The Doctrine of Salvation 1

The Doctrine of Salvation 1

I should point out at the start that Berkhof’s Summary of Christian Doctrine is the book we’re using. It might be good if I point out that I wouldn’t personally stand with everything that Berkhof says, but we purposely took somebody like him because he did not necessarily believe the same way that we did, and it would keep us from getting into a narrow party line approach. I felt that that was very important.

It’s very important that we retain the insights that God has given us through the Holy Spirit, but equally important that we have somebody to rub up against and compare our views with and to perhaps change our views. So some of the things in Berkhof we would strongly disagree with like a tendency towards predestination; that some people are predestined to be saved, some are predestined to be lost, that kind of thing. So with that qualification I would suggest to you that you buy that book as the textbook, Summary of Christian Doctrine by Berkhof. And so that you know what I’m working from myself, I’m simply working from his bigger work Systematic Theology and at times I’ll follow it closely and at times present my own things with the help of another book here. So that’s the procedure.

Now loved ones if you’d look at the assignment sheet, you’ll see the kind of approach that we’ll take. The class assignments give you an idea of the topics that we’ll deal with and maybe I could reinforce your confidence in some way by saying that at seminary you would not do it in any more detail than this. Indeed, at seminary I’m afraid we didn’t spend nearly a quarter on the doctrine of salvation at all. But this is the doctrine of salvation treated under as detailed topics as anyone would deal with them. Now I’m not saying the lectures will be as great as anyone’s, but certainly the topics are there and if you ever want to study the doctrine of salvation those are the issues that you have to deal with. I would hope, by God’s grace, and your prayers to keep up to the schedule day-by-day.

What I’ve tried to do in the homework assignments is to give you reading that you could do in the textbook that would tie up with the next day’s subject and also, in the case of assignment five, things like Murray’s Abide In Christ give you some collateral reading which would not just be a method of occupying you or giving you busy work, but would in fact be light from a different angle on a particular topic. So for instance Andrew Murray writes many books that are deeply spiritual and deal at considerable length with our direct relationship with Jesus and our prayer times, so that’s Abide in Christ.

At other times it will be like assignment nine; Clark’s Psychology of Religion which would be one of the well-known seminary religious psychology books and a slant on the psychology of conversion. Assignment fourteen would be page 143 of Berkhof against Wylie who would be a more Arminian kind of theologian and who would take a different view on sanctification. So that’s what I’m trying to do in the assignments.

Now any questions on the procedure and on the method that we’ll use? I know that all of us don’t have the books so I’ll just jump right into the lecture today and try to deal with it and try to bring up some of the issues. I’ll try to note subheadings so that you’ll have some guide in making sense in your notes. What I’d like to try to talk about a little today is soteriology in general and maybe it would be good to make it clear what that means; in English letters it’s ‘soter” and that means Savior. So when you talk about soteriology you’re talking about the word “logos” added to the word soter and you’re talking about “soter logos” or soteriology it becomes in the anglicized form. “Logos” is knowledge so knowledge of the Savior or knowledge of salvation. Or the way that it is normally designated in theology, the “ordo salutis” in Latin, or in English “the way of salvation” and that’s really what we’re studying. So soteriology is the study of the way of salvation.

Perhaps those of you have heard me explain it before would be patient as I do it rather quickly for those of us who haven’t. I will outline very briefly the way of salvation and then you would get some idea of the questions and the problems that come up when you’re studying that in detail. You know that God’s desire for us was to receive his Holy Spirit of uncreated life. That’s the whole purpose for instance, in Genesis 2:9 where it says, “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden.” God’s desire was for us to receive the Holy Spirit from the tree of life.

You will remember that in fact we decided not to do that, certainly Adam decided not to do it and we all followed him. As a result of the lack of the Holy Spirit in our lives, our own personalities deteriorated; our minds became impaired, our bodies became weakened, our emotions became unbalanced, and the big thing was that we developed an incredibly selfish will that could not do good if it tried. It was so depraved and so poisoned that the only thing it wanted to do was what the great “I” wanted to do. So that resulted in the cry of Paul in Romans 7:19 “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” By refusing to receive the Holy Spirit we ended up poisoned selfish beings that could no longer do what God wanted.

The only way God could rectify that situation was by destroying that selfish will, and that is what he did when he put us into Christ and Christ died. In Romans 6:6 it says that our old self was crucified with Christ so that we might no longer be enslaved to sin; so that we might be freed from sin and no longer enslaved. That is really the story of salvation; by refusing to receive the Holy Spirit at the beginning of our lives, we ended up with personalities that were utterly depraved and utterly damaged and with selfish wills that could no longer do what God wanted us to do. And in order for us to be free at all to do that, God had to put us into Jesus and destroy us there. That is salvation. That is the provision that God made.

