Part 3: Questions You Have Always Wanted to Ask
Tom Shrader addresses controversial questions about Calvinism, free will, and predestination by examining what Scripture teaches about salvation. He demonstrates from 1 Corinthians 2:14 that natural man cannot understand spiritual things, and from John 6:44 that no one can come to Christ unless drawn by the Father. Using Romans 8-9, he shows that God sovereignly elects whom He will save, and that salvation is entirely God's work from beginning to end.
“Natural man cannot understand spiritual things, and is the gospel a spiritual thing? Can a natural man ever understand the gospel? It's impossible.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Questions You Have Always Wanted to Ask
Recorded: October 23, 2003
Duration: 45 min
Themes: salvation, grace, sovereignty, election, predestination, free will, calvinism, conversion, questioning doctrine, struggling with theology, new believer, seminary student, pastor, church member, denominational differences, doctrinal confusion
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:14, John 6:44, John 3:16, Romans 9:10-15, Romans 8:28-30, Ephesians 1:4, Ephesians 2:8, 1 Thessalonians 1:4, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, James 2:6, Acts 16:19
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation doctrine, divine sovereignty, unconditional election, total depravity, human nature, reformed theology, biblical authority
Full Transcript
The first one is EPM, they're all initials, E-P-M, Eternal Perspectives Ministry, that's Randy Alcorn. Randy is going to answer a lot of questions that you have, especially as it relates to money, possessions, finance, and heaven. Lots of information there, E-P-M. Here's another one, G-dot-org, everything's dot-org, E-P-M-dot-org, G-T-Y, Grace to You, that's John MacArthur, G-T-Y-dot-org. John literally has in his Frequently Asked Questions section, literally has probably a dozen of the questions that I received are just almost verbatim on that website. It's a very helpful website, and all of these will link you to others.
Then the last one is the Scottsdale Bible Church, S-B-C-dot-org. Daryl has a site, and he probably must have had a name the section contest, because it's just brilliant the way he came up with this: a section called Ask Daryl. But that website has some pretty good answers to some of the kind of different questions, I would say. Halloween, Christmas, Christmas trees, lots of different things, and then a whole lot more than that as well. But between those three sites, most of the questions that I got could easily be answered. So a little bit of research on your part, and you're there on those sites.
I just encourage you, once you get in there, start doing links and start messing around. Here's been my discovery: if you'll take a pretty good search engine, if you'll take something like Google and just start to do a little search, you can find a lot of answers to a lot of stuff pretty quickly right now. So just take a shot at that.
A Difficult and Controversial Topic
I wanted to say that last week and this week, these are probably the two most difficult questions we've received to talk about in an environment like this. This is by far the most difficult. Because my suspicion is that there are some of you in here who are not Christians, and you would just acknowledge that, maybe haven't been around church. But there are many of you who are Christians who've been around church and maybe even been in church for a long period of time. What we're going to talk about today doesn't necessarily line up with what you've been taught. And whenever we hit a moment like that, there is just immediate tension.
This topic today is probably, in the church environment we're in right now, probably as controversial as any of them, if that's the appropriate word. At the same time, it's the source of most of your questions. The questions that I got that precipitated this answer today dealt with, in a broad sense, Calvinism. What is Calvinism? And then all sorts of sub-questions. What about free will? Do we have free will? How does free will play out? I'm going to answer that for you today and hopefully it is such a simple answer that hopefully you'll go, I see that. What about predestination? What about God's election? All of these things.
Now to think that you're going to get an answer to those that's satisfactory in 40 minutes is kind of silly. You're going to have to do a little work and I'll give you some things to work on that will help you. One of those is a series I did in church. So again, another website, if you're into it, EVBC, East Valley Bible Church, EVBC.org. If you'll go back to May 19th of 2002, so it'll be archived on there, you'll get six weeks that I did basically on this topic. That series title is God's Plan for Salvation.
