look at James chapter two, faith without works is dead.

11:26

And they go, see, you need works to be saved. If you don't have works, you're not saved. But is that what it's saying?

11:32

Well, actually, no. How do I know that? Because in verse 14, he says, if you say you have faith, so this cannot possibly be speaking to about people about regeneration, because he's assuming they already claim they're regenerate.

11:49

Yeah. That means he's talking sanctification, but you see, people end up looking at this. If they see the word saved, they read it into saved as regeneration.

12:00

And that is where most cults, everyone that believes in a works based system, you, you talk to anybody, you, folks, if you talk to a

12:08

Roman Catholic, you talk to a Mormon, you talk to, in fact, let me just make it easier. If you talk to any

12:13

Christian based group that is not biblical Christianity, they're going to mix up regeneration with sanctification every time, because the only way you can get works into regeneration is to make that confusion.

12:30

And so when you, when you make this distinction between, and most people don't have a problem with glorification, unless of course you're

12:37

John Piper. Why do I say that? Because John Piper talks about final salvation. He talks about things like really what he's referring to is that sanctification work counting in our glorification, but that's not that we're getting like Piper just wants to always nuance everything.

12:55

That's his big problem. He doesn't want to be clear. Okay. He couldn't. And when he tries to clear it up, he decides to nuance it even more, you know, now granted what he's actually arguing is who his mentor really kind of is through writings is

13:08

Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards influenced Piper very much. And this is the argument that Edwards had made.

13:14

But what they're talking about is the idea that you have sanctification works that do work into us receiving crowns and things like that in our glorification.

13:24

But because so many people hear final justification and they think works justificate their, what are they doing?

13:31

They're applying it to regeneration instead of sanctification. So you're going to see things like that, that happen before we get into this whole doctrine of studying salvation.

13:46

What I want to do is just lay out this very important thing. That's the word salvation is used both generally and specifically.

13:54

Generally, it can refer to anything from regeneration all the way to glorification, but specifically we sometimes use it for regeneration for sanctification.

14:04

We even could use it for glorification. And so if we're using it specific, we need to know which of those three regeneration sanctification or glorification, which one of those three is specifically being referred to.

14:16

You got to ask that question. So you talk to a Catholic, you're going to need to deal with that. You need to make that distinguishing point.

14:23

We can't just say, Oh, we believe in salvation because what do you mean by that? That's the question you have to ask.

14:30

They're going to have a different meaning when they're trying to push a work salvation, they have to take the sanctification works and put it into regeneration.

14:38

So they're mixing up two different categories by doing that. So I hope that's clear.

14:43

So salvation is wholly of God. So, but is this saying that man can add like, like God did all that he could,

14:51

God did the 99 % and he's just, he's just waiting on us, but he has made it possible for you to be saved.

14:59

He did everything he could. You got to do that last step. I don't think that's what this means.

15:05

Although that is a very prevalent understanding in evangelicalism.

15:11

And I was just going to add, and you kind of addressed it. Every religion has a soteriology.

15:16

They have a system by which they tell you, you must be saved. What we represent, what we believe is the only faith that is based on this comment in the statement here, wholly of God, by grace, you can't work.

15:34

There's nothing you can do. You don't get to invite Jesus into your heart and declare, oh, now I'm saved. Cause I did that.

15:40

It's wholly of God by grace. I wish, but I could find a verse in scripture that might say this.

15:50

How about, well, I don't know what you're thinking, but I was going to get that one later, but here's what

16:00

I was going to use is John one 12 and 13. Why, what does it say? It says, but as many as receive him to them, he gave the right to be come children of God.

16:12

So first off, when you talk to people and say we're all children of God, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

16:18

God says as many as receive him, Christ only those have the right to be called a child of God, but it goes on, even to those who believe in his name.

16:29

Now, a lot of people stopped there and they don't look at the next verse cause the next verse is very important who were born.

16:35

Not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.

16:42

So you have three things that it's not, how are we born is spiritually born. What's not by blood.

