Is Limited Atonement Biblical? w/Dr. James White (Part 4)

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"Free-will" and God's Power to Save (Part 5)

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If you would like to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter eight, we will be getting there, or I know this is a very special congregation.

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You have it right on the front of your bulletin. So I would expect most of you don't really need your

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English Bible. You have it right there on the front of your bulletin from manuscript

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P46, from around 175 to 200 AD.

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This is the earliest we have, the earliest manuscript copy we have of Romans chapter eight.

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This contains everything we're gonna be looking at today, except for sort of a part of one side.

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There's a papyri, this is what they look like. They're 1800 years old.

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If you think they look bad, what are you gonna look like in 1800 years, okay? Every time someone gets on the papyri,

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I'm like, they're doing better than you. But that is actually the earliest that is housed currently in Dublin, Ireland at the

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Chester Beattie Library. I got to see it a number of years ago. And so that's P46, the earliest collection of that we have of Paul's epistles.

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And I will go ahead and make this. If it is the earliest collection we have of Paul's epistles, then do you think it contains

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Hebrews or not? Because see, we don't know who wrote

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Hebrews, it doesn't say, right? So if the earliest collection, we don't even have any fragments of Romans eight before P46, so this is the earliest we have.

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So do you think it contains Hebrews or not? So if you think it contains Hebrews, put your hand up.

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If you think it doesn't contain Hebrews, put your hand up. And how many of you just refuse to answer my question?

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The vast majority of you. Every time I ask that question, literally around the world,

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I have asked audiences in Zambia, Ukraine, South Africa, Australia, Russia, Samara, Russia in January of 2019.

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And even when I say, now please, it hurts me when you don't answer my question.

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And I lay it down thick and they'll still just sit there going, I'm not answering, you cannot make me answer.

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I'm not putting my hand up one way or the other. You're gonna mock me, aren't you? There's a camera on me right now, it's going on YouTube, isn't it?

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Yeah, nope, it's not going on YouTube, but it does contain the book of Hebrews, right after the book of Romans.

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So the few of you who were kind enough, compassionate enough, loving enough to participate in my little vote and said that it did, you'd be right.

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All that means is someone around 175 to 200 years after the time of the birth of Christ, seemingly believed that Paul wrote

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Hebrews and included it therein. That's all that means, but there you go. So that's what's on the front of your bulletin.

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And if you were wondering, you may have been thinking the photocopier just had a problem today, spit something out, didn't make any sense, but actually that is the earliest copy we have of this section.

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We are going through a series on the doctrines of grace. This is not the first time that we've done so.

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In fact, I remember it was only a few years ago that as a non -member of Apologia, I was invited to speak on the next point of the acrostic on irresistible grace a number of years ago, back at the

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Vineyard Fellowship location when we were there in Tempe. And so it hasn't been too long, but we have so many people coming in and out that it is always good to make sure that people understand where it is we stand.

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And when we come to what I... I wrote an article back when...

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Well, I wrote an article back when Jeff was probably a young teenager called

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The Terrible Horrible L. The Terrible Horrible L. And this was back when we did a newsletter, again, on a photocopier.

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And I'm not even sure we had... I don't know if we even had laser printers yet.

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I think we were still in the dot matric age back then. But I called

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The Terrible Horrible L for the simple reason that when you think of tulip, the one that even

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Reformed people are a little afraid of, are a little hesitant about.

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I mean, if you were to ask everybody if we put a T and a U and an L and an I and a

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P up here, and I asked you to get in line in front of your favorite letter,

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I think the L would be lonely. It would be all...

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Lonely, L, they would fit together because they would be lonely. I'm not lonely because Zach is giving me some cold water.

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Isn't that wonderful? But it doesn't have a straw in it, which is really good. Not gonna say anything about that.

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But anyway, I don't think many people would line up behind it.

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I remember I was speaking at a historic Baptist church in London a few years ago.

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Sure, I'm glad I got to do all that traveling over the past decade because I'm not sure I'm gonna be doing much of it in the future, the way things are going.

