Ordo Salutis (part 2)

Heavenly Father, thank you for this worship day, the Sabbath day. Thank you, Lord, that we can come to this place and learn about you. I just pray that you would watch over us, help us to use our speech wisely and use it to build one another up.

I just pray that you would bless our learning of the Ordo Salutis this morning and that you would watch over us as we worship you in song and in preaching later. In your name we pray, amen. Okay, so when I first started talking about this, I mentioned something called the Historia Salutis as well.

Does anybody know or remember what that is, the Historia Salutis? So the Historia Salutis would be what we would understand as the chronological analysis of what actually occurred to save believers. What do I mean by that?

The way that we present the gospel, right, the four W's or the Romans wrote or whatever it is, that would be what is kind of classically referred to as the Historia Salutis, monergism .org calls it. The theological doctrine that deals with the logical, no, that's the Ordo Salutis, I'll hold on on that, sorry, my bad, I guess.

So Historia Salutis, so that's the four W's, that is who is God, who is man, why did Jesus have to die, what should our response to that be? It's this macro level view of salvation. Now how does that compare to the Ordo Salutis, for those of you who were here before or who may already know what this is?

I'm not going to give any names, but I heard some people saying that they've taught the Ordo Salutis before, so hopefully they're paying attention and they can maybe not hold a piece of paper in front of their face.

How does the Historia Salutis, the classic understanding of the chronology of salvation compare to the Ordo Salutis, anyone? Well, hopefully we'll have a little more interaction as the morning goes on.

Back to that monergism .org definition, the Ordo Salutis is the theological doctrine that deals with the logical sequencing of the benefits of redemption as we are united to Christ which are applied to us by the Holy Spirit.

Ligonier says, it is the order of salvation. This focuses on the acts of God and the response of the individual in salvation. So we talk Historia Salutis, we have this macro level understanding of God's actions towards those who would be saved, the collective group, and then our response to that Ordo Salutis pertains specifically to the process by which each individual believer is saved.

Does that make sense? That would be more of a micro view, exactly. We can distill from the Historia Salutis, bringing in some scripture where necessary to get this Ordo Salutis. There's a couple of really great passages that help us understand this.

The first of those would be Romans 8, 29 -30, which says, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. So there's five major things in this one passage, foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification.

And there's another excellent passage that we can look to in 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 13 and 14,. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.

To this he called you through our gospel, that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So in this passage, we see choosing, which is election. We see sanctification. We see faith. We see calling.

And we see glorification. Yes, absolutely. Anytime. Raise your hand. Scream. Yell. Please. That's a very good way to understand it. That the ordo salutis would be very much the element of a person's testimony.

And once someone is saved, they will certainly look back at the historia salutis, that macro view of salvation, and recognize all of those things. And we'll talk about this a little bit later, but one of the interesting things about, as we look at the logical sequencing of the ordo salutis, and again, if anybody came in after I started talking, Elder Brown has a handout that lists these bullet points.

Sometimes these things happen, and we don't really know, you know, obviously by definition if something happened in time, there was an actual time that it happened. Sometimes we don't really know when that time, like, when were you regenerated?

Especially if I grew up in the church, which, you know, I didn't. But if you grow up in the church, an understanding that the ordo salutis necessarily has points in it that we won't recognize at the time, is actually critical to the assurance of the believer who maybe did grow up in the church.

And they're like, well, I don't know, I mean, I've always known this. But when did I believe it? I don't really, I can't point to that time. As opposed to, you know, a drug addict gets saved, and they're like, well, clearly I have this, you know, 90 degree change in my life.

So within the context of the ordo salutis and these points where these things happen, this logical sequencing of events, which informs our theology, we might not be able to, in our personal lives, pinpoint individual things when they happened.

But we can know that all of those things happened for God to save us. Does that help? Okay. So, one of the things I said last week was the ordo salutis is a lot like the trinity, in a sense. Does anybody remember why that might be the case?

What's the unique thing about the trinity in a theological sense in scripture? Well, that's true, and I like that. And I should have included that, but I didn't. That's also true about the trinity. Also true about the trinity.