Now loved ones, the whole question that we deal with in the way of salvation is how do we apply that to our own lives? So what we’re talking about is how to apply the results of Christ’s death to our own lives so that we enter into the experience that God wanted us to have originally; that’s where all the problems and the issues come up. I’ll just outline some of them to you. Some people would say, for instance, it’s enough to believe that we were crucified with Christ. It’s enough to believe, and so they would lay tremendous emphasis on faith in the sense of simple belief; it’s enough for me to believe it.

I don’t want to push too far on this but there would be a tendency for the reformers, people like Zwingli and Calvin, to say that. Not totally, but there would be a tendency for them to say, “All we have to do is believe that. We don’t need to take part in it, we don’t need to let our selfish wills be actually destroyed, we don’t even need to receive the Holy Spirit; we need to believe this and by the fact that we believe this, this death of Jesus is regarded by God as ours so that’s all we need to do. Whether we’ve actually taken part in that or not it doesn’t matter, God regards Jesus’ death as our death. That’s all, its simple belief.” That’s what you get into with that way of thinking.

Now loved ones, be easy on me when I put Calvin in there, because the dear fellow probably didn’t say that himself, but it’s his followers who manipulate the doctrine until it’s almost that, and so it becomes almost an “easy believism”. Those are the dear ones who would say, “Well, I know, I drink myself to death every night, I am in and out of bed with different women every night, but I believe that Jesus died for me and I believe that because I believe that, that God will accept me at the end.” Now that’s extreme, but loved ones, I know I have met people after morning service that have come up and said, “It does not matter what my life is like. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve dealt with this will of mine or not. I just believe that God regards Jesus’ death as my death.”

There are others who say, “You have to allow this to be applied to your life by allowing your will to be crucified with Jesus.” So they bring into the business of faith, obedience, and they say, “The scriptural doctrine of faith is belief plus obedience. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus. Unless you are willing to let your selfish will be destroyed with Jesus, you cannot be accepted by God.” Then there are others who say, “You not only have to believe that you’ve been crucified with Christ, but you have to receive the Holy Spirit; that’s why God put you into Jesus and destroyed you there so that you could do the thing that he originally wanted you to do which was receive the Holy Spirit.”

You see that I’ve exaggerated a little in places, but that’s how issues and questions come up about how you actually become a Christian. So again, there’s no question with most of us about what God did for us, but the question is how you receive that into your own life and there are many, many different ways. Maybe I could highlight especially, for someone who has just come into Jesus; some dear ones will say, “You want to become a Christian. Alright, do you believe John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.’?” And you say, “Well, yes I do.” And they respond “If you believe it, then you’re a Christian.”

There are others who would say, “But even the demons believe and shudder. Even the demons believe that Jesus died for the whole world so it’s not enough to believe, you have to receive Jesus into yourself.” And then some dear ones will say, “Well, I’ll receive Jesus into myself. Okay, Lord Jesus, come in.” They just go through a kind of intellectual exercise, “Lord Jesus, come in. I receive you” and they think that’s receiving Jesus. There are others who say, “No, you have to make room for him in your life. It’s not just receiving him into your mind, it’s receiving him into your whole being, so will you make room for this person in your life?” And you say, “Well, what does it mean to make room for him?” They respond, “Will you stop doing the things that he would not want to do if he came into your life?” And then you start getting down to it.

I’d have to testify that for me, that was the change in my life; it was when I started to see that receiving Jesus was not just an intellectual game of believing that I was crucified with Christ, or believing that Jesus had come into my head, but it was when I started to change my life in order to make room for his Spirit that something happened inside me that was supernatural. So what I’m doing here is setting the stage to show you that there are differences among dear ones about the way of salvation. There are no differences among us about what God has done for us; but there are differences among us about how you enter into the way of salvation.

Now maybe it’s important to say this; I think there are many of us who have received Jesus that have received very poor explanations of how to receive him. So I think we’ll have to see that it’s not tied to our own mental understanding of it, but there are many dear ones who have received Jesus with little or no explanation and the Holy Spirit can take care of that. As you read Berkhof and you read some of the other theologians, you’ll find that finally when you say that Jesus died for you, you’re faced with a supernatural mystery. You can go very close to solving it intellectually, but finally it is a supernatural mystery that I think the Holy Spirit has to apply to different ones of us. Yet I think we have a responsibility to think it through as much as possible.

