Category Archives: Salvation

“Salvation is not initiated by human choice.”

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I read that statement recently. It was written by John MacArthur, a man with whom I agree quite often, and with whom I also frequently disagree. Sometimes statements hit us as just being so outrageous they couldn’t possibly be true, but other times they make us wonder if there is a sense in which they may be true.

Such was the case with this one. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with it. Read on and I’ll tell you why…

What’s the first step toward salvation?

This post will not be a “step 1, do this; step 2, do this” type of post. Everything starts somewhere though. Such is the case with salvation, and certainly to see whether or not salvation is initiated by human choice, we need to see how it is initiated. So where does it begin?

We’re told that “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). So hearing the Word is the first step toward salvation.

If hearing the Word is the first step, how is that initiated other than by human choice?

That indeed is the question to answer. Could it be there are things taking place that lead to our salvation before we hear the Word? If so, then they are not actions we take, because that would be in conflict with the Word itself.

Consider:

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

4For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love 5He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will—6to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. (Ephesians 1:4-6)

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)

So we are “created in Christ to do good works”. That’s a telling fact in itself, but what’s the source of these good works? “God prepared [them] in advance for us to do.” In advance of what? Certainly in advance of us doing the good works, but I believe it means more than that. The context of Ephesians 1, and on into chapter 2, is God’s eternal plan. Thus, God prepared before creation the good works He has in store for me today.

Predestined?

What about “He chose us” and “He predestined us”? So God chose before creation who would be good and who would be bad? Who would be saved and who would be condemned? No, that can’t be the proper meaning of this passage because if it is, it conflicts with several other things God told us, not the least of which is that He is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

It’s easy to read “chose” and “predestined” in Ephesians 1, and miss the critical phrase. God “chose us in Him to be holy and blameless in His sight,” meaning He foreordained that those who come to Christ in obedient faith would be “holy and blameless in His sight”. So yes, we’re predestined, but not as individuals; we’re predestined as a class of people who trust in Him.

So you see, there are many things going on in “the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3) that are directed to draw us to Christ — things that indeed initiate our process of salvation long before we ever hear the Word.

What other passages shed light on this subject? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How can I “Work out my own salvation”?

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Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed — not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13

Outside of a cult here and a splinter group there, you don’t much hear anyone talking about salvation being by works. So let’s agree on that — we’re not saved by works.

Then what in the world was Paul talking about when he said we need to “work out our salvation”? There are a couple of important points that will help us understand this passage.

  • First, who was Paul writing to? He was writing to Christians — a body of believers in Philippi who were already saved! (Philippians 1:1). Thus, this was not a group of unbelievers he was writing to who needed to go from a state of being unsaved to a state of being saved. He was not urging them to “come to Christ”; they were already there!
  • Second, let’s see Who it is that Paul says is doing the work: “…for it is God who works in you…”. So if God is the One doing the work, what is there left for me to “work out”?

Clearly Paul does not mean that there can be anything we can do as a meritorious act that will contribute to our salvation. The work of salvation was accomplished by Christ on the cross (John 19:30). The debt for our guilt of sin has been paid.

Therefore, we are not to work our our salvation from the guilt of sin; we are to work out our salvation from the power of sin. In a different letter, Paul wrote

11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires…14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11-14)

As a member of the body of Christ, sin does not “reign in [our] mortal body”, but that does not mean we do not sin. This is how we are to “work out our salvation” — we are to think as Paul thought and to work as Paul worked:

12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

You work each day so that sin has less and less “reign” in your life. You “press on toward the goal”. You let the Holy Spirit continue the work in you that Christ started. You work out your salvation from the power of sin by giving sin less and less control over your life, as you allow the Spirit more and more control.

So what about the sins of the Israelites? When were they forgiven?

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At the cross? Allow me to suggest that’s only partially true.

Ask many Christians about the sins of the Israelites, and they’ll explain that the sins were “rolled forward”, and forgiven at the cross, as if each Israelite kept adding sins to his account until the day he died. I’d like to also suggest this to be an unscriptural concept. Follow me here…

Forgiveness is not a distinctly New Testament concept.

27If a member of the community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’S commands, he is guilty. 28When he is made aware of the sin he committed, he must bring as his offering for the sin he committed a female goat without defect. 29He is to lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and slaughter it at the place of the burnt offering. 30Then the priest is to take some of the blood with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. 31He shall remove all the fat, just as the fat is removed from the fellowship offering, and the priest shall burn it on the altar as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. In this way the priest will make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven. (Leviticus 4:27-31)

Did you notice the words God spoke through Moses in the last verse there? “…and he will be forgiven.” Does that sound synonymous with “rolled forward”? Forgiven is forgiven; it is not “kept on account until such time as it can truly be forgiven”. You know what else? That phrase “will be forgiven” is repeated 7 more times in Leviticus 4-5, once each in Leviticus 6:7 and Leviticus 19:22, and three times in Numbers 15:25-28.

That’s a total of 13 times God promised the Israelites He would forgive them.

“Wait”, you say. The word “will” simply means that it’s a future action — one that doesn’t take place at the present time. Yes, I agree, but the context certainly doesn’t suggest that it would be another 2000 years before God would follow through on any such “future action”. Context demands the conclusion that the point in the future when God would fulfill His promise was when the sacrifice was made — in other words, when repentance was visibly demonstrated.

One more.

In Moses’ plea before the Lord, recorded in Numbers 14, he reminds God of one of His promises:

17“Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: 18‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’ 19In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” 20The LORD replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked…” (Numbers 14:17-20)

What about the fact that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins?

1The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, 4because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:1-4)

That looks like an apparent contradiction to me. We just saw 8 times in Leviticus 4-5 where God specifically promised to forgive the Israelites. We read in Numbers 14 where He said He already had forgiven them. Now He says that “the blood of bulls and goats [can’t] take away sins”. There are only 2 possibilities here. One possibility is that this could be a contradiction. But if you believe, as I do, that the Bible does not contradict itself, that leaves only the second possibility, that our understanding of passages that appear to contradict themselves, is itself incorrect.

If you want the full context of Hebrews 10:1-4, read chapters 9 and 10. The context shows how the sacrifice of Jesus was infinitely more perfect than animal sacrifice. One of the ways animal sacrifices were imperfect is that they had to be offered over and over. After one sacrifice was offered and one sin was forgiven, the newly-forgiven person would soon commit another sin, requiring another sacrifice. And so on.

Christ’s sacrifice, being perfect, had to be offered only once. It had the power to forgive Israelites who lived 2000 years before, and it had the power to forgive me 2000 years later. Animal sacrifice could never do that.

The sins of the Jew were not “rolled forward”. They were forgiven. The sins that were not forgiven until Christ’s death on the cross were the sins committed between sacrifices — between one Day of Atonement and another, between one sin offering and before the next.

God is, and always has been a God of forgiveness. Those aren’t my promises; they’re His.