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But I was speaking at a historic Baptist church. It's so historic that right about there or so, because similar laying out, right about there or so was a pew.

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I have a picture on my phone. And there is an indentation in the seat of the pew.

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And they like to show people it because during World War II, during the

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Battle of Britain, the Germans were bombing London and they would drop these incendiary devices and they're on timers.

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So they wouldn't all go off at once. They'd go off at different times so that the people trying to stop the fires would have different places to go.

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They wouldn't be able to just go to one area and put the fires out, see? So this one had come crashing through the ceiling and had landed on that pew and indented the surface of the pew.

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Thankfully a guy on a bike, it was obviously like a Tuesday night or something like that. There wasn't a church service going on.

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Guy on a bike going by outside heard it happen and ran into the church and got it out before it burned the church down.

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But the indentation of that device is still in the pew. That's how historic. You go over to London and everything is just soaked in history.

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And I was preaching at that church and the fellowship hall was sort of out similarly.

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Actually, it was out through this direction now that I think about it. And this woman came up to me in this narrow hallway so there was no escape.

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And she says, I'm not sure, but listening to what you were saying, you don't believe in limited atonement, do you?

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And it was sort of like, because if you do, I'm going to shoot you. That type of thing. Or I'm going to scream,

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I'm going to faint, I'm going to die right here, blame you. Whatever it was, it did not look like it was going to be a real positive situation.

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And that's not the only time I've had someone, you don't believe in that, do you?

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And you've probably experienced the same thing. And if you haven't, you will. Now, I'm here to tell you that if we did do the

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T and the U and the L and the I and the P, I would stand up and I would stand in front of the

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L. Because of the title of the sermon,

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Trinitarian Harmony in the Atonement. Trinitarian Harmony in the

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Atonement. When we think of the preceding points we've looked at, the sovereignty of God, he is creator of all things.

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He has woven the very fabric of time itself.

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The very fabric of time. He is the one described in Ephesians 1 as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will.

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So we have the sovereignty of God. Then we have the depravity of man.

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Made in the image of God and yet fallen in Adam. And the scripture teaches us that he is a slave to sin.

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And the son must make that slave free. Slave to sin.

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Unable to come to Christ outside of the drawing of the father. Incapable of hearing the words, unless you belong to God.

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This is the teaching of scripture. We've looked at the unconditional election of God.

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That God's not just peering down the corridors of time. It's not the two rails of the railroad that eventually meet in eternity because if the two rails of a railroad ever meet, the train crashes in time or eternity.

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It is the unconditional electing grace of God.

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It is free on his part. He is under no compulsion. That's why it's grace.

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But when you think of each one of those, once you get to the atonement, now you begin to see the interplay of the divine persons in bringing about the glory of God.

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You see the relationship of father and son, the harmony that exists between the work of the son and the decree of the father, which is going to then feed into the next point, which is the irresistible grace of God, that power of God, the spirit of God, that at the time of God's appointment comes and brings us to spiritual life based upon what has been done in the behalf of the elect at the cross.

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What you and I need to understand is that limited atonement, not the best term, not the most,

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I mean, obviously the Synod of Dort did not have a marketing term, a marketing team working on the various words they're going to be using, but what they were affirming is one of the most beautiful realities of biblical revelation.

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Think about it. When you think about the atoning work of Christ, remember our catechism question?

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The atonement, most people, when they think of the term atonement, think only of the cross.

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They think only of the sacrifice because most people today don't think about what the duties and realities of the priest really were.

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But obviously those who knew their Old Testament knew what Yom Kippur was all about.

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They knew what happened on that high day of atonement. They knew the priest first had to offer sacrifice for himself, and then he offered that sacrifice for the people, the people who had drawn near in worship.

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And when he would take that blood in the bowl, can you imagine what that bowl felt like?

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It was heavy, but what else was it? It was warm.

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That blood would have been warm in the hands. It had just been drained from the now dead body of the sacrifice.

