Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John - Part 2

In this series of posts I am endeavouring to show some of the prominent places in the Gospel of John where the author used the truth of God's sovereignty in salvation to demonstrate the deity of Jesus.

In this post we will look at Chapter 3 and examine how John recounted the truth of Jesus' statements to men concerning salvation.

Chapter 3

In this chapter Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus, a pharisee, that has come at night (in secret) to speak with Jesus (John 3:1-2). Jesus knew what was in Nicodemus' heart and his desire to know the path to salvation, so Jesus answers: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." In a casual reading of this verse one might miss the importance of the word "see" in Jesus' statement. Jesus is telling Nicodemus that even to have any understanding of the kingdom of God we must first be born again. This speaks to the doctrine of man's total depravity. Without being born again we can not comprehend the path to salvation, let alone obtain salvation. Ephesians 2:1 says that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. Dead means spiritually dead in that context. So taken together (John 3:3 and Ephesians 2:1) we can see that all of us our spiritually unable to comprehend the kingdom of God (let alone seek after it) unless and until we are born again.
So the obvious follow on question is how can we be born again? Jesus immediately dialogs with Nicodemus on this distinguishing between physical birth and spiritual birth, then he says this:
"Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."
This passage attributes the work of being born again to the Spirit, or Holy Spirit. Just like we humans can not control or summon the wind, we can not summon the Spirit to bring about this new spiritual life. The Spirit causes new birth "where it wishes". In other words God causes whoever He wishes to be born again and that whoever he doesn't wish is not born again. Another word for this concept is regeneration. The Spirit regenerates our souls from being dead spiritually to being alive and able to comprehend the kingdom of God. And now this truth sets the ground work for the rest of John 3, where Jesus invokes the historical truth of God's judgement and mercy on Israel in the desert. Where God instructed Moses to lift up a bronze serpent in the camp and that whoever looked at it (implied: in faith) would be saved from their judgement. Jesus uses this as a foreshadowing of His coming work, and then we get to the familiar John 3:16. And since I wrote some about this verse in the previous post I will simply say that now we should understand that the "whoever" will necessarily be limited to those that are already born again, which is the work of the Spirit.

In the next post we will look at John chapter 5.

A Propitiation for Sinners

I went before my ordination council today—an event which has to rank as one of the more stressful events of my many years of ministry. One of the men asked me about whether I was a Calvinist and what my position is on the issue of limited atonement, also known as particular redemption. I have addressed this issue in a previous post (see 11/22/07), so I will not rehash my answer to that issue. Suffice it to say, I am a Calvinist and I do hold to the position of particular redemption.

As a follow up question to my response, another man asked me about 1 John 2:2—“and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” This is, undoubtedly, the most difficult verse for those who hold to particular redemption to explain, and while I gave my answer, as I thought about it later, I do not believe I answered it sufficiently. In fact, I know I did not, probably because the stress of the situation caused me to go blank regarding the details of my argument. So I would like to take this opportunity to more fully explain my answer.

My initial response is that John was writing in a Jewish context. In Galatians 2:9, we see that John was, along with Peter and James, pillars of the church in Jerusalem who agreed that Paul was to go as an apostle to the Gentiles. Paul wrote, “and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.” So John was generally regarded as an apostle to the Jews, and it would be reasonable to assume that most of his readers would have been Jewish.

Consequently, he is using language that would have been particularly meaningful to a Jewish reader. The concept of a propitiatory sacrifice of atonement was a strongly Jewish concept, as the Jews had seen such sacrifices every year in the Temple on the Day of Atonement. So what John wrote would have been understood in a Jewish context. Thus, he was saying, “Jesus was the propitiation for our sins, but not just the sins of us Jews, but also for the sins of all the peoples of the world. He is the universal Savior.”

In a seminar a few years ago at the Shepherd’s Conference at Grace Community Church in California, Phil Johnson pointed out that a perfect parallel to 1 John 2:2 is found in John 11:51-52. There, the Jewish leaders are meeting together to figure out how to stop Jesus because they fear that the nation will begin following Him and Rome will come and destroy all they have built for themselves. And in verses 49-50 it says, “But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people and that the whole nation not perish.”

And then John, who also wrote 1 John 2:2, comments on this statement by Caiaphas with these words: “Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (vs. 51-52).

The parallel language between John 11:51-52 and 1 John 2:2 is unmistakable.

