Hebrews Lesson 105 October 25, 2007
NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not
sin against You!
We are in Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7 is an
argument for the superiority of Christ’s high priesthood based on the fact that
it follows the pattern of the Melchizedekean priesthood, that Melchizedek was a
royal priest and it doesn’t follow the pattern. (I use the word pattern instead
of order because it communicates I think a little better.) Order of Melchizedek
is one of those words we have been using a lot, but we tend to get - it becomes
one of those words that loses meaning the more you say it.
Now last week somebody asked me the
question, if the Melchizedekean high priesthood was eternal. I may have
miscommunicated on that in that I was talking about the fact that Christ as a
Melchizedekean priest is eternal because Christ is eternal, not because the
Melchizedekean priesthood is eternal.
Of course Melchizedek wasn’t eternal and any other examples of royal
priest-king in the Old Testament were human. They weren’t eternal. But the
point that is being driven home by the writer of Hebrews is that there is a
change of priesthood. That means there’s a change of law. A change of law indicates
a change of covenant. Everything is structured according to these legal
documents. The change of priesthood is from one that is based on the Mosaic Law
after the pattern of the flesh to one that is based on the order of
Melchizedek. It’s an eternal high priesthood. The emphasis here is on
eternal.
So I’ve got 10 points of summary. Now
I went through 8 of them – or 9 of them last week so you should have
them. If you weren’t here, you will frustrate yourself trying to write them
down because I simply want to breeze through them so that we get context for
where we are in verses 23 to 25. So I just try to alleviate a little
frustration. As always, somebody who comes in that wasn’t here the week before
and when you are doing a serial study like this, they feel like they are a
little bit out of place.
So we come down to verse 15 and I
retranslated it last week to give it a little more clarity that it should read:
It (that is the
principle of a change in the priesthood and Jesus’ higher status as covered in
the previous verses (12, 13, and 14)) is
even made.
The even there is an ascensive kai. It is not “yet it is far more
evident”; it is “even made exceedingly even more evident”. It’s a strong
superlative here.
Literal translation: It is even made exceedingly more
evident since another priest according the order of Melchizedek is arisen.
That got it right.
It is even made exceedingly more
evident since another priest according the order of Melchizedek is arisen.
That has a perfective sense of the
present tense there. It is something that arose in the past and has ongoing
efficacy.
NKJ Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn And will not relent, "You are a priest forever According to the
order of Melchizedek."
That’s the emphasis, that word “forever”. He is going to quote this
again and quote the whole verse in verse 21, but here he is just quoting the
two stanzas so he can pull in and emphasize that one word “forever”. He is not
emphasizing anything else in the quote, just the “forever” aspect that it makes
it a superior priesthood. Then he will develop that in the next couple of
verses. Verses 18 and 19 continue the idea that the Law made nothing perfect
and therefore there is a need to have a better hope.
Now that’s kind of where we stopped
last time so let me pause on this a minute. The point that is being made when
we get down to verses 20 and 21 down to 22 is the idea that this is based on an
oath and there was no oath sworn by God in relation to the Levitical
priesthood. This idea of an oath brings in a certainty or legality to the
establishment of this priesthood that goes beyond that of the Mosaic Covenant. It
takes this priesthood to a higher level. His argument in verse 20 is:
NKJ Hebrews 7:20 And inasmuch as He
was not made priest without an
oath
Then there is a parenthetical in
verse 21 with a quote from Psalm 110 and the thought is picked up in verse 22.
It should read:
In as much as He was not made a priest without an oath.
Then verse 22.
NKJ Hebrews 7:22 by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better
covenant.
Now set aside verse 21 for a second
because that is a quote from Psalm 110:4 again to support his point from the
Old Testament.
Now the word translated surety is
the Greek word enguos. I meant to
transliterate that. It should be engous.