We should talk a little about the scriptural background. Some people have said, “Why divide the thing up too much, because the Bible doesn’t?” But loved ones, there is some indication in scripture that there is a way and there is an order of events in which you can enter into Jesus. I’d ask you to look up a verse like Romans 8:29-30 and you get some indication there that there is an order of events set forth in the Bible. That is; a series of steps that one should take in order to be saved.

So there may not be a way of salvation outlined in the way the Navigators do it, or Campus Crusade does it, or someone else does it, but there is an indication of the way of Salvation. Romans 8:29, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” This suggests that first, God foreknew them, secondly, he predestined them in the light of his foreknowledge, then, “He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren.” Then verse 30, “And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.” So you’re beginning to get some of the terms that are used on the left hand side of the assignment sheet that we have.

Looking at some of the upcoming assignments you get some outline of a series of steps that one is to take. For example April 18th: “Calling in general, external calling”; then April 22, “Regeneration effectual calling”; then you see “Those whom he called he also justified.” Then you see the term “justification” on May 9th and May 13th. “And those whom he justified he also glorified.” So you get some outline here of a series of steps that one is to take. Acts 26:17-18 says, “delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.” So first of all their eyes have to be opened, so they have to be enlightened, then they have to turn from darkness to light which involves repentance, “and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins.” Once they have repented, then they’ll receive forgiveness of sins and after they’ve done that, “and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” then they’ll be sanctified.

In other words, there are indications that in order for us to do what God originally wanted us to do, which was to receive the Holy Spirit, we have to first of all at least believe that we have been crucified with Christ and then we have to be willing to be crucified. That is, we have to repent and turn from ourselves and turn to him. Then we have to see that because of that we are justified in God’s eyes; he is satisfied with us and we are justified in going to him and saying, “Lord, now that we have gotten rid of the selfish will that didn’t want you and didn’t want your Holy Spirit and would have manipulated your Holy Spirit and misused it, now will you let us receive your Holy Spirit?” And so we would receive the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit would then work in us to reproduce in us the life of Jesus, and we would experience sanctification which is, of course, becoming more like Jesus.

This is so we would be justified in coming before God to receive the Holy Spirit and we would receive the Holy Spirit and he would begin to work in us and make us like Jesus. So there you see that you begin to have some idea of a way of salvation outlined in scriptural verses and in the face of Christ’s death itself. So that’s the kind of thing that we’ll be talking about.

Now, if you’ll just be patient with me, I’ll outline three main views that you can discern and I suppose you could talk about four main views if you include the Lutherans along with the Baptist. There’s the Reformed view, the Lutheran view, the Roman Catholic view and there’s the Armenian view. I won’t go into them in great detail.

If you say to me, “Which one are all of us?” I think we’re just a wide mixture in our churches. I think you would find that the Reformed view is emphasized a lot in the Institute of Toronto up in Canada, which is exercising some intellectual influence on evangelical Christianity here in the States. It’s the view that they would like to say that [Francis] Schaffer holds, but the dear fellow does not. Schaffer is a very broad man and a very open man, and as with most of us who have begun to try to bring other dear ones into Jesus, we find that we needed parts of every view. So when you read Schaffer, at time he sounds far more like a fellow in this camp here (indicating one school of thought), than he does up here (indicating another school of thought.) But I’m trying to give you some idea of where people stand.

The Reformed view would tend to emphasize that we have only one need and loved ones, I’m exaggerating a little so don’t hold me on this, but I have to help you to see that there are differences in the views. They would tend to emphasize a little “Christ for us.” “Christ as our substitute.” Now, its right, Christ is our substitute, what I’m trying to say is they would tend to say that is the chief part of salvation; just believe that Jesus was our substitute, that he died for us and then we are justified by his righteousness.

Now that’s true, I’m not arguing with that, but they would tend to lay emphasis only on that. They would tend to make everything else less important -- like repentance, and Christ being reproduced in us, and our life being controlled by the Holy Spirit. They would tend to make all that less important. I don’t know if you were long at L’Abri (Francis Schaffer’s fellowship in Switzerland) (addressing a member of the class) but I know one of the difficulties some would say that occurred there was a lack of emphasis on repentance.

Where you find a lack of emphasis on repentance maybe I could explain to you what happens; you get a lot of dear ones believing, “This Jesus died for us,” but they themselves have not made any change in their own lives. So Jesus comes into them initially, but he is grieved more and more because he is telling them, “Look, get rid of the smoking. Okay, get rid of the swearing. Get rid of the anger,” and they won’t do it so they grieve his Spirit more and more. But they keep trying to cling to the idea, “But Jesus died for me so God is going to accept me because Jesus died for me whatever my life is like.” So that’s the tendency.