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And for the one time in the year, the high priest enters the veil, that thickly woven veil that separated the people from what you've probably heard called the

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Holy of Holies. Holy of Holies is just, that's a Hebrew word in Hebrew way of speaking. It just simply means the holiest place.

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And he enters into the holiest place. You have the ark, you have the mercy seat, and he sprinkles that blood upon the mercy seat.

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And he can see the blood of every sacrifice that has come before.

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You think it ever made him wonder? This must be pointing to something more. There must be something greater than this.

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But he had to enter into the presence of God with the sacrifice to intercede for the people for whom the sacrifice had been made.

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This is his function as the high priest. And tradition tells us by the days of Jesus, they were so concerned about the high priest not being struck dead when he entered in before God that they would put a rope on his ankle so that if he died, was struck dead in the holy place, they could at least get the corpse out.

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Somewhat of a lack of confidence might be expressed by that idea, if that's actually what happened.

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Some of the traditions say that's the case. This was the act of intercession.

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And what you need to understand, so many of your friends, your relatives, your family members have been given a complete misunderstanding of what this point is actually saying.

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It's always presented negatively. It's always presented, you're saying that Jesus's death is limited.

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It's not sufficient. You're just saying he only died for the elect.

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There's always some level of truth to any representation or it's not a representation at all.

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But what should we be saying when we present this truth to someone? What should our understanding be?

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Because if we don't understand it ourselves, if we're not passionate about ourselves, we're not gonna be passionate about presenting it to anybody else.

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And people can tell. I can tell. I can tell most reformed people they wanna talk about the sovereignty of God, oh yes.

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And they wanna talk about unconditional election. But they just wanna get past limited atonement as fast as they can.

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A little bit of a problem in confidence. I think it's a problem in understanding. Because what we need to say to someone, let's say you're at, you know, the holidays are coming.

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Believe it or not, this year will be over someday. It's hard to believe, but it seems like about three years right now.

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But the holidays are coming. And if we're allowed to meet with our families for the holidays and the

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Gestapo isn't coming after us, you might be sitting there and this conversation might come up.

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And someone might say, I just can't believe you believe in that limited atonement thing.

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And you know what my response would be? No, nobody in my family is gonna do that. Most people who know me don't do that ever.

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Actually, it's weird. Even when I want them to.

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But my response would be, I find the harmony that exists between the election of God the

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Father and the work of the Son to be a beautiful thing.

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Why would you want me to believe that the Father and the Son are not seeking to accomplish the exact same things in redemption?

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At which point you're gonna get this look, what? Which means now you can explain what you just said.

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You've got the conversation going. But did you hear what I said? Think about it.

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Unconditional election says that God the Father has a specific decree that names a specific people who are going to be redeemed to his honor and glory long before they ever come into existence.

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When we sing that song, my name was graven on his hands, we actually mean it.

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We don't mean it. I engraved my name upon his hand long after he died.

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That's not what we're singing. Elliot, is that the words? I'm just checking, because you're the official guy here.

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I just scared Elliot to death from the pulpit, folks. I just want you to know his heart rate has increased 40 beats per minute right now.

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He's talking to me from the pulpit. What's going on here? Think about the theology of our music.

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My name was graven on his hand. It's a personal atonement. So if God the

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Father has decreed the identity of the elect and the only way to bring about their salvation is

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Christ's death in their behalf, why would Christ's death be made for anyone that the

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Father has not decreed to save? Or let's put it this way.

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If the Son appears before the Father and presents his sacrifice, could the

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Father ever not be appeased by the perfection of the sacrifice that Christ presents?

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So if you have something called a universal atonement, where Christ bears in his body the sin of every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live, including every one of the

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Amorites and the Jebusites that were wiped out by the people of Israel in their sin as a judgment from God.

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If he bore in his body the penalty of their sin and he now appears in the presence of the

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Father in their behalf, there's only two possibilities if that happens.

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One, universalism, everyone's gonna be saved because his sacrifice in their behalf is enough to bring about their salvation.

