“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.”
Titus 2:11-14
Understanding “Once Saved Always Saved”
This term has been misused by folks in thinking that once you pray a prayer or walk an isle you are “in the club” and you quite simply cannot lose your salvation. The key to understanding this statement is to understand where the term came from. The early reformers had a series of statements about the doctrines of grace and one of those statements was called “perseverance of the saints”. This statement affirmed the Biblical truths that someone who is truly saved cannot lose their salvation. The reason? The reformers rightly understood that before we are saved we are dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1) and a dead person can no more respond to the gospel than a corpse can talk. It takes a supernatural work of God to cause a sinner to be born again, or “born from above” in order for that dead person to be able to respond to the gospel call. The Westminster Confession of Faith rightly states, “They, whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.” Jesus clearly taught that one must be born again before they can enter the kingdom of heaven. God causes spiritual rebirth as a gracious, sovereign choice. So the reformers understanding was very Biblical in that they taught that a true believer is kept by God and that believer will persevere because the Holy Spirit will cause that person to continue in the faith even amongst the strongest persecution and temptation.
As a Bible teacher, I am absolutely convinced from Scripture that the only way to teach God’s Word is to do so through a verse by verse exposition. The majority of curriculums available for the average church class is nothing more than a glorified devotional taking two or three verses (usually out of context) to drive some life application down the throats of the class members. These curriculums are normally devoid of doctrine. Is it no surprise that our churches are filled with people who know so little about Scripture? That is no way to teach God’s Word. We must allow God’s Word to speak for itself by providing a faithful verse by verse exposition of the text with grammatical, historical and authorial intent in mind. I get so discouraged when I hear Bible teachers and preachers focus more on application than a solid exhortation that follows Biblical exposition and sound doctrine.
I was so excited to hear Dr. John MacArthur speak on this very issue. MacArthur regularly comes under question by the typical “life application and relevant obsessed” pastors of the day as to why he does not focus on application more. John’s answer is spot on. I pray God will raise up more men like Dr. MacArthur who boldly proclaim God’s truth one verse at a time without compromise. Take a listen to this six minute segment where John explains his reasonings for a focus on doctrine and exhortation while leaving application to the Holy Spirit…
When we think about some of the most amazing creative acts of God I believe that most people would point to Genesis and the account of the creation of the world through the word of God Almighty. If we really step back and think about the creation account it should bring us to our knees in praise to our God – that He would simply speak things into existence – things from nothing.
When Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, he had to be thinking about that glorious truth of God creating everything from nothing, or ex nihilo as the theologians put it, when he penned chapter 4. There is a profound verse that speaks so many truths in this chapter…
“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:6
This verse is comparing the miraculous creation of the world by the unlimited power of God to the regeneration of the dead soul at war with God to a new creation that longs to know Him. I believe it was Paul Washer who once gave a powerful sermon stating that the regeneration of the soul is a greater act of God than His creation of the world. The apostle Paul I believe is saying just that in this verse.
This powerful verse of Holy Writ illustrates so many truths:
1. Only God can cause the regeneration of a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. Notice that God is the One who gives the light of the knowledge of His glory in Christ. This is not something that any man can obtain on their own – Scripture is clear on that. We want so much to be able to cling to something within ourselves to come to God. The only thing you have to bring to God is your sin. All of our salvation, all of it, is from God. He graciously causes us to be born again granting us repentance and faith to come running to Him, all to His glory.
2. The absolute miracle and power of God to speak light into existence is the same miracle and power of God to create a new heart – to create a heart of flesh from a heart of stone. God speaks in Isaiah 66:2 that His hand created all things, by His hand all things came into being. But as He looks out over the landscape of a billion galaxies what catches His attention, what causes Him to look is one with a contrite and broken heart and one who trembles at His Word.
“All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” Isaiah 66:2
God looks for His greatest creation – the regenerated man. This regeneration is all for His glory. We have nothing, absolutely nothing to boast in except the cross of Jesus Christ to the glory of God. I am so humbled that God would save a sinner such as I. I am a man who deserves nothing but eternal damnation because of my rebellion and willful sin against my Creator. But He saved me. My God and Savior Jesus Christ saved me. And my God who spoke light into existence transformed my stony heart to one of flesh and opened my eyes to His glory in the face of Christ Jesus my Lord. All to Him I owe.
3. What is the purpose of salvation? Why did God choose to save His elect? The Westminster Catechism sums it up better than any other – for God’s Glory. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. God is glorified through what He does to save sinners. Since all men are born haters of God and enemies of God, our natural desires are things other than God – namely self. Regeneration causes us to love the things we once hated and hate the things we once loved. We become new creatures in Christ and the scales come off our eyes to see God in Christ and to seek with all of our might to know Him more and more. God is glorified in our knowing Him. In fact, Jesus in what I call “The Real Lord’s Prayer” in John chapter 17 explains in absolute beauty what eternal life truly is…
“This is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3
In regeneration, God gives the light of His glory in the face of His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus being God reveals the fullness of God to us. To know Christ is to know God. The glorious truth is that it is only by God’s gracious and unmerited regenerative miracle that may we know Him in Christ.
This is just touching on this amazing verse. Like all of Scripture we can never exhaust the riches of what it contains and Who it exalts and glorifies. I am just amazed that God would save any one. The cross of Jesus Christ exemplifies the perfect love as well as the perfect justice of God. There on that cross was God in the flesh loving us beyond all measure taking the place of His elect, bearing the full wrath and punishment from God that we so deserve as rebels, idolaters and enemies of God saving us from the wrath to come. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Father in Heaven, may we all be humbled by Your gracious love, mercy, grace and justice in the cross of Your Son – The Prophet, The Priest, The King. May we boast only in His cross as we take up our own and follow Him. May we be constantly and ever increasingly amazed at the miracle of regeneration, the new birth, being born from above by Your power for Your glory. May You be glorified in all that we do as we seek to obey Your word by Your grace.
