1689 London Baptist Confession (part 17)

Lord we rejoice as we think about your goodness to us in sustaining us for another day of life, but more importantly of giving us eternal life

That is to say forgiveness of sins now forever and a relationship with you now and forever

Father such things are too glorious bless each one as we look to your word what it says about The Atonement free will the work of Christ Lord bless us we pray in Jesus name.

Amen Well, we started looking at the extent of the

Atonement last week, and if you recall We read

Romans 8 28 to 30 and I made this statement

So I want to I want to read Romans 8 28 to 30 and then with that context will

Proceed Romans 8 28 to 30 and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good and For those who are called according to his purpose 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 call this the golden chain of salvation and as we look at that It becomes pretty clear that there and we talked about this in Ephesians 1 and other places that there was an eternal plan to Choose some before the foundations of the world to then redeem them in time and to call them and Sanctify them so that they might be ultimately glorified and there's no

What's interesting and we're gonna talk. I think we'll get to free will here this morning But if we look like at passages like Romans 8

Ephesians 1 what we don't see is free will Let me back up we don't see human free will what we do see is the free will of God James White wrote his book the

Potter's freedom Romans 9 is the Potter not free to do what he wants. We are his creation

He gets to choose what to do with us, and he does that Now to continue talking about the extent of the

Atonement Started talking about the Covenant context of the Atonement demands Particular Atonement again.

This is Sam Waldron's book on the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith and he says the blood of Jesus is

Covenant blood it is shed with a covenant purpose and not all men are in the covenants

Did God covenant with all men? To redeem them and the answer is no he did not

Let's look at Matthew 26 28 Matthew 26 28

And when somebody has that especially if they have a red -letter edition, I think it's fine

If by the way, if you have a red -letter, I'm not I'm not knocking those Matthew 26 28

Yes, go ahead Okay now supposing that Jesus had said thank you for supposing Jesus had said poured out for all

Then what? What would that mean? Everyone goes to heaven because everyone would be in the covenants

They would be under the blood of Christ for this is my blood of the covenant. This is covenant blood

Which is poured out? Right. He voluntarily does this why? For the purpose of expiating for paying for the sins of all

Who would ever believe? But if it's poured out for all then really ultimately

Faith is immaterial the election of the Father would be Immaterial because it wouldn't matter if he chose for them or not because everyone would be in the

Covenant The Covenant can be broken or cannot be broken If Jesus died for your sins

Will you also pay for your sins? No, let's look at Hebrews 13 20 to 21

Hebrews 13 20 to 21 Okay. So again

This concept of the blood of the eternal covenants And if we we say well, why is it the eternal covenant?

Well, why do you think it's the eternal covenant because God's eternal and he's the one who made it

I think that's pretty basic. But again, look at look at this the great Jesus the great shepherd of the sheep and Instantly we think of what?

That he lays down his life for The sheep and so we have this idea of Jesus, you know and all of his followers his disciples following him the people following him

And he does what? He lays down his life for the sheep and it says

By the blood of the eternal covenant equip you with every good work. I mean, this is clearly the idea of There is a covenant there are people in the

Covenant they benefit from it. How do they benefit? They're equipped with every good so that you may do his will again this concept of Covenant and the people being in it

Any questions about the extent of the atonement because we're going to talk about Couple of complaints that people have about this in a moment, but any questions about yeah,

Cory Okay, good question. What's the difference between punishment for sins and chastisement you mean?

temporal chastisement Okay Any thoughts about that, I mean, is it possible, huh?

Let's see. Can God Temporally chastise us without there being eternal consequences for that.

Yes I'm thinking of a good

Sin issue. I mean certainly we know that God the Father chastises every son, right so let's just say

Well, here's a here's an example. That's near and dear to my heart You're foolish and I'm not pointing at anybody here in the classroom.

