The biblical gospel destroys morality, external conformity, and list-keeping religion.
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John Murray on Ephesians 1
Oct 28
John Murray writes concerning Ephesians 1
Here our interest is the expressions ‘being predestined…according to the good pleasure of His will’ (Eph 1:5), ‘the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him’ (vs 9), ‘having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will’ (vs 11). The central issue of the plan of salvation can be staked on these expressions. This latter expression is surely the will unto salvation revealed in the gospel with which the whole passage is concerned. As respects both – predestination and the mystery of His will – it is to trifle with the plain import of the terms, and with the repeated emphasis, to impose upon the terms any determining factor arising from the will of man. If he meant to say anything in these expressions in verses 5, 9 and 11, it is that God’s predestination, and His will to salvation, proceeds from the pure sovereignty and absolute determination of His counsel. It is the unconditioned and unconditional election of God’s grace.
“Doomed” evangelism?
Aug 27
Suppose I imagined that God commonly gave extra-Biblical revelation today. I so many kinds of don’t—but suppose I did.
And suppose God said, “I want you to go tell this guy the Gospel, because I have hardened his heart so that, not only will he not repent and believe, but he’ll become infuriated and want to kill you and torment the people you care most about. I’m going to use this situation to do all sorts of wonderful things.”
The whole prophetic revelation thing aside—what would I think?
“Okay now, wait—’because’? You want me to talk to this guy, knowing that he won’t believe? In fact, You’re going to make sure that He won’t believe? But for us who believe in Your sovereignty, the whole premise of evangelism is that we don’t know who is and isn’t elect, so it’s our place to sow in hope, and leave the results to You. But here You’re telling me, right off the bat, that it’s going to be a bust? And that’s why You want me to go in?”
It struck me that this is precisely Moses’ situation in dealing with Pharaoh, and specifically in Exodus 10—
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, 2 and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.”
Wouldn’t that be grim news? “Go in… for, because, I have hardened his heart.” Were I in Moses’ sandals, it might be hard to get motivated.
But might that not be because our whole motivation is out of whack? Why would it bother us so much?
Well, it would bother us because we don’t like to fail. Might as well be honest about it: we don’t. “Here, try something you have no chance of achieving” isn’t much of a sales pitch. We do things because we hope we might succeed in doing them. “Thirty Days to Miserable Failure” wouldn’t be a catchy title for a church program, I’m thinking.
And then of course, on a higher level, it would and should bother us because we care about the person we’re talking to. Unless there’s something very wrong with us, we don’t want to see anyone go to Hell. We want to be used by God for deliverance, not judgment. We don’t evangelize to seal folks’ doom. We evangelize in the hopes that the Word will bring hearing, and hearing will bring saving faith (Romans 10:17).
So what motivation does Yahweh offer Moses, apart from the mere and sufficient fact that it is He who calls him to talk to Pharaoh? I see a threefold motivation:
- “that I may show these signs of mine among them”
- “and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them”
- “that you [plural] may know that I am the LORD”
“It is my opinion that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they have not been saved.”
–A.W. Tozer
I would like to present thirteen ways that we have re-defined how a person becomes a true convert. Have we done this intentionally? Certainly not. We have simply created lingo that has a grain of truth in Scripture, but it is so open to interpretation that the un-converted understand it in ways that lead to false conversions.
Make Jesus your Lord and Savior. We cannot make Jesus our Lord and Savior, He is our Lord and Savior. We are living in rebellion to Him and He commands us to repent and trust Him.- Ask Jesus into your heart. Does Jesus come into our hearts? Yes He does. The question is, “How does He get in there?” It is not by simply asking Him in; it is by repentance and faith.
- Just believe in Jesus. The demons believe and they tremble. We must repent and trust.
- You have a God-shaped hole in your heart and only Jesus can fill it. We have far more than a hole that needs to be filled so we can feel complete; we have a wretched, deceitful, sinful heart that needs cleansing. Repentance and faith applies the blood of the lamb for that cleansing.
- Accept Jesus. Whoa. We need to accept Jesus? This is entirely backward. We need Jesus to accept us–and He will, if we repent and trust.
- Make a decision for Jesus. Decisional regeneration puts man in the driver’s seat of salvation. When we repent and trust, Jesus decides to save us. That puts Him in the driver’s seat…where He demands.
- It is easy to believe. While the formula of repentance and faith sounds simple, a complete surrendering of self in repentance is anything but easy. It’s hard. Read the rest of this entry »