16:47

In other words, it's not your genealogy, just because you're Jewish. This was my thinking, just because I was Jewish, God's chosen people,

16:53

I was going to heaven, no matter what evils I did in the world. That's how I was raised. Many people think because they're

16:59

Catholic, they're going to heaven, but they're Mormon. They're going to heaven. Our genealogy will not make us born again.

17:06

That's what that's saying. So your genealogy doesn't help the will of the flesh. This is the idea of works.

17:12

You can work really hard to earn salvation. You are not born of those works, nor of the will of man.

17:19

This is just your desire. I want to be in heaven. My example of this, if you ever read, have read

17:25

John Bunyan's work with Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress and Christian runs into a man named

17:30

Ignorance and Ignorance wills that he is going to be in heaven. He just wants to, he's not, he's not doing it

17:36

God's way. He's doing it his own way. And you see plenty of people like this. They want to go to heaven.

17:42

They want to be saved, but they don't want to do it the way God prescribes it. They want to live with their sin and just,

17:48

Hey, I said a prayer and I want to go about my day and just know that I got my fire insurance, you know, my get out of hell free card.

17:55

And now I can live any way I want and know that I'm going to heaven because I said that prayer. Well, that's the will of man.

18:00

Your desire is not enough. In fact, in Pilgrim's Progress, you see at the end, I'm going to ruin the end of the story if you haven't read it, but that's okay.

18:06

Read it anyway, because there's a whole lot more in there. Ignorance is seen at the pearly gates and no one knows why he's there.

18:13

And he discovers there's a door to hell right from the gates of heaven, because of someone like ignorance who thinks he can get there by the will of man, just by his desire.

18:21

No, you're not going to get there by your genealogy. You're not going to get there by your good works. And you're not going to get there by your desire.

18:27

It says, but of God, this is why we say it is wholly of God, because only

18:34

God will get you there. This makes Christianity unique against every world religion.

18:40

And this is the reason I say there's only two world religions. There's a religion of human effort and divine effort, and that's it.

18:47

Christianity is the only one where God did all the work to make man right with him.

18:55

Every other religion adds human effort to some level, even, oh boy, bud, should

19:02

I say this? I'm going to say this. I'm going to get in trouble. Okay. The email address is info at striving for eternity dot

19:08

O -R -G. I will forward all of your nasty comments to bud so he can respond.

19:14

I'm just going to say that upfront info at striving for train .org Billy Graham. Why? Because what did

19:20

Billy Graham teach? God did the 99 % on that cross. It's up to you to receive him and do the last 1%.

19:30

Then it's not wholly of God as probably a bad Billy Graham, you know, impersonation, but that's what he would say.

19:38

God did 99%. It's up to you to do that final one. Well, guess, guess what? Ultimately, where does salvation lie then on the work that Jesus did on the cross?

19:49

No, he did everything he could. Now you're the one that makes salvation possible. You're the one that's actually going to do the ultimate thing.

19:57

God couldn't save you by himself. He needed you to do something. We're going to go through this in detail and you're going to, by the end of this series in soteriology,

20:08

I, if we do our job, right, you're going to go. Billy Graham was wrong. I know some of yours.

20:14

How can you say that he ministered to so many presidents and so many thousands of people, he's human.

20:21

I think he got caught up in all that personally, but he also said that there were Mormons and Muslims who are staying within those religions that were going to heaven.

20:30

So count that for what it's worth. Now, as we look at this, we're saying that this is something that is done wholly of God.

20:39

Man had nothing to do with it. There's no other religion that teaches that God did all of the work.

20:47

Yes, absolutely. And our fault in our fallen state, if you could choose

20:52

God, you wouldn't. Well, that's true. And something else with that is the way that people will do that to answer that is they try to say, well,

21:01

God, we've addressed this in the, when we looked at the doctrine of man, and this is why we're doing it this way.

21:06

Because in Dr. Man, people say, well, the will was not influenced by sin. And so people can choose.

21:12

That's the argument is that they have a neutral will. So even though their mind controls their emotions, their emotions control their actions, they say that the mind and the emotions were tainted, but somehow the will wasn't, even though it's controlled by the thinking.