You're foolish with your money. You overextend yourself You can't pay your debts You wind up in bankruptcy

You wind up homeless Has God been unfaithful to you and the answer is no, of course

You were foolish you were sinful in your choices and you are reaping the benefits or the penalties of your choices

Andrew, okay Disciplining our children, right? They they it's an example of temporal chastisement.

This doesn't have eternal results They disobey They get discipline Does that does that mean does that mean you know that there are eternal consequences

Maybe maybe not but you know, especially when they're young You know clearly not other of the thoughts or examples

Ferdie, right? right, the consequence would be Sanctification Here, you know, which is what we go through anyway, right?

We're being conformed to the image of his son So there are always going to be

Some form of temporal Consequence even if it's only you know, when you when you sin and you confess it to the father, you know, what happens in between?

What happens from the time You know that you commit the sin to the time that you confess it and you actually have that sense of forgiveness

What happens during that time? Okay, that's one answer grace happens.

That's true. But but I mean when you send you just go yeah grace Yeah, Anthony Thank you

You're convicted You have guilt. Is that is that a temporal consequence?

Yes absolutely, and you know for those people who just kind of go yeah,

I Send well, there are other issues right like salvific issues There are reasons to be concerned if your attitude towards your sin is met to quote

Andrew Okay, yeah other thoughts are

Not about that. Yeah, Andrew. Yeah, I said No, any other thoughts or questions about that?

Because if not, then we're gonna look at a couple. Yeah Great example from the

Bible. Yeah, the sword would never leave his house Consequences of what he did, you know, and I mean we could go back and even look at the baby dying

All these things are Consequences of his sin so can there be Temporal consequences.

Yes, you know, does that stop David from going to heaven? No other thoughts

Yes, Anthony Chastisement and punishment, you know eternal punishment.

Okay. Now there are some Passages in the Bible that seem to make the

Atonement universal right John 129 who knows that one

John the Baptist says Look Yeah, the next day he saw

Jesus coming toward him and he said behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world

Now supposing he actually takes away the sin of the world then what okay We still only have morally neutral people because he's being theologically precise

Why because if somebody pays the price for your sin, then you are Not guilty, but that doesn't make you

Righteous, okay, so that's important but now what we're talking about, but thank you If Jesus takes away the sins of the entire world then

No one in the world would be Guilty. So what is John the Baptist trying to say?

Okay, so This world is filled with sin And Jesus is going to take away all the sin that Has infiltrated the creation, right?

And so someday there's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth if if I were writing a problem passage

Paper, you know, which we had to do in seminary John 129. Here's my problem. My problem is it seems like Jesus is going to take away the sins of the whole world.

This would be one of the possible explanations Right that Jesus is dying so that Or he's going to take that way the sins of all of creation so that when creation is

Recreated all those sins are done away with and we have a new heaven and a new earth where there is no sin that would be a possibility

I Don't think dr.

Roscoe would buy my solution if that was it but it is a possibility. Okay So he is the instrument of judgment, right he's going to judge the world and he's going to save those who

Are his right? He's going to save them from sin Another possibility,

I mean we're filling up my you know, it's usually good when you do one of those problem passages

I don't know if you ever done you never have because you weren't probably in seminary, but You know, you usually have to go okay, here are my possible solutions

ABCD, you know And here are the reasons why that buttress each of these?

Solutions and then this is what I landed on and why you know, and it's usually good if you have some exegetical reasons

But anyway, I digress Cory. I'm not even sure I understand it, but he's talking about all the believers.

I understood that part Okay, so hyperbolic lady. He's just saying that a whole lot of people. Okay, Andrew Okay, Andrew says and this would be you know choice

D probably in our flowchart here You know that that when

John the Baptist is talking and really we have to keep in mind also that this is John The Apostle who's writing these things

John the Apostle who wrote the gospel of John Saying he takes away the sins of the whole world that he's not just referring to Israel which

Israel that's their default position, right? That God only has to do with Israel and that everybody who's outside of Israel the

Gentiles is doomed So John the Baptist saying no, wait a second.