That's not the theological thing I was going for, but these are all good, I like this. The word trinity doesn't appear in the text, right? And so, in the same way, this, number one, the list that I have given you has 10 points.

Some of those can be broken out to just be more points. But it's a construct. So we see clear evidence of the trinity in the Bible, but the word trinity never appears in the Bible. So that's one of those things that, if you're preaching the gospel to people and you talk about the trinity, that's kind of one of those, people have it, thou shalt not judge, right?

And right under that is, well, the word trinity never appears in the Bible. It's one of those kinds of things. The words ordo salutis, first of all, they're Latin, so they're not likely to appear. But it's a construct, so it's not something where we're going to see point one to point 10 in the sequence of a few verses.

We learn about this through the two passages that I gave you earlier and a number of other ones, and we put this together. But it's also not a catechism, which means, you know, a named catechism, the Westminster Catechism, or even something like the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, these are things that you could memorize, you know, like the Constitution.

You could literally memorize the words that make up this thing. And the ordo salutis isn't really like that. So we're going to talk today about repentance and faith. Some people would categorize that under conversion, as a single bullet point.

So when we look at the ordo salutis, it's really important for us to understand the theology behind it, less so than the specific words that are being used. Does that make sense? Anybody have a question about that, or unclear?

So like I said, it's important to understand the theology behind that, because the order, the ordo salutis is important. We are Calvinistic, and so if we were to look at the handout, if you look at the first column that's on there, what are you going to see?

You're going to see .4 regeneration, .5 faith, .6 repentance. So what is the ramification if we just made a little tiny update, little tiny adjustment, shifted us over to the Arminian column, and took faith and regeneration and swapped them?

Just, I mean, same words, just swap them. How would that affect our theology? Exactly. And that has huge, huge effects on what we understand on our theology. If God is now responding to the faith that we've exhibited, now that high five in heaven that Mike likes to joke about, now that happens.

But instead, if we understand, as Scripture teaches, that we are regenerated and we respond with faith, now we understand that salvation is of the Lord and of the Lord only. And that's why this isn't, I don't know how to say collection in Latin, so I'm just going to say collection salutis, it's ordo salutis, probably.

So one thing that I think would be helpful, because there was a little bit of confusion before and I just want to work through this, is to understand the timing of these things. So we have an order, but also on top of that there's timing.

So these are not, it's not like you could take your life and separate it into 10 bullets and chunk that out by 10 equal amounts of time and each one is applicable to each one of these. Some of these happen instantaneously, some of them happen really together, but they're logically sequenced.

Some of them take a long time. So as we go through this list, this is group participation here, I'm going to ask two questions. Number one, when does this event happen? Sometimes that's actually on the sheet.

Number two, what is the period of time for this event or events? How long did it take for this thing to occur? So let's work down the list. Election. When did election happen? Before the foundation of the world.

How long did it take? Instantaneous. Right? It's the will of God. It just happens. Probably if it was before the foundation of the world, it's also outside of time because God created time, so really how long did it take is a question that doesn't actually apply.

Predestination. When did predestination happen? Same time. Good. How long did it take? Instantaneous. Excellent. Calling. When does this happen? Well, OK, so hold on. What's the definition of calling on the sheet here?

Do you have a definition? I don't remember. Is it on there? The preaching of the gospel message. So it varies, but certainly we can put it in an order somehow. Between birth and death. Between birth and death.

We're narrowing it down. Right? Now we're in a vapor instead of the corpus of humanity. Yes. This is individual. It can happen a couple of times. Be careful with synergy when we're talking about salvation here.

But go on. OK. No. OK. Good. So in the interest of time, calling is on my list. Hopefully we will get there today. That's part of my plan. But does anybody have something they really feel like they need to get out before I move on?

I like this discussion, by the way. This is good. And I think it's interesting that we get to this point where all of a sudden it's election. We got this stuff, right? Now we get into the nitty gritty.