A double gamma is always pronounced like an “ng” just like angel is really aggel. But the gamma comes across as an
“ng”. So it is enguos. This means
surety. It has the idea of a person who takes responsibility for the payment of
another’s debt or a pledge deposited as a security against loss or damage. Let
me comment on that. The first idea – this word is only used one time in
the entire New Testament. It’s common in extra-biblical documents. In the first
meaning it would relate to substitutionary atonement, the idea of a person who
takes the responsibility for the payment of another person’s debt. But that’s
not the context here. So he’s not talking about Christ being our surety at the
cross. He’s talking His being our surety as our High Priest and His ongoing
intercessory ministry as our High Priest.
The second idea of enguos is that of a pledge deposited as
a security against loss or damage. It’s like the security deposit you make when
you go rent a place. You put up usually a months rent or two months rent as a
security deposit in case or to hold the place until you can move in, to take
care of any damage that may incur. As long as that security deposit is made,
that’s yours. That is a legally binding thing. That’s the point that he is
making – Jesus has become our security in an ongoing security deposit of
a better covenant.
Now as soon as you translate it in
the sense of a security deposit, the key word there is security. As long as He
is our security deposit, then whatever transactions occur on our behalf are as
long lasting as His security deposit, which means that salvation can’t be lost.
It is a great argument for eternal security that He is our surety.
Now in verse …as we go forward into
verse 23 he brings in another point. That is also related to eternality.
NKJ Hebrews 7:23 Also there were many priests, because they were
prevented by death from continuing.
NKJ Hebrews 7:24 But He, because He continues forever, has an
unchangeable priesthood.
The key interpretive words here in
these two verses are “death” and “forever”, the contrast between the temporal
nature of all human priests. Sooner or later they have to die so there has to
be a whole bunch of them.
That word that is translated
unchangeable is the Greek word aparabatos.
Now there are three parts to this word. There is the alpha privative at the
beginning, that first letter “a” which is like our “un”. It’s a negative, “un”.
And then parabatos – you have para which means something going
beyond. It’s a preposition
attached root batos. It has to do
with something that you are not able to go beyond. You can’t go beyond this
point. It comes to mean something that is unsurpassable or that which is the
final or ultimate expression of something. So what the writer of Hebrews is
saying:
But He (that is Jesus Christ) because He continues forever…
So he picks up that whole theme of
“He is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” that He is the
final priesthood. He is that unsurpassable priesthood. You could never have
anything that would go beyond that. He is the final expression of a priesthood
because He is the only one who is eternal. He is the foundation of the
statement.
Now I want you to take a look at
verse 24 a minute.
NKJ Hebrews 7:24 But He, because He continues forever, has an
unchangeable priesthood.
So you have a causal statement
there. And then you are going to have a proposition stated.
But when you get to verse 25 you are
going to draw another conclusion from the causal clause. Because He continues
forever, first of all He has an unchangeable priesthood. Second we can draw the
conclusion that because He continues forever...
NKJ Hebrews 7:25 Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost
those who come to God through Him, since He always lives...
Eternality.
…to make intercession for them.
So verse 25 is built on the doctrine
of the eternality of the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternality of Jesus
Christ. Because He continues forever (because He is eternal), He is able to
save to the most complete way, the fullest way those who come to God through
Him since He always lives (eternality) to make intercession for them.
So this whole passage drips with
eternality. The point is that because Jesus is eternal, because His high
priestly ministry is eternal, anything He does toward us in relation to His
eternal high priestly ministry is eternal. So when He saves you, He saves you
eternally, not conditionally. When He saves you, it is not with a caveat
attached that I will save you as long as you’re obedient. It is totally based
upon Him. When we look at the verb, the verb has as its subject the one who
performs the action of the verb - He is able to save. The one who performs the
action is Christ, not us. He saves us; we don’t save ourselves. The most important
thing you can understand in salvation is that you don’t contribute one thing to
your salvation or your security – not one thing. That’s what grace is. Jesus
does everything and we don’t do anything – not one thing. It’s totally
dependent upon Him and His power and His will.