I think you’re being very unfair to all reformed people if you just batter them with that, and I’m exaggerating a little so that you’ll see the weakness. However, I do hold to this; that many of the dear ones in the Reformed tradition do have real troubles there and I would point out that the difficulty in L’Abri that you had: you often have very high and very clear intellectual insights, but you often lack that emphasis on repentance.

Now again, we could be emphasizing repentance like mad here and we’d still be able to point out that somebody will come Sunday after Sunday and still beat his wife every night. So I think it is important to see that it’s an edge that I’m pointing to. There’s a tendency in the Lutherans to say, “We are justified by our faith and that is all you need. We are justified by our faith.” There’s a tendency here in the Reformers to say, “You have to just believe.” There’s a tendency for the Lutherans to say, “Well, you have to have faith. You have to have belief plus obedience.” But really, the big emphasis is that your own life does not, and may not, improve tremendously after you’ve received Jesus.

In other words, many Lutherans will say, “We sin in word and deed day after day and there’s no way out of that, we’ll never get clear of that. You’re justified by your faith that Jesus died for you and that’s why God will accept you.” We agree with that; God will accept you but only for one reason, because of Romans 5:9 loved ones, but many of us would say there’s something beyond that; Jesus, now that he’s come into you, wants to make you like himself. So there’s something beyond just being justified by faith, you have to be sanctified also by faith, you have to become like Jesus.

The Roman Catholic’s, who have tremendous truths within them, would still tend to say “Well yes, you’re justified by faith in Jesus, but once you receive Jesus into you, that faith works by love and the Holy Spirit sheds love abroad in your heart and he begins to change your life.” Then they would tend to say, “Your life should improve by obedience to the law of the church.” And they would tend to lay emphasis on the church’s laws and the church’s regulations. Not completely, because there are dear Catholics who have a very real relationship directly with Jesus, but there’ll be a tendency to emphasize, “Faith plus love, but it ought to show itself in obedience to the church’s laws.”

The Armenians went way out in one direction in the beginning by saying, “Yes, you’re justified by faith and it is Jesus’ death that makes you right with God, but you yourself have to change your life.” And there was a tendency in the Armenians to say, “You have to pull yourself up by your own boot straps.” That is, you have to change yourself by your own willpower.

You have found that [Charles] Finney will go very close to that, but will stop short of it, but the Armenians go way over in that direction. I think there is a middle way and I think it is possible to find the scriptural way through a combination of these. I think loved ones, it lies somewhere along the lines of the emphasis God has been teaching us; that the whole purpose of salvation is that we would receive the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit, when he comes into us, will show us more and more of Jesus and as we obey that Holy Spirit personally, and indeed slavishly, he will make us like Jesus; he will reproduce the purity and the power of Jesus within us, and that is the reason God allowed Jesus to die. So we will always believe that the only reason we’re acceptable to God is that Jesus has died for us, but we’ll see that the reason Jesus died for us was so that we could begin to please our Father through expressing this dear Holy Spirit in our own lives.

So to summarize it; there’s a tendency for us to say we have to get from A to B. Some of you have seen this diagram before, and you’ve been on your way, then you got lost and you took a wrong turn and you went way, way into a miserable area and down dirty muddy roads and got lost completely. Then at point Y a person told you the way back to the main road and you got back to point Z.

Now, the weakness of many of our emphasis here in these four I’ve just presented is that many of them stop at this point and they say, “Oh, I want to tell you the story of how I was on my way and I got lost at point X and I lost my way, and I was lost for years and years, I didn’t know which way to turn, and then somebody showed me the way and I got brought back here and oh am I glad that I found my way again.” And they sit down at that spot and five years later they’re still telling of how they were lost and found their way and they’ve forgotten that the purpose of the journey was to get to the next point on the map, and instead of moving in that direction, they’ve stayed where they were and told of how they were lost and now they’re found.

There is a middle way, we believe, it’s the middle way whereby you see that the reason you were on this journey was to be conformed to the image of Jesus through the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

Maybe I should stop there and ask you if there any questions? This will not be easy for all of you to understand because it’s an introductory lecture and then we get down to business next week with the operation of the Holy Spirit. But are there any questions?

You said something in your sermon about Christ can’t move on a jet airplane

That’s good because it does seem to me that though so many liberals, so many social activists, misuse this quotation yet the quotation is true that he has no hands but our hands, he has no feet but our feet. I think that’s true.