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Or B, there is disharmony between the Father and the Son because the

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Son is seeking to get the Father to save individuals that the

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Father has not decreed to grant his grace to in the first place.

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Which is it gonna be? Oh, I know, some of you say, well, actually what it means is

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Jesus does bear all their sins, but that's not enough.

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That only makes their salvation potential. It's a possibility.

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Now it's possible for them to get saved if they will, and then the list can be very short or the list can be very long.

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Maybe they only have to do this number of things or they have to do a bunch of things, but the point is the death of Christ is not enough.

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And so you can have God desiring everyone's salvation, the

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Son dying to accomplish everyone's salvation, but it's all up to the almighty will of man.

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So you can literally have the Son interceding before the Father in behalf of individuals, and God the

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Father does everything he can, God the Son does everything he can, the Spirit of God does everything he can, and they fail miserably because of the almighty will of man.

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That's a real popular viewpoint. It's almost never expressed that way because people are never pushed to think through what it means that they're saying, but that's a very popular viewpoint.

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What I'm saying to you is the scriptures present to us perfect harmony between the

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Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father elects a specific people unconditionally.

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The Son dies in their place. What is the key term? Ephesians chapter one, 10 times in 13 verses.

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In him, in the beloved one, in Christ, we are united with him in his death, burial, and resurrection.

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He knows for whom he is dying. We die with him.

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We don't experience that until his chosen time in our life, but the reality is the atonement is personal.

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We are united to him. This is the result of the Father's decree. The Son takes our place.

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His death is our death, his resurrection, our resurrection, and then the Spirit of God at the time of God's choosing of his ordaining comes to us, removes that heart of stone, gives us a heart of flesh, causes us to be born again, and gives to us the gifts of faith and repentance.

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Perfect harmony. The Son is not doing something outside of the Father, separate from the

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Father, trying to accomplish something the Father isn't trying to accomplish. Spirit is applying everything that's done by the

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Son and by the Father. It is a Trinitarian gospel.

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Now, there are people watching this right now who will probably be doing three or four hour responses to this sermon, which will not be three or four hours long itself,

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I can assure you of that. I would never live it down by a certain person with a large beard anyways if I did, but that's why we're doing two of them.

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Get to split it over two Sundays. There are those who will respond and try to say, well, that's just a theological position.

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You're imposing that upon the text. That's why

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I want to do a deep dive with you. I believe the Bible doesn't just imply this.

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The Bible teaches it necessarily. So, turn with me to Romans chapter eight.

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You all know the text very, very, very well. I am going to move quickly through what you think is the key part.

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Yes, it's important, but we know the beginning of verse 28, we have the start of the golden chain of redemption.

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Don't have time to exegete it all right now. I'm gonna run through it quickly though. For we know that to those who love

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God, He causes all things to work together for good to those who are the called according to His purpose.

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Just one thing to emphasize, those who love God and those who are the called according to His purpose are the same group.

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They're the same group. So that means the loving God part is the result of His having called us.

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You can tell where somebody is in their understanding of grace. If when they read a verse like this, their first thought is, oh,

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I've chosen to love God and therefore He has chosen me as a result. You can tell where somebody is if that's what they think.

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And it makes me wonder, do you know your own heart? Do you know the depth of your own sin?

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The reason you love God. What does 1 John say? We didn't love

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Him first, He loved us first. We love Him because He first loved us. And so the point is in Romans 8, those two groups are equal to one another.

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They're the same group, but it exists because of the result of God's grace.

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And all things work together. That's the term for synergism. That's the Greek word synergism.

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They work together for good. God causes that to happen.

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Why? Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed the image of His Son so that He might be the firstborn amongst many brothers.

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Once again, very briefly, foreknow does not mean to know a fact beforehand.

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This is an active verb. Every time God does it, it's a person that He knows.

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It's either Jesus, Israel, or the elect. This is not

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God looking down the corridors of time and learning something. This is

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God choosing. This is God loving. When Adam knew

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Eve, she conceived a child. God says of Israel, you only have

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I known. He knew about all the other nations on the globe. He created them, but He chose to enter into relationship, covenant relationship with one.