Now let’s look at a couple of terms
that are here. If you are using a New American Standard (I don’t know what the
NIV says but), the New American Standard says:
NAS Hebrews 7:25 Hence, also, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God
Sounds good, doesn’t it? But it’s
confusing because in James 4 the concept of drawing near to God (Draw near to
God and He will draw near to you.) is a fellowship verse, not a salvation
verse. It’s a totally different word. The word in James is not the word that we
find here in Hebrews 7:25. What we have here is the simple word proserchomai. Pros is the preposition prefix, erchomai
simply means to come. It’s translated “to come” many, many times through
Scripture - that those who come to God through Him is simply a statement of
salvation.
Jesus said:
NKJ Matthew 11:28 "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
There it is erchomai, not proserchomai.
Coming to God is another synonym for
trusting Christ as your Savior because that is the way we come to God.
So in verse 25 when we read:
NKJ Hebrews 7:25 Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God
Those who come to God are those who
believe that Christ died on the cross for their sins.
Now what does it mean that He is
able to save them to the uttermost? That is the Greek word panteles. Now the pan
means all or every. It’s the word that encompasses everything. Teles comes from our familiar word teliao, telos and it has to do with complete. It has the idea of “with all
completeness.” So He is able to
save completely or utterly or to the fullest extent. He is the one who is able
to do all of the work related to salvation.
through Him,.
Again we have the statement that
echoes what Jesus said.
NKJ John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Same grammatical construction, dia plus the genitive. So the statement
here is a very strong statement that God is the one who saves us the
uttermost.
since He always
lives to make intercession for them
It connects that ongoing salvation
(that security) with His intercessory ministry. His keeping us is part of His
high ministry. That’s what He prays in His high priestly prayer. So this is a
very strong verse and a very important verse for understanding the Doctrine of
Eternal Security.
Now this is a doctrine that so many
people are getting confused about today because you have a lot of historical
confusion and today you have a lot of confusion because nobody wants to teach
the Bible anymore.
So I thought it was important to go
over the Doctrine of Eternal Security and I have added a few things and tweaked
a few things to try to deal with some of the things that are going on today and
answer some questions that I’ve had. It’s amazing. I’ve had several questions
from people coming from the direction of how do I deal with lordship salvation,
the lordship concept of perseverance. I’ve had people ask me. They are talking
to somebody and this comes up. I know of one person who doesn’t live locally
(lives in another part of the country) has been going around from church to
church for a number months trying to find a church where they can at least find
a level of comfort zone so the kids can go to Sunday school. It always gets
twisted up on this. If you don’t
understand the theological nuances...
This one guy was telling me…he said
it was almost like playing a word game with the pastor.
“You come up and ask them, ‘Do you
believe this?’, and they try to do everything but tell you what they really
believe so that you’ll still come to their church.”
You have to sort of understand the
jargon or the code words to know what to listen to or you will be suckered
right into some congregation. You are going to think it sounds right, but it
really isn’t. So let’s go through the Doctrine of Eternal Security. First,
let’s define it.
Doctrine of Eternal Security
To say that you can lose your
salvation isn’t simply a matter of saying, “Well, he was going to go to heaven
and now he’s not.”
That is such an over simplification.
To lose your salvation means you have to be un-baptized by the Spirit. You have
to become unregenerate. You have to lose that imputed righteousness. All of
these different things have to be reversed so that you can then lose your
salvation. It’s a real failure to deal honestly with the complexity of what God
does for us at the instant of salvation. So the first part of the definition is
that it’s the work of God toward the believer at the instant of faith alone in Christ
alone which guarantees that God’s free gift of salvation is eternal and cannot be
lost, terminated, abrogated, nullified, or reversed by any thought, act or
change of belief in the person saved. You can’t get saved one day and truly
understand the gospel that Christ died for you and you trust Him, You can’t
believe it one day and disbelieve it the next day and lose your salvation. Salvation
is not based on what you do after you are saved. It’s based on that point where
you put your faith alone in Christ alone. It’s so simple, but it is such a
battlefield today.
You may not realize this and if you
are not engaged in trying to witness to people or even trying to have a
conversation about what you believe with other Christians, then when I start talking
about things like this and doing this comparison and contrast with these other
belief systems, then you are going to be totally lost. That’s because you are
living a spiritual life on an island which frankly is not a biblical spiritual
life. We have to be engaged, witnessing to unbelievers and encouraging
believers.