Moving Beyond the Baggage
When we talk about this Calvinism, I want to get that word off the table. Not because there's a problem with it in and of its definition, but it has so much baggage that we frequently can't even talk to one another about it. It's like saying, I'll give you four names, it's like saying Bill Clinton or Rush Limbaugh or Ted Kennedy or Jesse Helms. It doesn't matter. Once that name's out there, there's so much going on and subplots that we can really never even, at least frequently, have an honest discussion. It brings so much fire around it that you can't fight through it. So I'm not that concerned in talking about Calvinism per se.
Let me show you how elementary I want to be in this approach. I didn't go to some theological dictionary. I didn't go to some big, thick book. I went to Webster's dictionary for a definition of Calvinism. It certainly sets up what we want to talk about. Obviously, this is a small definition, broad. It says this: the group of Christian doctrines of John Calvin and his followers, especially those of predestination and salvation of the elect solely by God's grace. What we want to talk about is exactly that. We want to talk about salvation.
As I said, when you go to the website and you look at the series that I did talking about this, what we're talking about is not Calvinism. It is nice to know what Calvin taught or Luther taught or Augustine taught. I really need to know what the Bible says. That has to be the fundamental ground rule in this discussion.
The Bible Must Be Our Standard
As we talk about these things, you're going to get all sorts of questions that pop up in your mind. All sorts of responses. You're going to respond typically to the response. You're going to be sitting around saying, "Well, wait a minute. The guy at Starbucks says, my great aunt's sister told me," I think it really doesn't matter what you think. We really don't care what you think or what the guy at Starbucks says or what your great aunt says or what I say or what Daryl says or what your pastor, priest, rabbi, whatever he, she or it may say, it doesn't matter. What does the Bible say about this? If we get away from what the Bible says about this, we don't have a chance in this conversation. We've got nowhere to go in this conversation.
I have spent between 15 and 20 years haggling over this very issue. I have discovered time and time and time and time again that 90% of what poses for questions and problems and rejections
are of my human gut reaction. They're not biblical objections. So this is really one of those times where you've got to let the Bible say what it says. Let it speak.
Here's another thing, and then we'll start. My experience has been that in a room like this, if I said to you, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8, I'm saved by grace through faith. That's not a work of my own. It's a work of God. So no man should boast. Most of you would go, amen, brother. Amen, brother. That's it. If I said to you, God saves sinners, most of you would say, absolutely, I believe that.
What you're going to discover today is you may not. You may say you do, but when we begin to put definition to it, all of a sudden you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know. So that's what we're going to look at.
The Fundamental Question
If we want to go back to Webster's definition, it's the idea of predestination, or especially salvation of the elect solely by God's grace. So here's a fundamental question, and I'm into simple. I'm not looking for something complex here. It's this: Does man choose God for salvation, or does God choose whom He will save? If you want to personalize it, if you're a Christian, did God choose you, or did you choose Him? Fairly important question.
Now I know what most of your testimonies would be. There was this point in time, maybe it was crisis, maybe it was a friend, maybe it was in the middle of a business calamity. There was this point in time where somehow you listened to the gospel, and here's the phrase you would use: I asked Jesus into my heart. I accepted Christ. I came to Christ.
Well, all of those terms have with it the idea of you doing something. But you just got done saying you're saved by grace. Grace is unmerited favor. It's totally something that God does and nothing that you do. You just got done saying God saves sinners, and now when it comes to that key moment of who chose who, your instinct is to say, I chose Him. And I understand that.
Cultural Influences on Our Thinking
For one thing, you've been raised in a culture that promotes that. Many of you in this study are a little bit older. You've been raised where we've got an icon of a guy like Billy Graham, who's got Him playing just as I am, and saying now's the moment, now's the time. Here you go. The hour of decision. Decision magazine. The whole implication here is that this whole thing is a choice.
