Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible…. 

Once Saved Always Saved 

John 3:16  NKJV

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

The one verse of Scripture which is the most popular, most widely quoted, and most widely known is John 3:16.  And I think it necessary to add, the least understood. 

It does not say that all men have free will and can accept Christ if they will, which is believed by most non-Calvinists.

It does not say Christ died for the elect.  Calvin denies God is referring to the elect in this verse.  A.W. Pink claims that “world” refers only to God’s elect.  This position of Pink has found agreement rarely in other reputable Bible commentaries.

The misunderstanding of this verse lies in three errors.

1.  Defining “so” as an adjective rather than an adverb.  In the Greek of the New Testament ,“so” in Vs. 14 and Vs. 16 are precisely the same word and they are, by virtue of the way they are spelled, adverbs.
2. Defining “world” as every single individual person rather than in John’s sense throughout the Gospel as both Jews and Gentiles. John is a true Christian universalist.  Salvation is no longer a Jewish national privilege (it never was), but it is to be inclusive of all manner of men everywhere.
3.  Defining “whosoever” as a statement of free will.  Whether this is by ignorance or intent to deceive, it is equally in error.  The word translated in the King James Version as “whosoever” is the simple pronoun “all”.  This pronoun is immediately followed by its antecedent, or that which defines it, “those who believe.”

To make “all”, (Greek pas) mean “free will” is to import a meaning into this that is not there.  If this meaning is found elsewhere is another matter, it is not here. 

Having stated the above we can understand the following truths from 3:16.

1.       Salvation has as its source God’s self-determined love.  In its source neither man’s activity nor the work of Christ on the cross is the origin of God’s saving activity.  That rises simply from His self-determined love.

2.      The result of that love is the gift of Christ in His whole person for salvation.  This is His life, His death, His resurrection and His present reign.

3.      This is done in the uniquely Divine person of the God-man.  God cannot die.  Man cannot redeem.  The uniquely “only begotten Son” alone can do this.  In His person and work He is always to be realized as “given”.  As the one “given” it was always His purpose and personal intent to give His life for the redemption of His people.

4.      In the purpose of God the single way of entry into all the treasures stored in Christ is through faith in Him.  Let me finish this thought with Galatians 2:21  I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

5.      What is due man separate from Christ is summed up here as perishing.  This is not a complicated word.  It means as it is used in this particular tense “to be lost, to perish, to be ruined”.  It is, in the context of John 3:16, to be outside the Kingdom of God.

6.      There is the adversative to perishing which is emphasized by the strongest use of the Greek form “but” (alla).  The opposite of perishing is to “have everlasting life”.  It is the design of God’s love that the end product is this condition.  It is neither won by man nor lost by man.

Romans 5:6-11 

⁶ For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

⁷ For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

¹⁰ For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

¹¹ And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Romans 8:38-39

³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,

³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

The Divine Call

Romans 8:30  NKJV

³⁰ Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

People who hear the gospel resist it.  This is nothing less than resisting grace.  It is in Acts 7:51 that Stephen accused the Jewish leaders of resisting the Holy Spirit.  This, explained in the context both by what comes before and what comes after, is being disobedient to the prophetic word and abusing the prophets who spoke it.

 

It is clear from the Scriptures that people resist the word of God in both reading it and hearing it preached.  Some may be converted later.  Some never are converted.  But the fact that they have resisted the inspired Word of God remains.

This is not the issue for the believer in “Irrestible Grace”.  The issue at point is can the Holy Spirit, in His regenerating influence, be resisted? 

John writes in chapter 6:37 that there will, without exception, be those who come to Him.

³⁷ All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.

Then in Vs.44 he further states the reason they come, “they are drawn to Him.  As Sproul so aptly states the word “draws” is literally “drag”, cf John 21:6, “draw or drag the net”.  Isaiah, in chapter 26:10, states clearly that God’s kindness is not sufficient to teach the lost righteousness.