So anytime you start opening your
mouth about what you believe as a Christian to anybody else, they’re going to
immediately say, “Well, I heard this or I believe this.”
And now all of a sudden you are put
in a place where you have to articulate what you believe and why you believe
it.
The next thing you know you are
going to come along and somebody will say “Well, I have been reading this book
by this author and he says this and I really like that and that makes sense to
me.”
You are going to say, “Wait a
minute. Let’s go to the Bible.”
Oops. Where are my notes? Where is
that Scripture verse? What did Robby say?
Somebody commented on this to me the
other day and said, “I went back over my notes and I realized if I just knew
everything in my notes I would be really smart.”
But, we are all that way. It just
takes time. When I say that it’s not to ridicule or get down on anybody. I am
just as much at fault on that as the next person. I don’t think that quickly on
my feet.
Usually somebody says, “Well, what
about this?”
I think, “Hmm…”
On the way home I have a good
answer.
I know you can all relate to
that.
Let me break this down in a slightly
different way. When a person trusts in Christ for salvation God permanently
justifies and regenerates and gives eternal life. This cannot be lost, no
matter what that person does or does not do from that instant on until the day
he dies.
Let me comment on this because each
one of these clauses can be challenged and attacked and changed and
misinterpreted by any number of people as they say, “What do you mean by
belief? What do you mean by trust?”
A person can (according to some
people can) believe in Christ and it’s not a saving faith.
“What do you mean by salvation? What
do you mean by justification?”
Most people today –you would be amazed. I had the
opportunity in the past few days to spend some time with my pastor-friends. I
won’t mention them. Yeah, I will. Bruce
was over hear the other day, David Dunn. We have a great time together. Igor
was over here. Chris was back here. Ike was over here last week. We were having
a gripe session about how hard it is trying to teach (and this doesn’t relate
to either of our congregations), but it relates to other teaching environments
that we have Christians who are so biblically ignorant – profoundly,
abysmally ignorant of the Scripture and basic doctrine and don’t seem to care a
wit that they are. In fact I experienced this some when I was teaching at the
College of Biblical Studies. In fact they think that they can come in and on
the basis of the fact they have been studying their Sunday school quarterly to
teach their Sunday school classes for ten years, they think they can tell you
what the Bible says and it doesn’t matter the fact that you have been a pastor
for 30 years and have a masters in theology and everything else and know the
original languages. They’re right. They really came to school just to get a
diploma rubber stamped and tell you what the Bible says. The arrogance that is
out there today in the visible church is unbelievable. This country is headed
for a real discipline from God because the only thing that’s supposed to be the
salt of the nation has lost its savor. The church today is ignorant. It’s
running away from the truth. It is so postmodern.
The stories I get from the few
people that we have that are going to seminary is that the seminary students
are so postmodern that if they in conversation say, “Well, maybe the Bible
actually says X.”
“Well, how can you say that? I would mean that I am wrong and I am
offended.”
It is difficult for them to even
have a conversation with other students because everybody wants to think that
whatever they generate out of the idolatry of their own naval is absolute
truth. It’s incredible. It’s so great to have a congregation like this. It
makes you want to fall down on your knees every night to thank God for it
because people want to know the Bible. But most people out there want a band
aid. They want something that makes them feel like they have done something for
God. And, that’s it. And if you don’t validate that, then you are right out of
the pit of hell. You are judgmental and arrogant and terrible. So it’s really
hard to have these discussions, but you have to know what is going on.
When a person trusts in Christ, faith
doesn’t mean faithfulness. John MacArthur tried to do that in his first edition
of the Gospel According to Jesus. He
tried to say that pistis in Ephesians
2:8-9…
NKJ Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith,
…should be understood as
faithfulness.
For by grace you have been saved
through faithfulness.
Let’s go see the pope. That’s Roman
Catholic theology: you are saved by your faithfulness; you’re not saved by the object
of faith in Jesus Christ; you are saved by faithfulness.
