Our Most Precious Faith
Salvation: God’s Sovereign Election
Turn to John 6. Last week we looked at the first half of our doctrinal statement on salvation. If you were away, you need to watch that as much of what we will discuss this morning is dependant upon that message, which was an emphasis on man’s responsibility to respond to the message of the gospel and man’s accountability before God. The first part of our statement says this:
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins through the shedding of His blood on the cross. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone and not on the basis of human merit. Only those who repent and trust Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord are born again and have eternal life.
And we said that one of the greatest arguments for man’s responsibility within God’s sovereign election is that man is judged by God for his rejection of God. Therefore, man must be responsible, otherwise, how could God judge him? The second part of our statement focuses on God’s sovereign election in salvation. And where we see the two truths being front and centre is a passage such as Philippians 2:12-13:
“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling [man’s responsibility]; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure [God’s sovereignty in salvation].”
Philippians 2:12-13 (LSB)
If you have your Bibles open to John 6, we see the same back-and-forth tension there:
35 “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe [man’s responsibility]. 37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out’ [God’s sovereign election]. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day [God’s sovereign election]. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life’ [man’s responsibility]. 65 And He was saying, ‘For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father [God’s sovereign election]. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe” [man’s responsibility].
Jesus in this sermon here gives no explanation of this paradox or tension, but teaches both man’s responsibility to come to the gospel, and goes on to say that it is impossible without the Lord’s granting that person to come. And it is this second truth—our Lord’s sovereign election—that is emphasized in the latter half of our statement.
We also believe that those who are truly born again have been elected by God and will persevere in their faith to the end.
There are two truths that are highlighted in this part of the statement. One, God’s election; and two, the fact that those called by God will persevere in their faith to the end. So, now look with me to Ephesians 1:4:
“[J]ust as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love.”
Ephesians 1:4 (LSB)
Here we see the word “chose,” as it states that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. This is the statement that I gave to you last week, that I wish to read again for you:
“God chose those for salvation before the foundation of the world. His sovereign choice was not based upon a decision that you and I would make but was based upon God’s own determined purpose and glory. Yet at the same time, man is absolutely responsible for his actions and decisions and therefore man is accountable before God for his choices and for his rejection of God.”
Now we already studied man’s responsibility to respond to the gospel last week. And going back to Tom’s wording that last week’s message would have explained, how can I be saved? When the Philippian jailer asked, what must I do to be saved? Paul and Silas responded:
“‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your house.’ And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his household. And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.”
Acts 16:31b-33 (LSB)
I have shared with you before the story of a young, unchurched girl in our youth group, who was is grade 12, who stayed back after our Sunday night youth meeting with her Christian friend. And after a long discussion of Anne and I with her about Christianity and the Bible, she asked, “What do I have to do to become a Christian anyway?” And we basically said the same thing that Paul and Silas said. Well, she received Christ, and shortly after, she was baptised, and over twenty-five years later she is still serving the Lord along with her husband. But what we are going to look at this morning is actually what happened when you were saved. And that truth is taught to us in Ephesians 2, turn there. In our men’s study we discussed these new believers in Ephesus who had come to Christ, who had believed the message of the gospel that Christ had died for them, and who had offered them forgiveness and eternal life. And now Paul is going to teach them the deeper truth of what happened to them. And though they had made a decision to receive Christ, Paul now informs them here that they actually had been chosen by God, and will explain further their conversion to Christ.
“And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Ephesians 2:1-3 (LSB)
They possibly were hearing this for the first time what happened to them when they were saved. They may have thought it was them and their own ability and smarts, but Paul tells them actually what happened when they responded in faith. So, Paul begins by explaining to them that they were dead. This goes back to the message a few weeks ago of man’s total depravity, which does not mean that man can never do right or that he cannot love and be kind, but it does mean that man is dead spiritually in that because of his sin he is apart from God, that he is destined to an eternal hell, that he has no means of saving himself. And apart from God’s acting, he has no hope or ability. And what Paul is telling these new believers is that God did act on their behalf.
“But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2:4-9 (LSB)
Verse 5, that when you were still dead, God raised you up and He made you alive. That is what happened to you when you came to Christ. And you might argue that and say … no, someone explained the gospel to me and I believed. And Paul would agree, but he is explaining to you now how you were able to believe. As everything we have as believers, everything that happened to us at salvation: our belief, our faith, our life, our regeneration, our sight when God opened our eyes—came after God raised us up from the dead. The whole package was a gift from God. Now some might argue that the one who is raised from death to life spiritually, could refuse the message of the gospel. But that is not what the passage says, for it says that God gave you life and raised you up and seated you with Christ. Now, could someone reject the message of the gospel? Well, of course they could, but not the one who has been called by God. Not the one who has been given life and raised up by God. Not the one whom the Lord has given them spiritual sight.