21:26

And, but I guess in their mind, the will just does its own thing without the thinking going on. And so you could choose

21:32

God without thinking about it. Well, we have a doctrine of total depravity. Correct.

21:37

Which is what we went through several episodes ago. Because once you understand that the will is also affected, if you, if you try to see this is where it breaks down, what you have, when you try to argue,

21:47

God lets you choose, it's not a work, but he gives you the choice.

21:53

And therefore you end up realizing, well, if he gives you the choice, your will has to be completely free from sin.

21:59

The problem is if your will is free from sin and your will is controlled by your emotions and your emotions have to be free from sin.

22:04

If your emotions are free from my sin and they're controlled by your thinking, then your thinking has to be free from sin. And therefore there is no such thing as sin nature.

22:11

And that is the exact way some people start to argue. Why? Because they start with a conclusion.

22:18

And instead of saying, what does the scripture say? They work it back to say, okay, that had to be.

22:24

And even some will say what's called open theism. They will say God's not omniscient. He's just a really good guesser.

22:30

Yeah. He just guesses very well and knows really well what people are going to do. So, so those prophecies aren't really prophecies in the sense that God knew they're just prophecies because God guessed what would happen.

22:43

And now you've, you've got a complete messed up nature of, of God. And this is what people do when they start with the conclusion and work it backwards to figure out how to make the

22:52

Bible say what they want it to say, rather than look at it and say, what does the Bible say? So as we go through this, if we do our job well, you will realize that there's no other way to interpret scripture other than the fact that God saved us completely and utterly all 100 % of his work, not ours.

23:12

The only thing we bring to salvation is a wretched sinfulness. That's it.

23:19

It's like Christian pilgrims progress. We bring a bag of burden of sin that we lay at the cross.

23:26

That's what we bring to it. A wretched ruined nature, a person who's an enemy of God.

23:34

That's what we bring. So salvation is holy of God by grace.

23:40

This again. So this is where we end up saying it's not by works.

23:46

It is by grace. And we can add grace alone. It sounds like something that a lot of people do, right?

23:52

Why did they add grace alone when they argued? This is because the Catholic church is grace plus works. The, they would say that you're saved by faith plus works.

24:00

The Mormons would say you have grace after all you can do. In other words, you do all your works.

24:07

And after you do your works, then they got all out of the grace. So you do everything you could do and God will make up the rest.

24:12

So what you have is Catholics say they start with faith and then you add your work. So your face gets you started and your works end up saving you.

24:19

Where the Mormon church would say you do all the works and whatever you have left over,

24:25

God will finish up. Either way, it is a combination of faith and works. And it is not by grace alone.

24:31

And we would argue that it's, it's grace alone. That's an important thing. So it's by grace. Ephesians one, seven in him, we have redemption.

24:39

Well, that's what we're talking about, right? Redemption in him. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

24:50

Amazing. So why is it from his grace? Well, Peter's explaining it. It's because it's his blood that was shed, not yours.

24:57

Is his blood shed in your place? And because he shed his blood, we have the forgiveness of sins.

25:03

Well, what makes Jesus so special? Well, what makes Jesus so special is that he's truly God and truly man being truly

25:10

God, his death, being an eternal being can count for all of eternity being truly man.

25:15

He can act as a substitute. He must be both. Again, another thing that makes

25:20

Christianity unique amongst every world religion is that every world religion is a system of morality, teaching you rights from all.

25:28

Why? Because they're a workspace system. Christianity is the only one that's based on a person, Jesus, because he is the

25:35

God man as, and that our salvation can only be through him because of that, because he pays for the sin of all people.

25:44

And he can be a good substitute because he's sinless.

25:50

His death, because he's an eternal being, if he was a temporal being, he could pay for the death of one person. It would take him all of eternity.

25:57

Because he's eternal. He can pay for multiple people, even in different time periods of history and have it count for eternity because he is eternal, even though he did it once in time in a three day period.

26:10

You wanted to go to the, I think the other Ephesians passage, correct? Ephesians two eight nine. Sure. Go there.

26:17

Why don't you read that one? Oh, okay. Read all the way down to 10. All right. It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing.

