The Protestant Witness # 2 | What Arminians Really Believe

Divine Predestination and the Arminian Remonstrance

Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived. The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.

The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers. They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.

Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture. What happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross?

That was the day of wrath. That was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation. Brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling, when we repent and believe in our unity to Christ.

Welcome to the Protestant Witness. I'm your host, Pastor Patrick Hines of Ridwell Heights Presbyterian Church in lovely Kingsport, Tennessee. In this episode, we're going to cover more about historical Arminianism.

Many people, even elders in Reformed churches, have never read the canons of the Synod of Dort. And often when they do, are surprised to find out exactly what it was that they were condemning. The word Arminian comes from the last name of James Arminius, or I've heard of Jacob Arminius, too.

And his followers, the Remonstrants, the protesters that were dealt with by the Reformed churches in the Netherlands back in 1618 and 1619, and they spelled out their five biblical responses to the five protestations of the Arminian Remonstrants.

So the five points of Calvinism really were just a polemical response to errors that arose in the Reformed churches, and really people saying things that really are nothing new. John Cassian and so-called semi-Pelagianism is very, very old.

But what's very interesting is that when you walk through the canons of the Synod of Dort, and you see what it was that they were responding to, it is a lot more serious in its doctrinal errors.

Than.

People often recognize. And what they do in the format of the canons of Dort is they spell out the biblical teaching on each of the five points, each of the five things that the Arminian Remonstrants wanted to be cleared and wanted to be changed, and.

They.

Spell out the biblical truth, go to the key texts, and then they have a series of rejection of errors. And so it's very important that we look at these things and understand exactly what's going on here.

And so what I'd like to do today is start with the very end of the documents of the canons of Dort, and the way that the the Council Fathers responded to Arminianism and its historic purity. Most of what's called Arminianism today is really not Arminianism.

That's what the first video I did was about. Historic Arminian theology does not believe in the substitutionary atonement, and that is an essential truth to the gospel. If you don't have a substitutionary penal atonement that takes away the punishment for man's sins, you don't have the gospel at all.

So historic Arminianism was rejected as heresy, and I want to just point out just a couple of quotations here. Here in the canons of Dort, under rejection of errors concerning the teaching of the perseverance of the Saints, they said this in point number two, they reject the errors of those who teach that God does provide the believer with sufficient strength to persevere and is ready to preserve the strength in him if he performs his duty, but that even with all those things in place which are necessary to persevere in faith, and which God is pleased to use to preserve faith, it still always depends on the choice of man's will whether or not he perseveres.

For this view is obviously Pelagian, and though it intends to make men free, it makes them sacrilegious. It is against the enduring consensus of evangelical teaching which takes for man all cause for boasting and ascribes the praise for this benefit only to God's grace.

It is also against the testimony of the Apostle who says in 1st Corinthians 1 8, it is God who keeps us strong to the end so that we will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. And what you're going to see as we go through the canons of Dort is that Arminians, and this is true even to this very day, and I would include Roman Catholics because they really argue for their understanding of salvation in the same way the Arminians do.

You couldn't do it without God's grace and grace is necessary to the whole process, and even the acts of perseverance, you couldn't do them unless in those very actions God had given you grace. But, and that's the key word here, but the decisive factor, the thing that determines whether the whole plan of salvation is going to work or not, is in the final analysis, man and his free will.

And so it's critically, critically important that we recognize what these folks are really saying. And the council fathers at Dort used the word Pelagian a lot. Now, Pelagianism was from the British monk Pelagius who battled with Augustine way back in the fourth and fifth centuries, and Pelagianism was condemned by the church.

It was condemned as heresy, and so was semi-Pelagianism, the Council of Orange in 529, condemned it as heresy. It's pretty amazing that what the early forefathers of our faith saw as heretical is now seen as, oh, it's just fine, it's just an error that, yeah, there's some people that hold to that and that's not that big of a deal.