So I say when a person trusts in
Christ, by trust we mean to rely on, to believe in. That’s how the Apostle John
expresses it in the Gospel of John again and again and again - to believe in
Christ, to accept as Savior, to accept what He did on your behalf. That’s the
imagery of Jesus bread of life.
NKJ John 6:35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life.
He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never
thirst.
It is accepting Him and all that He
is and does into us - accepting it into our lives. Those are just different
ways of expressing this concept of completely and exclusively relying upon
Jesus. That means that you are not going to trust in Christ and get any
soteriological benefit from going to church or from participating in the
sacraments. It’s faith alone. You’re not helping it or strengthening it any by
doing anything else. It’s only believing that Jesus died for you. The object of
faith is what has the value. It’s not the kind of faith because faith is
faith.
If you talk to anybody coming out of
a Calvinistic position that holds to a Lordship view of perseverance, they see
faith as a gift. They see faith as a gift.
Hold you place here in Hebrews and
turn over to Ephesians 2.
I think I covered this last week. I
don’t know which night. I did a lot of teaching on this section 1 through 10
when I was at the WHW Conference out in Los Angeles. Verses 1 through 7 are
one sentence in the Greek.
The grammatical subject of that
sentence doesn’t occur until verse 4 - God. You can circle that. That’s your
grammatical subject. That means that everything that is said up to that point
is secondary to the main idea of this sentence. The main idea of the sentence
is expressed in the independent clause of the sentence, which is composed of
your grammatical subject and your verbs. You have three verbs that explain the
action of God. God performs the action. The three verbs begin in the second
part of verse 5.
NKJ Ephesians 2:5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
That’s regeneration.
NKJ Ephesians 2:6 and raised us up
together, and made us sit together in
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
Those are the three verbs. So you
have one subject, God, who does three things. He makes us alive together,
raises us together, and sits us together – three things He does.
Now if I were to ask you to give me
one word that would summarize the work that Christ did in making us alive
together, raising us up together, and sitting us together with Christ what
would that one word be? What would that one word be? Tom, have you got it? What
would that one word be? The first one is regeneration. I want you to think
about this. That’s why I am asking you this question. It is kind of unusual in
Bible class. He made us alive together. That’s regeneration. He raised us
together and seated us. He made us alive and raised and seated us. What one
word covers those three things? He
saved us. He saved us. That’s why you have this almost an expletive at the end
of verse 5. See He summarizes these three verbs in the one verb - you have been
saved.
NKJ Ephesians 2:5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
That is the statement that’s made in
the middle of these three verses that is grammatically unrelated to the rest of
this sentence from 1 to 7. Why is that important?
This is one of the great examples I
use to show why grammar really matters. Why is that important? Do you see that
phrase “for by grace you have been saved” anywhere else. Where do you see it?
Verse 8. That’s right. What
happens in verse 8 is he is using that phrase “for by grace you have been
saved” to summarize everything he said in 1 through 7. He is taking all that
content in 1 through 7 and he scrunched it down to one phrase, “for by grace
you have been saved through faith.”
He adds the idea in verse 8 that
it’s through faith. All of this that God does for you in verses 5, 6 and 7 is
done is through faith.
Then you have the phrase “and that.”
Now the interesting thing in the Greek is that the “that” is a neuter in the
Greek. It’s a neuter pronoun. A neuter pronoun has to refer to – easy
question. See, I am being so Aristotelian tonight - so Socratic. A neuter
pronoun has to refer to:
A, B, or C? C.
Well, grace is a feminine noun and
faith is a feminine noun. So the “that” can’t refer to faith or grace. It’s not
the faith that’s the gift, which is what every Calvinist will tell you. It is
what God did for you in 2, 5, 6, and 7. The fact that He made you alive
together, raised you together, and seated you together - that is the gift of
God. That whole salvation package is the gift of God, not the faith. But see
when the faith that saves you is a different kind of faith, then you can have a
non-saving faith in Jesus. So if you can believe in Jesus and it’s not salvific
(It won’t save you.) and you can have a faith in Jesus that can save you, how
does a person over here distinguish his non-saving faith in Jesus from the
person over here that has saving faith in Jesus? What’s the difference going to
be? Because the person over here is not going to have works consistent with his
faith. This person is going to have works consistent with their faith. So the
only way you know if you really believed in Jesus is you have works that are
consistent with your faith.