And I find that very few would actually argue with this frankly. For if you ask anyone about their salvation, they will often say such things as, I was blind, but now I see. So, did you open your eyes? No! But they will quickly tell you what? That God opened my eyes! I also find that when we speak to people about praying for those who are unsaved—a spouse, a child, a friend at work—we often pray that God would change their heart. Yet if God is not sovereign in salvation, it would be difficult to really explain what we are praying for. Are we praying that God needs to try harder? No, we are pleading with God that He might open their eyes so that they might see their need of Christ and believe and therefore receive eternal life. See, if God is sovereign in His election of sinners to salvation, and God has asked us to pray for those outside of the faith, therefore, it is God alone who can change and transform a heart that is dead to a heart that is alive to Christ. And therefore, our mandate as believers is to plead with God on behalf of those who do not yet know Him, because God is sovereign, He is all-powerful, and he is the only One who can save.
If someone is drowning in Lake Huron and cannot swim and is gasping for breath, they need someone to save them who can save them. But in this case the swimmer is already dead. They really need someone to come and save them. And therefore, we must be active, diligent, and working towards that end—as it was never the intent of the Scriptures to sit and say God will save whomever He will save—no, the intent is that we would pray, plead, go, and tell. For God is a merciful God, and He is mighty to save. And when someone receives Christ as their Saviour and Lord, He receives all the glory. Yet, good to be reminded here when we have already studied the sin nature of man, and his natural rebellion against God as Wayne Grudem writes:
“It would be perfectly fair for God not to save anyone, just as He did the angels. What would be perfectly fair for God would be to do with human beings as He did with the angels, that is, to save none of those who sinned and rebelled against Him.”
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology 681-682
What happened to the angels that sinned against God along with Satan? They have been eternally condemned without any plan or purpose to rescue them. This is a sobering truth that we must wrap our minds around. And this is the importance of understanding our total depravity. Lord, You didn’t offer Satan redemption. Lord, You didn’t offer the fallen angels redemption. That’s unjust! And God says, it is just, it is completely just. Second Peter 2:4 says:
“For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the pit and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for judgment.”
- Peter 2:4 (LSB)
Now some might say that if God elected those who would come to Himself, therefore, an unbeliever had no real chance to be saved. Yet the Bible never speaks in those terms as when people rejected Christ, the blame is always placed upon the sinner, as the Bible teaches clearly that all men, whether they have heard the gospel or not, are without excuse. And yet, when someone comes to Christ, God gets all the glory because He is the only One who can save them. Grudem says:
“This is the consistent pattern in Scripture: people who remain in unbelief do so because they are unwilling to come to God, and the blame for such unbelief always lies with the unbelievers themselves, never with God.”
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology 681
So, we plead with God, we cry out to Him. As Paul told Timothy that “perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the full knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.” The book of Acts explains to us this same truth:
“And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.”
Acts 13:48 (LSB)
As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. Not those who believed were appointed to eternal life. Clearly, we are reading here, the sovereign hand of God in election to salvation. I want to add here an important truth about salvation that is referred to in our statement when it says that we are “born again.” This references the truth that salvation as taught in the Bible is instantaneous. Though we may be aware of God and know about God, and we might look at our lives and think that this was a long process that brought me to Christ—and there could be truth to that—but the teaching of the Bible is that there is a moment when you went from being dead to being alive. This is always the wording in the Bible, as there is no being half-dead or being half-alive. The Apostle John speaks about this when he talks about being born again—that moment of new birth. John 5:24, the believer has passed from death unto life. First John 3:14, we have passed from death unto life.
And I know that for some, there may not be a moment or a day when you remember your eyes being opened, but I believe that from God’s perspective there was an exact moment. It may be something that you will have to ask the Lord in eternity, Lord, when was the exact moment of my salvation? In other words, when did I pass from death unto life? God’s sovereign election. Now in relation to salvation, there is another very important truth we hold to and that is the perseverance of the saints. “[T]hat those who are truly born again have been elected by God and will persevere in their faith to the end.” Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
- Cor 5:17 (LSB)
This doctrine of the perseverance of the saints—or some of us may have grown up with the term eternal security—though I do believe that the term … perseverance of the saints is better. Certainly, the insinuation here is that once a person receives Christ and is born again, they have eternal life, and have gone from death to life, and therefore, it would follow that there is no reversing that process. Now if you hold to this, this sets you apart from other denominations that may believe that a person can lose his or her salvation, such as the Pentecostals, Salvation Army, most Methodists, and some denominations such as the Missionary Alliance, do not make a stand on this issue.