If we could go back in time, and I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of history here, but if we could go back in time to the early 1600s, the mainstream majority view in the church body, in the body of believers, is what today we would identify as Calvinistic. That is just the mainstream. There's a guy by the name of Arminius that came along and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Man's not really totally depraved. Man has the ability to do good, and man has the ability to reject God's work, and man ultimately chooses God, and man can undo this thing and lose salvation.
And the church then came together and said, no, let's declare these truths again. And those truths that they declared are the truths that we're going to look at right here this morning. What's important is, not that they're the truths from the Synod of Dort, or again, not that they're Calvin or Luther or Augustine, but they're Paul. They're biblical.
The Problem with Modern Teaching
You also live at a time where most churches don't teach these. And here's what makes me particularly sick. Even though most of the guys in the pulpit would say, I believe them, but I could never teach them because it's so divisive. I hear that over and over and over again.
If you can't teach what you believe from the pulpit, then get your can out of there. Even if it's wrong, at least you have enough conviction. Even if I disagree with it, at least you ought to have enough conviction to teach what you believe. And that just breaks my heart when I sit with guys and say, I wish I could teach these things. And I'll say, why can't you? And they'll say, because it's so divisive.
If the Word of God's being taught and the truth is being proclaimed in love, then let it be.
The Root Issue: Human Depravity
Having said all that, what we're talking about here is, beginning with this discussion of the salvation of the elect solely by God's grace, is a sense of what happened to mankind. It was Jesus Christ who said, you must be born again. Why does He say that? Because we're dead in our sins and trespasses.
Your view of what happened in the garden with Adam and Eve, and how that sin affects you, has a profound influence on your whole perspective here. One author writes these words: the view one takes concerning salvation will be determined to a large extent by the view one takes concerning sin and its effect on human nature. It cannot be said too often that a false theology finds its source in an inadequate view of depravity.
What Scripture Actually Teaches
So here's the question, and I think we can answer the question: did you choose God or did God choose you? I think we can answer this like that. I don't even think it's that difficult, because the Scripture doesn't stutter and stammer.
I believe, here's what the Scripture teaches, and we'll come back and we'll show it to you. I believe the Bible teaches that you are unable to comprehend, understand, or believe spiritual truths. You can't do it.
If you have Bibles, open them. There's two or three, four absolutely hugely important passages today. Here's the first one, 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. Make sure you understand what we're trying to ask here. What we're trying to ask is, can man choose God? Can man, on his own, unaffected by any outside force, will man believe the gospel?
Here's what 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14 says: Natural man, now that's a man, woman, boy, girl, that's a human being. Natural man, apart from Christ, natural man on his own, natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. Natural man doesn't receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolish to him. Now Paul
adds this, nor can he know them. Can natural man understand spiritual things? No. Not only does he not understand them, this verse says he cannot understand them. Why? Because they are spiritually discerned.
If I'm going to understand spiritual things, I have to have the Spirit of God in me. Haven't you had that moment where you're sitting there and you've got your friend, a family member, somebody you love, a parent, a child, a buddy, a classmate from school. I don't care. You've got this person you really care about and you're sitting there. You know, you're at IHOP and you've had breakfast and you're talking to them and you're pouring your guts out to them and all of a sudden you lay out this profound spiritual truth. It was the thing that God used to throw the switch and your eyes opened up and you got it for the very first time.
It flows from the Scripture and you see it so clearly and you lay this out for that person and you take the time and you explain it and you spell it out and they pause. They look you right in the eye and they say to you, you're going to eat all those potatoes? Can I have your toast? When you're walking away, you're speaking truth and you don't even realize it. When you're walking away and you're just maybe even thinking by yourself but even talking out loud, you're saying, they just don't get it.
They Can't Get It
And what this verse says is, and they can't get it. No, they don't get it. And they can't get it. Why? It's a spiritual truth and natural man cannot understand spiritual things. Something has to happen to man before man, woman, boy, girl, I'm using man in this universal sense, before man will ever understand a spiritual thing, he has to have a spiritual transformation. He has to have the Spirit of God living inside of him. Jesus may have been right. He must be born again. That's the condition of man.
