Election
and Assurance (handout)
Why
we believe what we believe
(The
Baptist Faith and Message)
(Message
8)
John
10:27-29
Introduction: (Illustration) Seems
a biker is riding by the zoo, when he sees a little girl leaning into the
lion’s cage. Suddenly the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to
pull her inside his cage, all the while her parents are screaming in terror.
The biker jumps off his bike, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the
nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back for a
brief minute, letting go of the little girl. The biker grabs her, pulling her
to safety and brings her back to her parents. The scene is emotional, as the
parents hug their child and thank the biker for his heroic actions which saved
their daughter’s life.
A reporter has seen the whole scene, and while
speaking with the biker says, “Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I
have ever witnessed. Where did you get such courage?” “Why it was nothing,” The
biker replied, “The lion was behind bars, after all, and I just saw the little
girl in danger and did what I felt anyone else would have done.”
To which the reporter replies, “This kind of
action will not go unnoticed. I’m a journalist and I promise you that this will
be on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper. By the way, what kind of
motorcycle do you ride?” “A Harley Davidson,” says the biker.
The following morning the biker buys the
paper to see what the reporter had written. And there in large bold font, he
read the following headline, “Biker Gang
Member Assaults African Immigrant and Steals His Lunch.”
We can’t believe everything we hear or read,
can we. That’s why it is so very important for us to be certain about the
source of our doctrine. As Christians we hold to the inerrant and infallible
word of God as the sole source of doctrine. Our doctrinal statement, the
Baptist Faith and Message, is a summation of our understanding of what the Bible
teaches on specific doctrine.
Today we come to the doctrine of Election
and the assurance of our salvation.
Article five of the Baptist Faith and
Message reads:
“Election is the gracious purpose of God,
according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies
sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and comprehends all the
means in connection with the end. It is the glorious display of God’s sovereign
goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting
and promotes humility.”
“All true believers endure to the end. Those
whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall
away from the state of grace, but shall preserve to the end. Believers may fall
into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair
their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and
temporal judgments on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation.”
For the purpose of our study we will look at
our assurance in three sections. We will look at election, eternal security and
finally we will conclude with some practical suggestions for application.
First, the issue of
election.
I. Election
The doctrine of election is, simply put, a
biblical doctrine which says that everyone who comes to faith in Christ, does
so because God, in His grace and mercy, chose them to be saved. There is no
denying that this is the clear teaching of the Bible. However it must be
properly understood in order to be properly applied.
Ephesians 1:3-5 says, “3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined
us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good
pleasure of His will, …” (NKJV)
Jesus Himself speaks of the elect. In
Matthew 24:24 He says that in the last days false prophets will come who
will perform signs and wonders and will be so convincing that if it were
possible they would even lead the elect astray. And in Matthew 24:31 He says
that the Son of Man will, “Send out His angels with a loud trumpet, and they
will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the
other.”
While there is no question about what the
Bible teaches, there are many questions about what it really means. There are
many things within this doctrine where Baptists do not agree.
Baptist’s have never been able to agree on
the basis and nature of election. Election is one of the things upon which we
will only find total agreement in heaven, speaking of election there are some points
which God will have to settle for us and there are some points upon which we will
seem to agree.
At the heart of the disagreement over this
doctrine is the tension between God’s election and the free moral agency of
man. Libraries have been written about this subject and no one has ever been
able to settle the questions surrounding this tension. Simply put there are two
schools of thought free moral agency or Arminianism
which teaches God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but He
does not interfere with man's freedom. Then there is Calvinism which teaches in
general that because of the fall, man is unable of himself to savingly believe the gospel. The sinner is dead, blind, and
deaf to the things of God; his heart is deceitful and desperately corrupt. His
will is not free, it is in bondage to his evil nature, therefore, he will not -
indeed he cannot - choose good over evil in the
spiritual realm.
Those who follow the reformed tradition
would say it is the tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility,
while those who follow Arminianism would say that it
is the question between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will.
Lets look at Calvinism…
I have found it difficult to identify a
universal definition of Calvinism because everyone I have met who claims to be
a Calvinist wants to define exactly what they mean by that. Needless to say, we
cannot be exhaustive in our treatment of this topic. So for the sake of our
study we will simply overview the basics.
For the sake of our series, Calvinism stems
from the teachings of the great reformer, John Calvin, who lived between 1509 and
1564. Calvin emphasized the sovereignty of God, the sinfulness of man and the
necessity of grace for salvation, things which are foundational to our theology
as Christians. Some years after he died, his followers systemized his theology
and went beyond what Calvin himself taught. This system,
is recognized with the now famous acronym TULIP. I want us to understand a
little about Calvinism and Arminianism first lets look at TULIP and Calvinism.
The ‘T’ in Tulip stands for Total Depravity. Since the fall, man is
born with a sin nature. Every part of his being has been infected with this
disease so that he cannot save himself, nor can he seek God without the
prompting of the Holy Spirit through God’s grace. The Bible clearly teaches
that we cannot come to God on our own. It takes God drawing us to Him. John
6:44 says, “No man can come to me, except the Father which
hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
The “U” in Tulip stands for Unconditional Election – This says that
God, in His grace and mercy, without any conditions, by His own sovereign
desire, chose some for salvation and left others to suffer hell. The controversy
arises from the two truths which state that no one is saved apart from God’s
plan and yet, anyone who repents and trusts Jesus Christ can and will be
saved. The Bible teaches both that God chooses us and that we must choose
God. It teaches that God will hold us responsible for our decision to accept or
reject Jesus, and yet it says that we cannot come to Him unless He enables us.