26:27

It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

26:37

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Now here's the thing to note, folks, what's important here.

26:44

This is talking about both regeneration and sanctification. Eight nine and regeneration 10 is sanctification.

26:52

So as you look at that, you end up seeing there's a lot here we could deal with. Okay. First we're saved by grace for by grace.

27:00

You have been saved through faith. So it's the grace of God. It's because of his grace that we're saved and where we saved through faith.

27:09

Well, where do we get that faith? Well, because we know in Philippians one 29, even our belief has been granted to us by God.

27:19

And as he says that this is a gift of God, this, this grace that we have, this salvation that we have is a gift of God, but he makes it clear.

27:28

It's not of works so that nobody can boast. We can't take any credit for this redemptive work.

27:35

And then notice what he says in verse 10, he says, for we are the workmanship created in Christ. So once you're regenerate for good works, that's when the good works come in.

27:43

They're in the sanctification process. Now that we've been regenerated, now we're workmen for those good works.

27:52

That's what we're now created for. God bore us, made us born again for those good works in sanctification.

28:00

It's important distinction cause and effect. Yeah. So what we see is we're saved by God.

28:07

Complete. God does all the work, but it's grace on our part. And it's because of the redemptive work of Christ.

28:14

It's because of what Jesus did on the cross. And you already saw that some of those verses, this is first Peter one 18, knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold, but your futile way of life inherited from your brothers.

28:33

But with the precious blood of the lamb, unblemished, spotless, the blood of Christ, that's where we end up seeing the salvation.

28:42

It's on what Christ did by shedding his blood on that cross. That's where the redemptive work occurred.

28:49

Now one of the things that we end up seeing is a lot of people end up struggling with the idea that we get our debt paid when we become a

29:00

Christian. I know a lot of people that hold to that. Well, let's look at an important passage,

29:06

Colossians two 13 and 14. It says, when you were dead in your trespasses and this uncircumcised in your flesh, he made you alive together with him.

29:18

So what do you, what do you see there? You were, you're seeing a stage first, you were dead in your, you're spiritually dead. That's the first part.

29:24

He made you alive with him. That's regeneration. How did he do it? He says here, having forgiven us of all our transgressions.

29:33

If this says he's forgiven us of all our transgressions, then it's not most of them.

29:39

It's all of them. Some people will say, well, you can lose your salvation. And we'll, we'll get to that.

29:45

This is saying all of your transgressions have been paid. And so what some people say is, well, what that means is all the transgressions before I believed were paid.

29:54

But if I say I'm saved, I repent and I say a prayer and I do something really heinous.

30:00

God is going to take salvation away from me because he only paid for all of the sins at salvation.

30:06

All the ones that are historic to me at salvation. That's Muslim Islam. Islam teaches that that once you say that prayer, any of your past sins are forgiven immediately.

30:17

And it's your future ones that you have to do good works to make up for. That's Islam folks. This says all of our sins.

30:25

Well, the question is when were they paid? Was it when we believed? No, keep reading verse 14, having canceled out the certificate of debt.

30:36

That's what we owe. The certificate of debt consisting of degrees against us, all those sins that work against us, that makes up our debt.

30:44

He says, which was hostile to us. And he has taken them out of the way.

30:51

He removed them, all those sins, all the debt of sin that we have. He removed them. The question is when having nailed it to the cross.

31:00

So when was all of our sin debt paid? All of it, all those transgressions at the cross, every sin we ever commit is post -cross.

31:09

So at the cross, all transgressions were paid. So if you come to the cross and you come to salvation, then all your sins are paid.

31:18

Not when you believe they were paid back at the cross. When Jesus suffered that punishment, that was the payment.

31:25

He being omniscient and eternal, omniscient, meaning that he knows all things he knew who was going to be regenerated being eternal.

31:34

It's all the same eternal now to him. And therefore he can look at all the, all of time as a single instance.

31:40

And so he sees it all. And so when we look at it, we look at it historically within a timeline, all of our sin was paid at the cross.