Now, before I move on, I do want to make one comment, though. I was a Christian before I was a Calvinist. I just didn't understand why I was a Christian. I didn't understand why I believed in Jesus Christ, and of course, I had heard the mischaracterizations of biblical truth saying, well, these Calvinists believe that God forces people against their will to believe in Christ, and I remember thinking, no, I definitely willingly believed in Jesus, but then over time came to see the biblical truth that the reason I believed is because God had mercy on me.

God opened my eyes. God is the one who irresistibly, effectually called me, and by his grace alone made me alive in Jesus Christ. And so it's very, very important that we recognize there are a lot of people who don't understand why they're Christians, but they are.

They do trust in Christ alone, but the issue that we have here, the issue that I would have is, what about people who are the opponents of the doctrines of grace, people who look at what Scripture says and they just reject it out of hand?

One thing is very clear is that how can people really be sincerely interpreting Scripture and listening to it and end up on completely opposite sides of this issue? How is that even possible? Well, the problem has nothing to do with the clarity of Scripture.

It has to do with people who are in rebellion against God, and that's where I would have a real, I really struggle to identify people who are the the dead set opponents of God's sovereignty and grace, and who really do believe in, and are very clear and explicit, even after having walked through all the key passages, still believe that salvation is entirely synergistic.

I have a problem with that. I really wonder, at the end of the day, what are those people really trusting in? But as far as people that sit in pews, people that are not theologians by profession or anything like that, or who have a more simple understanding of the faith, I think there's a lot of people who are not Reformed who really are Christians, who when their head is the pillow at night, they're trusting only in Jesus Christ.

They don't understand why they do that, but they do trust in Him, and those people are definitely brothers and sisters. I was a Christian before I was Reformed, but once I had been taken by the hand and walked through the key passages, it became undeniably clear that God is absolutely sovereign, that His decree encompasses all that comes to pass, and that He is the one who is in charge of salvation.

It's not left in any part to man's autonomy, or his free will, or anything like that. Now, as I said, Pelagianism is the idea that men save themselves. Semi-Pelagianism, which I really think is just, is really just still Pelagianism.

Semi-Pelagianism is that God, is that men save themselves with help from God. And then over against that, you have the biblical notion of God saves sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Not to make their salvation possible, or to open a door, or to make it a hypothetical possibility, but to save them. And that's exactly what God does for His people. So with that, I'd like to go back to the beginning here.

I was looking at just a couple of things in the Canons of Dort, how often they use the word Pelagianism. But the first point at issue, the first issue that was addressed by the Synod of Dort with the Arminian Remonstrance, was the issue of divine predestination, which the Synod declares to be in agreement with the Word of God and accepted until now in the Reformed churches.

Set forth in several articles. So they, first they set forth, here is what the Bible teaches about this issue of predestination, God's electing grace. Now, everyone will say, I mean, Arminians will look right at you and say, yeah, we believe in predestination.

We believe in predestination. So it's not really enough to say you believe in that. You need to define what you mean by it. What they mean is, basically, God looks down the corridors of time and then takes in knowledge about who would do what, given their their libertarian free will, with the offer of the gospel.

And then if they believe, then he'll predestine them to eternal life, which really is to say that there is no doctrine of predestination. If in the final analysis men elect themselves by their own free will, then you're really, there really is no point in even talking about predestination, because the term, the verb, praorizo, means to determine or destined beforehand.

But if we are the ones ultimately who do that, why is there any need for God to predestine us? It really is a negation. To say that it defends decisively on our free will is really to negate the very meaning of the word predestination, as it's used in Romans 8 29 and in Ephesians chapter 1.

Let's go ahead and look at, here's the canons of Dort, article number one, God's right to condemn all people. I still remember the very first time I ever read this, many years ago, and this first article really shook me up.

It says, since all people have sinned in Adam and have come under the sentence of the curse and eternal death, God would have done no one an injustice if it had been his will to leave the entire human race in sin and under the curse and to condemn them on account of their sin.

Right out of the gate, that really challenged my presuppositions, because I thought it's only fair that everyone gets a shot at it. And I believed things like, well, if people respond to common grace and to general revelation, if they make some kind of generic free will move towards God, even if they've never heard of Christ, maybe they can be saved that way.

