We're going to look at salvation from God's perspective. It's called sovereign grace or reformed soteriology or the Augustinian understanding of salvation. Most of us, I guess all of us, came here in a car this morning. It's a blessing to have a car. I guess all of us know how to drive one, but not so many know what's under the hood. So what we're gonna do is lift up the hood on salvation today. Let's look under the hood and see what makes our salvation go, as it were. So turn over to Ephesians chapter one, and I wanna read the first full paragraph which is three through 10. And what we're trying to figure out is the point. So that's gonna be my question. What is the point of this paragraph? I'm gonna get Jace to read it. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. What's the point of that? What's the purpose? What's he getting at? What's Paul saying? Why did he write it? What's the big idea? He did choose us, and we're gonna talk about that. But why is He telling me that? He is blessing God for all the blessings God has given us in Christ. So as Robert just said, if you look at verse 4, He chose us. According to verse 5, He predestined us. According to verse 7, He gave us redemption. It says He provided us forgiveness. In verses 7 and 8 it says, He lavished grace on us. And in 9 and 10 it said, He made known to us the mystery of His will. So these are the blessings God has given us, and that's why he starts off in verse three with, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So this is a blessing for what God has done for us. Y'all see that? So that's the big idea here. And what I wanna look at underneath the hood, as I said, it starts off with this word, chose. He chose us. Now look at verse four. We're gonna look at the word chose and the word predestined. So if you believe the Bible, you gotta believe in predestination. Because that word's in there. You gotta do something with it, right? All right, so look at verse four. What was the purpose for which God chose us? To be holy and blameless. So let's talk about the word holy. The Greek word is hagios. That Greek word is in the first two verses, and it's not translated holy. So look at the first two verses and tell me which English word in the first two verses is not translated holy, but it's the same word hagias. What word would that be? Saint, that's it. The word saint and the word holy are the same Greek word. So what does it mean to be a saint, or what does it mean to be holy? Okay, set apart is the bottom line meaning. So if you have a special pan and you only use it for changing the oil in your car and you don't use it for anything else and it's set apart from all your other pans, that's a holy pan. We talk about the holy land. What's so holy about real estate? Well, it's the land God set apart for the Jews to live on. Now in Corinth, that was Sin City, that was the Las Vegas of the time, there was in that city a temple to the goddess Aphrodite. You've heard of an aphrodisiac. Well, this temple to Aphrodite was not in the city. It was on this hill above the city. And you could see it. It was up on the hill. And the ancient writers say there were 1,000 temple prostitutes doing their thing up there. So you could say those women were holy. Why? Well, they were set apart from the city to be like their goddess. So when it says, you're holy, what does that mean for us? To be like our God, Jesus. That's right. I looked up in Isaiah 6-3, you got these seraphim in God's presence, and they called out to one another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord. Now, if you're writing something in English and you want to emphasize it, you can underline it, you can put it in bold, you can put it in italics, you can put it in all capital letters, but the way the Hebrews did it was to repeat it. Sometimes maybe if somebody's up here teaching and they've said something, you might go, amen. You're saying, yeah, I agree with that, truly. Jesus starts with amen. He'll start with truly, truly, I say to you, amen, amen, I say to you. Now he's emphasizing, hey, listen up, I'm about to, he said it twice, I'm about to say something really significant here, listen. But now you got these angels and they say it, Three times. So they didn't say God is love, love, love. They didn't say he's just, just, just. Although that's true. What did they say? Holy, holy, holy. That's an essential attribute of who God is. And so one author, he said, It's the very essence of who God is. Everything God thinks, desires, speaks, and does is utterly holy in every way. And holiness is what it takes for us to be right with God. Bible says without holiness, no one will see the Lord. And so God is entirely morally pure, all the time and in every way possible. And when Isaiah, who saw those seraphims and Jehovah God, when he saw that, he said, woe is me, for I'm lost. I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. So that's another way of saying that God chose you to be saved. and sanctified or sanctified, okay? It's a