31:48

And therefore we can't say that our work adds anything without violating what Paul says in second

31:54

Corinthians 13 and 14, it cannot be from our merit. The only merit, as we say in the statement, the merit of his shed blood, that is the only thing, his shedding of his blood.

32:06

And then lastly, I say in the statement and not based on human merit or works. So this isn't based on what we do in any way, because this is the problem that so many have is they think, well,

32:20

I'm going to do good works. I can add, I can add some works to this. I mean, surely God will count my work.

32:26

Won't he? I mean, he's going to accept that I've worked really hard to be a good person.

32:32

This is the argument that many will make. And it is a bad argument. Why is it a bad argument?

32:39

Because we saw in Ephesians two eight nine that God does not want us to boast.

32:46

So he saves us says in Titus three, five he saved us not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in righteousness.

32:57

So even the deeds that we do in righteousness, that's not what saves us. Even if you could do good deeds of righteousness, that's not going to save you.

33:05

He says, according to his mercy, by the washing and regenerating and the renewing of the

33:11

Holy spirit, whom he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior.

33:17

It's not by the deeds we do. It's by what Christ did. That is an important thing to do because we're going to go over a whole lot here.

33:24

And that's a good starting point for us to look at. I want to give an overview of where we're going from here, what we're going to look at in the next episodes.

33:32

Before I do, let me just ask you about what you want to add to that. Cause I I'm sure you have a bunch to add. I know we have some resources we're going to recommend later.

33:40

Oh yeah, no, no, no. I don't have anything. That's a, that's a pithy statement. I'll tell you the thing that I was just sitting here noticing and you guys can edit this out if you don't like it.

33:50

But nevertheless, it says salvation is Holy of God by grace because of the redemptive work of Christ.

33:58

I would have changed that word because to through the redemptive work of Christ that's actually a better, yeah.

34:06

See, and this is the thing, like, Hey, this is a living document. It's not a constitution. It is

34:11

Sunday. There are times we've, we have made updates to this and that's actually a good update because it is you're, you're right.

34:16

And so let's explain the difference, right? The cause versus through one. Why don't you start that?

34:22

Well, the issue is God determined before the foundation of the world, we're going to get to that with the issue of election predestination and all that God determined from before the foundation of the world that he was going to save.

34:34

There are a lot of people that don't understand the sovereignty of God in decreeing the fall and ordaining sin and allowing that into his perfectly good creation.

34:44

But nevertheless, he determined to save from before the foundation of the world.

34:49

How is he going to do that? What is the mechanism through which he's going to do that? Well, the mechanism is the redemptive work of Christ.

34:57

So it's not because Christ did this. Now God's obligated to save. It is through Christ doing this, that God is performing the redemptive act he intended to from before the creation of the world.

35:12

Yeah. I think that as we look at that, you're right. This is something where it's not the cause, but the effect.

35:20

Yeah. The cross was not an afterthought. Correct. So because makes it more of a causal thing.

35:26

You do this. It causes that versus this is the way God laid it out in a, a redemptive plan.

35:32

And it's hard for us to get into the mind of God and really understand that. Like you say, before the foundation of time, time is a construct we're bound by and live by.

35:40

God doesn't, he doesn't need to. Right. So what's he saying when he says, I elected you before the foundation of time.

35:47

Well, he says before the foundation of the world. So he ties it to creation. Yeah. So what is he saying?

35:53

He's saying you had nothing to do with salvation. Precisely. That's that's what he's saying. He's saying before you were a thought, he chose who would be saved.

36:02

He's emphasizing that say you have nothing to do with it. And I don't know that there, we can talk in the concept of before, before the time -space continuum started.

36:10

I don't, I don't know that we can really talk that way. Like, what was it before? Yeah. We like, yeah, sorry.

36:18

Can't go there. It just isn't going to work. So as we look at that, yeah.

36:26

So I think that we, we have to evaluate these things and realize that there is going to be a limit of where we're going to throw up our arms and go,

36:34

I can't go any further. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I would add this.

36:40

Let me, let me read this. I think you'll like this. This is from, uh, Lewis Burkoff, Louie to his friends and his, uh, and you're his friend, huh?

