In the last post I covered verses 3-6 but I feel there is more in verse 6 for us to get. This verse argues against two opposing and yet equally false doctrines.

The first one teaches that you can lose your salvation. There are many people who believe this. If you sin then you can fall out of a state of grace. They rely heavily upon the verses that emphasize that you must continue in the faith.

Now I want to say that these verses do mean what they say but the context is that continuing is fruit of true salvation not a warning that true salvation can be lost. Where this doctrine fails is that it puts saving us as a work of Christ and keeping that salvation as a work of ours.

The Bible teaches that Christ is the beginning and end of our faith (Hebrews 12:1). Christ didn’t save us because of us but because of Him. Therefore His love for us cannot change because He never changes and His love for us is contingent upon Him not upon us.

Christ has declared us not guilty (Romans 8:1) and will not count our sins against us (Romans 4:8). There is another doctrine, polar opposite from this one but just as false. This is commonly called the doctrine of once saved always saved.

This doctrine focuses on the passages that say to believe. They see this belief as a one time act and they say that continuing is not necessary. Basically just make a profession of faith and you’re saved regardless of how you live.

John 3:16 says whosoever believeth on Him shall have everlasting life. This is not a one time belief. The word “believeth” in John 3:16 is in the Greek pisteuo which is an action verb. In other words John is saying that those who believe and keep on believing will have everlasting life.

James tells us that faith without works is dead (James 2:26) and that works actually justify our profession of faith (James 2:21-22). So both of these doctrines are false and this text demonstrates this.

“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

Paul begins with a bold statement. He says “Being confidant.” Paul is not wishy washy, he is not full of doubts. He is confident, he is sure, he is convinced.

This is the kind of confidence Abraham had when he went to sacrifice Isaac.

There is so much doubt in the church today. Having grown up in church I have seen hundreds profess Christ at a young age then come back for assurance of salvation as a teenager then often again as an adult.

So many people, not just kids and teens but adults, live in doubt as to whether they are truly saved. Paul wasn’t that person. He was confident in the work of the Lord. It was this same apostle that urged people to examine themselves.

His confidence wasn’t founded in closing his eyes and hoping for the best. I have had pastors who said you should never encourage someone to question their salvation. I have had pastors who would tell new converts that they should never let anyone tell them they aren’t saved.

This is not Paul’s mentality.

“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)

The reason so many doubt their salvation is that they are looking to themselves. We have a very “self” based message in the American church. Most sermons are about better relationships, better marriages, better parenting, and so on. We use the Bible as a handbook to be a better version of ourselves.

Much of what goes on in churches today is religious self-help. This is why our view of election and predestination is so skewed. How dare God tell us what to do? We choose Him He doesn’t choose us or at very least He chooses us because we choose Him first.

Predestination is an insult on our own feeling of self control and self determination. We have relatives who have said of God’s freedom to choose “if He does the choosing then I don’t want to be chosen.”

My wife had a conversation the other day with a relative who’s salvation is definitely questionable. This person isn’t a part of a local church, married to a oneness person who is definitely not saved, and who never talks religion in his home but he wanted to talk to her to argue against predestination.

Living in complete rebellion to the Word of God but angry that we believe God is sovereign. He of course wouldn’t answer the Scriptures just gave analogy after analogy that he got from someone on the internet.

So the Bible gives a very God-centered view of salvation The Gospel is preached to dead sinners. Not sick and dying but dead sinners. Can the dead do anything for themselves? The answer if you’re honest is no.

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1)

Quickened means to be made alive. It doesn’t say we chose to be alive, or that we made ourselves alive. God does that. How does He do this? By grace through faith.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” (Vs. 8)

Well I had faith and so God saved me. That’s not how it works. If this faith came from within us then we could boast in it.

“Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Vs. 9)

In verse 8 it says it is the gift of God. What’s the gift of God? Some would argue grace. Since grace by it’s definition is unmerited favor then to say it’s a gift is redundant and unnecessary.

It’s clear the gift is referring back to the thing that could come from ourselves which is not grace but faith. You’re saved by the grace of God through faith and that not of yourselves it’s the gift of God. We are also called to repent of our sins. Maybe that comes from us.

“In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” (2 Timothy 2:25)

Even the act of repentance comes from God. Don’t we have a free will? Yes we do. Our will is free to act according to our nature. Our nature is fallen and depraved so we will never choose God and righteousness unless He acts first to free our will.

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)

It’s our will. We are not robots. We choose to come to Christ because God has worked in us to will. He causes us to will, not by force but by taking our spiritual deadness and bringing us to life, giving us faith and repentance and with those things we freely choose to respond to the Gospel.

Those who reject Christ do so because they willingly choose to reject Him. He doesn’t make them reject Him. They want to. They will not respond without His aid. Why doesn’t He bring everyone to life then? Good question.

“For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” (Romans 9:15-16)

“Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” (Vs. 18)

Why would God do this? There is an answer to that.

“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?” (Vs. 22-24)

Some get upset and accuse God of being unfair. Let me stop there. If God was fair we would all perish. Grace by it’s very nature must be free. If God owes everyone the same grace then it’s not grace.

One pastor tried to tell me that election impunes the character of God. He said God owes everyone the same grace. If it’s owed it’s not grace.

Those who argue God is unfair in election still accept that not everyone has the same opportunities. There is a great inconsistency there. Not everyone hears the Gospel in their lifetime and not everyone who does hear it has the same freedom of access to it and yet that doesn’t bother them.