Now this is very simple and I'm not trying to bait and switch you here. I just want you to see the connection. Can a natural fallen man understand spiritual things? Not a trick question. Can they? No. Is the gospel a spiritual thing? Can a natural man ever understand the gospel? It's impossible. It's absolutely impossible.
You might as well be talking to this chair. It isn't going to make any difference. It's not a matter of convincing them. It's not a matter of debating them. It's not a matter of answering every question. All of those legitimate enterprises to be sure, but you need to understand when you're...
Why Evangelize Then?
And this raises questions, well then why would I even evangelize them? Why would I even share the truth with them? Let me give you a couple of reasons, by the way, and we'll just nip this right in the bud at the very beginning.
Here's why. Number one, just as God has ordained who He's going to save, He's also ordained the method He's going to use, and typically that's through the teaching of the gospel. Here's another reason. This might be a compelling reason to evangelize. Big one. God told you to. That's pretty important.
And the third thing is, when you evangelize and God's Word is taught and Christ is proclaimed, God's glorified. And you're here on earth for one important reason, to glorify God. Evangelism is not about converting people. This isn't about soul winning. Get this idea of soul winning and banish it from your vocabulary. Get it out of there. You can't win a soul. That's the whole point of this verse. You can't win a soul. That's God's job. God's job is to convert. Your job is to proclaim the gospel. You see that?
The Father Must Draw
Let me take you to another passage because it's very important. John chapter 6. John chapter 6. Jesus is speaking. It's very difficult teaching. In fact, after He's taught some of these things, there's a bunch of guys who say, I don't believe I'm up for this, and they leave.
In John chapter 6, verse 44, Jesus says this. Profound, important, critical verse. No one can come to me. So what He's talking about, He's talking about people come to me. Who's going to come to me? No one, unless. Now, that's an important word. Wherever we see this word, unless, what we're talking about is a necessary condition. Something has to happen before something else can take place. No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws him.
What we're talking about here is ability, not permission. So somebody may come up to me and say, I don't know how you can say that. Doesn't John 3:16 say, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life? Sure it does. That's exactly what it says. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
We're not talking about what happens when a person believes. What Jesus is saying in John 3:16 is, everybody that believes has eternal life. Put me down for yes on that. I've got that figured out. We're talking about who has the ability to believe. See, this is a core question. I'm not interested in this point of your testimony. I'm interested in asking the question, but why did you believe? Where did the faith come from?
Ability vs. Permission
This is the difference between ability and permission. Do you see that? You learn the difference at a very early age. You're sitting in class in the third grade and you put up your hand and you say, you know, Miss Johnson, can I go to the bathroom? Well, I don't know. That's between you and your little guy there. You may go to the bathroom. That's a different question. Whether you're able or not, that's a whole different discussion. You see the difference, right? See the difference? It's an important difference.
Whosoever comes, fine. Whoever believes, great. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. That's the boy downstairs who plays baseball. By that I mean it has nothing to do with anything. We're talking about ability. Who can come? Who will come?
No one can come unless, here's that pre-existing condition, unless something happens. What needs to happen?
got it in front of you. What needs to happen there? The Father needs to draw them. The Father needs to draw them.
Now, people will say, "Well, yeah, that's what God's doing. God's wooing everyone. Everyone has that still, small voice, and God's wooing everyone." We've got a problem here. The word that's translated "draw" means literally to compel. It's used two other times in the New Testament.
It's used in James chapter 2, verse 6. See if you can pick the word out: "But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppose you and drag you into court?" Not woo you. Not "Come here, come here, come here, come here. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty."
Acts chapter 16, verse 19: "They seized Paul and Silas and they dragged them into the marketplace." This is not an act of wooing. It is not that God is calling everybody, because what we're going to see later, and this is undeniable, is everybody that He calls comes. So if you want to say that God is drawing everyone, then what you have to say is, then everyone will come.