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Those whom He foreknew, He predestined, not just simply to give them a ticket to heaven, but to conform them the image of His Son.

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There is a purpose in all of this. There is a purpose that God is accomplishing to His glory.

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And it is making the body of Christ conforming us to the image of His Son, the incarnate

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God -man, so that He might be the firstborn, the one having preeminence amongst many brothers, many brothers, and then you have the golden chain.

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For those whom He predestined, these He also called. And those whom

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He called, these He also justified. Those whom He justified, these

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He also glorified. You already know this, but I'll repeat it.

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You can not break this chain as Paul writes it.

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Without contradicting the apostle, he is very specific, he is very clear in the language and grammar that he uses, that this is the same group all the way through.

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All those predestined are called. All those who are called are justified.

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All who are justified are glorified. This is the golden chain.

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This is God's work of redemption. It is not an exhaustive description of everything that God does.

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But it is the foundation that Paul is giving to the church at Rome to recognize that this work of salvation is divine.

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It is powerful. It is what God does. It is not a hoped -for thing.

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It is what God is doing to glorify Himself. That was the prologue.

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I'm learning from Jeff. He's smiling over there, that's good.

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My eyes are still good enough to see that. That's good. Therefore, what shall we say to these things?

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What shall we say? Follow the pronouns. It'll be vitally important.

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Follow the pronouns. What shall we say to these things?

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These things that God has done. You'll notice there wasn't anything in there about us doing anything that determines the outcome.

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God foreknew, God predestined, God called, God justified, God glorified. He's the subject of all of those verbs.

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So what shall we say to these things? In light of a recognition of what

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God Himself has done, what shall we say? If God is hupere haemon, for us, who can be kata haemon, against us?

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If God is for us, who can possibly be against us?

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I mean, you can get the whole Roman Empire in there. They're nothing in comparison to the creator of all things.

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If God is for us, who can be against us? Now, who is the us?

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Well, we know, verse 28, love God, called according to His purpose, foreknown, being conformed to the image of His Son.

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We are the many brethren. We are the ones predestined, called, justified, and glorified. That's the we.

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And so, God is for us. Therefore, no one can be against us. He, who did not spare or hold back

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His own Son. The emphasis there is upon the personal relationship, not just a son of God.

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My Muslim friends like to say, God has sons by the tons. Not in this fashion.

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When Jesus used the same type of language in the gospel of John, John chapter five, the

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Jews wanted to kill Him because they knew He was calling God His own Father in a special way that no one else could ever use.

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He, who did not hold back, spare His own Son, but huperhemon, the exact same two words

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He just used in verse 31. If God is huperhemon, for us, huper is the normal term for substitution, taking the place of.

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If He did not hold back, spare His own Son, but in our place, delivered

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Him up for us all. For us all.

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Is this all of humanity speaking here? Many people will try to say that it is. They will have to constantly be switching out the speakers in this text.

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Let me suggest something to you. He who can walk through a text consistently from beginning to end in the way that the author originally intended it to be heard is the person who is honoring the original intention of the writing.

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If you have to break out of what the original intention of the writing was, you have a tradition that's getting in the way of truly following the text.

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That's how you determine it. That's how you detect it. And so there'll be some who will say, yes, delivered

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Him up for us all. And in fact, is that not the standard evangelical theology in the

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United States today? That the Son was delivered up for every single human being who has ever lived?

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Or there might be some who would say, well, every single human being who has lived since the cross.

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They might do some dispensational things or something to change how that works, but there are different views.

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So just be aware of that. The term delivered

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Him up is the same term used of Judas's betrayal of Jesus. It is a term used of delivering up of the sacrifice in the

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Old Testament, paradidomi. But He delivered

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Him up for us all, I suggest to you, and we're gonna get a few words down the sentence here and it'll be made very, very plain.

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I suggest to you that this is a limited group.

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There are many people today who don't speak these words. They do not love God. They're not being conformed to the image of His Son.

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They hate His Son. And there are many who will die this day in that enmity toward God.