¹⁰ Let grace be shown to the wicked,
Yet he will not learn righteousness;
In the land of uprightness he will deal unjustly,
And will not behold the majesty of the Lord.

 He further states in Vs. 12 this requires an internal activity of God to provide the peace man needs.

In Romans 8:28 there is a twofold limitation placed on those who receive God’s favor. 

²⁸ And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

There is the present objective description which is absolute, “those who love God.”  But this is limited to those with an eternal qualification, “to those who are called according to His purpose”.  In 8:29-30 he explains this purpose and places the Divine call as God’s time-related approach to the predestined one.  What God has purposed in eternity is realized in the earthly call of His elect. 

Can this called be effectively resisted?  The answer of those who disagree with the position stated here say “Yes, it can.  If it can’t then man does not have free will”.  But in response it must be asked, “where does the Bible say man has free will?”

It doesn’t.  The Bible says the lost man is a slave, Romans 6:17,   But God be thanked that though

you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you

were delivered.  The result of this is as Paul writes in Romans 3:11 “There is none who seeks after

God”. 

Peter also confronts man’s bondage but in a slightly different way.  In II Peter 2:22 he sets the conduct of false teachers in the light of the principle taught in Proverbs 26:11.  ²² But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”  Any and every person will act according to their nature.  The lost person has a fallen and depraved nature and will always without exception or until changed by regenerating grace act according to that nature. 

God has saved everyone who is saved in spite of himself.  In II Timothy 1:9 Paul looks at God and His power and states, ⁹ who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible…. 

What He Did and When

Acts 20:28  NASB

²⁸ Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. 

The hope and confidence of every Christian is what Jesus has done for him or her.  Our faith is in Him.  Our knowledge of God is by Him.  We look for His return.  And it is an eternity with Him we eagerly anticipate. 

We believe that our righteousness is His life and His death freely given to us by the Holy God.  We are not our own, we are bought with a price.  He, by His death, has purchased for the church her righteousness; gained the right to pour out His Spirit upon the church; become the single head and sovereign over the church; and claimed once more for man what Adam lost - absolute kingship over the world. 

All of this Jesus has done by His life and death.  But the question seems to remain.  Did He in His death save none, save all, or save some?  Of course saved as I use it here is the crux of the issue.  The Reformed student is very secondarily referring to number when he considers the Atonement.  At issue for him is how effective is Jesus’ death.  Did it in and of itself save anyone?  If something must be added to it - be it faith or any other contribution - then His death is not efficient.  The actual efficiency lies in whatever triggers its effect.

Paul in his address to the Ephesian elders said that the “blood of God” purchased the church.  This is a bald and bold statement.  There is no other blood that can be considered but that which Christ shed in His death.  He therefore is God. 

First it is important to consider who has done the act referred to in Paul’s statement.  Very boldly he claims God has a part in this death to such an extent that it can be called His blood.  This was man because there was blood by which we must understand His bloody death. 

Having said this it is clear that what is done in this transaction is done by God.  Whatever the effect is or isn’t can be understood only in the light of Divine activity.  The question is “has God really done something or not?”.   If He has, then our attention should be drawn to Ecclestiastes 3:14 NKJ.

¹⁴ I know that whatever God does,
It shall be forever.
Nothing can be added to it,
And nothing taken from it.
God does it, that men should fear before Him.

The activity is described as a purchase.  A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, pg 353, “First aorist middle of an old verb, to reserve, to preserve (for or by oneself in the middle)”.  The one whose blood is the price has by Himself bought, purchased, or reserved an entity called “the church”. 

It does not matter how broad or how narrow the word “church” is made to be.  Whether it is all those who have a saving interest in Christ’s death on earth and in heaven, or whether it is those described as the holy flock in Ephesus – those described belong to Him by virtue of His purchase.  His deed – and that alone - has efficiently secured His ownership. 

Whatever “the church” described here does, it does not accomplish or change the fact of what the death accomplishes.  The death has an effect.  This is a completed fact.  The aorist of “purchase” assures us of that. 