No, this is God taking hold of a life and pulling them in. This is God coming into a person's life and opening their heart and taking a heart of stone and putting in it a heart of flesh. So they don't come to Christ kicking and screaming and saying, "Oh, I don't want to come." At that moment with that new heart, what they desire more than anything else on this planet is to be united to the Father through the Son.
The Question of Free Will
So can a natural man understand spiritual things? Well no, a natural man can't understand spiritual things. Can a natural man come to Christ? No. This leads us to the question of free will.
What about my free will? I'm going to give you the answer, then we'll do some explanation. You don't have free will. Why do you think you have free will?
If by free will you mean, "I'll just go ahead and make choices with no pre-existing prejudice or influence," did you notice you didn't show up for this study Monday at eight? Why did you show up here today at seven? Because that's when we're doing it. If by free will you mean, "I'll do whatever I want to do," yes, I agree with that. If by free will you say, "I'll do what I want to do without any prior influence," then I don't agree with that.
There's a classic work, and if you're up for it, it is absolutely worth reading. And the book is worth buying for the introduction: "Bondage of the Will" by Martin Luther. It isn't particularly difficult reading. I mean, it depends on what you're reading now, but it's not particularly tough sledding. And the introduction—you want the version with J.I. Packer's introduction. That introduction is worth the price of ten books. And the whole point is very simple: your will isn't free. Your will is in bondage.
The Vulture Illustration
I want to prove this. This, to me, is my favorite illustration. I think it just speaks to it so profoundly.
So if I've got a vulture in the back of the room, and I've got a head of lettuce here, and I've got a piece of meat here, and you release the vulture—this vulture's hungry, this vulture's going to fly to the front—where's the vulture going to go? Now, why do you say that?
Well, maybe we got a faulty vulture. Let's get another vulture. So we get another vulture in there. We let that vulture go. And we say, "You know what? Here's some lettuce. Here's some meat." We let that vulture go. Where's he going to go?
And let's do it again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Let's get rid of him. Let's get another vulture in. And we'll go through this exercise. And we'll do it again, and again, and again, and again. And every time—hundred out of a hundred, thousand out of a thousand, million out of a million—every time, the vulture's going to the meat, not to the lettuce.
Does the vulture have free will? No. Free choice? Yeah. Yeah. He has a choice. He's got lettuce, but that lettuce isn't very appealing to him. You know why? Because he's got in him the heart, the soul, the mind, the nature of a vulture. And a vulture is going to go to the meat, and never to the lettuce, because his will is not unaffected by any pre-existing prejudice or inclination.
And you come into the world a sinner. And you will, time after time after time after time, go to the sin and not the good, because natural man is not attracted to spiritual things. By spiritual things, I don't mean spirituality. I mean the true things of God.
Understanding the Issue
Do you see that? I'm not asking you to believe it. I'm not even saying that it's smart, although I've got to admit, it's a pretty compelling argument. I'm just saying, do you at least see the issue?
What we're talking about here is not whether you believe or not, but why you believe. And what we're talking about here is, nobody's got free will. If by free will you mean, "I'm just totally unaffected by any sort of prejudice or inclination or anything," no, you're not. No, you're not. Do you see that?
And the only way I'm going to get that vulture to go to that lettuce is to put the heart of a rabbit in him. If I can make the vulture a rabbit, he'll go to the lettuce. If I can take natural man and put the heart and the Spirit of God in him, he'll go to the gospel. Do you see that? And that's what's going on.
Just stop for just one second. Do you see how this is not really that difficult an issue? Though I understand churches are split, I understand there are denominations—I got all that figured out. It's just what the scripture teaches. And if you can get rid of all the junk, those of you that have been around church for a while are probably at a disadvantage in this discussion. Those of you that are coming for the very first time to this are going, "How do you argue with that?"