So how do you know if you are saved?
Works. It’s legalism; but it’s a works that is brought in the backdoor, not
brought in the front door. So that is why I have this statement here.
When a person trusts in Christ for
salvation then God does the work. He permanently justifies, regenerates and
gives eternal life. I couldn’t put everything in there, but I thought those
three things summarize it. He justifies. That means imputes righteousness and
declares you just. He regenerates.
You get a new human spirit. You are born again and you are given eternal
life. This cannot be lost no matter what you do or don’t do. Now that’s really
important because what happens is that in 90% of Christianity people say that
what you do or don’t do after you trust in Christ is either going to cause you
on the one hand to lose your salvation if you were saved or it’s going to prove
whether you had the right kind of faith – if it was the non-saving faith
or saving faith. This salvation cannot be lost no matter what that person does
or does not do from that instant on until the day he dies.
Now the two schools of theology that
you have to understand here are on the one hand Calvinism and on the other hand
Arminianism. Calvinism is the theology that is developed from the followers of
John Calvin. It is not necessarily everything Calvin believed, but it is what
is basically calcified into his theology by the end of the 16th
century.
A man by the name of James Arminius
(or Jacobus Arminius whether you want to use the Latin or the English form)
comes along and he actually believed in eternal security. But his followers
solidified his theology and you had this huge theological confrontation that
occurred in the Senate of Dort in Holland in the early 1600’s. I think it was
1614 or 1615 or something like that. The Arminians actually had their 5 points
and they were called The Five Remonstrance. They were the 5 points of
Arminianism. And the Calvinists answered it with their 5 points called The
Counter Remonstrance and that became known under the acronym of TULIP.
TULIP is for total depravity, but they actually mean total
inability. You can’t even exercise neutral positive volition to God. You can’t
do anything. God does everything. He even gives you positive volition. So you
have total inability.
The U is for
unconditional election that God doesn’t base His choice on who will be saved and
who won’t on any condition. He just chooses.
“You, you and you will be saved and
the rest of you won’t.”
In the more extreme forms, you get a
double predestination where “you four are predestined to heaven and the rest of
you are predestined to hell.”
But not every Calvinist holds to
double predestination. But it is sort of a passive double predestination.
The L stands for limited atonement. See,
if God chose who would be saved, then that’s set in concrete so Jesus doesn’t
need to die for those who aren’t chosen. So He only dies for those who are
chosen.
They’ll say terms like, “Well, if
you believe Jesus died for the unsaved, then He just spilled His blood on the
cross.”
Like it’s an accident.
The I is irresistible grace or
sometimes efficacious grace. (This will confuse everybody here. I have
re-educate every young guy that goes to seminary.) Efficacious grace doesn’t mean
in its historical theological context as almost every theologian has ever used
it - efficacious grace does not mean that the Holy Spirit makes your faith
efficacious for salvation. Efficacious grace means that the Holy Spirit is
going to give you the grace you need to be saved because you’re the elect. It’s
a Calvinistic term. Some of you had it redefined for you, which is not really
kosher. The term historically by every theologian for the last 500 years has
meant that the Holy Spirit is going to irresistibly give you grace. You can’t
say no. He is going to give you the grace you need to trust Christ as savior
because He is going to give you the faith also. That’s historic Calvinism.
P is perseverance. Perseverance
isn’t - although some like Louis Sperry Chafer held to a non-lordship
perseverance where for him perseverance of the saints was the perseverance of
Christ. But for most Calvinist and reformed theologians the P stands for the
perseverance of the saints. What it really means is that you persevere in good
works so that you know that you’re saved. If you don’t persevere in good works,
then you didn’t have the right kind of faith. You didn’t have efficacious grace
and you just had a non-saving faith in Jesus. So that’s how they define it.
