| How We Are Saved, Part 1: Introduction |
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| Written by David Lawrence |
| Monday, August 11 2008 00:00 |
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Steve Brown of Keylife Ministries on his Monday radio program will always make the statement, “I hope your pastor’s sermon was as good as my pastor’s sermon.” I am blessed to hear excellent sermons on a regular basis. Some months ago my pastor made a comment that he envisioned salvation as a gate, like a Roman arch, with two faces. As one approached the gate, he saw “Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17b). But after he has passed through the gate and turns to look at the other side and see that under which he has come, he will see “Foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30). What he was saying is that salvation may be viewed from two different vantage points: what we see from our human point of view, and what has happened from God’s sovereign point of view. As we analyze our own actions, we always see that we act from deliberate, free-will choices, and that is true. But unless we see the other side of the gate, which we shall not see until we have actually passed through it, we fail to understand the sovereign, gracious workings of God in our lives. As we have always emphasized, God is totally sovereign, and man is completely accountable. Man is always able, and God so insists, to act in accordance with his own desires, and he always has the freedom to choose according to his desires. What he does not have is the freedom to choose contrary to his own will, for, as Jonathan Edwards shows in his On the Freedom of the Will, will and choice are the same thing, and man always chooses according to his most immediate desire. However, how often is the subject of salvation examined from both perspectives? In our next few studies we shall examine first the human viewpoint of salvation, and then the divine to see how they work together. People err when they insist that both cannot be simultaneously true, but until man has the power to scan the inscrutable, vast, eternal purposes of God’s mind, he should be a little wary of making such an assertion! Join us! |
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