36:49

Well, Louie, you know, I mean, what a guy, right? Hey, I mean, if you, if you're old enough to have lived with Lewis Burkoff, you know?

36:57

Yeah, I don't, I wasn't, but I really, I really like his systematic theology. But anyway, under soteriology, he's just got this great summary of what soteriology is.

37:07

It's just the first line of his, of his section. It is systematic. And it says soteriology deals with the communication of the blessings of salvation to the center and his restoration to divine favor and to a life and intimate communion with God.

37:27

I just think that's wonderful. You can say amen or something. Hey man.

37:34

Hey man. Hey man. Okay. Figure you want, you get the whole choir going. Yeah.

37:40

I've been in some black churches where that's what they do. They have, they have the choir. They all start singing. Amen. It's at different points.

37:47

Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Cause they, the pastor gives the cue when it's supposed to go is I saw one guy, he'd flick his hand in the air and they would all go,

37:52

Hey man. Hey man. Well, that's a lot better than the mega churches where they'll just hold up a sign for applause or, you know, whatever.

38:00

Oh no. Do they really? Oh, nevermind. Oh, I shouldn't be surprised, but yeah.

38:06

Aye, aye, aye. So let's go over where we're going to be headed in this. And then we're going to do some, some books that we recommend.

38:14

The topics we're going to touch on. And if you're looking at the website and you're looking at the areas, we're going to start off with regeneration.

38:21

Then we're going to go to election. We're going to look at justification, sanctification, and then talk about security.

38:27

So what do we mean by each of those? And some people would argue we should have put election first. And the reason is, is because election happens before the foundation of the universe, before the foundation of the world.

38:37

So the argument that we all say is you should start there with election and move forward. I chose to start with regeneration.

38:45

The reason I wanted to do that is because we first want to define the terms. This is the first act within history of what we understand happened.

38:54

Even if there was things that were going on before that in time. Now we can't fully comprehend election outside of time.

39:02

So I start with regeneration and then move to election. Regeneration is that point, as I said earlier, you go from being an enemy of God to a child of God, what we'd be referred to as a born again, conversion.

39:12

Election deals with the selection process that God shows that God chose us.

39:19

Think about that. People don't like that because they think, well, I chose God. That's the thing we want to break you off.

39:24

And if you keep listening, we want to lay that out to show why it is that God had to be the only one to choose.

39:32

And we've been laying this, this out throughout building. We're building block upon block with this so that you see what scripture, what

39:40

I believe scripture is teaching. What happens in regeneration? Well, justification, that's a, that's a legal term and we're going to explain that because that is defines what regeneration is.

39:50

So all of those three are really dealing with regeneration that salvation passed. Then we will deal with a section on sanctification.

39:59

Sanctification is the whole idea of that process that is between, it starts at regeneration and ends at glorification and security deals with the thing is

40:09

I already brought up so many people question, can you lose your salvation? We will deal with that under security.

40:14

One last section we'll deal with is separation. Okay. The separation of sin in this one, we'll deal with the fact that many people end up arguing that you could be sinlessly perfect and we're going to show why that is not true.

40:28

All right. So that is where we're headed in the next several of episodes in this series.

40:43

So we wanted to give some books for you guys to get some homework to do. Gave you homework in a previous episode that we did where I talked about some personal things.

40:52

Well, we're going to give you some homework on this one. So your homework here is going to be to go and check out some of the books we recommend.

40:59

So first, let me just give a word from our sponsor, MyPillow. If you want to get a great pillow, get a great night of sleep, go to mypillow .com

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It's a bud changer. So let's look at some books before we look at the books we want on soteriology.

41:27

Let me just mention that striving for eternity is still running a sale on the book, sharing the good news with Mormons. If you want to learn more about Mormonism, this will help, but really what it's going to teach you is different ideas on evangelism.

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42:03

So with that, let's get into some books we can recommend for people to go pick up on soteriology because this is a topic that a lot of people debate.

42:12

I think the two areas that I see most people debate is the area of soteriology and end times.