He's not just gonna take away the sins of Israel He's gonna take away the sins of the whole world

Any other thoughts Yes, Ferdie, okay, it's

Christ has taken away the sin of the world Correct. I agree. The question is, you know, the issue ultimately for us right now is what is the world?

Right. What does that mean? Okay, love not the world of the things of the world.

So the world system So if we apply that here Who takes away the sin of the world system?

Okay, I think that's II and I don't I don't know if I'm going for that one, but okay Do we have

F? If you're jumping on Ferdie you better put on some weights on Sorry mark, okay

This is the lamb that has been looked for that's going to deal with the sin of the world So putting the focus on the sin, which is a good place to put the focus

Let let me just say one more word before I get to Simon here last week after class the idea was brought up, you know, what is the efficacy of Jesus death and let's just let's just kind of put that in focus here for a moment.

In other words If the goal of The triune

God was to have Jesus death Atoned for let's say not only the sins of everybody who would ever be born on this planet but what if there are other planets in the universe where You know humans with souls or creatures with souls or whatever, you know exist is

Christ's death sufficient to pay for all of their sins and the answer is yes

Why? Because the perfect sacrifice but even more

Because he's God Okay now Simon and who are the ones who are actually saved? Yeah, and so I I think

You know John's fairly consistent when he's talking about The Lamb of God the sacrifice of God and that being

For the it for the elect Basically to cut it a little bit short, but a couple other problem passages and you're free to study this on your own

But a couple of other problem passages. I want to look at first John 2 2. It's amazing how many of these

Problem passages come out of John John's pen so to speak Although he didn't have a pen if he did were you know in big trouble first John 2 2 would somebody read that please?

Go ahead Ferdie. Okay Propitiation that words kind of important it means satisfaction and Who's being satisfied?

Okay So the picture here then is our sin creates Wrath the wrath of God as we'd read about in Romans 1 and other places that wrath

We know is propitiated. We read about that in Romans 3 among other places

By the death of Christ in other words Jesus is an acceptable sacrifice.

He's an acceptable lamb Chosen by God to take away the sins of the world

So when it says that the wrath of God is actually propitiated. He is the propitiation

For our sins He's a satisfaction for our sins.

So you have a problem here in first John 2 2 because for our sins

Who? Who's he writing to who's his audience? Christians, right?

I mean we know that from the beginning because he's talking to you know My little children and all these kind of terms.

Oh, it says that even in verse chapter 2 verse 1 my little children Well, he's not writing that to pagans in you know

Australia or whatever Any Australians here this morning? He's writing this to believers.

We have an advocate with the father Not everybody has this advocate only those who are in Christ those who are in the covenant so to speak

So when he says he is a propitiation for our sins he's talking about believers and not for ours only but also for the sins of the

Whole world So is God's wrath propitiated for the sins of every single person who will ever believe?

Yes for every single person who will ever be born Says the whole world it's enough, but they were not chosen.

I can go for that I mean again, I think we have to you know, this is this is a passage that is often brought up but I mean you ultimately wind up on one of two places here either in Universalism Right because you say well he died for the sins of all people

MacArthur says Christ actually paid the penalty only for those who would repent and believe Etc, etc.

Most of the world will be eternally condemned to hell So they would not have been paid their sins would not have been paid for Christ World indicates the sphere the beings toward whom

God seeks reconciliation and has provided Propitiation God has Mitigated his wrath on sinners temporarily.

In other words, there are benefits to everybody MacArthur says But that kind of obscures the singular point of who for whom was the

Atonement Intended, you know, why did Jesus come to earth to make things temporarily better for everyone?

No, he came to Seek and save that which was lost he came to save his people from their sins

Ferdie. Yes. How could he Forgive the sins of those well forgive the sins let's say of unbelief to those who never believe

You know, how could he forgive the sins of those who hate him and he never causes to be born again there there would be a a

Disconnect and also how could he then punish for and I think this is your point.