You see how many errors were in my thinking? And people really think things like that, as if Romans 1 is actually teaching us that the gospel is revealed from heaven and revealed in nature. It's not. What does Romans 1 18 say?

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven and against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. What is in natural general revelation is not salvific. It doesn't get man an opportunity to believe in anything.

The fact is, men are under God's just condemnation by their union with their federal head, Adam, and are in that condition and are glad to be left in that condition. They have no interest in God, no interest in coming to him, no interest in repenting of their sins.

And so, God would have done no one an injustice if it had simply been his will to leave the entire race of man in sin and to condemn them on account of their sin. Now, that's a hard pill to swallow for some people, but there are fewer things that are clearer in Scripture.

We tend to have such an unbiblical view of the fall and what it did to us. Men hate God. Jesus said men refuse to come to the light lest their deeds be exposed. They love darkness rather than light. Jesus said in John 3 19 and 20, if that really is Jesus, it might not be, but that's a whole another issue.

But that's biblical revelation. Men refuse to come to the light because their deeds as evil will be exposed and they love those evil deeds. They love the darkness. Men love their sin. It is their master.

They serve it with their whole heart. They have no interest in turning or repenting or anything of the kind. So we need to be rid of this idea that man is, you know, he's been wounded by the fall and he's this innocent guy, you know, out there really trying to do his best and doing the best with what he's got.

No, men hate God. They rage against him. They have no interest in him. They love their sin. They know they're under God's just condemnation and they don't care. When I was examined for ordination by our presbytery and I was I was prepared for this, I thought someone might ask this, what happens to the innocent native who lives in in Congo land or lives in the New Hebrides Islands or what down the South Pacific who's never heard of God, never heard of the Christian faith, never heard of Jesus Christ.

What happens to those innocent people when they die? And I said they all go to heaven. Did you catch the the sleight of hand in the question? What happens to those innocent people? Well, if there are innocent people, they would go to heaven because they wouldn't need a Savior.

And I pointed out to the guy that asked that, the problem is there are no innocent people that live on islands in the South Pacific. There are no innocent people that live in Central Africa somewhere or in the in the sticks somewhere.

There are no innocent people. But if there were innocent people who were not guilty of sin, yeah, they would go to heaven when they died. And so this article goes on to say, as the Apostle says, the whole world is liable to the condemnation of God, Romans 3 19.

All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God, Romans 3 23. And the wages of sin is death, Romans 6 23. So men are conceived and born in Adam. They are willfully in Adam and they love their rebellion.

They love their sin and they have no interest in turning from it. And so God would have done no one an injustice if it had been his will to leave the entire human race in sin. You see, I used to think that it would be unfair for God to choose to save these people and to bypass the rest.

But you see, that's actually grace. It's gracious that God chooses to save some and it is fairness that he leaves the rest on their sins to get what they justly, not only what they justly deserve, but what they want, which is to have nothing to do with him.

Article 2, the manifestation of God's love. But this is how God showed his love. He sent his only begotten Son into the world so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Okay, article 2.

That is how God's love is manifested. Anyone that believes in Christ will not perish, but have eternal life. Article 3, the preaching of the gospel. Okay, so God, in his mercy, sends preachers of the gospel.

It's not fairness. He doesn't do that so as to be fair, to give everyone a shot at it. This is pure grace. God sends ministers to preach the gospel. He sends individuals who will proclaim Christ crucified and people will hear that truth and be turned by God to believe that truth.

Article 4, a twofold response to the gospel. God's anger remains on those who do not believe this gospel, but those who do accept it and embrace Jesus the Savior with a true and living faith are delivered through him from God's anger and from destruction and receive the gift of eternal life.

Article number 5, the sources of unbelief and of faith. Listen carefully to this. This is very important. The cause or blame for this unbelief, as well as for all other sins, is not at all in God,.

But in man.

Faith in Jesus Christ, however, and salvation through him, is a free gift of God. As scripture says, it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves. It is a gift of God, Ephesians 2a.

Likewise, Philippians 129, it has been freely given to you to believe in Christ. So where does faith in Christ come from? It is the sovereign gifts of God to his elect people. It is granted to us on behalf of Christ to believe in him.