package deal. If you're chosen by God to be saved, you're also chosen by God to be holy. Thessalonians puts it a different way. It says, God has chosen you for salvation. Very explicit. So, let me ask an obvious question. Go back to verse four. Did we choose God or did He choose us? It says God did the choosing. Now when we hold political elections, we vote for, we choose candidates for public office. And so what this means is God had an election. He voted and you won, okay? Theologians call this, because of this word chose, they call it the doctrine of divine Okay, so this is one of the things we're gonna try to introduce this morning. Now, I heard, I actually heard a preacher say this. It grieved me to my core when he said it, but people say these things. I won't tell you who it is, lest you think less of him. But here's how he explained it. He said, God voted for you, the devil voted against you, and you cast a deciding vote. Yeah, well. There's nothing here about anybody voting except God. He chose us. Now when he says us there in verse four, originally, who did that refer to? Who's us? Okay, the Apostle Paul who's writing this, and who's he writing to? The saints, the church in Ephesus. Now by extension, if you believe in Jesus like they did, if you're a member of the church, that would include you too. Now look very carefully at verse four. What was the sphere, you like that word? What was the sphere in which the Father chose us? He chose us in Christ. Jesus is a very integral part of this whole election process as we're gonna see. And according to verse four, when did this election take place? before you were ever born, before the foundation of the world, before Genesis 1.1. Now guys, this means the die has already been cast. The outcome was decided before you got here. It says in 2 Thessalonians 2.13, God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation. The classic example of that is Jacob and Esau. When Rebecca had conceived children, Jacob and Esau, they were equal in every way, same father, same mother, born at the same time, they were roommates. When she had conceived children, though they were not yet born and had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of His call, she was told, the older will serve the younger. So that's an example that comes to mind often. Now let me just say that the Bible only talks about election in a positive sense. you will only read about God electing certain people to eternal life. God does not actively damn people. Whenever it talks about choosing someone, it's always positive for salvation, just as a qualification. I thought I'd throw that out there. But here's what every denomination believes. It doesn't matter if you're Pentecostal or Methodist or Baptist or Catholic. In eternity past, before the foundation of the world, God chose to save some members of the human race and to let the rest perish. All denominations are agreed about that. You don't have to like it. You might be upset by it, but you're all alone. If you reject that, everybody believes it. Now, the next word we want to deal with, the next way to be offended, is in verse 5. It says, God also predestined them, so that brings up the doctrine called predestination. So look back at verse five. Not only did God select these people, He predestined them for some purpose, for some goal, for some objective. What was that objective? Look at verse five and tell me the answer. for adoption of sons. That's right. Now, a lot of people are frightened by the doctrine of predestination, and it goes on for a long time. This verse, the sentence with the word predestined in it, covers parts of three verses. It's mostly in verse five and six. You see, there's not a period there in the ESV until you get into verse six, but it starts in verse four. What word at the end of verse four begins this sentence on predestination, in love. So whatever else is true about predestination, it is intimately tied up with God's love. Predestination is not God's way of keeping people out of heaven. There's one misguided theologian said this. This is an actual quote. I do not believe in predestination. By the way, he's already just told you he doesn't believe the Bible. That tells you what kind of school that was. But I do not believe in predestination because I do not believe that God brings people kicking and screaming against their wills into the kingdom while he excludes others from his kingdom who desperately want to be saved. All right, God does not bring people kicking and screaming into the kingdom, nor has he ever excluded anybody who wanted to be there. So you need to see that this predestination is based on God's love and on this choosing all happened in Christ. He uses the word grace twice. It says he lavished his grace upon us. So this is not something to be afraid of. It's something to praise God for. So let's take this word apart. It's an easy word. What does pre mean? Before, as in? Preschool. Preschool. Thank you. And then a destination, okay, if you call a travel