The issue is not that God is unfair but that we see ourselves as the ultimate will in the universe and God is our servant who must do as we say. What does the Scripture say to this?

“Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” (Vs. 19-21)

This passage here is eerily similar to Job. God appears after Jobs accusations and basically says, “you got something to say, step up like a man and say it, but answer this first…” Then He goes into all that He can do that Job can’t.

A lot of people who oppose election and predestination will stand before God and say like Job…

“I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:2-6)

Salvation is a Divine act of God. Our actions in coming are in response to His work not our own.

“And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” (Acts 13:48)

Their believing was a response to their being ordained or chosen.

“And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.” (Acts 16:14)

Her heart was opened by the Lord not by her own will.

“But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.” (John 10:26)

Jesus doesn’t tell them that they are not His sheep because they don’t believe does He? He says they don’t believe because they are not His sheep.

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44)

“And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.” (Vs. 65)

Who does Jesus raise from spiritual deadness? Most evangelicals will say, “well anyone who chooses for Him to do it.”

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” (John 5:25)

We know the dead here are spiritually dead not physically dead because the physically dead are mentioned separately in verse 28.

Some would argue well the spiritually dead who choose to hear His voice live. Look back at verse 21.

“For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.”

“As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” (John 17:2)

So our view of the cause of salvation is skewed. We believe that we are the ultimate cause and that God looked into the future saw we chose Him and then chose us as a result. This means, if true, that God saved us entirely because of us.

Then we make the act of salvation man-centered. If you ask most professing believers how they got saved they will say that they gave their life to Christ, or prayed and asked Jesus to be their Saviour or something similar.

Let me say that some people pray and cry out to God as a result of their heart believing on Christ and that is fine but I’m addressing the concept of a sinner’s prayer being how we are saved.

If a prayer was the way to enter life then the Bible would have said so. We would read Acts 16:30-31 differently.

“And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?And they said, (pray and ask Jesus into your heart) Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

I won’t spend a lot of time going through all the Scripture used for the sinners’ prayer so we will look at just one. Turn to Romans 10:9-10.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

What we see here is not a prescription for a worded prayer in order to be saved. The context of the chapter is ethnic Israel and the fact that they can still be saved. They are saved by believing the same as we are and that believing will have an outward affect which is confession of Christ publicly.

This passage is very similar to James when he references Abraham and Rahab being justified by works. He means and Paul means that their works justify their claim to faith. There was a price to a Jew publicly professing Christ and paying that price would justify his profession of faith.

Verse 10 says with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. This is the way of salvation. The heart believes and righteousness is imputed to the sinner. What about the phrase in verse 10 “confession is made unto salvation?”

The verb rendered “confess,” is homologeo, and it is found 24 times in 21 verses. In at least 23 of these 24 times, a believer’s public confession before men is in view, not private prayer. The only time we see it used about private prayer is in 1 John 1:9. That verse is not about the unsaved but about Christians who sin.

What about verse 13? The calling in verse 13 is not an individual praying a sinner’s prayer. It’s about all men regardless whether Jew or Gentile being able to be saved. Look at verse 12-13.

“For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

It’s a quote from Joel 2 which has the same application. We see a similar wording in Genesis 4:26.

“And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.”

You definitely can’t fit a sinner’s prayer here. So we are not saved by praying but by believing in the heart. How do we know someone gets saved without a prayer? They will confess Christ publicly, get baptized and begin to live a different life.

Back to the question of examining ourselves. First of all too much self-examination is sinful I think. There comes a point where we obsess with it and we are actively doubting the Word of God. That being said some self-examination is good.

People are in doubt of their salvation because they look inwardly at themselves for that assurance. Did I believe enough? Did I pray the right prayer? Was I sincere when I prayed? Since salvation is outside of us, given to us, we cannot find assurance by looking to ourselves.

Examine yourself by looking to God. Do I believe in my inmost being that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. Can anything I do commend me to God? No. Is their fruit in my life over the time of my profession of faith? Let’s say 10 years.

Has God given me new desires than I once had? Has God directly answered prayer or spoken to me directly in His Word? Do I hate sin and my own internal corruption? Do I long to know and love Jesus? These are all things the Spirit does within us.

Look to the fruit of your life, not what you do but why you do it. This is how we realize we are saved. When a person goes from hating God to loving Him that didn’t come from inside him.

A person goes from pretending to be religious to sincerely loving Christ that didn’t come from him that came from the Spirit. Now I have seen people fake religion, have doubts, go forward and pray a sinner’s prayer again and then go back to faking. That’s not salvation.

In Philippians 1:6 Paul says, “being confident.” Where does this confidence come from? He goes on, “that he which hath begun a good work in you.”

His confidence is not that they were really smart and made a good decision that they may now go back on. His confidence is rooted in the fact that God began this work. If God began the work there is confidence it will be completed.

God doesn’t do shoddy work, nor can we say God saves us but we keep ourselves saved. Paul had confidence that God started the work and He would finish it. Look at the end of the verse, “will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

It’s His work from start to finish and this brings us great confidence. Paul expresses this same confidence in Romans 8:29-30.

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

He foreknew, a people and those people He predestined, those He predestined He called, those He called He justified and those He justified He also glorified which is the end of the salvation process. He sees it through from foreknowing all the way to glorification.

Your salvation, my salvation is a finished work of Christ. We contribute nothing. He started it, He is maintaining it, and He will finish it. This should bring great confidence to anyone doubting their salvation today.