There are Biblical references which give one pause in understanding this truth.  John 3:16 is not one of them.  That reference has nothing to do with this discussion one way or another.  There is one passage that is the best example of those which would indicate any kind of universalism.  This is I John 2:1-2.

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

² And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

It would be easy to answer this with the common universalism of John.  His use of world can be usually understood as inclusive of both Jews and Gentiles.  But his wording, “the whole world” seems to me to mean something other than his normal universalism.

It seems to me 2:2 is a reference back to 1:7.

⁷ But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

 His concern is not the number who are cleansed whether it be every individual, both Jews and Gentiles, or elect.  His concern is the fact of forgiveness that comes from the death of Christ. 

In chapter 2:1 he sets forth the first principle of holiness.  Do not sin.  But if you do - and you will, I have already dealt with this - be aware there is a means of gaining God’s forgiveness.  There is a covering for sin Jesus Christ the Righteous.  And let me tell you, John continues, wherever there is sin “in the whole world”, that covering will extend.  Distance, time, ethnicity, degree of guilt, or past unbelief, this one, “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son,” will cleanse the one who believes from all sin. 

As Paul could tell us the chief of sinners had been saved.  John tells us there is no place in this world where this will not work. 

There is no better commentary than this stanza from Charles Wesley’s hymn,

Arise, My Soul Arise.

Five bleeding wounds He bears
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers
They strongly speak for me;
Forgive him, O forgive they cry
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

Is God Fair? 

Ephesians 1:3-4  NASB

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

⁴ just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.  

Paul begins his message in this epistle with the privilege of believers.  God has “blessed” or given “every spiritual blessing” to all included in this statement.  There are two qualifications.  First these pertain to the “heavenlies” and secondly they are limited to, “in Christ.” 

“The heavenlies” qualify both the origin and the nature of the blessing.  God is the origin, and the nature is that of heaven.  Those in heaven have these same blessings in kind. 

“In Christ” directs the reader to the sphere of participation.  One becomes a participant by being “in Christ” by the new birth and faith.  Christ as the purchaser and dispenser of salvation has become the sphere of being for all spiritual blessing. 

Then there is Vs. 4.  By what means did these spiritual blessings become personal?  There is a conduit between that which the believer has in heavenly places and the present participation.  The writer begins Vs. 4 with “just as”, kathos or as the KJV has it “even as”.  The adverb defines the connection of this verse with Vs. 3.  Rather than the cause of the blessing what is to follow is the mode by which this transpires.  This mode of happening is by the divine prerogative.  “He chose us” is the singular activity of the Divine Being in bringing this about. 

The “choice” has two characteristics.

1.  The verb is Greek aorist.  This confronts the reader with the fact that the action is completed in itself and final.  It has been done and nothing can be added to it.  The past of the activity is defined as before there was a creation.  Because of this nothing in creation can influence or affect it.
2. The “choice” has a particular purpose.  “That we should be holy and without blame”.  It must be noted that nothing in any Christian’s life that can be considered as holy or blameless can be considered as a contributor to this choice.

It is absolutely foreign to Paul’s intent to make anything about the Christian contribute to God’s choice.  And it is a fact of the Christian’s holiness.  To be “holy and blameless” before God is

to be in Christ by faith and living in the light and strength of that faith. 

Understanding these verses as they are written leaves but two choices.  They are a) an absolute, without exception, universalism or b) a sovereign unconditional choice of some.  There is no middle ground.  And when the dust of controversy settles; when depravity is understood as the Bible presents it; this grace.

This is “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved”.  Ephesians 1:6 

To God alone be the glory.

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

Sin And Death 

Ephesians 2:1-2  NASB

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

² in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 

I have been a Christian for fifty years.  In the summer of 1963 I made a deliberate choice.  I, being informed from a book that was representative of John Calvin’s doctrine, Calvin’s Calvinism, resolutely decided this was what the Bible teaches.  In the forty-nine years since that time I have not found any other way that can represent the doctrine of Scripture. 