You know we could mention Campus Church the same way because I’m sure there are dear ones that hear half the story in Campus Church and they say, “They’re way out there.” But you know that part of the battle we have with the dear ones who go to Fort Lauderdale at Easter (to share about Christ) is putting over a superficial shallow, “If you confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart.” And the dear soul is lying there in their swimsuit and they say, “Alright, I confess with my mouth I believe in Jesus and I do believe in my heart. Well, I feel the excitement of you being here to talk to me about these things and yeah, I feel it.” And they do kind of feel it in their hearts I think there’s a tendency through under emphasizing the Holy Spirit for the dear ones in the Reformed church and in the Lutheran church I suppose, to be purely psychological about conversion.

The miracle is that conversion is a work that God works in your heart through the Holy Spirit. I mean, he changes you when you are truly ready to change your life. And that would be what I would be saying because you might be sitting there and saying, “Oh, I’m a month and a half old and you are just overwhelming me.” But I think what I’m trying to say is it’s not enough just to believe in your head that Jesus died for you, but you need to be willing to give your life to him and to change your life. Then in response to that God sends the Spirit of Jesus into you and you begin to sense a different Spirit inside.

I’d be slow to use the word because of course I’m way at the other end of that list there, which I didn’t include myself. But I’d be slow to say that but they are I’m afraid. I’m afraid there’s a tendency – antinomian is anti, against, and “nomos” is “the law” in Greek so “against the law.” Antinomians are dear ones who say, “Yes, I’m saved and I know I swear, and I know I steal but I’m still saved.” In other words they believe they’re saved by the intellectual belief that Jesus died for them.

The Lutherans and Catholics are more legalistic?

There’s a tendency for the Catholics particularly to be legalistic. There’s a tendency for the Lutherans I suppose to be legalistic depending on which church you’re in. I hesitate to talk too much because Joyce’s dad is a Lutheran Pastor, but I think there’s a tendency for them to say that “justified by faith” is where it ends. There’s not a strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit except you could contradict me because you could point to the Lutheran conference on the Holy Spirit that was here in the Twin Cities. So there are people in the Lutheran Church that are trying to pull themselves forward.

I would rather put it this way, [Martin] Luther himself was fighting. I might as well tell you who he is, I’m a Methodist and I believe that Methodism is a mess, but I believe that [John] Wesley was a dear fellow and I think a lot of what he says though I’m prepared to argue with him! But Luther was fighting the works: the Catholics were saying, “You’re justified by works.” He said, “No, you’re justified by faith.” Wesley was fighting a different thing entirely, he was fighting antinomianism. He was saying, “When Jesus comes into your life, it must make a difference to your life.” So Wesley emphasized the changed life. So that’s probably what it is.

Then of course, all the Lutherans follow Luther, the Wesleyans follow Wesley and that’s where the trouble comes. You see, church history starts down the middle [indicating a diagram] and then there’s a tendency over in this direction to emphasize – it always goes between faith and works. And there was a tendency then for the church to emphasize more and more, “Oh your life must be changed” Until you got into the Catholic Church. Luther tried to pull the thing in the other direction over this way and he exerted, as we all do when we see the dog going that way, we give him a big pull over this way to get him to counteract the forces and so Luther did a big pull over this way. Actually, he left the church at that position but the Lutherans; dear love them they kept going in that direction. You know, all followers, we’re all the same; we outdo the fellow that we’re following. Luther probably left it about there but the Lutherans kept going in that direction.

They go way out in this direction and when Wesley came along in England, everybody believed they’re justified by faith but it doesn’t matter what my life is like. It doesn’t matter if I have any works so Wesley pulled them back that way. He left them about that side but the old Wesleyans kept going that way. Then you got into measuring the length of the girl’s skirts, whether they ought to wear cutoffs and that kind of thing and whether we should allow anybody to smoke in church, and so you get a way over in works. And really what these men were doing was trying to pull the thing back into the middle all the time.

I don’t want to be glib about these dear ones, you cannot generalize about anybody, and yet I want to give you all some idea of the different groups in theology, the different trends.

Loved ones, I think I should close in prayer.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that we are not it know alls here. Lord, we know so little and we have to face you honestly and say we talk of things that we don’t know and don’t understand. Only you through your Holy Spirit can make these things real. And Lord Jesus, I would pray now that my brothers and sisters would receive this in a way that you want them to receive it and that we wouldn’t get proud or think that we know exactly where the reformed people sit and where the Lutherans sit. Lord, we know that there are lots of Lutherans and reformed people, and Catholics, and Wesleyans that are right where you want them to be.

So Lord Jesus, we simply look at the name of the subject and the tendency to see it as something we want to avoid. And Lord, we thank you that we don’t find the middle way by avoiding all the wrong ways, we find the middle way by looking to you Lord Jesus, and loving you and being faithful to you day-by-day and by means of that your dear Holy Spirit of truth keeps us right. Thank you Lord. Thank you. Amen.