Would he be just if he Punished Jesus for the sins of everyone who ever lived and Then went ahead and put some people in hell for the same sins

So the answer would be no, that's not just Let's look also at first John 4 10 in this is love

Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins

Again we would see the same Kind of language. This is a little easier because it doesn't include any kind of whole world language just having to do with believers

Okay, so if the Bible says This is

Waldron Says that Christ died for the world or for all men

Then Waldron argues what all men Would be saved

Then he asked this question. He says do we tell or do we tell those we evangelize that God loves them and Christ died for them?

Is that necessary? Is that even true if I walk up to somebody and I say

Jesus loves you and he died for you What have I just done?

Well, I'm not only giving them false. Hope but I would put it this way I would say you know what? I have good news for you.

Your sins are forgiven. Jesus died for you And if I'm a sinner, then what do

I say? Yeah. Hey, thanks. Have a nice day. I'm just gonna go back to my life now

The law is good if we use it lawfully, right if we use it rightly We have to the bad news has to precede the good news

Very few people. I mean if you go through acts, I can't really think of a situation where I Mean, I guess you could argue the

Ethiopian eunuch. Maybe didn't get the bad news. He was reading through Isaiah 53 Maybe he didn't get the bad news.

Maybe he already understood who he was But typically what we see is what talking about sin or judgment or something and then here's the good news or you know

Here's the bad news, here's the good news Repent and believe something like that. But what we don't see is something where somebody just says

Jesus died for your sins You're okay. Don't worry about it. We don't see anything like that.

So thoughts or questions concerns What passages what about passages that seem to indicate that those for whom

Christ died fall away like Romans 14 15? Let's look at that and after somebody reads that I'm gonna ask you if it means that somebody can lose their salvation

Romans 14 15 That's just a hint who wants to read that go ahead Simon Okay, so can you cause somebody for whom

Christ died to lose their salvation by what you eat thoughts about that? Can you lose your salvation? No, so what's he saying here?

Okay You're violating their conscience big -time anguish and difficulty temporally, yes

But I mean again we have to think this is a whole different world that we're talking about right we're talking about a world where Judaism and the effects the influence of it are still

Deeply ingrained in much of the Christian community So, you know,

I mean we see language like in verse 14 But it it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean we don't even have concepts of Clean and unclean, you know that we

I mean, I'm not really concerned if something is kosher or not But this is you know, that's the world that they lived in But look at verse 17 for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking

But of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, you know, what did Jesus say? It's not what goes

Into your mouth that Condemns you but what comes out of your mouth? So yeah when

Paul withstood Peter do his face basically because Peter had Kind of stepped back and fallen in with the

Judaizers decided that he was going to obey some of the dietary restrictions and Paul says

You know you stand condemned why because ultimately he made Um Dietary issues and that kind of thing almost well part and parcel of Christianity part and parcel of being saved

And so when you do that when you add to the Word of God you stand condemned Yeah Galatians, I mean it just of a piece with Paul's whole argument there if you have a different gospel then what?

You are anathema so Yes other thoughts on that yeah

Romans 14 comes after Romans 8 which says that there's nothing in Creation nothing invisible or a visible nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So certainly not food or any creative thing, okay so Let's talk about free will here because and this this goes right into it

If you think about the sovereignty of God and salvation if you think about from the beginning the father elects

He chooses before the foundation of the world and then in time the triune God the

Father Son and Spirit All bring this salvation the election to pass right?

If you think about it that way The sovereignty of God and salvation then you ultimately wind up saying well, then what are we?

