The Doctrines of Grace: Unconditional Election: Part 2
Most people do not realize this but the doctrine of God’s sovereign grace in election is brought up by Paul in Romans 8-9 to give assurance of salvation. Paul wants to ground the faith of suffering Christians whose lives feel like they are spiralling out of control and implying God does not love them or is too weak. He grounds their assurance by showing how all things including suffering are working together for the good of those God is calling according to His purpose. Paul then reveals that God has a plan that began in eternity past as He...
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The Doctrines of Grace: Unconditional Election
I became a Christian in my late teens and had not been brought up in the faith. I came cold to all things Christian and was dependent upon my youth pastor and pastor and bible study leader to guide me in things. Quite early on I heard about these terrible people called Calvinists who taught terrible doctrines like ‘born to burn’ and ‘once saved always saved.’ That they believed in an arbitrary God who was sitting in heaven with a flower pulling out petals saying, ‘elect, reprobate, elect, reprobate.’ I was told about this terrible teaching that would stifle...
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The Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity
Imagine with me two different religions, but both are called Christianity. One flows from man’s reason, not that Spirit illuminated Bible taught reason but reason driven by man’s sinful self-confident ability to rationalise everything out to the nth degree. The other religion is based upon God’s revelation recognising that our sinful minds need to be taught truth because it is our natural tendency to suppress it. At the centre of the first religion is man, we will call this anthropocentric religion. At the centre of the second religion is God, this we call theocentric religion. In the middle of...
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