agent, the first thing he's gonna wanna know is, what is your, it's where you're going. So when we talk about predestination, it's talking about your ultimate destination. God has determined pre, ahead of time, what your ultimate destination is gonna be. And it, only uses the word predestination in a positive way as it relates to salvation. It only talks about people being predestined to heaven. It never talks about people being predestined to hell. It just doesn't. Now look at verse 5. What else can I learn about predestination from verse 5? You told me it was for adoption. Okay, according to the purpose of, who's his? That's God, isn't it? And look down to verse nine, whose will was mentioned there? His will. Stay in verse nine, whose purpose determined what happened? God's purpose. Look ahead to verse 11. Ooh, we got double predestination. He mentions the word again, look at this. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to what? purpose of God's will. And according to verse 11, what was the deciding factor? Whose counsel was the deciding factor in all this? God's counsel, that's right. So that's part of the reason why Paul says, he's quoting, he's talking about this. In Romans 9, Paul is quoting Jehovah. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. And I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it, God's mercy does not depend on human will, but on God who has mercy. That's what I said, there's nothing here about us voting. So again, based on verse six, what should the truth of predestination cause you to do? Praise God, that's what it says. That's what it says. All right, so the so what of this paragraph? Tell me again, for what purpose were we chosen and predestined? His purposes, and his purpose is that you would be holy, blameless, and adopted as sons, right? Now, by the way, for purposes of salvation, the word chosen and predestined are pretty much used interchangeably. When Paul wrote that these Ephesian believers were chosen and predestined, what effect were these words designed to have on those people? You're not trying to scare them. What's the impact it's supposed to have? Assurance. Make you feel bulletproof, Jace says. That's right. God is in control of your eternal life. You are secure in him. If salvation were a legal dispute, this would be called an open and shut case. Predestination's a blessing. Jesus put it this way. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." So that's you, and here's Jesus' hand, and there's the Father's hand, and you're not getting out. This is designed to assure them in their salvation. Now the question is, you can figure this out, why does Paul write about election and predestination without any further explanation? How are they supposed to understand what this is all about just from what's here? Okay, well it is pretty obvious what he's saying and the reason it's obvious two years there before he wrote this. They already knew everything he had to say about predestination and election. Now, there are different ways of explaining or, in my opinion, explaining this away, but the way we have to learn from it beyond what's here is to look at other places in the Bible that talks about these same concepts. So that's what we're gonna eventually do over the next few weeks. Now, back in the Dark Ages, R.C. Sproul did a... series called Chosen by God, and he pointed out that God had several options in salvation. I'm gonna give you the first one to prime the pump and let you guess the rest of them. Adam sinned. We're condemned in Adam. We sinned. We got our own sin. And so option number one that God could have done is to save none of us. Okay? Would God have been fair, would that have been just for God to do that? Absolutely. We just simply get what we deserve. That's right. And so he could have decided to punish the whole, that's what he did to the angels. They don't get a second chance. The fallen angels don't. Is God obligated to show us mercy? So imagine you're a condemned criminal and you're there in the courtroom and they just find you guilty. You know, the condemned criminal cannot go up and pound on the judge's desk and demand mercy. You can't do that. So God's not obligated to show anybody mercy. Grace, tell me what grace is. Grace is undeserved favor. It's getting something good that you don't deserve. Mercy is not getting something bad that you do deserve. Justice is getting exactly what you deserve. What option would be the polar opposite of this option? Okay, to save all. What is this called theologically besides heresy? What's that called? Universalism. So if you pass, there's a couple over here in Atlanta, Unitarian Universalist Church, that's what they believe. There was a former evangelical mega-pastor who taught this. He didn't remain an evangelical mega-pastor long after that. He taught everybody's going to heaven. His name was Rob Bell. He became good friends with Oprah Winfrey. I think he runs a surf shop in California now or something. So, you know, we used to talk