Robots Do our choices not matter don't we make choices? I mean it was interesting to me yesterday somebody

I mean, I'm Facebook friends with I think he's a pastor and he's super Calvinist It got spend a couple weeks working

With Mark Dever which deepened his theology substantially his brother I think it was you know posting yesterday all these free will things and so I was just like trying to get him to stay in a passage that Actually talked about our wills and he just kept looking at places, you know, our choice is made in the

Bible Yes That's not the issue right

The question is free will and how do we define how would you define free will? What is free will only

God has free will well, let me just give you an illustration illustration. That's near and dear to my heart inmates in jail

Can choose to watch TV But at least in the jail,

I was in they only had one channel that they got to watch And it was whatever we set it on not whatever they wanted, right?

So is that free will you have to watch TV? Not exactly, okay

Free will is when you can, you know go home and order up whatever channels you want. That's kind of free will

Human free will when it comes to salvation Here's the here's the question, you know, like the person in the jail cell does a

Person who's born in this world have free will the ability to choose whatever they want

When it comes to God Can they choose to believe or not believe

Okay, they're incapable of choosing. Well, why is that and that's what we're going to talk about I'm going to give a little

Background here because Waldron does and he says that false views of free will have perverted the entire system of Christian truth

And he says origin how many of you have heard of origin not origins, but origin?

Yes a man who is said to have castrated himself because of his understanding of Scripture whether that's true or not as of some debates, but he was very serious about what he believed

He gave free will an increasingly prominent place in his view of Christianity And we're gonna see in just the closing minutes here that he really had some pretty wild ideas

One historian says of him and did the free the idea of free will provides the key to origins entire system origin grounded human sinfulness in the individual falls of human soul of the human soul in a pre -existent state

And when I was reading this I just thought okay, this is bizarre nobody really believes this except for Mormons do they

Anybody ever heard of a pre -existent state I Didn't know anybody believed this other than Mormons until I was reading about origin

He says that only this explains the universality of human sin in other words

The only reason that everybody's born into this world the sinner is because in a previous existence when they existed only as spirits

They chose to sin against God and That's why they come into this world sinners one writer says this he says origins cosmology is complicated and controverted

But he seems to have held to a hypothesis of the pre -existence of souls Before the known world was created by God he created a number of spiritual intelligences at first devoted to the contemplation and love of their

Creator almost all these intelligences eventually grew bored of contemplating God and their love for him cooled off Those whose love for God diminished the most became demons

Those whose love diminished moderately became human souls eventually to be incarnated in fleshly bodies

Those whose love diminished the least became angels so angels are the highest form of Creation according to origin

One however remained perfectly devoted to God and guess who he was Jesus and He became through love one with the word logos of God the logos eventually took a flesh and was born of Mary becoming the

God -man Jesus Christ, and I'm like I read that and I was like okay, this sounds more like What does it sound like?

What's that a movie or I What's that Sounds a lot like Mormonism right

I mean you could just adapt it to Mormonism because it's really close Or like mythology really you know and not it's certainly not grounded in Scripture, but here's what happens if Your presupposition in other words your foundational point.

You know your terra firma your bedrock is Free will then what do you do?

ultimately you're like you know a Gymnast or you know somebody in the circus on a trapeze or something you turn yourself you twist yourself you bend yourself you fold and middle

Spindle and mutilate yourself you do whatever you got to do to find free will so you create a whole system

That doesn't exist anywhere in scriptures They could say well the only reason that everybody's a sinner right is that there was some pre -existence

We wouldn't find that anywhere what we would find is that everybody's a sinner because We're children of Adam and our father was a sinner and his sin nature is passed on to us

And then we choose by virtue of our nature and because we're sinners. That's what we do right

But origin went on to say that you know and this this sounds like Eastern religion

The various states of life whether it be wealth or poverty or bad health or good health or whatever

Determined by what Their level of sinfulness in the pre -existence, I'm like this is like reincarnation, right?

