Faith - Spiritual Knowledge - Part 1

December 8, 1775

My Dear Friend,

Are you willing I should still call you so, or are you quite weary of me? Your silence makes me suspect the latter. However, it is my part to fulfil my promise, and then leave the event to God. As I have but an imperfect remembrance of what I have already written, I may be liable to some repetitions. I cannot stay to comment upon every line in your letter, but I proceed to notice such passages as seem most to affect the subject in debate. When you speak of the Scriptures maintaining one consistent sense, which, if the Word of God, it certainly must do, you say you read and understand it in this one consistent sense; nay, you cannot remember the time when you did not. It is otherwise with me and with multitudes; we remember when it was a sealed book, and we are sure it would have been so still, had not the Holy Spirit opened our understandings.

But when you add, though I pretend not to understand the whole, yet what I do understand appears perfectly consistent. I know not how far this exception may extend; for perhaps the reason why you allow you do not understand some parts, is because you cannot make them consistent with the sense you put upon other parts. You quote my words, "That when we are conscious of our depravity, reasoning stands us in no stead." Undoubtedly reason always will stand rational creatures in some stead; but my meaning is, that when we are deeply convinced of sin, all our former reasonings upon the ways of God, while we make our conceptions the standard by which we judge what is befitting Him to do, as if He were altogether such an one as ourselves- all those cobweb reasonings are swept away, and we submit to His autoV efh (authority) without reasoning, though not without reason. For we have the strongest reason imaginable to acknowledge ourselves vile and lost, without righteousness and strength, when we actually feel ourselves to be so.

Available on Kindle for $1.99

You speak of the Gospel term of justification. This term is faith, Mark xvi. I6; Acts xiii. 39. The Gospel propounds, admits no other term. But this faith, as I endeavoured to show in my former letter, is very different from rational assent. You speak likewise of the law of faith, by which if you mean what some call the remedial law, which we are to obey as well as we can, and such obedience, together with our faith, will entitle us to acceptance with God, I am persuaded the Scripture speaks of no such thing. Grace and works of any kind, in the point of acceptance with God, are mentioned by the apostle not only as opposites or contraries, but as absolutely contradictory to each other, like fire and water, light and darkness; so that the affirmation of one is the denial of the other, Rom. iv. 5, and xi. 6. God justifies freely, justifies the ungodly, and him that worketh not.

Though justifying faith be indeed an active principle, it worketh by love, yet not for acceptance. Those whom the apostle exhorts to work out their own salvation with "fear and trembling," he considers as justified already; for he considers them as believers, in whom he supposed God had already begun a good work, and if so, was confident he would accomplish it (Phil. i. 6). To them, the consideration that God (who dwells in the hearts of believers) wrought in them to will and to do, was a powerful motive and encouragement to them to work, that is, to give all diligence to His appointed means; as a right sense of the sin that dwelleth in us, and the snares and temptations around us, will teach us still to work with fear and trembling.

You suppose a difference between Christians (so called) who are devoted to God in baptism, and those who in the first ages were converted from abominable superstitions and idolatrous vices.-It is true, in Christian countries we do not worship heathen divinities eo nomine (by those names). And this is the principal difference I can find. Neither reason nor observation will allow me to think that human nature is a whit better now than it was in the apostle's time. I know no kinds or degrees of wickedness which prevailed among heathens, which are not prevalent among nominal Christians, who have perhaps been baptized in their infancy; and, therefore, as the streams in the life are equally worldly, sensual, devilish, I doubt not but the fountain of the heart is equally polluted and poisonous; and that it is as true as it was in the days of Christ and His apostles, that unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

A Four Fold Salvation — Part 3

One of the things I learned from God as He imparts this life in me is that if you cannot rise to the occasion, then you would do well to examine yourself to see exactly what did you receive.  A lot of us loves saying we have received Christ, but what does that mean to us?  Better yet, what does that mean to God and how does it work out with His vision for Salvation?  As He taught me through a lengthy and painful process the act of receiving Him, I found out the true meaning of this verse in 1John 2:19  “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”

I also found out, although there are a lot of things in the Bible that were written for people living in that time and we cannot interpret the Bible without incorporating this fact.  So, yes 1John 2:19 was also written with context of Acts 15:1, but it was also written for our own good today. None of it will make sense to us if we are bent on going on about Salvation with one or two verses, and our own explanation. We make Christ a liar as He did not need to send the Holy Spirit to teach us His Word and His way. It is His job to take from God, to us.  There are several ways we can depart from the faith. The only proof you have that you have truly received His Salvation is that you keep rising to the occasions and keep going forward with Him no matter what the obstacles or the trials

A.W. Tozer: "The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favourite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

A Fourfold Salvation

Arthur Pink, 1938 

It is not that God would bewilder us—but that He would humble us, drive us to our knees, make us dependent upon His Spirit. Not to the proud—who are wise in their own esteem—are its heavenly secrets opened.