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But the scripture says He gave His own Son, delivered

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Him up in our behalf. That's sacrificial language. That's substitutionary language.

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How shall He not also together with Him freely give us all things?

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So if He has given His Son in our behalf, would He withhold anything else that we would need to be conformed to the image of His Son, to make it to the completion of what the intention of that sacrifice was?

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Can there be anything that will not be provided to us in light of the fact that His Son has been delivered up in our place?

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It's a rhetorical question. The answer is supposed to be very, very clear. Of course not.

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Of course not. Then you have,

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I think, the portion of the text that seals the deal.

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Seals the deal. Who will bring a charge against God's elect?

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Now, the term to bring a charge, I spent a little time this week refreshing some of my studies from the past.

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It is a term that is used in numerous papyri that we have discovered contemporaneous with the time of the

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New Testament. In a legal context, it is the normal term that would be used if you were to bring a charge against someone in a court of law.

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And that's gonna be the context right here. The context here is the heavenly courtroom.

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So that's the best translation. That's the best translation. Who will bring a charge against the elect of God?

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Now, just before this, it was said, who can be against us? Kata. Here it is again.

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Who will bring a charge, kata, against the elect of God? Who has the standing?

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Who has the ground to enter into the place where God sits as judge and bring a charge, an accusation against those whom

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God has chosen? Well, that's a good question. That's a good question.

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Because the whole idea here is going to be that something special has been done in their behalf that precludes any kind of condemnatory charge.

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And that special thing is the death of Jesus and his resurrection and his intercession.

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So if it's a universal atonement, then no one can bring a charge against anyone.

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But we know that's not the case. Unless you're a universalist.

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There are only two possible ways to read most of these texts, either as a reformed person or a universalist.

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The person in between has to continually switch their interpretive hermeneutic and methodology to make it all work.

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Because it just doesn't fit the text. It just doesn't. Who will bring a charge against God's elect?

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God is the justifier. It's only three words in Greek. Theos ha dikaion.

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Dikaios, righteous, just. This is a participle.

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God is the justifier. God is the one declaring righteous.

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He is the one bringing down the gavel and saying, not guilty. In behalf of whom?

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The elect of God. God brings down the gavel and says, that one, those people as a group are right with me.

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Why? Because he did not spare his son. Delivered him up for us all.

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God is the one who justifies. What, now I'm not gonna ask if we have any attorneys here.

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Because I have a lot of attorney jokes. And I don't want to start that. But what attorney with a brain is going to bring a charge against the elect of God when

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God has already brought the gavel down and said, not guilty, righteous.

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Who can bring a charge? God is the one who justified. But that's not, that would be the most simple law court illustration you could have.

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Very, very, very simple. But this law court situation is more complex than that.

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Because you have God, the judge. Who is the one who condemns?

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So God has justified. The opposite of that is to bring condemnation. Who can be the one who brings condemnation?

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Because we have another person in the law court. Another person in the law court.

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Christ Jesus. Now it's interesting. When God the Father is described in verse 31, a participle is used.

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It's an articular substantival participle. The justifying one. And now when

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Jesus, Christ Jesus is mentioned, there are, there is a participle here that says the died one.

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It's in direct parallel. The one who died. The one who gave his life.

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The one that was delivered up. He now comes into the picture. This is a sacrificial context.

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This is about the atonement. Christ Jesus, the one who died, he actually gave his life.

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The God man gave his life in behalf of his people. The one who died.

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But rather, more than that, beyond that, in addition to that, was raised up.

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Was raised up. The one who died, yes, but he can stand in the law court because he's been raised up.

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It's the same beautiful picture. Remember Revelation chapter five? Remember it wasn't too long ago we preached on that.

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Remember when the lamb is seen? What is the description? He stands before the throne, the lamb as if slain.

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No. The stain of the blood's still upon the animal, but he's standing because he's been raised up.

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He's defeated death. Christ Jesus, the one who died, rather who has been raised up, who is also at the right hand of God, who also is interceding, who per haemon, for us.

