PREDESTINED TO ADOPTION The Bible tells one story. We therefore see an essential unity of the two testaments as telling the One story of God’s redeeming plan for the world, His one building of His one Kingdom, through the coming of His Son the Righteous and True King, firstly as a Redeeming substitute and finally, in the end of time, as the Conquering Restoring Re-creating King. All of the Old Testament pointed to Him, and all of the New Testament flows from the truth that the Once and Future King, Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah of old, has come and begun to build His kingdom through His church.

We believe that we are saved by grace alone. This means that God’s grace is the basis for our salvation, not our decision.

Do we choose to become Christians? Yes. Do we choose to become Christians without God first melting our hearts so that we want to do so? No.

We love Him because He first loved us. We receive Christ because He first pursued us in love and did everything necessary to bring us to God, including helping to overcome our resistant hearts and minds and desires. Our understanding of this grace comes from the following texts summarized in the following way …

TOTAL DEPRAVITYThe scriptures teach that we are unable to save ourselves without God’s gracious intervention. To be “depraved” does not mean that all sin is equal in it’s intensity - it means that everyone has been tainted by sin comprehensively. Sin cannot be reduced to actions we do or don’t do - sin is a condition humanity is born into. That condition is a natural inclination to live independence from God.

Romans 3: 9b- 12: For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Romans 8: 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our

flesh, carrying out the desires of the body [1] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind

Therefore, before we can be free enough to choose Christ, God must make us spiritually alive:

John 3:5: 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”

Ephesians 2: 4- 8: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved;

Acts 16: 14: One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

Conclusion: Without God’s intervention, we have no freedom to pursue Him because apart from His grace, we are born with no natural inclination to desire Him. We are spiritually blind and dead, slaves to the evil one, slaves to our desires, dead to God.

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION: God’s choice of us was not conditioned by anything we did, thought, or decided, but simply from the depth of His love.

Ephesians 2: 4- 8: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

1 Peter 1: 3- 4:  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you

Romans 9: 14 – 16:  What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

LIMITED ATONEMENTChrist’s death secured the salvation for all God’s chosen people - everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord. Before going to the cross, Jesus specifically prays for those who the Father “gave to Him”.

John 17:8-10 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that  I came from you; and  they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 

John 10: 14-15 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

Romans 10:13 Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

It is not for us to comprehensively understand this mystery of salvation - who calls on God and who does not. It is for us to preach the grace that leads to salvation. In the words of Jonathan Edwards, one of the preachers during the Great Awakening in the 17th century, “God alone saves, therefore let us preach the gospel as far and wide as our voices can carry.”

EFFECTUAL GRACE

When God saves, He is not thwarted in His love. His salvation cannot be lost. In the words of Charles Spurgeon, “Once God pardons a man, there is no end to that pardon.”

John 6: 35- 40, 44: Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on thE last day.

Acts 13: 48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life, believed.

a. Ephesians 1: 3- 6:  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5  he predestined us  for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6  to the praise of his glorious grace

PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS

All those chosen by the Father, redeemed in the Son and regenerated by the Spirit are eternally saved, sustained and preserved by faith.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever should believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

1 Peter 5:10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

II Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you,[a]not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

COMMON OBJECTIONS

God seems to want all to be saved. This is shown in verses like 1 Tim 2: 3- 4:  This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Saviour, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

There is a mystery here in that God seems to desire certain things that do not happen, and vice versa. Certainly God desires that we be holy: this is God’s will, yet after our conversion, we sin and God allows it. He did not have a vindictive desire for people to abuse and kill His Son; yet He predetermined Jesus’ death and allowed His suffering as part of His plan to reconcile us to Himself. So while

we find many texts where God’s love for His creation is expressed in His desire for all to be saved - all are not saved.

If, in our discomfort with this mystery, we ignore these texts, the fact remains that all are not saved and we haven’t made matters better - but far worse.

Not only are we left with the reality that not everyone professes faith in Christ, but now, our theology dictates that the burden of salvation is not resting on the pre-eminent shoulders of Christ, but the utterly incapable shoulders of the church.

If God does not predestine to adoption, then it is us, the church, who are solely responsible for the salvation of our children, our family, our neighbours. If it is not Christ alone who saves through His church, despite the fact that in many ways we are incompetent, flawed ministers of the gospel, then the burden of salvation is on us, to be totally competent, flawless ministers of the gospel.

Is God really fair in choosing some and not others?

If God were fair - which would be giving us what we actually deserve - then nobody would receive His grace because none of us deserve it. God is not being fair in choosing to save. He is being gracious.

Grace is neither justice nor injustice - it is undeserved pardon.

If salvation is by grace, and therefore by definition, undeserved, then we cannot claim a right to it. If God were required, by some “law of fairness”, to give salvation in equal measure to all people, it would no longer be grace, because it would be deserved - but because God is holy and we are not, none of us justly deserve that and therefore none of us can accuse God of being unjust in not giving it.

Deserved pardon is not grace. Undeserved pardon is not justice. Undeserved pardon is at the discretion of the one giving it.

Can the guilty pardon themselves?If God allowed humans to choose their own pardon, then what we are saying is that God, the pure and holy one, the sinned- against One, the innocent One, the Rightful Judge, does not get to choose who is pardoned.

Rather, it is us: the impure and unholy, the criminals, the sinners, the guilty, the unrighteous ones, who get to determine who is pardoned and who is not. Is that fair? While we cannot comprehensively understand these doctrines of grace, doing away with them creates a travesty of justice of monstrous proportions as we presume that God isn’t the main actor who moves 1st toward the guilty, but rather that we, the guilty, were the main actors who move 1st to attain pardon for ourselves.