In like manner it may be shown from Scripture that the cause of salvation is not a single one, as so many suppose—the blood of Christ. Here, too, it is necessary to distinguish between things which differ.

First, the originating cause of salvation is the eternal purpose of God, or, in other words, the predestinating grace of the Father

The fact is, that the great majority of professing Christians fail to see that "salvation" is one of the most comprehensive terms in all the Scriptures, including predestination, regeneration, justification, sanctification and glorification. They have far too cramped an idea of the meaning and scope of the word "salvation" (as it is used in the Scriptures), narrowing its range too much, generally confining their thoughts to but a single phase. They suppose "salvation" means no more than the new birth or the forgiveness of sins. Were one to tell them that salvation is a protracted process, they would view him with suspicion; and if he affirmed that salvation is something awaiting us in the future, they would at once dub him a heretic. Yet they would be the ones to err.

Ask the average Christian, Are you saved, and he answers, Yes, I was saved in such and such a year; and that is as far as his thoughts on the subject go. Ask him, to what do you owe your salvation? and "the finished work of Christ" is the sum of his reply. Tell him that each of those answers is seriously defective, and he strongly resents your aspersion.

As an example of the confusion which now prevails, we quote the following from a tract on Philippians 2:12, "To whom are those instructions addressed? The opening words of the Epistle tell us—'To the saints in Christ Jesus' . . . Thus they were all believers! and could not be required to work for their salvation, for they already possessed it." Alas that so very few today perceive anything wrong in such a statement. Another "Bible teacher" tells us that "save yourself" (1 Tim. 4:16) must refer to deliverance from physical ills, as Timothy was already saved spiritually. True—yet it is equally true that he was then in process of being saved, and also a fact that his salvation was then future.

Let us now supplement the first three verses quoted and show there are other passages in the New Testament which definitely refer to each distinct tense of salvation.

First, salvation as an accomplished fact, "Your faith has saved you" (Luke 7:50), "by grace you have been saved" (Greek, and so translated in the R.V.—Eph. 2:8), "according to His mercy He saved us" (Titus 3:5).

Second, salvation as a present process, in course of accomplishment, not yet completed, "Unto us which are being saved" (1 Cor. 1:18—R.V.); "Those who believe to the saving (not 'salvation') of the soul" (Heb. 10:39).

Third, salvation as a future prospect, "Sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation" (Heb. 1:14), "receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21), "Kept by the power of God through faith Studies in the Scriptures July, 1938 20 unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5).

Thus, by putting together these different passages, we are clearly warranted in formulating the following statement—every genuine Christian has been saved, is now being saved, and will yet be saved—how and from what, we shall endeavor to show.

As further proof of how many-sided is the subject of God's great salvation and how that in Scripture it is viewed from various angles, take the following, "by grace are you saved" (Eph. 2:8), "saved by His (Christ's) life" (that is) by His resurrection life (Romans 5:9), "your faith has saved you" (Luke 7:50), "the engrafted Word which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21), "saved by hope" (Romans 8:24), "saved yet as by fire" (1 Cor. 3:15), "the like figure where unto baptism does also now save us" (1 Peter 3:21).

Ah, my reader, the Bible is not the lazy man's book, nor can it be soundly expounded by those who do not devote the whole of their time, and that for years, to its prayerful study. It is not that God would bewilder us—but that He would humble us, drive us to our knees, make us dependent upon His Spirit. Not to the proud—who are wise in their own esteem—are its heavenly secrets opened.

In like manner it may be shown from Scripture that the cause of salvation is not a single one, as so many suppose—the blood of Christ. Here, too, it is necessary to distinguish between things which differ.

First, the originating cause of salvation is the eternal purpose of God, or, in other words, the predestinating grace of the Father