about hell's bells, you know? Now we talk about bell's hell. It's the opposite. Anyway, no hell for anybody. That's what he thinks. Now, could God do that? Does God have the ability to save everybody? He does. He certainly does. But he won't. We know he won't. Okay, now what's our third option? Thank you. It's just save some. And of course, that is the biblical option. And there's two ways Christians understand this. This is Christian, and within that camp, we'll call it an A and a B. How does that work that he saves some? Well, one option is he saves potentially. So in other words, I had a business downtown, and I had 30,000 line items, all stocked, and I wanted to sell them to people. but I couldn't force anybody to do business with me. I never knew if anybody was gonna walk through the door or not, but I was ready to sell it to them. And so under this view, Jesus died on the cross to pay for the sins of whoever will believe in Jesus. So God is an equal opportunity redeemer, but it's only potential. There's no guarantees under this view. There's a guarantee if you believe you'll be saved, but there's no guarantee that anybody would believe. It's totally up to man's, it's commonly called free will, it's based on whether man has faith or not. Does that make sense? So I don't want to mischaracterize this, but it's kind of like in this view, God doesn't choose people for salvation. He chooses a plan of salvation. The plan that's predestined is that if anybody believes, they'll be saved. You see? But what we read in Ephesians, he's not picking a plan, he's picking people. And I don't want to misrepresent this, but that's kind of the idea behind it. Now, there's another option, that's option 3B, and that is where God will guarantee that certain people will believe. So there he's not picking the plan like up here, he's picking the people themselves. That God so works in some people's lives to make sure that they come to faith in Christ. Now, under 3B, God does not treat everybody equally. He has predestined some people for mercy, and the rest he passes over. So one group gets mercy, what does the other group get? Justice, that's right. Mercy for some, justice for others. Who gets injustice? Nobody. Mercy is non-justice, but it's not injustice. What's injustice? What is injustice? Yeah, you mistreat someone. The only one who's ever really been mistreated by God, if you look at it that way, is Jesus, who had to pay the price for our sins on the cross, and he didn't deserve any of that. So again, mercy is non-justice, but it's not injustice. So some people get mercy, and some people get justice. Nobody gets injustice. Now, a lot of people object, and they say, that's not fair. Well, listen, when you're dealing with God, the last thing you want is for God to be fair, because we all go to hell if God is fair. That means you get exactly what you deserve. You understand how that works? So you got to face it. God is not an equal opportunity redeemer. So the question is, which of these options did God take? Well, we know it wasn't one and two. It's some variation of number three is what he did. And how you answer whether 3A or 3B, what it comes down to is, does fallen man have the ability to believe in Jesus? You don't have to answer that, but that's the difference. 3A says, yes, we're sinful, we're screwed up by sin, but there's just enough good left that you can believe in Jesus, of your own free will. Okay, the Holy Spirit convicts you, and you hear the testimony of other, yeah, all that, but still, you decide. And B says, no, we're so screwed up by sin, mind, will, and emotions, that if left to your own free will, you're ultimately gonna not believe in Jesus. By the way, the devil believes in Jesus. He's got better theology than we do, but you're not gonna see him in heaven, right? So I'm talking about, you're not gonna believe in Jesus in a way that's saving. And I'll use this again in a few weeks from now, but we have a cat. And he's biased in what he eats. They're picky eaters, aren't they? Finicky. And so if I gave him a choice between shrimp and chopped onions, what's he gonna pick every time? The shrimp. And he's got a choice. Well, we're biased, too, toward sin, toward self. And so, if God leaves us alone, we're gonna make the wrong choice every time. So, that's the difference in these two views. And I'm not trying to misrepresent either one. I'm just trying to tell you the way it is. So, why did God pick who he picked? What was the basis for who God picked? Sir? Yeah, it's his will, his purpose, that is what that says. But some people say God picked you, it was his purpose to pick people who of their own free will believed in Jesus. Smokey Robinson saying, if you feel like giving me a lifetime of devotion, I second that emotion. You ever heard that? I won't sing it. So it's like God is singing, if you, the human, feel like giving me, God, a lifetime of devotion, I, God, second that emotion. So under 3A view, God is merely responding to your faith. The trigger point for