42:19

And it is on, I, I said to you before we recorded bud that when I moved to this house and I started putting my books back on the shelf,

42:27

I started to notice something as my books were being laid out over here on my left,

42:32

I have all my theology section. Now they're not theological works like systematic theologies.

42:37

Those are the ones that are back into the left. No, of course you can't see them. These are all just books that people have written on theological topics.

42:46

They're over there. Now granted some of them merge over to the shelf that's here on my right.

42:52

That's behind this monitor. And what I noticed was all of my old

42:57

Puritan works and reformers, they're all in the theology section mostly.

43:03

And a largest section of them are in soteriology. And then

43:08

I noticed all the newer books that I have, they're all in the Christian living. I have very few

43:13

Puritans and reformers in an older works that are in the

43:19

Christian living. And I have very few of the newer works in the theology. It's just something

43:25

I noticed. And I sat back and looked at it and went, wow, this tells us the problem with the modern church, because they're all focused on how we can help you as a

43:32

Christian without providing the theology that underpins how we live.

43:39

And it's those, that's why I think the Puritans reformers, they didn't have to teach the Christian living because they taught the theology and people figured out the

43:46

Christian living from the theology. Now we're sticking the Christian living out there with no underpinnings, no theology under it.

43:54

And then we wonder why people walk away from, from the, the faith, why they don't believe why it is that the church is in such a mess.

44:01

And they, they, they can't figure out what the definition of a pastor is. They got to reevaluate what a pastor is because maybe, maybe it does allow for a woman to be called a pastor, but not a real pastor.

44:10

Like we're going to dice words, or maybe homosexuals can be pastors. They're getting into all these things.

44:16

Why? They're basing everything on Christian living without the underpinnings of theology. So let's give a couple of books that we can recommend.

44:23

What's on your list. I had a couple of kind of current modern authors and a couple of,

44:31

Puritans actually, but I had chosen by God by R .C. Sproul. Excellent resource.

44:37

I had that too. The book by John Murray called Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

44:43

I think that is just a stellar work. I didn't have that on my list, but I would, I, I would probably agree with you.

44:49

That should be on there. Yeah. Stephen Charnock's, the doctrine of regeneration and then John Owens, the doctrine of justification by faith.

44:57

Now with those two, it really doesn't matter what they say, what they write. You want to get it hard to read.

45:03

I will grant you that these are Puritans, right? So I would add to that Lorraine Botner's book on predestination.

45:12

That is very good. I would also add MacArthur's book on what we would call lordship salvation, which is the gospel according to Jesus.

45:23

And the reason I would add that is because he's really making a distinction toward, you know, what are we, do we just say a prayer?

45:32

Is it just, Hey, I can, I can say, I believe and live any way I want, but what is salvation?

45:38

He gets into what is conversion? Yeah, I think that's a helpful, that would be a really helpful one.

45:43

If folks need to understand if they haven't read it, then I don't think you can get into heaven if you haven't read it. But nevertheless, you need to get that book and understand he's really dealing in a polemical response to this sort of carnal

45:54

Christian notion that was going around and he's debating for lordship salvation.

46:01

He's mentioning Zayn Hodges and mentioning Ryrie's books. And so he's, he's being specific in that.

46:07

Let me give one book that you may not expect. It's a short little read. It's called do not hinder them by Justin Peters.

46:15

And you say, wait, isn't that about childhood baptism? Yes, it is. So why are you recommending it,

46:21

Andrew in salvation? Because one of the things I love about what Justin did in that book is he, he said he wanted to say, okay, you baptize a child when you know they're safe.

46:31

So the first question that comes up is what is conversion? And he does an excellent job in very few words, defining what conversion is, which is necessary when we talk about salvation.

46:44

And so I would recommend that book as well. Any others that you want to add? There are tons, but the problem is, you know, yeah, some of them are very helpful, but the authors may not be someone you'd want to recommend because they've gone off the, off the reservation.

47:03

Sometimes what's good for people is to get the, like the counterpoint point series where they have like five views on free will.

47:10

There's books like that that are helpful to give you a differing views. I think that when you look at R .C.