I love you Lord Jesus. Maranatha.
Soli Deo Gloria
Related Post: The Sacrifices of God
“He is despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:3). For the special benefit of young preachers, we propose to sermonize this text, though in as simple and homely a manner as possible, trusting that it may please the Lord to speak through it to some unsaved readers, for we dare not assume that all who take this magazine have really been born again.
Our text forms part of one of the Messianic predictions, in which God made know long beforehand the treatment which his Son would receive when He became incarnate.
The prophecy of Isaiah was in the hands of the Jews seven hundred years before the Lord Jesus was born at Bethlehem—yet so exactly did it describe what befell Him, that it might well have been written by one of the Apostles. Therein is supplied one of the incontrovertible proofs of the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures, for only One who knew the end from the beginning, could have thus written history beforehand.
It might well have been supposed that the advent to earth of such a One as the Lord of Glory, would meet with a warm welcome and reverent reception, the more so in view of His appearing in human form, going about doing good. Since He came not to judge—but to save; since His mission was one of grace and mercy, since He ministered to the needy and healed the sick—will not men gladly receive Him? Many would naturally think so—but in so thinking they overlook the fact that the Lord Jesus is “the Holy One,” and none but those who have the principle of holiness in their hearts, can appreciate ineffable Purity. Such an assumption as the one we have just mentioned, ignores the solemn fact of human depravity—the heart of fallen man is “desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). How can the Holy One appear attractive to those who are full of sin!? Nothing so clearly evidences the condition of the human heart, and so solemnly demonstrates its corruption, as its attitude toward the precious Savior.
There is much recorded against man in the Old Testament Scriptures, as for example in Psalm 14:1-4; yet dark as is the picture there drawn of fallen human nature, it fades into insignificance before what the New Testament sets before us. “The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7), and never was this so frightfully patent, as when Jesus was manifested in flesh. “If I had not come,” declared Christ, “and spoken unto them, they had not had sin—but now they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15:22). The appearing of Christ has fully exposed man, bringing to light as nothing else ever has—the desperate wickedness of his heart!
Now let us ask and supply answer to three questions—Who was (and still is) “despised and rejected by men?” Why is He so grievously slighted? In what way is He scorned? Who was so unwelcome here?
When we think of Christmas what may come to your mind is a round, young virgin and a miraculous birth in a small stable. Or maybe your idea of Christmas is more of a family setting with the exchange of gifts around a glimmering Christmas tree. Maybe your view of Christmas is more about a season of peace and joy where people seem to get along a little better this time of year.
The world we live in has always found a way to distract us from the true meaning of anything having to do with Christ Jesus. Christmas focuses on Santa Claus and Easter focuses on a large bunny. In this study, I want to show you how the story of Christmas is all throughout Scripture. We’ll also see that Christmas is an event in history that all men throughout time have looked forward to and look back on along with all of the other events that emanate from the birth of Jesus Christ.
Let us begin with an important question: How were those before Christ saved from the wrath of God because of their sins? Has there always been only one Christmas? Has there always been only one way to salvation throughout all of time?
Scripture gives us clear answers to this question. Some may say that they were saved by the Old Covenant sacrifices or by following the Law. Others may say that faith in God or confession saved them before Christ came.
However, what Holy Scripture teaches us very plainly is that from the foundation of time the only way that anyone could be saved is through the merits of Jesus Christ. The Puritans called that merit the “crosswork” of Jesus Christ – the atoning death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior. Let us take a journey through God’s Word to see just a few of the many places that show that all of Scripture points to Christ. My prayer is that you will come to always see the shadow of the cross over the Babe in the manger as you celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.
“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” – John 6:44
Coming to Christ” is a very common phrase in Holy Scripture. It is used to express those acts of the soul wherein, leaving at once our self-righteousness, and our sins, we fly unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and receive his righteousness to be our covering, and his blood to be our atonement. Coming to Christ, then, embraces in it repentance, self-negation, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it sums within itself all those things which are the necessary attendants of these great states of heart, such as the belief of the truth, earnestness of prayer to God, the submission of the soul to the precepts of God’s gospel, and all those things which accompany the dawn of salvation in the soul. Coming to Christ is just the one essential thing for a sinner’s salvation. He that cometh not to Christ, do what he may, or think what he may, is yet in “the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.” Coming to Christ is the very first effect of regeneration. No sooner is the soul quickened than it at once discovers its lost estate, is horrified thereat, looks out for a refuge, and believing Christ to be a suitable one, flies to him and reposes in him. Where there is not this coming to Christ, it is certain that there is as yet no quickening; where there is no quickening, the soul is dead in trespasses and sins, and being dead it cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. We have before us now an announcement very startling, some say very obnoxious. Coming to Christ, though described by some people as being the very easiest thing in all the world, is in our text declared to be a thing utterly and entirely impossible to any man, unless the Father shall draw him to Christ. It shall be our business, then, to enlarge upon this declaration. We doubt not that it will always be offensive to carnal nature, but, nevertheless, the offending of human nature is sometimes the first step towards bringing it to bow itself before God. And if this be the effect of a painful process, we can forget the pain and rejoice in the glorious consequences.
I shall endeavour this morning, first of all, to notice man’s inability, wherein it consists. Secondly, the Father’s drawings–what these are, and how they are exerted upon the soul. And then I shall conclude by noticing a sweet consolation which may be derived from this seemingly barren and terrible text.
“Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
Hebrews 13:20-21
Recent Comments