I wrestled with what is known as “Limited Atonement,” in the light of particular Scriptures.  I also had problems with “Irrestible Grace” philosophically.  Over time, not a long period, I came to see the truths in these doctrines and have a full agreement with them. 

But there was something that became increasingly apparent by both those who agreed and those who disagreed.  The truth concerning God and salvation can be understood only to the degree that man’s sinfulness as the Bible represents it, is accepted. 

There are two books I read early along that left a lasting impression on me.  Luther’s Bondage of The Will and Thomas Boston’s Fourfold State of Man.  Both authors centered their understanding of man upon his fall into sin and the consequences. 

Luther stated as the main issue about man and salvation is man’s loss of any free will as he lives prior to conversion.  Is he responsible - yes.  Is he free to affect a change in himself toward­­­­  God or His law -  no. 

Boston showed man to be so radically evil in his nature that any change to the good must come from without.  Both would take Romans 8:7-8 as a statement to this affect.

⁷ because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,

⁸ and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

The question then before Election,. Atonement, or Irresistible Grace is how dead is dead?  Or just what does Ephesians 1:1-2 say?

1.  This is directed toward believers.  “You”, those he will later describe in Vs 5 are the ones addressed.  So to begin Paul states as the history of all believers or more correctly according to Vs 5 those who “by grace have been saved”, that they have been “dead”.
2.  There is an active condition in which the deadness abides, “in your trespasses and sin”,
3. This deadness is productive.  “You formerly walked,” is descriptive of what the deadness produces.  This person who is described is active in malignant opposition to God and indulgent in every manner of sinful activity.

If this was the only description of man’s depraved separation from God, a way might be found to excuse it.  But it is ordinary in the Biblical description of the unconverted.  To deny this is to be forced to resort to something other than Scripture.  Man in the Scripture required radical renovation.  This is called regeneration, a new birth, a new creation, a new man, and there is never any explanation for this renovation separate from God’s sovereign intervention.

Titus 3:5

⁵ He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 

John 1:13 places man’s need in such a clear light that any who deny the necessity of a sovereign unilateral intervention must either delete or deny the truth that is there. 

¹³ who were ^]born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John states in 1:13 “Who were born”, that is those who have exercised saving faith, “not of” and he names every method man can claim.  Not by inheritance; not by human priestly action; nor by the human will or free will. It can’t be his by nature; another cannot do it for him; and he can’t do it for himself. 

Then he places an adversative, “but” those means already named being ineffectual, there is something or someone who is effectual, “born of God”.  If any of the other means work God is not necessary.  He can inherit salvation as the Jew thought he would.  He can be circumcised, baptized, confessed, catechized, or given communion by another man.  He can exercise his will to change.  He can see his need.  He can feel his deficiency.  He can make a profession, walk the aisle, meet every requirement of any church, but until God he is dead and undone. 

I read one who said that a child is not a sinner under the condemnation that I just stated until he gets old enough to knowingly sin.  In other words he becomes a sinner by sinning. 

First that you know what this is - it is a doctrine known as Pelagianism, condemned by the Church in the 5^th century.  Secondly, there is a simple question to be answered.  If babies are not sinners why do they die?  The Bible gives one reason for death, Romans 5:12. 

That reason is sin.  No sin – no death.  Where there is sin, there is death.

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—

All the truth of Grace follows from this.

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible…. 

Christian Confession 

Romans 10:9-10  NKJV

⁹ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

¹⁰ For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 

The necessity of confession is so plain that there can be no denial.  But two questions have risen.

What is the confession required and what is it to “confess Jesus as Lord”? 

When confession is studied, it must be determined “what it is”, and “how public is it to be”.  Confession can never be considered separate from baptism.  In 1st century Christianity a person was not accepted as a disciple separate from baptism.  Any consideration of confession assumes this. 