47:16

Sproul's book, Willing to Believe, what he tries to do in that book is give the all the different controversies over free will.

47:23

And what he's trying to do is give it from, from the different perspectives. So he talks about the

47:29

Pelagius view of free will, the Augustinian view, the semi

47:34

Pelagian view, Martin Luther's view, John Calvin's view, James Arminius' view, which is interesting,

47:41

James Arminius. And, and the thing that's interesting that R .C. does is he points out that Arminius was actually a

47:47

Calvinist. So few people understand the history, right? So you have John Calvin and he taught some things, but his followers went further.

47:53

And what James Arminius was actually doing was trying to say, no, no, no, guys, guys, this is what Calvin was teaching. Pull it back.

48:00

And then his followers went even further the other way. And then they wrote a five point argument against the

48:07

Calvinist and the Calvinist responded. And that response is known as Tulip. But you end up seeing that Calvin and Arminius actually, when people say,

48:15

Oh, you worship a man. Well, Calvin and Arminius are pretty similar. There's areas they disagree with as with anybody, but R .C.

48:22

makes a good point of saying of bringing that out. But then he goes over Jonathan Edwards. Then he, he deals with Finney's view.

48:29

And then he, the one chapter I didn't like, and Bud's going to say it's because I'm dispensational and he's knocking on dispensationalists.

48:36

But the one chapter I didn't like is the one on Louis Barry Schaefer. Now, why didn't I like that? The only reason

48:41

I didn't like that one is not because of his knock on dispensationalism. That's that actually wasn't the reason he says he's going to focus on Schaefer and all these others.

48:49

He focused on, on one man's theology, and he's focusing on Schaefer. But then he says that, you know, he says in the beginning, like, you know, there's so many dispensationalists all over the place.

48:57

We shouldn't use the extremes, but then what does he do? Instead of taking what Schaefer said, he takes the extremes like Billy Graham.

49:04

And I just go, wait, you just broke your own rule. So that, that was the reason I didn't like that. But, but the book, the book is helpful to give you a whole view, the different views that different people had and being, trying to be honest with those views.

49:18

And so books like that would always be helpful. So you can see, especially if you get like the counterpoint series, where you have people arguing their view, say of people that are in those views, arguing for those views and you can compare them.

49:29

Those are helpful. So with that, let me give some closing comments and say this, that if you guys go check out strivingforturning .org,

49:45

if you'd like us to come to your church and speak, we got plenty of weekend seminars. We do evangelism training, apologetics training, teach you how to interpret the scriptures, teach you on how to address things, cultural issues, such as social justice, abortion.

50:01

We can come into your church and we don't have a price tag. You do have no speaking fee.

50:06

You can do a love offering if you want. You know, we come out and we ask that you at least try to cover the costs of coming out there and, but not all churches can, and that's fine.

50:17

We don't care. We'll go to the smallest church. You say, but Andrew, I don't have 10 people. That's okay. I preach to a congregation of five.

50:24

That included me, the pastor, the organizer of the conference and two attendees.

50:30

Yeah, we'll do that. You preach to me every, every time we record. So no, no, no.

50:37

I'm preaching. Then, then we're preaching to the thousands. They're they're listening over the rest of the month.

50:43

But what we end up seeing though is we'll come to a small church because that's where the help is needed.

50:49

And the pastors don't usually have the time because they're by vocational to put together studies and seminars.

50:55

We'll come out and train your people so that you guys can be equipped to build your church.

51:01

We come in, we give the training, we give the tools, we leave, you carry on the work. That's the idea.

51:07

So let us know, email us at speaker at striving for eternity .org speaker, it's driving for any .org. And if you want to book us, just go to the website strivingforeturning .org

51:15

and go to the section on scheduling a speaker. We'd greatly appreciate it. If you want to donate to us, we would greatly appreciate it.

51:22

You can go to strivingforeturning .org slash support, and it's all at the one site. So you could just go to striving fraternity.

51:28

You can see where you could support us. That'd be great. Supporting us monthly helps us a ton because we have monthly expenses.

51:35

And so that would be helpful for us. So with that, bud, you know what? What's that? That's a wrap.

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