Origin was also a universalist he believed free will was a perpetual state Always have free will in other words again

If your foundational premise is that God loves us so much And he's so interested in having a relationship with us

And the only way that that relationship can be genuine can be based on mutual love and affection is

If we have free will then you will do whatever it takes to get there, and this is what he did he says even after death

People might be saved After being purified for a time in the fires of hell

They might become good enough, and he says even Satan might eventually choose salvation

So if somebody quotes origin during a summer during a sermon just kind of tune this guy's nuts

Now if they're talking bibliology origin is interesting historically, but I mean other than that he doesn't really have much to bring to the table

Okay, so the confession 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith affirms and defines Free will let me say that again it affirms and defines free will well

I thought you just said free will is a bad thing it defines free will It affirms that we have we again we make choices we have

Natural liberty it will call it the ability to act on choice It is the freedom though to choose

What one desires? Let's see it is not the freedom to choose what one desires without regard to External circumstances or environmental factors, etc.

Etc. Etc Free will Free will means that no one is forced

To choose Good or evil men are free right?

but their choices are Not determined by external factors. It said their choices are made by their personal free and moral natures their moral natures

There cannot be human responsibility and accountability which the Bible teaches unless this were the case

But let's we'll close on in fact,

I think Simon brought this or started get us here earlier John 3 18 and 19

John 3 18 and 19 and if somebody would read those two verses and we'll close here in a moment

John 3 verses 18 and 19 Okay, so we're going to choose

Right. Everybody's going to choose to believe or not believe the question is is that free will?

You know are there other factors that come into play and this is what he says and then we have to close he says the confession

Carefully limits and qualifies free will Free will is not utter unpredictability

It's not utter Unpredictability Doesn't mean you know that You know,

I I randomly choose what today what or what to do today? He says human freedom is not ultimate.

It's not the most powerful thing in the universe Origin thought it was apparently our

Freedom is under the control of God's sovereign will even in the state of innocence

In other words, even Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were under the control of God's Sovereignty, even though they had free will in other words, they could choose according to their nature.

They had no sin nature But God ordained the fall

God ordains all that happens and he says divine freedom

God's freedom the potter's freedom as it says in Romans 9 and Human freedom are not in conflict

Rather it is only because our wills are made in the image of the freedom of God's supreme will

That our wills are free. In other words human freedom is rooted in God's sovereign freedom

We have to close here and we'll talk about this extensively next week.

But here's the issue the issue is And I'll just frame it this way

Our wills are free to choose within the confines of our nature right as Unbelievers, we are free to choose all that unbelievers will choose

Unbelievers have a few disadvantages Those disadvantages to just kind of summarize is that they're spiritually deaf

Blind and dead they cannot hear the truth.

They cannot See the truth and they cannot respond to the truth

Other than that, they can make free choices That's a pretty rough place to be right and one of the arguments

I made and we'll just close with this With this gentleman yesterday. I Said, you know, here's the thing

We can you know treasure our Ability to choose and everything we can look at that and just think how wonderful that is or we can look at first Peter chapter 1 and I'm just gonna read verse 3 and I think maybe you know one of the greatest thoughts

Definitely the greatest thought in scripture is this and it's said a multitude of ways but in chapter 1 of 1st

Peter verse 3 Peter writes this he says blessed be the God and Father of our

Lord Jesus Christ According to his great mercy he has caused us

To be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

This is the gospel His great mercy.

He has caused us to be born again not You know blessed be the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to my great wisdom I have caused me to be born again.

It's God's sovereign will He has to cause us to be born again and we'll talk more about that next week

But the reason is because the unsaved man cannot respond to the things of God He doesn't have the ability to do that and we'll talk about that more next week.

Let's pray father Thank you for the sure nature of your word

Thank you for Your sovereignty just for the plan that we can read about in scripture and see that from beginning to end you've planned it all we are the objects of your affection your action

You chose us before the world began You caused us to be born again in time and you will keep us to the end

Triune God for your own glory father son and spirit and we praise you and thank you in Christ's name.