Article 6, God's eternal decision. The fact that some receive from God the gift of faith within time and that others do not stems from his eternal decision. Now you got to realize how contrary that is to the Arminian perspective.

Okay, those who believe in Jesus Christ, it stems not from their free will, but from God's eternal decision. Now listen carefully to the scripture passages. For all his works are known to God from eternity, Acts 15 18 and Ephesians 1 11.

In accordance with this decision, he graciously softens the hearts, however hard, of his chosen ones and inclines them to believe. But by his just judgment, he leaves in their wickedness and hardness of heart those who have not been chosen.

And in this especially is disclosed to us his act, unfathomable and as merciful as it is just, of distinguishing between people equally lost. Do you hear that? God is making a distinction here between all who are equally lost, equally deserving of God's wrath, equally under his just condemnation.

God's not looking out over an innocent group of people to decide, you know, what he's gonna do with them. He's looking at a mass of individuals who are dead in their sins, who hate him, who are resolutely opposed to everything that God loves, and who in their hearts hate God and want nothing to do with him.

Okay, now listen, listen to that sentence again. And in this especially, in God's act of choosing to save some, is disclosed to us his act, unfathomable and as merciful as it is just, of distinguishing between people who are equally lost.

This is the well-known decision of election and reprobation revealed in God's Word. This decision, the wicked, impure, and unstable, distort to their own ruin, but it provides holy and godly souls with comfort beyond words.

And I'll tell you, when I finally came to see, by the grace of God, that the reason I believed in Jesus Christ, and that I had repented, was not because of my free will, was not because of anything good in me, but was because of the sovereign mercy of God, who could have justly left me in my sins.

That was a humiliating moment. I still remember that. I was about 22 years old when that happened. Sitting there reading Romans 9 for the thousandth time, looking for a way around it. Maybe we can turn it into nations.

Maybe you can chop the passage up into 35 unrelated pieces and make it totally destroy the child. None of that works. And I remember finally recognizing God has mercy on whom he wills. And here I sit.

I understand the depth of my own sin. I trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I hate my sin. I am endeavoring to turn from it all to the Lord. I trust only in Jesus Christ for my justification, for my salvation, for my entrance into heaven.

Why? Because God had mercy upon me. It wasn't because I was better than other people. It wasn't because I was smarter, or I was more spiritually attuned, or it wasn't because of anything in me. And I remember it just bearing down on me, and it just brought tears to my eyes.

God could have justly left me in my sins, and I would have been happy to stay there. I would have wanted nothing to do with him, and would gladly have lived my life in rebellion against him, and then died in my sins, and gone to hell, and not cared.

But God would not allow it to be that way. Don't you see? Election is not opposed to people coming to Christ. It's the only reason people do come to Christ. Election is not a hindrance to assurance. Election is the very foundation of assurance.

That God who started this work in me, he will carry it on to completion. That Jesus Christ's faithfulness to his Father's mission is the reason I will one day step into eternal glory. As he said in John 6, 37 -39, a passage that I used to cringe from, is now a passage I think and meditate on all the time.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all he has given me I will lose none, but raise them up at the last day.

That is the very lifeblood of my assurance. Jesus Christ is a faithful and perfect Savior. He has justified me entirely and completely, accepted me in his sight by faith alone apart from my works, and he has promised to carry that work on all the way into heaven itself.

Such an encouraging thing. It's so tragic that so many professing Christians are robbed from having that kind of assurance because their quote-unquote pastors and teachers will not teach them what Scripture says about this blessed truth about the grace of God.

Grace equals unconditional election. If you lose the doctrine of unconditional election, you cannot argue that salvation is by grace alone. You just can't. The two things don't go together. Unconditional election is what grace means.

You could say grace is necessary and that it's sufficient to make it possible for us to be saved, but that we're not really actually saved by it. Article number seven, election. Election or choosing is God's unchangeable purpose by which he did the following.

Before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, according to the free good pleasure of his will, he chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people out of the entire human race.

Did you hear that? A definite number of particular people. This is not a class election. It's not, well, Christ is the elect one and then by our free will we get into Christ. People who are chosen for salvation are elected by God individually by name from all eternity.

