God Role in Your OWN Salvation
A FB friend posted this question in response to an essay I had posted: “Reed, do you believe in limited atonement.”
That “limited atonement” is a teaching that Christ only came to save SPECIFIC people – His “elect.” Among Christians who delight in arguing theoretical points about which they seem not to understand well, this is an especially hot topic.
Here is my response to him:
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And I suppose you would like the answer to be “Yes” or “No,” or in 25 words or less, right? 🙂
I will take the definition of “limited atonement” (or “definite atonement”) to be adequately explained at the following web site: https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-definite-atonement/
I tend to shy away from questions like this, because ALL the debaters I have ever read are leaving out essential background information (including the author of the web site I gave above). In my “Blueprint for a Revolution”, Volume One, Supplemental Essay III (“God’s Predestination and Man’s Freedom”), I provide the only adequate background that I have ever seen in print. Understanding GOD’S part in our personal salvation is essential before talking about any of these kinds of questions.
So, I will have to ask you to read that chapter, since it is too long to put here.
The HIGHLY condensed bottom line would be based upon whether or not God IN TRUTH “knows His own” and knows them “from the foundation of the world.” My conclusions are derived from the conviction that He what He said is very true:
“4 just as He chose US in Him BEFORE the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him, in love, 5 having PREDESTINED us into an adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, into Him, according to the good pleasure of His will, …11 in whom we were also ASSIGNED an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the decision of HIS will,” (Ephesians 1)
“28 Further, we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are CALLED according to purpose. 29 Because whom He FOREKNEW He also PREDESTINED to be conformed to the image of His Son,12 so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 Further, whom HE predestined, these HE also called; and whom He called, these HE also justified; and whom He justified, these HE also glorified.” (Romans 8 )
44 “No one can come to Me UNLESS the Father who sent Me DRAWS him; and I will raise him up at the last day … 65 And He said, “That is why I told you that no one CAN come to me unless it has been GRANTED to him by my Father.” (John 6).
One can go on and on with such passages!
IF we have quit assuming that WE have the right to tell Jesus and Paul (and others) what they “MUST have meant” by such clear and bold statements, and if we have finally – in childlike trust – accepted that they knew how to pick the best possible words to communicate what they meant… IF we have decided to become their disciples rather than their teachers, there are certain conclusions that must necessarily also be true (as it pertains to your question).
If God “foreknows” those individuals whom He WILL be able to “draw” to Him, then is it also not obvious and necessarily true that He “foreknows” those individuals whom He will NOT be able to “draw” to Him? Is that not one of those logical “no brainers”?
So, when the Father sent Jesus to earth to minister, did He not have very SPECIFIC people in mind, since Jesus knew the specific thoughts and the specific future decisions of specific people (Luke 6:8, John 2:24-25, John 13:10-11, 15:19, et cetera)? WE may not know such things, but Jesus and His Father CERTAINLY did, no? Consequently, is it not also one of those “no brainers” that He knew PRECISELY those whom His sacrifice would draw to Him, AND those whom His sacrifice would NOT draw to Him? What would THEORETICALLY avail for all, in REALITY will not. In our ignorance, we humans seem to love to argue and make our decisions based upon what is THEORETICAL, but God lives and makes HIS decisions about what He knows to be REAL!
So the answer to your question must be “YES”!
But if you do not read that chapter in the Blueprint, to understand GOD’s role in our INDIVIDUAL salvation, this idea might still seem to be “unfair”.
I do not have the SLIGHTEST interest in defending Calvin, Luther, or Augustine! But I do have a great interest in defending Jesus, Paul, Peter and others from the common compulsive tendency to “tweak” what they say before we ACCEPT what they say! God knows VERY well, how to inspire and teach what is true, how to communicate in a way to people who learn how to communicate in the simplicity of carpenters, fishermen, and farmers, who – because they are willing to OBEY what He said – also know that what He MEANT was what His words SEEM to mean. This is the way “Christians” listen and read virtually EVERYTHING that is a serious communication – with the single exception of what is in the New Testament. Somehow, such “Christians” are “inspired” to think that only SOME of the New Testament teachings are written in that way, while many others – those flesh-threatening teachings – need to have a magical “key” to unlock to “true” meaning of what Jesus and His apostles “must” have meant.
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The more that I considered and yielded to those teachings that I mentioned above, the more deeply personal my awareness of God became. If you are the product of His PERSONAL selection of you, of how He “set you up” INDIVIDUALLY even before you were BORN, and how I was only able to escape Satan’s powerful “godship” over generations of my “dysfunctional” family because of His PERSONAL interventions, how it was HE who got me out to sea on ships and PERSONALLY both showed me the murderous evil in this world, while also physically and morally PROTECTING me from it… WOW!
“18 So then, He has mercy ON WHOM HE WISHES, and He hardens whom He wishes. 19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has ever resisted His will?” 20 Really now, just who are you, O man, to talk back to God? What is formed will not say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21 Or has the POTTER no right over the CLAY, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 What if God, wishing to display His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 just in ORDER TO MAKE KNOWN the riches of His glory on vessels of mercy,9 which He PREPARED BEFOREHAND for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As He also says in Hosea: “I will call the ‘not my people’, ‘my people’, and the ‘not loved’ (f), ‘loved’.”10 26 “And it will be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’, there they will be called sons of the living God.” (Romans 9)
I, Reed, truly AM His clay and He truly IS that Potter! He did not just “do His thing” in Jesus and then leave it up to us to do the rest: from beginning to end, he had me PERSONALLY in mind even when my grandmother “got in trouble,” when my mother kicked my biological father out of the house for his drunken infidelities, when I got put into the good and bad influences of my step-father. …… To realize that you are the result of SO much deep thought and hard–but-creative work on His part, makes me SO much more dependent upon Him, but also SO much more confident that I am SAFE in His hands. He IS going to bring me safely home to Him, even if I am so pig-headed that He has to break every bone in my body in order to accomplish it!
He does not just change your theological opinions – He knows how to change your deepest INSTINCTS! Praise His Holy Name! AMEN?
But why does He work that way with some, and not others? You have to read the Blueprint for a Revolution in order to find out about THAT thorny problem!