Now let’s look at a couple of
historical documents so we understand this. This is the Westminster Confession
of Faith written in the early 1600’s by the so-called Westminster Divines, the
Westminster Theologians which captures English Presbyterian theology. In the
Westminster Confession of Faith it states (Notice the grammatical subject here.
It’s really important.):
They whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called…
See I told you – efficacious
grace was terminology that meant the Holy Spirit irresistibly draws you to the
cross. There’s the term.
…and sanctified by His Spirit can neither totally nor finally fall away
from the state of grace,
Now what that is saying is if you
were really saved, two days later deny Christ and go into carnality for the
rest of your life and die in a cesspool of sin. You can’t do it – not if you were really saved. You
may commit egregious sins as a believer. You may have periods of carnality. But
you’re not going to stay there with the pigs and the prodigal son until the day
you die – not if you were really saved.
So what are they saying? If you are
really saved, you’ve got to have works consistent with your salvation.
but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved.
Notice that – they will
certainly persevere. Who performs the action of “certainly persevere”? The
“they”, the believer; not God.
Now Louis Berkhof well-known
reformed theologian (We had to read his Systematic
Theology – parts of it, when I
was in seminary. Very good, very reformed. Good in some parts.) says:
The doctrine of perseverance requires careful statement especially in
view of the fact that the term perseverance of the saints is liable to
misunderstanding. We should guard against the possible misunderstanding that
this perseverance is regarded as an inherent property of the believer or as a
continuous activity of man by means of which he perseveres in the way of
salvation.
See, he recognizes the danger there
that it’s not – you can’t articulate it as man being the one who
works.
However, Charles Hodge who was a
great reformed 19th century theologian wrote in his commentary on I
Corinthians 9:27 regarding the Apostle Paul that:
This devoted apostle considered himself as engaged in a life struggle of
his salvation.
Huh? Can you picture Paul waking
every day struggling to make sure he was saved? That was Charles Hodge not to
be confused with Zane Hodges.
Okay, that was Charles Hodge, 19th century Princetonian
theologian.
His son A. A. Hodge named for the
man who founded the Princeton Law College which became Princeton Seminary
wrote:
Perseverance and holiness therefore in opposition to all weakness and
temptations is the only sure evidence of the genuineness of past experience of
the validity of our confidence as to our future salvation.
In other words the only way you can
know is by your experience of good works, not by the promise of God. See that’s
the difference. Is God’s promise good enough or - I don’t look to the Bible, I
look to fruit? I have to become a fruit inspector rather than relying on the
promise of God.
On the other end of the spectrum you
have an Arminian like Robert Shank who says:
There is no saving faith apart from obedience. There is no valid
assurance of election and final salvation for any man apart from deliberate
perseverance and faith.
See how close that sounds to what
the Calvinist says? Now the way most people think of this is that Calvinism and
Arminianism are on opposite ends of the spectrum. It’s a misconception. They
think that Arminianism and Calvinism are complete opposites.
But it is really more like this. There
is just a little bit of distance between them because the Arminian is putting
works up front and the Lordship Calvinist is putting in the backdoor. The
Arminian says there is no eternal security and the Lordship Calvinist says
there is eternal security but you can’t really know you are saved if you don’t
have works. They are both introducing works into the equation.
But Scripture says it’s not on the
basis of works either before or after salvation. And so in neither of these
systems can you really know if you are saved. Now where it gets tricky is you will go up and you’ll ask
somebody - let’s say you are out there in the rest of the country, the world
somewhere, and you are trying to look for a church somewhere and you say, “Do
you believe in eternal security?”
The pastor says, “Yes. I believe
once saved, always saved.”
But what he didn’t tell you is that
he doesn’t know if you can know if you were once saved. He doesn’t know how you
can know you were sure you were once saved.
I remember asking John MacArthur one
time when he was speaking at a bookstore in Dallas for a pastor’s breakfast.