I remember sitting with a guy, and I'd been meeting with him for a while, and this guy's a pretty big old derelict guy, and kind of a semi-high
And we're going through the gospel of John. We came to this passage and I thought, this high-profile guy in the valley is going to struggle with this. So I lay it out, and he said, "You seem to be worked up about this." I said, "Well, it's a big thing." And he said, "Well, it's so obvious. I didn't have any choice in this. I wasn't looking for God. I was involved in sin and adultery and drugs and everything else, and God just came along and changed everything. Yeah, what's on the next page? This isn't hard."
If you can come with those kind of fresh eyes to it, and get rid of preconceptions, you begin to see how all this takes place. Your choice is free, your will is not.
The Divine Decision After the Fall
So here's what happens. Man sins. Adam sins. Through Adam, death comes into the world. All have sinned. All fall short of the glory of God. No one can do good. Man's will is in bondage.
At that moment in time—and I understand how this breaks down metaphysically, so you don't need to email me here, but we need some frame for discussion—at that moment in time, God had a decision. God could justly save no one. God could mercifully save everyone. Or God in His mercy could save some.
As we look around, and as we look at the scripture, what we understand is that God didn't save everyone. I doubt that there's a universalist here. You'd be more willing to say you were a democrat, I would think, than a universalist. Just teasing. Don't let politics be the dividing issue here. But you're probably not a universalist, so you don't think everybody goes. And yet, most of you would say, "Well, I'm going." So our only conclusion is that God chose to save some.
God's Purpose in Election
He sent Jesus Christ to this planet for a very important reason, and He told us what that reason was. What was it? To save His people from their sin. You cannot get around this, and you have to do this incredible tap dance to do it, that the scripture just teaches very clearly that there is God's elect. God's chosen.
Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica, and he said, "knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God" (First Thessalonians 1:4). Second Thessalonians 2:13: "But we should always give thanks to God for you, beloved brethren of the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation." You can't get away from this. It's just there. You know what? Let the Bible say what it says.
When did He make this choice? Ephesians 1:4: Before the foundations of the earth. God did this work.
Jacob and Esau: A Clear Example
Now, if you have your Bibles, it's important to turn to Romans chapter 9. There's a whole boatload of questions that are out there. We're going to answer a bunch of them right now. We're going to go through the text backwards, because I want to hang on this point for a while.
Paul's talking about God's sovereignty, God's election, how God had worked in the nation of Israel, and how God works in individuals. Beginning verse 10: "Not only this, but when there was Rebecca also. When she conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac, for those twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad in order that God's purpose, according to His choice, might stand. Not because of their works, but because of Him who called it. He said this, the older will serve the younger." Look at verse 13: "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated."
You could not have a more graphic, compelling picture for us of God's choice. Same mom, same dad, twins, in the womb. Neither had done anything good to merit salvation, nor bad to not have it. But that God's choice would be declared, God's glory would be proclaimed. Jacob He loved, Esau He hated.
That word "hated" has such a connotation for us. What He says is, "Jacob I'm going to show favor to, Esau I am not."
Addressing the Fairness Objection
Paul knows how you think, and he says, verse 14: "What shall we say then? There's no injustice with God, is there? May it never be." See, when I say to you, here are these twins in the womb, they haven't done anything, and God says "I love one, and show favor on one, and grace and mercy to one, and not the other," you want to sit there and say, "That's not fair." See, that's how you think, isn't it? "That's not fair. That is not fair."
Now here's what you just need to do. You can come up to me, and I'm ready for this. I got the flak jacket on today, I know how this works. You're going to say, "That's not fair, that's not fair, that's not fair." Okay, just for a moment, direct your attention not to me, but to God, and see yourself standing there, as Paul anticipated you would, saying, "That's not fair, God. That's not fair, God. How can you, God?" And then all of a sudden, I'm not the focal point.
It's certainly not equal. Encompassed in the idea of "not fair" is to say—and this is a better term, more of a legal term—"that's not just." Well, Paul anticipates your objection, doesn't he? Paul knows how you think, doesn't he? So what does he say? He says to you, "Is there injustice with God?"