Individuals. It's not a faceless mass. It is not that God elected to save if people would do this, that, or the other thing. People themselves. We are the direct object of God's choosing. It is individual people that are chosen by name individually by God from all eternity.

Which had fallen by its own fault from its original innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen, listen, were neither better nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the common misery. This is why a true Calvinist who really understands the grace of God, who really does get what grace means, that the reason they're a Christian is solely and only because of God's grace and his unconditional election of myself, that that's the only reason I'm a Christian.

We should never be impatient with others. We should never be nasty to people. We should never look down our noses at others because they don't understand these things. We should be among the most patient people on earth because to be really ugly or nasty about these truths is really to deny what we ourselves believe.

It takes a divine work for anyone to believe these things. So we ourselves should be gracious and winsome in the way we present these truths because without the grace of God, we wouldn't believe them either.

The article goes on here. He did this in Christ whom he also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all those chosen, and the foundation of their salvation. And so he decided to give the chosen ones to Christ to be saved and to call and draw them effectively into Christ's fellowship through his word and spirit.

In other words, he decided to grant them true faith in Christ to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of his son, to glorify them. God did all this in order to demonstrate his mercy.

Did you hear that? Not to demonstrate fairness, but to demonstrate his mercy to the praise of the riches of his glorious grace. As scripture says, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world so that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

He predestined us whom he adopted as his children through Jesus Christ in himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace by which he made us pleasing to himself in his beloved.

And of course the beloved there in Ephesians 1 6 is Christ himself. We are accepted in Jesus Christ. In Romans 8 30, and elsewhere, those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

Okay, article 8, a single decision of election. This election is not of many kinds. It is one and the same election for all who were to be saved in the Old and the New Testament. For scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure purpose and plan of God's will by which he chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation, which he prepared in advance for us to walk in.

Article 9, election not based on foreseen faith. Listen closely. This same election took place not on the basis of foreseen faith, of the obedience of faith, of holiness, or of any other good quality and disposition as though it were based on a prerequisite cause or condition in the person to be chosen, but rather for the purpose of faith, of the obedience of faith, of holiness, and so on.

Accordingly, election is the source of each of the benefits of salvation, faith, holiness, and the other saving graces, and at last, eternal life itself, flow forth from election as its fruits and effects.

As the Apostle says, he chose us not because we were, but so that we would be holy and blameless before him in love.

So,.

That whole idea of God electing based on foreseeing what we would do, foreseeing our works or our faith, if you really do believe that, you believe we're saved by merit. I mean, if you're saying that God chose us because he foresaw what we would do in certain situations, then, in effect, we are our own saviors.

We are the decisive factor in the matter. And, of course, that's just not the case. Let's say that God did do that. I think that that wreaks havoc on your doctrine of God. You have the idea of God looking down the corridor of time and learning things, seeing how people would react, and then reacting to it.

That totally destroys God's omniscience anyway. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, God looked down the corridor of time to see what we would be and what we would do in given certain situations.

The fact of the matter is, the fact of the matter is, what would God have foreseen? Sin. If you look down the corridor of time to see, what would I do in this situation or that situation, or would I have responded to this or that?

What he would have seen is sin, closeness, resistance, and the positive existence of total rebellion against him. So, this idea of God looking down the corridors of time and seeing how people would react, well, if he did do that, which he didn't, but let's just say he did, all he would have seen is sin.

All he would have seen is rebellion. No one is able to come to Christ. No one is able to understand the things of the Spirit. No one is able to submit themselves to the law of God. U'dais dunatai. U'dunatai.

Not able. Not able. No one is able. No one is able. So, what would he have foreseen? Total disability. He would have seen us in our sin, loving it, and wanting nothing to do with him. Okay, Article 10.

Election based on God's good pleasure. So, it's not based on foreseen faith. It's unconditional. Election is based on God's good pleasure. So, this is a good answer here. When people say, so you're saying it's basically totally arbitrary or capricious on God's part.

No, election is never said to be arbitrary or capricious. It's based on God's purpose, his boule, his plan.