Tommy Ice and I were sitting right
in front of him and I raised my hand and I said, “Well Dr. MacArthur, are you
sure that you are saved?”
“Well, only 99% sure.”
See even he couldn’t be 100% sure
that he was going to heaven when he died because there was a possibility at
least that he faith he had in Jesus was a non-saving faith. There might come a
time when he might reject Christ and fall into sin for the rest of his life and
then he would have proved that it was a false faith. It was a pseudo-faith, a
pseudo-salvation. So that sort of sets it up. This is the battle and what we
have in the middle as the alternative to this is the movement that really (not
that the theology wasn’t there before because it was), but it became crystallized
in the midst of this theological debate that began to develop in the 60’s and
70’s. It became known as the Free Grace Movement. That was really a product, a
lot of the writings of Zane Hodges, a professor at Dallas Seminary who was my
first year Greek professor and some of the books that he wrote. He wrote a
great book called The Gospel Under Siege.
There was another well-known beloved
professor at Dallas Seminary named as S. Louis Johnson. S. Louis Johnson was
Pastor Thieme’s Greek professor when he was in seminary. So a lot of guys who
came up out of that background went up to seminary and they had this pre-suppositional
trust in Dr. Johnson. Within three months they were 5-point Calvinists because
they were told that they could trust Johnson. Wrong. So Johnson became a 5-point
Calvinist. At least he had the integrity to realize that he wasn’t in step with
the seminary so he retired from being a professor at the seminary. But he
did - I remember when he and Zane
Hodges had a debate at a brown bag luncheon at Dallas Seminary back in the 80’s
and he re-punctuated the title of Zane’s book. He said he was here to review a
book The Gospel - Under Siege by Zane Hodges.
So they had a lot of fun with that
of course were very good friends. Back in those days we were all gentlemen at
Dallas Seminary. But this has been a battle and now what’s happened and some of
you are aware of this and others of you are not, but even within the Grace
Evangelical Society there has developed within this a new kind of twist that
there are saying (and Zane is one of them. I think he is completely off on this)
that the gospel content is just accepting, believing that Jesus will give you
eternal life.
What’s not there? This has become a
major battle. It has affected us at Chafer Seminary. They had a big conference
in Dallas last week dealing with this and I was going to go, but it was a
bridge too far after coming back from WHW. This has
become the big issue now. These battles are going on and you just need to be
aware of some of these things because you may hear things.
In I Thessalonians 4:13 Paul writes:
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who
have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus gave us eternal life God
will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
Is that what it says? It’s not what
it says.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again.
Paul said:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 2:2 For I determined not to know anything among you
except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
See what’s happening now is we are
getting people in the free grace camp who have and the terminology has been
developed by others have a crossless gospel. As long as you are trusting Jesus
to save you, you don’t have to believe in the deity of Christ or His
substitutionary atonement. You just believe that He is going to give you eternal
life and that’s enough. This is going to be a major issue. The sad thing is
what we are seeing is in the last 30 years. We have seen 50 at least, maybe a 100 new theological
positions develop fragmenting evangelicalism, splitting churches that didn’t
even exist when I was back in seminary back in the 70’s.
Everybody is battling each other and
nobody is having any impact and everybody is out there saying. “Well there are
50 positions and I can’t think them through so let’s just come together at
church, light a few candles, sit on our sofas, hold hands and sing Kumbaya
and…”
“The only thing we have in common is
experience. We have all had some experience with Jesus, but let’s not put it in
words because if we put it in words we will start fighting with each other so
the only thing we can do is have a unity of experience.”
But Paul said in Ephesians 4 that it
is the unity of faith the body of doctrine and doctrine is worth splitting over
because there is truth and there is falsehood. God didn’t communicate to create
a fog between our ears. He communicated to give clarity between our ears so we
can know what God says.
So next time we’ll come back and
having introduced what the issues are in relation to eternal security we will
go through the various passages related to security because what we see in
Hebrews 7 is that the intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ is based on His
divine characteristic of eternality. It is because we have an eternal High
Priest, He can secure our salvation eternally.