whether God picked you or not is you believing in Jesus. Your faith causes God to pick you. And, of course, He's omniscient. He's independent of time. He knows what we're all going to do anyway. So knowing what He knew that one day you would believe in Jesus of your own free will, He responded to that by picking you for salvation. That's one way people explain that. That is the official position of Roman Catholicism. Eastern Orthodoxy, and many evangelical churches, most notably the Methodists, the Pentecostals, Now, the other view, 3B here, say that what determined you getting picked was God's mercy, or as it says here, God's pleasure, God's will, God's counsel. His picking people was not hinged on anything that we do that pleased him. Okay, now that is called the reformed view of salvation because that's what all the Protestant reformers believed at the time of the Reformation. Today, it's held by the Presbyterians who still believe the Bible. It's held by the Anglicans who still believe the Bible. It's held by the Dutch Reformed Church. The Baptists who believe that are called Sovereign Grace Baptists. All the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention believe that. But again, we're trying to say what is cause and what is effect. Or I could say, what is affect and what is effect? Now, let's review. In position 3A, what is cause and what's effect? Yes. The cause is man believing, and the effect is God choosing. That's right. Now, it's just the opposite in 3B. The cause is God choosing. The effect is you believing. That make sense? So that's how those two are different. By the way, before I forget it, the reason the Reformers believed 3b, look at chapter 2, verse 1 of this very letter. You were dead in trespasses and sins. So if you go out to your car this afternoon and the battery's dead, what does that mean? Yeah, it doesn't turn the engine over, it's inoperative, it's powerless. And so the Bible says, when we were powerless, Christ died for us. Romans 3.11, no one understands, no one seeks for God. We read that, we go, except me. No, you didn't. 1 Corinthians 2.14, the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. So that means every time you share the gospel with natural people, they're not gonna accept it. Every time, they're not gonna accept it, like the cat and onions. And then John 6, 65, Jesus said, no one can come to me, unless it's been granted to him by the Father. This is a very one-sided thing, folks. Now, Sproul also pointed out there have been three historic views of salvation. The question is, how essential is the grace of God to human salvation? So the question concerns grace and how essential it is. Historically, one answer was given by a guy named Pelagius. Pelagius was a British monk around AD 400. And another opposite view was Augustine, who lived in North Africa around 8400, and then in the middle was a guy named Arminius. So how necessary is the grace of God to human salvation? What did Plagius say? Zip, zero, you do not need God's grace to be saved. So that clearly is a false gospel. Now, let's not be confused with plagiarism, that's Pelagius. All right, now, the church person God raised up to counter this heretic was Augustine. And again, the question is, how essential is the grace of God to human salvation? And he said, 100%. And what he went on to explain was, even your initial response to the gospel is a result of grace. Of course, we know it says, by grace you've been saved. And so he taught something called irresistible grace. You cannot ultimately refuse God's grace if you're one of the elect. So imagine it's Valentine's coming up, and there's a fat little Cupid, and he's got his arrows. He shoots somebody. They're hit by the love arrow. Well, God shoots love arrows at certain people. That's what he's saying grace is like. You're a goner to love. That's the idea. And Augustine also talked about what we now call the effectual calling of God. So if we go out to the college campus and we tell people to believe in Jesus, that's a general call. But the effectual call is targeted to the elect. And that's like those tractor beams on those Star Wars movies. Man, God locks that tractor beam on you. You're going to get pulled in. It's just what happens. So that was Augustine talked about all that. And so look at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8. That's a famous verse, for by grace you have been saved through faith, right? And this is not your own doing. It's the gift of God. The word this is a pronoun. Pronouns refer back to some immediately preceding noun. What noun is in front of this? What noun is in front of the pronoun this? The word right in front of it is faith. Is he saying your faith is not your own doing, that your faith is a gift of God? Is he saying that? You know, English is a very impoverished language. We don't have genders like, well, we got too many genders now in America, but our words don't have genders. So the word grace is feminine. And the word saved is a participle. That's