Now an area which we may sometimes struggle with is the fact that we may look around us and know those who apparently have come to faith in their lives, and yet seem to have fallen away from the church and serving Christ. And therefore, it may be hard to view someone like this, wondering if they were at one time saved, what happened? Well, I think that we need to know that the Bible makes no qualms about those who fall away from the gospel, as we are really confronted with this tension in the Bible as we discussed last week. Remember we spoke about the depth of the word “believe,” that it can be used of the demons who merely had a mental belief of Christ. John wrote that when Jesus was teaching that many believed in Him. And listen to how Jesus responded:
“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32 (LSB)
What does Jesus actually do here? Well, He actually “qualifies” the definition of the word “believe.” In fact, if you read the chapter, He later tells some of them (vs 45) “you do not believe Me.” So, He begins by saying that the Jews believed in Him, but Jesus says if you believed you would abide in My Words, and therefore, He says, some of you do not believe in Me. When Jesus taught the parable about the four soils. In the parable, four different people were faced with the decision of belief. For one of them, he heard the Word, but it was taken from him by Satan. The second guy, the Bible actually says that he received the message with joy. But it was only temporary and he fell away. The third guy, it says that he heard the Word, but because of the worries of the world, his faith became unfruitful, or the ESV says his faith “proved” to be unfruitful. And yet the fourth gentleman professes to know Christ, and it says about him that he heard the Word, and he understood the Word, and therefore, he began to bear fruit. So, in reality, many people will look like Christians at some point in their life. They may do all the right things outwardly. They may walk an aisle, sign a card, raise their hand, even get baptized. Yet remember what Jesus said:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”
Matthew 7:21 (LSB)
In other words, “if you abide [or remain] in My Word, you are truly My disciple.” Now here is some important teaching and therefore an important question. Are these people who were never saved, or are they people who at one time were saved and then became unsaved? Well, in that passage when Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus then responded to those who would not enter, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” That’s key, isn’t it? Not, I knew you and forgot about you, but I never knew you. That would indicate that those who fall away, what? that they have never truly been transformed by God. Jesus says I never knew you. It was not that a person who came to know Christ and fell away. The truth is that they never came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. First John 2:19:
“They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they were of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be manifested that they all are not of us.”
- John 2:19 (LSB)
This is extremely clear that those who are not truly saved will eventually be exposed as unbelievers. So, do we see the danger in saying to someone, once saved always saved. Whereas we need to be asking the much deeper question, have you truly given your heart and life to Christ as Lord and Saviour? And this is where the term the perseverance of the saints is such a good term as it comes directly from the Bible, as this is exactly what the Bible teaches, that those who have truly come to Christ, will persevere to the end. Turn to 1 Peter 1.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
1 Peter 1:3-7 (LSB)
A testing of what? To see if the faith is actually faith, actually real faith. See when gold is tested and found to be inferior. It does not mean that it was pure gold and it became inferior. It means that it was never pure gold in the first place. A further perspective from God, when Jesus said:
“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.”
John 6:37 (LSB)
This is very strong language of those one, whom the Father gave to the Son (election); and two, they will never be cast out (perseverance of the saints). And then Jesus said (John 10) that those same ones given to Him can never be snatched out of His hand. Jude 24:
“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy.”
Jude 24 (LSB)
So, we have the many passages in the Bible to motivate us. John 8:31, “If you abide in my word”—I must abide! Colossians 1:23, “if indeed you continue in the faith”—I must continue! Matthew 24:13, “But the one who endures to the end”—I must endure! Hebrews 3:14, “For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end”—I must hold fast! And this is not a burden for us if you truly know Christ, this is a joy for us! And this is much of the motivation and the joy of our salvation. This ought to be our passion—that I must persevere to the end. And I would suggest that this doctrine is similar to what we have already discussed with man’s responsibility and God’s sovereign purposes, that we, like Paul would strive in our faith—I must persevere. And then we see the faithfulness of God in many of these verses to keep us, saying, yes, you will persevere.
In closing, man is responsible to respond to the gospel. The Bible even says that if he has not heard the gospel, he has even rejected the evidence of God’s creation. But it is God who calls us to salvation, because everything we have in in Christ, are belief, our faith, our life, our regeneration, our spiritual sight—you did not do that—God did that when He resurrected You from the dead. And even the good works that we do for Christ after salvation are due to His grace in our lives. At the end of the Ephesians 2 passage we read (vs 10) where Paul said:
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:10 (LSB)
Yes, even those good works, they too, are due to the grace of God. As John Piper said that every act of obedience that we do puts us in even greater debt to His grace, and that this is exactly where God wants us to be in eternity. In other words, the more that we do for Christ, the more grace we have received and the more we owe Him. If you have rejected Christ and the message of the gospel in salvation, you will be held accountable and therefore judged by God for that rejection. But if you have received Christ because of His grace in electing you for salvation, you will forever praise God for His kindness to you and He will forever receive the glory for His work in salvation in your life.
Let’s pray. Lord, Your Word is powerful, as it cuts into the soul and spirit, and it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of every heart. Lord, we praise You for Your sovereign greatness in choosing a people for Your own possession, and keeping Your people to the end, held in Your hand. So, we ask You as the sovereign King, would You convict the hearts of we Your people; would You convict any that are here this morning outside of Christ with the power of the gospel; would You convict the hearts of those we cry out on behalf of their eternal souls, some in our families, some who we love dearly; and would You convict the hearts of individuals all around this globe to come to Christ. Lord, in Your sovereign mercy, we would ask that You might draw the sinner to yourself and grant to us a great burden for the lost. And all God’s people said, amen.