Understanding Grace Versus Justice
See, here's the problem that you have. Jacob gets grace and mercy. Esau got justice. No one was treated unfairly. Esau got what he deserved. Jacob got grace. If all of a sudden you say, "Wait a minute, Jacob got it, that's not fair," if what you're saying is everybody should get it, then it's not grace and mercy anymore.
Right after this, Paul gives the classic illustration, the potter and the clay, and he says the clay doesn't speak to the potter, does it? Let me help you out, just plug your name in there. God's the potter and you're the clay.
And I understand, because I've been around this enough, I understand how for some of you, your stomachs are just turning. You have so many things going on, and you want to know, "That's not fair. What about my Aunt Mary? How come God never saved my Aunt Mary? Or how come God..."
The question isn't why God didn't save your parents, or why God didn't save your brother, or why God didn't save your best friend. You're asking the wrong question. The question is, why did God save you?
Do you understand how when you talk about Thanksgiving, all of a sudden it takes on a whole new perspective? We're talking about praise. How do we praise God? We come up with new things: let's change the lighting, let's have a dancer, let's do all these different elements to praise God.
Here would be a great way to praise God. If you understood that God saved you in spite of you, that you deserve hell, you didn't do anything good, there's nothing you did, you didn't even believe until He had already saved you—you were born again, and then you had faith. Doesn't the praise and thanksgiving tend to just flow out of that? I think so.
The Greatest Spiritual Truth
I'm speaking autobiographically here. To me, this is the greatest spiritual truth that you can embrace. When somebody says, "I want to grow in my daily walk with Him, I want to feel intimacy with Him, I want to worship Him, I want to praise Him, I want a vitality of a relationship with Him," well, if you understand that He totally initiated it, it changes everything, doesn't it?
Let me add something even more. He totally initiated it, and it is unbreakable. Now it takes on a whole new dimension.
The Chain of Salvation in Romans 8
Here in Romans 9, look at Romans 8. Romans 8:28: "We know God causes all things to work together for good"—not to everybody, but "to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." For whom He foreknew, He predestined. And whom He predestined, verse 30, He called. And whom He called, He justified. And whom He justified, He glorified.
The word "foreknew" there does not mean what many people think. As you talk to somebody about this, they will say, "Well, sure, God chose. Here's how He chose: He looked down the corridors of time. Because He's God and knows everything, He looked down the corridors of time, He knew who was going to choose Him, and then He chose those people." That's what you're going to hear. "He foreknew." That's not what it means.
Can we go back to square one? If He looked down the corridors of time and saw a natural man who had not yet been infiltrated with the Spirit of God, what would He see? He would see billions and billions of people, and the natural man is never attracted to spiritual things. If He looks down the corridors of time, all He sees are billions and billions and billions of unrepentant, rebellious, sinful people.
The Meaning of Foreknowledge
The word "foreknew" means an idea of intimacy, like Adam knew Eve. He foreknew them. Even before they even existed, there was, on God's part, a desire, an intimacy there.
All of those that He foreknew, He predestined. Very important point here—time's getting precious, but hang with me. It's not like He foreknew a bunch of them, and then some of them were predestined and some of them weren't. That's not what the text says. Everyone He foreknew, He predestined. Pre—beforehand—destined. Chose their ultimate destination.
Everyone He foreknew, He predestined. Everyone He predestined, He called. Literally, it's God's saving call. It's an active call. Everyone that He called, He justified. That means He saved them. He brought them into the kingdom. They were declared righteous before God.
Once Saved, Always Saved
I want to go one step further, because we've got a question on the table: Once I'm justified, can I lose my salvation? No. Because everyone He foreknew, He predestined. Everyone He predestined, He called. Everyone He called, He justified. And everyone He justified, He glorified.
If you're a Christian today, right now, this moment, you're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. It's a done deal.
Now, you may look around. Your experience may lie to you. Those lying eyes you've got may lie to you. You may see somebody, and they may say they're a Christian, and one day they walk away.