How does this stuff work together, and how do we understand this? So is there anybody else that really needs to get something else out on calling before we move on? Brian, go ahead. I mean, I think that's perfectly true.

And as we look at this, it is critical to remember that we cannot separate the ordo salutis from, as I think it was modernism said, the benefactor who is Jesus Christ. That being said, let's move on. Point four, regeneration.

When does this happen? Immediately after the call? Any disagreement? OK. How long does it take? Instantaneous. Faith. When does that happen? Instantaneous. How long does it take? Or what's the duration of faith in the ordo salutis?

It starts, and then it is a continuing act. Repentance. Same thing, right? So it happens immediately after regeneration. It is ongoing after regeneration. Justification. Does anybody disagree with that?

Good. Instantaneous. It happens immediately after regeneration. We are justified in the eyes of God. Sanctification. Until glorification. Good. I love that answer. That's a good answer. Instantaneously happens after regeneration, and it is ongoing from that point on.

Well, not today. There's no chance I'm getting down to bullet point seven. Yep, absolutely. Sanctification is a process that will continue until glorification. What about perseverance? It is also lifelong.

And most importantly, it is God's work in the individual to persevere, to keep that person throughout their life. And then glorification? When you die. And it happens pretty instantly. And it lasts forever.

Well, I would answer that probably a couple of different ways. The first thing that I would do is go back to scripture and look at Paul in Romans when he talks about saying, shall we sin so that grace may abound?

May it never be. And really, that's the attitude of the regenerated believer, right? It's not that, well, I mean, we know our sins are forgiven, so who really cares? But it's a desire to bend the knee under the lordship of Jesus Christ, not just his salvific work.

And that's really the difference. Does that make sense? Between someone who recognizes Christ as Savior and has hell insurance, and someone who is truly regenerated internally in their heart and desires to please God.

And when we look at sin in terms of, and we even have this in our society, where the penalty for disobeying the law is not necessarily dependent on the one who's committing the atrocity, but on the one who is receiving it.

Even if a finite being is committing a sin against an infinite God, a finite penance would not pay for it. Plus, it's not in the Bible. So there's also that. Does anybody want to add anything else to that?

OK. So now that we've kind of got this, I think, better baseline than we probably did last time, we can start working through these points. We'll do a little bit of review on election and predestination before we get into the next two.

So in talking about election and predestination, I think kind of one of the classic passages to look at is Ephesians 1. Would anybody like to read? Anybody feel a calling to read? You're going to hear a lot of my voice, so.

Becky, could you read verses 3 to 14? Ephesians 1? 3 to 14? OK. So, election is hard. And I think that election is a hard topic for a lot of reasons, especially in the United States, because we are a very proud people.

And the idea that our ultimate end is not something that we have 100 complete control over is just a very, very difficult thing to talk about. And that's why when we preach the gospel, we don't say, you have or have not been chosen for this thing, and therefore you must believe.

We preach the gospel and we call people to repentance for a reason. Because it is a truth that demands a response. And this is an idea that is taught in both the New and the Old Testament, a lot in the New Testament, but also in the Old.

Quoting Malachi, we see Paul in Romans 9, not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather, Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger.

As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. This is the Old Testament supporting election. And the examples abound in the New Testament, Acts 13, for as many as were ordained to eternal life, believed.

Ephesians 1 we already read, Romans 8 we already read. We talked about last time some objections to election or objections to predestination. Does anybody remember any of those? Or maybe just things that you've heard in your life when talking about this doctrine?

It's not fair? Sure, that's a very common one. Do we want it to be fair, by the way? No. Makes us robots? Right. That was the first one that, actually the guy who preached the Gospel to me when I came out as a Calvinist, I guess, that was the first thing he was like, but that turns us into robots.

Well, no, God allows us to make choices that are consistent with our will, but if our nature is not yet changed. Yep, that is very true. And ultimately, what it breaks down is it becomes one of two things.

Either that person has a man-centered theology, or they're merely immature in Christ. Right? Because everybody has a theology, whether they say they believe in God or not. Everybody has a theology. So either their theology is man-centered and it's not fair that God would choose?

