Perhaps a way to attempt to justify their insular, anti-missions notions?
Are the Elect under wrath of God Until actual salvation then?
Discussion in 'Calvinism & Arminianism Debate' started by Yeshua1, Sep 8, 2014.
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An Article On Justification From Eternity
GRACE FOR TODAY Radio Message #464
Justified From Eternity
Pastor Don Fortner
Grace Baptist Church of Danville
2734 Old Stanford Road
Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438
Faith in Christ is the evidence and manifestation of our justification, but not the cause of it. God’s elect were justified in Christ from eternity. Justification is one of those “all spiritual blessings” with which God’s elect were blessed before the worlds were made (Eph. 1:3).
Christ stood before God as our Surety in the covenant of grace from eternity. In that covenant the Son of God voluntarily engaged to pay the debts of his elect and make full satisfaction for them. God the Father accepted him as our Surety. “Thenceforward,” wrote John Gill, the Father “looked at him for payment and satisfaction, and looked at them as discharged, and so they were in his eternal mind.” As soon as one person becomes surety for another, the debtor is freed and the Surety is accepted. Thus all God’s elect were justified in eternity, as soon as Christ became our Surety (Rom. 8:30).
Our justification did not commence in time, but in eternity. Paul, speaking of God’s eternal decree of predestination, declares that all of God’s elect were justified in his eternal purpose of grace (Rom. 8:30). Gill was right on the money when he said, “God’s will to elect is the election of his people; so also his will to justify them, is the justification of them.” God’s act of justification is entirely an act of his grace. It is God accounting and constituting us righteous, through the righteousness of his Son. From all eternity God has looked upon his Son as our Substitute, and looking upon us in Christ we are, and always have been, righteous in his sight. In the mind and purpose of God, Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8; Isa. 53). God set up his darling Son as our Surety, our Substitute, and our Redeemer before the world began; and as such, in his own mind, he looked upon Christ as having been slain for us from eternity. Just as Abraham, in his heart sacrificed his son at Moriah, and looked upon Isaac as one dead, so the Lord God looked upon his Son as slain from eternity because in his heart the deed was done.
Because God our Father looked upon Christ as one already sacrificed for us before the world was, all the blessings of grace were given to us in him (Eph. 1:3-7; 2 Tim. 1:9). The Holy Spirit tells us plainly that “all spiritual blessings” were bestowed upon all God’s elect in Christ before the world began. All the blessings of salvation and grace were irrevocably given to us in Christ our covenant Surety in eternity according to the purpose of God in election. Astonishing grace! Adoption, acceptance with God, redemption, forgiveness, and an eternal inheritance in Christ, all were given to us in Christ because he agreed to pay our debt and became totally responsible for all our obligations as our Surety in eternity. Thomas Goodwin wrote - “We may say of all spiritual blessings in Christ what is said of Christ himself, that ‘his goings forth are from everlasting.’ In Christ we are blessed with all spiritual blessings (Eph. 1:3). As we are blessed with all others, so with this also, that we were justified then in Christ.” He goes on to say that God the Father, in that everlasting transaction of grace with his Son, “told him, as it were, that he would look for (our) debt and satisfaction (from) him and he did let the sinners go free. So they are in this respect justified from all eternity.”
In addition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture, two facts compel us to look upon justification as an eternal act of God. 1st Had it not been for the fact that God looked upon his elect as being righteous and justified in Christ from eternity, he would have destroyed our race as soon as Adam sinned. God spares the wicked for the sake of the righteous. Just as the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were preserved for Lot’s sake, so the human race is preserved for the sake of those who the Father has chosen and justified in his Son from eternity. 2nd The Old Testament saints were justified by Christ, just as we are today. Their justification was just as full, complete, and perfect as ours (Heb. 9:15, 22; Rom. 3:25). If they were justified before Christ came, it could not be upon any grounds except the fact that they, like us, were justified by the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the earth. -
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Iconoclast Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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pinoybaptist Active MemberSite Supporter
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pinoybaptist Active MemberSite Supporter
all these discussions on election are a waste of saliva until we understand the passivity of eternal election re the elect, and the reciprocity of gospel salvation between God and the elect who come under the hearing of the gospel, and until we understand that not all the elect come under such preaching.
one can call himself an adherent to the doctrine of grace until he's blue in the face, and for as long as he does not see the difference between eternal salvation vs gospel salvation he will come right around to the usual Calvinist contention that one needs the gospel in order to be eternally saved, which, bottom line, is no different from the classic Arminian doctrine. -
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tyndale1946 Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
Rev 7:9 After this a beheld, and lo, a multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
10: And cried with a loud voice, saying, SALVATION UNTO OUR GOD WHICH SITTETH UPON THE THRONE, AND UNTO THE LAMB.
Brethren is that the elect of God or not? -
Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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pinoybaptist Active MemberSite Supporter
hell, the lake of fire and brimstone, and all those things that today's preachings in many churches like to froth about, to scare listeners into 'accepting' Jesus, were never created for God's people.
the very reason Jesus sent His apostles out to preach the gospel to the nations is to inform His people, scattered among the nations, that the Son of God Himself have come and redeemed them with His blood, independent of the law, or any rituals that the religions they grew up on may have inculcated into them, and that they have been set free by God from the slavery of sin, and given the power within them (the Holy Spirit) to resist sin, and if they fail, they have an intercessor in Heaven, the very One who is their Hope.
they are to turn to Him from their idols and He will call them out into a body wherever they are whose purpose is to exalt Christ and glorify God in their midst and to live peaceably with those around them.
the elect was never and will never be under the wrath of God, in the eternal sense. -
ONLY way to bypass that was to be born sinless, don't think any other then Jesus qualified by that! -
pinoybaptist Active MemberSite Supporter
only Jesus qualifies for that.
HOWEVER, God's sovereignty and the faith of the three Persons of the Trinity on each other allows them to consider the redemption of all whom they have decreed FOR heaven to be a finished and done deal from eternity past, sealed HERE IN TIME at the cross, therefore God calls His elect 'MY PEOPLE', 'SAINTS', and consider them "MY SHEEP" before time began.
Not one of them will be born without the sin nature, everyone who passes through time, EXCEPT CHRIST, has that nature.
MANY OF THEM will knowingly and unknowingly, willingly or unwittingly, commit acts of sins of omission and commission, as well as sins of presumptions, in accordance with that nature, the exception (I believe) being infants and babies.
But NONE of them were, or will ever be bound for hell, precisely because, in as far as the Triune God is concerned, what needed to be done is as good as done, else there would have been no need for a covenant between the Three Persons, if they doubted neither of them would go through with the agreement.
This does not mean, however, that the elect is exempt from the timely consequences of sin in their lives here in time, or David would never have been subjected to the tribulations and sufferings he suffered as a result of his adultery and murder.
also, the wrath of God does not necessarily equate to eternal wrath or eternal punishment. -
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pinoybaptist Active MemberSite Supporter
man, you have no idea of the implications of what you are saying.
let me just try to put the implications in words.
if the Triune God, who created the entire universe, and everything in it, and who created the earth, and everything in it, simply by speaking them into existence, and who created man from the earth, and woman from man, finally rests their faith and trust in each other, on the feeble faith and clouded decisions of fallen man, who could not get from point a to point b, without moving a muscle, then the entire Bible is a myth and everything that that Bible describes about God, they are all lies. -
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