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Same language we've already seen. We dare not miss, because this is gonna come up elsewhere in Paul.

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When he writes to Timothy, he uses the same type of language about the intercessory work of Christ.

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It is in the context of his being given in our behalf. And so in the apostle's mind, there could be no separation.

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The intercessory work and the sacrificial work are one and the same. That's because that's how the high priest had to do it.

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That's how it had been set up. That's how this is fulfillment language. And so you have

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God, righteous, justified. Who will condemn?

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And there is Christ Jesus, who has died. He's been raised up.

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And now he stands before the Father, interceding for the very same ones.

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That's why there can be no sentence of condemnation. Once again, only two possibilities.

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Universalism, everybody gets saved. The biblical teaching,

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God's elect. Why are we saved? It's because we've cleaned ourselves up.

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It's because we pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. Oh yes,

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God's at work within us to will and to do according to his good pleasure. We are to desire to recognize good works within us because God has foreordained that we should walk in them.

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But the only reason any one of us ever stands in the presence of this holy

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God is because what has been done in our behalf by the

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Father, the Son, and the Spirit? He intercedes for us.

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Who is Jesus interceding for? Some of you have heard some of the debates I've done on this subject. Sometimes I'm debating people who don't really wanna discuss the subject or they're just trying to get around it.

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Sometimes I'm having conversations with brothers. And it's always amazed me how they really struggle at this point.

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When I push home upon them, who is Jesus interceding for?

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Is it not clear that he would have to intercede for everyone for whom he died?

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How could it be possible that Jesus provides a universal atonement, a substitutional universal atonement on the cross and then does not intercede for a certain portion of those people before the

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Father? That would be like the high priest taking the blood into the holy place and instead of just sprinkling the mercy seat, well, that one's for Bob and that one's...

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No, he didn't have that right. He didn't have the capacity. He sprinkled the one blood on the one mercy seat.

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The high priest intercedes for everyone for whom he died, for whom he died.

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And so here you have, I believe the direct statement of particular redemption, specific atonement.

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It is laid out for us. Who will bring a charge against the elect of God?

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No one can because the Father has justified them and the Son has died in their place, has risen again and intercedes for them in the presence of the

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Father himself. This is Trinitarian harmony in the atonement in bold letters.

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It is amazing the depths to which people will go to try to get around the clarity of a statement such as this, but there's no way to do it.

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And if you think that this is just, well, you know, it's a lot of deep theology you're talking about today, look at the next verse.

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Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

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You want theology? When you're at the deathbed of the loved one, you better have theology.

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And this better be the theology you have. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

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Who is the us? It's been clear all the way through, hasn't it?

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This goes all the way back, God's election.

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We love God. This is what he's done. This is how he did it.

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And the result is no one. Can ever separate us from the love of Christ.

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Which as he will say in verse 39, once again, none of these things will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. All the nakedness, all the peril, all the famine, none of the things in this world can separate us from the love of Christ.

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Why? Because nothing in this world united us with Christ in the first place.

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That was the grace of God. And the world cannot destroy that grace. The triune

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God is going to glorify himself in the salvation of a specific people.

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And the surety of your salvation can never be any more certain than that God is going to accomplish his purposes.

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And once you try to kick open the door for your accomplishments and your free will and your autonomy, you destroy the foundation of assurance that is found only in surrendering yourself completely.

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This is the goodness of God. I remember so clearly years and years ago, my mom, who's not with us any longer, went to a funeral.

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We have a lot of SDA folks in our family, Seventh Day Adventists, on both sides, interestingly enough.

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And no, I don't know that I'm actually related to Ellen G. White, okay? Who was married to James White.

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My name's not doing me a lot of good these days on any front, really. But I don't remember if this was a specific

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SDA funeral or whether it was a Roman Catholic funeral. It was a funeral where the theology of that particular group was that you had to keep your nose clean.

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You had to be all confessed up because you could lose your salvation like that.

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And I was just, I think I was in about second grade at this point in time, maybe first.