Like, pfft, come on. Or they just don't understand they are a Christian, but they are very young in the faith. They're just not mature in the faith and they can't really get their arms around this thing.

Right? Some people will say that that means that we don't have a choice. It's a lot like, you know, we're robots. But we know from Scripture that God is sovereign and man is responsible. How about this one?

Unbelievers never have a chance to believe. If election is the thing and God chooses who is saved, well, what about that tribe in Papua New Guinea? And that's why Bob's here. Romans 1 is clear when it says that the world provides evidence of the existence of God.

It tells us that nobody is without excuse. So, questions. Is election conditional? No. If election were conditional, we would all fail the condition. So we are glad that election is unconditional. Unconditional election, does sound familiar?

Ferdie touched on this. What should the mature Christian's response to election be? Praise, thankfulness, comfort and encouragement to evangelism. Right? 2 Timothy 2. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they also may obtain salvation.

The salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The elect need to hear the gospel. We need to hear the gospel every day. That's how God works. It's not this kind of hyper-Calvinist thing where if God's going to choose people to believe, we don't have to do anything.

We need to obey the commandment of God to preach the word. So here's an interesting question and this will get into reprobation which I kind of squished into the end of last week's teaching. What's the difference between election and predestination?

You can't talk. What's the difference between election and predestination? Right, so in love he predestined us. Right, exactly. So, election is the active work of God to choose those who would believe.

And predestination is fundamentally the consequence of that. So, we are chosen by God and by choosing us he has predestined us. This is where it gets sticky. By not choosing others he has also predestined them consistent with his lack of choosing them for salvation.

Does that make sense? Okay, that is called reprobation. That is not the same as choosing people to go to hell but rather it is the lack of choice, the lack of choosing those who would be saved. Grudem defines reprobation as this.

He says it is the sovereign decision of God before creation to pass over some persons in sorrow deciding not to save them and to punish them for their sins and thereby to manifest his justice. So, when we look at scripture, and this is something that please, by all means, if you know of a verse that might not be consistent with this, please let me know.

In my study what I found was that scripture regularly references people being destined for punishment but not necessarily chosen for punishment. And there are vessels that are destined for wrath. Yes, Ferdie?

So, this is kind of one of those things like how do you identify the darkness? The darkness is where the light is not. So, is it actively darkness or is it the absence of light, Taylor? Yes, absolutely.

So, the only thing I'm going to add to this, I think, because I think we've kind of gone over this a bit, is that election is the working out of God's love and God's grace whereas reprobation is the working out of God's justice.

So, we know that God is creator, we know that God is judge, he is perfectly just, and if this world were fair, we already discussed the unfairness of election, then what would happen? Then we would all be condemned to hell.

Right? Does anybody disagree with that? Are we together? So, if that's the case, so if God's fairness, we're all sinners, God's perfectly fair, we are all condemned, we all stand condemned, God then applies a special grace to those who he has chosen.

And he changes their destination through election. So, remember when I started talking about election, what was the first thing I said? This is a very hard topic to understand. And I think that Charlie is right in that there are, in order for this all to be perfectly elegant, and for us to perfectly understand it, I think it requires some divine inspiration, most likely post.

Yeah, exactly, right. Alright, well, I've gone through my review, and now I'm ready to start talking about the call, and we are out of time. This sounds familiar, Pastor Mike. So, in an effort to not be cavalier with the subject matter, I think we'll probably have to end here.

I have a feeling I'm going to have to beg Pradeep for a few more Sunday School lessons to work our way through this. But, does anybody have any questions before we close? Because this is pretty complicated, and I'll do my best.

Okay, alright. Why don't we close in prayer? Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this time that you've given us to come together and discuss matters that even the most wise man on earth could not completely understand.

I just pray, Father, that you would help us to rest in your word, help us to understand it as best we are able, and help us to look, Lord, with an earnest desire and an earnest passion to fully and completely understand your ways when we are in glory with you.

In your name we pray. Amen.