masculine. And the word faith is feminine. The gender of the word this is gonna match whatever noun it refers to, right? So if it's faith, this is gonna be feminine. Are you ready for what it is? Drum roll, please. It's neuter, like my cat. Was Paul just asleep when he wrote that one? All right. What that means is it refers to the whole phrase. It refers to grace, which is feminine. It refers to salvation, which is masculine. And it refers to your faith, which is feminine. This whole process is a gift of God. Grace is a gift. Salvation is a gift. And guess what? Your faith is a gift. That's what Augustine said. All right, now, over time, a third view arose. After the time of the Reformers, another fellow, he was Protestant, his name was Jacob Arminius. He said, yep, grace is 100% from God, just like Augustine did. So this is not a false gospel. But there's a but in here. But, now I don't know how to say this. I'm not trying to offend anybody, but I'll just call it human cooperation. In other words, Whereas Augustine taught irresistible grace, Arminius taught resistible grace, you see? And Augustine said faith is a gift, and Arminius said, no it's not. Now these are both within the household of faith. They both believe you're saved by grace through faith. Now the question is, where's your faith come from? So Arminius said, you gotta believe. And of course Augustine thought you gotta believe too, but he said you're not gonna believe unless the Holy Spirit gives you the gift of faith. You see the difference between these two positions? Most people who are Arminian deny being Arminian, but he was not a bad guy. He was very biblical. Modern-day Arminians are usually more emotional than they are biblical. Arminius said your election is based on what? Foreseen faith. Well, Augustine, he said your election is based on what? God's mercy and grace. Now look, there ain't no such thing as the tunnel of time. That's from science fiction. And it does got a disservice to say this, but people say it. So I'm going to just say it. God looked down the tunnel of time, and he saw that you would one day believe. And based on what he foresaw, your faith, he responded to that by electing you. Now if we just run with that terrible, terrible analogy. Well, Augustine would have said, if God looked down the tunnel of time to see who would one day of his own free will believe in Jesus, what he saw is that nobody would believe in Jesus. He decided to do something about it. So despite foreseen ill will, he chose to have mercy. According to his own sovereign purposes, on some people. That makes sense? So that's the difference in those views. And I'm going to quit by just telling you who believes what for fun. Who can we put in the Arminius camp? Well, I think it'd be fair to put Jacob Arminius in that camp. OK? John and Charles Wesley. were in that camp. You might have heard of Charles Finney. He was an evangelist, a lawyer turned evangelist. Billy Graham was definitely in that camp. Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley here in Atlanta was in that camp. I've heard him say it. Norman Geisler is an apologist up at Trinity Seminary. He was very anti-Augustinian. Dave Hunt, an apologist, Arminian, authors you might have read, Andrew Murray, A.W. Tozer, R.A. Torrey, today there's a debater going around named Leighton Flowers, he's definitely Arminian. Now, on the Augustinian side of things, well we could put Augustine there, after him, Thomas Aquinas, you read him, he's that way, Martin Luther, John Calvin. Now the blame for this doctrine goes on Calvin. I don't know why. Luther wrote more about it than Calvin ever did. Somehow he got blamed for it. Jonathan Edwards here in America. Now, Sprawl mentioned, if you can get those five guys to agree on anything, that should get your attention. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards, probably the greatest theologian the United States, or at least America, has ever produced. And so, at least it ought to get your attention that somehow they agreed about that. All right, more recently, Francis Schaeffer, J.I. Packard, Spurgeon, John Piper, D.A. Carson, John MacArthur, Tim Keller, A.W. Pink, John Knox, Matthew Henry, I got George Washington, it shouldn't say that, it should say George Whitfield, I don't know what Washington believed. He probably did, yeah. Stonewall Jackson, yes, that's right. William Carey, Doug Wilson, Paul Washer, Voddie Bauckham, Al Muller, yeah. All right, and so what we're gonna look at next week, does fallen man have the ability to believe in Jesus? We'll take that apart next week. This message was produced by the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, reforming today's church with New Testament church practices. Permission is hereby granted for you to reproduce this message. You can find us on the web at www.ntrf.org. May God bless you as you seek to follow Him in complete obedience to His Word. May your faith in the Lord Jesus be strengthened and your daily walk with Him deepened. Okay.