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So I was young. And yet it made such a huge impact upon me that she was saying it was so sad to hear the people talking and how, well,

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I hope he made it. I hope he made it. I hope he didn't have a bad thought right before the end.

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I hope he's gonna make it. There was no assurance. There was no ground for rejoicing.

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Because once you kick that door open and you insert that human element in, you lose all ground for assurance and hope.

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Because I don't know about you, but if God does 99 % of it and leaves 1 % up to me,

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I'm gonna find a way to mess it up. Anybody else like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I am so thankful for a perfect Savior. And any time, brothers and sisters, any time you start feeling like God isn't being fair to you,

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God's lost track of you. He's not blessing you the way he's blessing other people.

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I want you to remember something. If you're actually a believer, if you're in Christ, you know what your

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Savior is doing right now? He's representing you before the

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Father. He's representing you before the

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Father. He could be doing anything that he wants. He's representing you before the

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Father. Knowing everything about you.

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Knowing you better than you know yourself. Knowing the sins you will commit this coming week.

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Knowing the number of times, having heard God's truth, you're gonna ignore that and fulfill your own desire.

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Representing you. Is there really anything in this world that could possibly be as precious?

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Sometimes we experience deep pain and sorrow in our lives.

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And the Bible doesn't say it's not real deep pain and sorrow, it is. Sometimes we have horrible things happen in our bodies because we live in a fallen world.

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And by the way, the mortality rate of life is 100%. We're all dead men walking.

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And so sometimes things go wrong with these bodies. And it's so easy for us to become so focused upon that pain and that loss.

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You see the Christian, the Christian has a gift the world cannot understand.

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He's in the presence of the Father for me. I have an anchor within the veil, that beautiful language in Hebrews chapter six.

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I have an anchor within the veil and it's gonna hold for me. No matter how long

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I have to suffer, he intercedes for me.

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He represents me. The world can't understand it.

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We can offer it until the spirit of God changes a heart and a mind.

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And there can be no conception of it. Very often brothers and sisters, we allow the world to steal that gift from us.

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When we set our hearts and minds to love the things of this world.

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What we give up. Theology matters.

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Because it's this theological truth that says, there isn't anything in this created universe that can separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, because of the sovereignty of God, the depravity of man, the unconditional election of God and the particular atonement of Jesus Christ.

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That's why. I'm not saying those that reject these things don't rejoice in Romans eight and what it says.

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I'm just simply saying they don't have any firm foundation for it. When I read, nothing will separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

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I know that's true, because there is an empty tomb and a cross that proves it.

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And it's not about me. It's all about him.

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That's the difference between manmade religion, where you're always working it up inside yourself.

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The biblical faith that says you look away from self. You look only to him.

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He has accomplished all. Everything you do, you do out of love for him.

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Not to add to what he's done, but because you rest solely in what he has done in your behalf.

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So if we put the letters up, the T, the U, the

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L, the I, the P. Be a few more people join me in front of the

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L. You're gonna be ready to explain over Thanksgiving dinner.

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Oh, mom, dad, cousin, uncle, what you've been told about limited atonement, let me tell you something.

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It's actually the glorious truth that nothing can ever separate God's people from the love of Christ because of the perfect unity of the father and the son in providing everything for us.

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So that my high priest right now is in the presence of the father.

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His finished work avails for me. That's why I have peace. That's the beauty of what we have revealed to us in scripture.

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Let's pray together. Our heavenly father, we bow before you knowing right now that our blessed savior, he who was in the beginning, the one who made all things, as the

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God man now is in your presence representing your people.

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And we are amazed. We are astounded.

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We are humbled that such a one who holds all things together would intercede for us, would give himself for us.

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All the beauty of the gospel. We confess we have not lived worthy of it.

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We desire in this coming week, Lord, that by your spirit, you would work within us, that you would remind us over and over again of the glory of the gospel.

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The beauty of our savior. We thank you for the harmony that exists between father, son, and spirit.

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For it is that harmony that is the foundation of our hope.

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Father, thank you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for saving us.