The History of the Debate This installment will not be exegetical. The purpose is simply to provide a historical backdrop for understanding how the debate about the biblical exegesis has been conducted, and when. We will limit our discussion to the history of the Christian church, although it is important to recognize that this is …
Reprobation and Preterition
We must begin by understanding that there are two distinct aspects to reprobation. It is important to keep these distinctions in mind all the time. Preterition comes from the Latin, and means “to pass by.” It is flip side to election and has nothing whatever to do with the merits or demerits of the person …
Free Will and Free Agency
No serious participant in this debate denies that men are free, responsible agents, and that they are fully accountable for what they do. There is, however, much debate on what the word freedom means. How Does the Will Operate? Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and …
Providence and Predestination
We come now to a discussion of God’s control over everything. Obviously, this includes our salvation, but is not limited to that. Now most Christians do not have a problem in acknowledging God’s control over the physical creation. Not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father, and He know the numbers of …
The Perseverance of the Elect
This is the one aspect of the gospel which the natural man thinks he might be able to like. But like all spiritual truth, the natural man can only love the truth through a distortion of it. We should therefore begin with misunderstandings of the doctrine: 1. The Existence of Distortions: “If you teach the …
Resurrecting Grace
We begin by reviewing what we have covered. First, the condition of man is such that he cannot save himself, or contribute to his own salvation. Secondly, we saw that the Father elected some to salvation before the creation of the world. Election is the work of the Father. In our last installment, we looked …
Efficacious Redemption
We must begin by rejecting a term that is commonly applied to this doctrine. The rejected term is that of limited atonement. It should be rejected for two reasons. One is that it is misleading with regard to the teaching of the Bible, and the other is that it misrepresents the debate. One of the …
Election by the Father
In Whom? We must begin with the understanding that election cannot be understood apart from Christ. Christ is the Elect One, and all those whom God choose to give to Him are therefore elect in Him. Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit …
The Condition of Man
Introduction: The nature of the problem dictates whether or not there will be a solution, and if so, what that solution will be. Among evangelical Christians, the nature of the “problem” of salvation can be described in two basic ways. Either man is sick in his sin, needing to take the medicine, or he is …
Attributes of God
1. The Holiness of God — When the biblical doctrine of salvation is first presented, one of the first responses men have is to question how this affects the holiness of God. So we begin there: Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, …