But what is the baptized person’s confession?  It is to faith in the Gospel.  This in Romans 10:9 is to “confess with the mouth Jesus is Lord.”  There is absolutely no doubt Paul is using the term “Lord” in this scripture to identify Jesus as the “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” of the Old Testament.  This opens for us the nature of confession. 

The Lord of Israel is the Triune God of Covenant love - the One who alone is Savior of His people.  This answers both questions.  What is confession?  It is to be able to have faith in the true God of the Scriptures.  Who is the Lord?  He is the Triune God of creation, salvation, and providence. 

If a Christian is asked, “What do you believe?” most will answer “I believe the Scriptures.”  But this is no answer.  For the issue is “what do the Scriptures teach?” 

For the Reformed and Presbyterian Church officer the Westminster Confession of Faith with the Larger and Shorter Catechism are a statement of what he believes the Scriptures teach.  He does not claim they are inspired. Neither does he have to agree with every word taught there.  They are his confession.

In the past every major denomination had a confession of faith.  When a Christian was asked what they believed, they had a confession to define the system of doctrine they accepted. 

Any of the Christian creeds, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian of the past would have - and will now - separate the true Church from the false. 

There has ever been a difference between true and false believers.  Our confessions identify us.

Deuteronomy 32:31

³¹ For their rock is not like our Rock,
Even our enemies themselves being judges.

Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

True Value Of A Believer

I Corinthians 4:2, 15, 16, 17  NKJV

² Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.

¹⁵ For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

¹⁶ Therefore I urge you, imitate me.

¹⁷ For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church.

pistos, πιστός  Trustworthy, reliable, sure, true, unfailing

In verse 2 it is plain Paul has a special category in mind, “stewards”.  These are primarily apostles and secondarily all ministers.  The stewardship is the responsibility of the “word of God” and the true reporting of it.  Nothing is to be done with this word but that which a servant faithful in obedience, does for his master.

As we fast forward to vs 15, we find Paul making a very general application.  All who fall under the category of believing, Paul says are to be imitators of him in every way they can within their calling.

This is illustrated in vs 17 by Timothy being a “faithful child” or one who has followed Paul’s example within his calling.  Paul has been able to trust and rely upon Timothy to do all those things he had instructed him to do.  Timothy fulfilled his stewardship.

Having been in the Christian ministry for 45 years, I can say that what is most desirable in a church member is that they are consistently faithful.  Gifts, talent, intellectual ability, wealth, and any other measure used will not approach the worth of simple faithfulness.

This faithfulness is found in three areas of life:

1.  Attendance:  They can be depended upon to be present when the church meets.  They do not need a special place on the program; there does not have to be a special event or a special personality.  They very regularly and faithfully come.  They are not discouraged by the normal providential hindrances.  If they are not present, a Pastor knows to contact them.  Something is wrong to keep them away.  Above all else they come.
2. Service:  They do what they can.  Some I have known have huge amounts of talent.  Others stretched the imagination to find the one talent.  But the faithful person served or waited according to leadership requirements.  They were not easily offended.  The most talented were willing to do the least visible tasks while the least talented were willing to try to do anything they were asked if at all possible.  They were not prima donnas.  They were first of all faithful.
3. Giving:  A church is supported by the tithes and gifts of its members.  No church should ever need more than this.  When every member is a faithful giver the church prospers.  The member may earn $1000 per month or $50,000, the church only needs the tithes and gifts the members can give.  Every faithful member I have ever known, I believe to be a tither.  I cannot guarantee this, but as I recall this appears to be true.  If they do not tithe their faithfulness in this needs attention and encouragement for their spiritual improvement and economic well-being.

There have been great geniuses in the world who have done amazing things.  But overall the civilization as we have it has not been built by geniuses.  Ordinary people are the real builders.

The church has some truly amazing talent and greatly gifted believers but overall the church is built by ordinary faithful church members who do what they can.

Matthew 25:21

²¹ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’