It says that God has His elect but it also says that He is not willing that any
should perish but that all should come to repentance. This is one of the great disputes
over scripture. Calvinists insist, and rightfully so, that since salvation
begins and ends with God and that it is by His grace and His mercy, man can
have nothing to do with it. Those who do not hold to reformed theology,
however, quote verses like 1 Peter 1:2 (2Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,
through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the
blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.) which says that we are the elect, according
to the foreknowledge of God. In other words, they say that God saves everyone
without them having to do anything.
Through His wisdom God did not give us
insight into the nature or basis of that election, He simply tells us that He
chose us and that all who will receive Him are chosen. I sometimes get amused
at the degree to which some people are preoccupied by the doctrine of election
and how it affects salvation. Folks, I understand Unconditional election to be
the work of Christ on the cross as the final sacrifice for sin and our
responsibility to accept it for application to our heart for the forgiveness of
sin.
The “L” in Tulip stands for Limited Atonement –That is to say they
believe that Jesus died only for the sins of the elect. Historically this meant
only those pre chosen from the beginning of time. At the end of the day, however,
unless we believe everyone will ultimately be saved, which would make us
Universalists, we have to admit that the benefit of the work of Christ (salvation)
will be limited to those who trust Him. That is to say, that Jesus died on the
cross for the whole world but the only ones to benefit from His atonement are
those who receive, by their personal faith in Christ, the free gift of
salvation offered to them.
The “I” in Tulip stands for Irresistible Grace – Calvinists prefer
the term “effectual calling.” This says that those who are predestined (chosen)
to be saved will ultimately be saved. Calvinists teach that the elect will not
be forced to be saved against their will, but that they will come to Christ, of
their own choosing because God’s call on their life will be so strong they
cannot resist it. Critics of Calvinism, however, say that choices which are
predetermined for humanity are not choices of free will but are nothing more
than fatalism. They would point to passages like Acts 7:51 where Stephen, before
he is martyred accuses his executioners of resisting the grace of God. And Matthew 23:37 where Jesus says, “O,
The “P” in Tulip stands for Perseverance of the Saints – which
simply means that those who God saves He saves eternally and they cannot lose
their salvation. This is a point upon which nearly all Baptists agree. Often
referred to as “eternal security,” or “once saved always saved,” this doctrine
is often misunderstood. You see, the perseverance of the saints is not a
license to live however you want, to the contrary, it says that if you are
truly saved you will display actions which give evidence to the fact that you
have truly been saved.
Now lets look at Arminianism…
Free-Will or Human
Ability
Although human nature was seriously affected
by the fall, man has not been left in a state of total spiritual helplessness.
God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but He does not
interfere with man's freedom. Each sinner possesses a free will, and his
eternal destiny depends on how he uses it. Man's freedom consists of his
ability to choose good over evil in spiritual matters; his will is not enslaved
to his sinful nature. The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God's
Spirit and be regenerated or resist God's grace and perish. The lost sinner
needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the
Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man's act and precedes the new
birth. Faith is the sinner's gift to God; it is man's contribution to
salvation.
Conditional Election
God's choice of certain individuals unto
salvation before the foundation of the world was based upon His foreseeing that
they would respond to His call. He selected only those whom He knew would of
themselves freely believe the gospel. Election therefore was determined by or
conditioned upon what man would do. The faith which God foresaw and upon which
He based His choice was not given to the sinner by God (it was not created by the
regenerating power of the Holy Spirit) but resulted solely from man's will. It
was left entirely up to man as to who would believe and therefore as to who
would be elected unto salvation. God chose those whom He knew would, of their
own free will, choose Christ. Thus the sinner's choice of Christ, not God's
choice of the sinner, is the ultimate cause of salvation.
Universal Redemption or
General Atonement
Christ's redeeming work made it
possible for everyone to be saved but did not actually secure the salvation of
anyone. Although Christ died for all men and for every man, only those who
believe on Him are saved. His death enabled God to pardon sinners on the
condition that they believe, but it did not actually put away anyone's sins.
Christ's redemption becomes effective only if man chooses to accept it.
The Holy Spirit Can Be
Effectually Resisted
The Spirit calls inwardly all those who are called outwardly by the gospel
invitation; He does all that He can to bring every sinner to salvation. But inasmuch
as man is free, he can successfully resist the Spirit's call. The Spirit cannot
regenerate the sinner until he believes; faith (which is man's contribution)
precedes and makes possible the new birth. Thus, man's free will limits the
Spirit in the application of Christ's saving work. The Holy Spirit can only
draw to Christ those who allow Him to have His way with them. Until the sinner
responds, the Spirit cannot give life. God's grace, therefore, is not
invincible; it can be, and often is, resisted and thwarted by man.
Falling from Grace
Those who believe and are truly saved can
lose their salvation by failing to keep up their faith, etc. All Arminians have not agreed on this point; some have held
that believers are eternally secure in Christ - that once a sinner is
regenerated, he can never be lost.
This brings us to our second point in this
message, the doctrine of Assurance.
II. The Assurance of Salvation
This doctrine is founded on the scriptural
teaching which says that God saves us and that He can keep us. It is founded on
the scripture truth which teaches us that God gives us eternal life. It is not
life till we sin again, it is not life till we feel unsaved, it is not life
till times get tough and our faith grows weak, it is eternal life which will
never end.
There are a number of scriptures which give
us assurance of our salvation and affirm this doctrine of the perseverance of
the saints.
You see scripture is filled with the
assurance that our salvation is secure.
Let me give you five reasons why people
doubt their salvation. Im sure there are more but
here are five.
1. They don’t understand how they are
saved
2. They do not have a biblical
understanding of perseverance
3. They are ignorant of God’s promises
in His word
4. They are out of fellowship with God
and do not sense His presence
5. They are not saved and sense they
are lost because they are
Which brings me to my conclusion.
III. Conclusion
I want to make three practical suggestions
as to how we can put Assurance into practice.