In the mid-forties, there were two up-and-coming, young, hot evangelists in the world. One was Billy Graham, but he was kind of second to this other guy. This other guy, by all accounts, was a better teacher, better speaker, better everything. At a point in time, they had a debate about the Bible. Graham made a decision to follow the Bible and teach the Bible. The other guy moved away from it, and to this day—I don't know if he's still alive, but as of three or four or five years ago—he was an active antagonist to the Christian movement.
Was he a Christian who walked away? No. That's not possible. Why? Because everybody that was foreknown was predestined. Everybody predestined was called. Everybody called was justified. Everybody justified was glorified.
Two Possibilities for Those Who Walk Away
He is not a Christian who is no longer a Christian. One of two things: Either he never was a Christian to begin with, or he's on a very long sabbatical. Which is it? I don't know, and it doesn't matter because I'm not God, and I don't have to carry that burden. Why do you want to play God? I don't need to play God in that deal.
Can I lose my salvation? Absolutely not.
Why This Teaching Is Controversial
I understand that churches are split over this. I understand, because I hear this constantly, that this is controversial. I understand that this is divisive. Let me explain to you why it's controversial and divisive: because when the discussion starts, we move away from the Scripture. If we just stick with the Scriptures, we're going to be fine.
to be fine. And you've got basically one of two choices. You either got natural man doing a spiritual thing, or you got natural man being affected by God. Those are the only two choices. And one choice is not the choice.
And it was what Calvin taught, and it was what Luther taught, and it was what Augustine taught. And it was what the great thinkers, the great theologians—I mean the giant theologians of the Christian faith—all believed it. They just did. That's just what they taught. You know why? Because it's what the Bible teaches.
And I understand that that's tough, but I'm telling you, you don't need to go to another seminar to jumpstart your spiritual faith. You don't need another tape. You don't need to listen to another message. All you got to do is understand who God is. All you got to do is understand who God is.
When God Gets Bigger
And He just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and as He gets bigger, He's kicking doors down. He's opening your heart. He's emptying you of you. Like John the Baptist, He must increase and you will decrease. Do you see that? It is not at all difficult.
Give me one minute here. My son-in-law just gave me some stuff to read the other day, and it's a book called Young Evangelicals. And what it is, is looking at 20-somethings as a demographic and saying, what are they after? You know what they're after? You know what their music's about? Quiet, lots of hymns.
See, if I come in and say, we're going to go, we're going to read, if I come into your church today, we're going to reach the younger generation. You go, I don't want that noise. I don't want that loud stuff. Neither do they, by and large.
What the Younger Generation Really Wants
You know what they say they want? I did this Sunday. I took the nine things they said they wanted, and I took the seven things that were present at Revival in Jonathan Edwards' time, almost 300 years ago, and they absolutely lay right across each other. I think we're at a very unique time.
You know what these kids are responding to? I'll tell you what they're responding to. They've been malnourished by all this church-growth, seeker-sensitive junk that feeds no one. It's just bunk. And after you steady down, it's like, here you go. It's like eating candy and candy and candy and candy. And you don't grow, and you die.
And you've got a whole generation of young people saying, we've been around church, and we don't know God. We thought we might find Him in church. We thought that was a reasonable place to look.
You know what they're saying they want? They want communion more often. They want more liturgy. They want more Scripture taught, more Scripture in worship. They want a sense of a transcendence, otherness of God. You know what that is? The holiness of God.
The Simple Solution
Well, the fastest way to get that is to understand the truth we got out right here. You get that in front of you, and you don't have to all of a sudden start prodding people to take 40 days to figure out their purpose. Here it is right here. Boom. There it is.
I'm not putting that down. I'm just saying, why do we always have to have a program for something? You don't need it. The reason you need a program is nobody knows how they got saved. They got out God that's this big instead of infinite. See that? Very important.
That's enough of me. Here we go. Father, thank you for this truth. All of a sudden, we...