Listen.

But the cause of this undeserved election is exclusively the good pleasure of God. It's his good pleasure. This does not involve his choosing certain human qualities or actions from among all those possible as a condition of salvation, but rather involves his adopting certain particular persons from among the common mass of sinners as his own possession.

As Scripture says, when the children were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, she, Rebecca, was told, the older will serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I.

Hated.

In Acts 13, 48. All who were appointed for eternal life believed. That was a passage that really troubled me years ago. Acts 13, 48. As many as had been appointed to eternal life.

Believed.

So, why do they believe? Because they have been appointed to eternal life. What are you gonna do with that one? Well, eventually, you have to just believe it. Article 11. Election is unchangeable. Just as God himself is most wise, unchangeable, all-knowing, and almighty, so the election made by him can neither be suspended nor altered, revoked or annulled.

Neither can his chosen ones be cast off, nor their number reduced. Article 12. The assurance of election. Listen carefully to this. This is another important one. Assurance of this, their eternal and unchangeable election to salvation, is given to the chosen in due time, though by various stages and in differing measure, such assurance comes not by inquisitive searching into the hidden and deep things of God, but by noticing within themselves with spiritual joy and holy delight the unmistakable fruits of election pointed out in God's Word, such as a true faith in Christ, a childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on.

I would add to that list a.

Humble.

Submission to and delight in what the scripture says about this very topic. It may not be that way right out of the gate, but over time, God will teach us and show us it was not us who sought him, but him who sought us.

It was not that I got my act together and finally repented and believed because I could see things finally in my own libertarian autonomy or anything like that, but rather, God closed in on me. God was the one who drew me to himself, irresistibly.

I believed in Jesus Christ not because I'm better or smarter, but because God changed me. God had mercy upon me when he could have justly left me in my sins. And I'll tell you, that's the most humbling thing there is.

That ought to cause us to just weave tears of gratitude to God for his graciousness to us. He teaches us, like little children, he teaches us how to believe in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation. No matter how many John Pipers or whoever else is trying to encroach on that, by in some way locating the final salvation that we get in our works, the elect are never gonna believe that stuff.

They're never gonna believe those things because they are taught by God how to trust in Christ. And one of the best books I ever read was John Owen's book on justification by faith alone. I mean, it's a beast of a book.

But right out of the gate in that book, he really lays to rest the idea that well, there weren't many people that were real clear on justification and exactly how a person gets to heaven early on in church history.

Although, I think Buchanan and others have given a very broad testimony to justification by faith apart from works in every century after the Apostles. Also Stephen Lawson's books, A Long Line of Godly Men, goes through a lot of those men in the early church that did see it early, like in every century after the time of the Apostles.

Goshock and Augustine and many others. Although, you know, there's confusing statements here and there. But Owen made the point in his book, the elect have always known how to put their faith in Christ alone for their salvation because it is God who teaches them to do so.

You know, I've heard a lot of false teaching in my time. I've heard a lot of false Gospels in my time. And it's such a delight to me that I've never given heed to any of them. As soon as John Piper made the statements that he did, that we're saved through those works and everything, immediately I knew that was wrong.

Immediately, I knew that was wrong because it's not taught in Scripture. It's not what the Bible says about any of these kinds of things. And it's so important. It's so important that we maintain purity in our understanding of the Gospel.

And it's God who teaches us to do that. I know. I am so thankful to Christ. I will never trust in my works that I do. I will never trust in, you know, trying to be a good husband and father and pastor and doing good works and the things that I've done throughout my life.

I would never trust in those things as the basis of my final acceptance with God. Will God remember and reward our works? Yeah. Hebrews 6 .10. He is not unjust to forget your work. Does that have anything to do with the grounds of my salvation?

Of course not. Of course not. Those things could never save me. They could never withstand the scrutiny of God's holiness in terms of the accepting and accounting of my person as righteous in God's sight.

And so a childlike fear of God, godly sorrow for sin, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a longing for worship, a love for the Word of God. Those are the marks of election. And those are the fruits that God shows us in our lives to show us that He has begun this good work in us.