John 11:51-52	1 John 2:2
“Jesus was going to die for the nation”	“He Himself is the propitiation for our sins”
“and not for the nation only”	“and not for ours only”
“but in order”	“but also”
“that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad”	“for those of the whole world”

Both the phrasing and the sense of these two passages are exactly parallel. So I believe that the best interpretation of what John is saying in 1 John 2:2 is, “Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for us Jews only, but also for the sins of Gentiles, from every tribe, tongue, and nation throughout the whole world.” The phrase “the whole world” refers to people of all kinds, including Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, Romans, and so forth, as opposed to “ours only,” meaning the Jewish nation. This would have been understood by John’s Jewish readers.

Admittedly, there are many good Bible expositors who do not hold this view, but see 1 John 2:2 as referring to the universal provision of the atonement. In their interpretation, they say that while the atonement is provided for all men, God did not intend to apply it to all men nor did He actually provide it to every man, but the provision is there for all. Those who hold this interpretation believe that John’s use of the exact same term, “the whole world,” in 5:19 where he says that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” defines how the term should be understood in 2:2. Thus, since it refers to all unbelievers in 5:19, it would mean the same thing in 2:2. Such an understanding would require that 2:2 refers to the provision of the atonement rather than to a contrast between elect Jews and elect Gentiles.

However, I personally believe that understanding that John was an apostle to the Jews, who would have been writing primarily to a Jewish audience, and coupling that with the parallelism between John 11:51-52 and 1 John 2:2, the stronger argument is for my interpretation.

Doctrines of Grace in The Gospel of John: Part 1

One of the aspects of this Blog that I truly enjoy is reading Bruce's posts that supplement his teaching from his Sunday School class. Even though I am not there to hear him in person I am able to learn a good deal from his written words.

In my posts, at least at the start, I will attempt to follow a similar pattern of distilling some of my teaching from Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings into posts that I can use to direct people who are interested in more information about the subjects I taught. And of course I will work to insure that the posts are still clear enough to be understood even if you didn't hear the initial teaching.
A major push in my putting this teaching together on the Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John is that there have been some people who have come to me and wondered why did we continue to come back to this topic throughout the Gospel of John. And my answer to them was simply because John keeps returning to the topic and we can only faithfully teach what John through the Spirit wrote for us. I will also note that Martin Luther, the great reformer, called John one of the Generals in the Army that proves God's sovereignty in salvation.

So with no further delay...

In the Homebuilders class at Lakeside Chapel I have been teaching through the last few chapters of the Gospel of John. It has taken us quite a while to get through this incredible book. What a blessing to read and examine the key points of the life of Jesus Christ as told to us by the apostle John.

One of the points I have stressed in class is that we must understand the goal that John had in writing this text. John clearly states that his goal was not to give a recitation of everything that Jesus did. In fact, John says that it would be impossible to do so (John 21:25). Instead John's goal is found in John 20:30-31 . He wrote what he did in order to demonstrate through the life, actions, and words of Jesus that Jesus was The Son of God. And with a minimal amount of reasoning we can understand that by saying Jesus is The Son of God, John is saying that Jesus is divine! This is stated clearly in John 1:1,14, In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
It is my assertion then that John, to meet his goal in writing the Gospel of John, sets out to prove the deity of Jesus Christ, and a prominent way he does this is by demonstrating that Jesus has the attributes of God. That Jesus did things, and claimed things that would be impossible for any man, any prophet, or any angel to do and say.
Now if you ask an average American Christian what is an attribute of God; they are most likely to say "LOVE". And John affirms that truth in many places including in 1 John 4:7-8. But God is much more than just Love. And in the Gospel of John we see a great emphasis on another of God's attributes. The attribute of Sovereignty. God is in total control of everything that occurs in this universe that He created, and that includes the salvation of mankind.
We can see this emphasis early on in John, in the passage John 1:12-13. those that were born...of God. This passage explicitly removes three elements from being determinative of being born again:

1. Not of Blood - salvation is not a matter of earthly lineage
2. Nor the will of the flesh - not do to any natural inclinations of man
3. Nor the will of man - not any higher function of mankind suffices

At this point you might wonder what I am talking about when I write about God's sovereignty in salvation. This concept is also called: the doctrines of Grace, or more succinctly Calvinism. A full discussion of this topic is WAY beyond the limits of this post but in summary, I am talking about God's predestination, and choosing men for salvation which the Bible tells us takes place before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5). And since God has chosen whom he will save, he then calls those whom he has chosen during their lifetime through the gospel message, and seals them permanently in His hand forever. (Eph. 1: 9,13). By extension, this means that those who were not chosen by God for salvation, will continue to reject any offer of the gospel and upon their death they will face the punishment for their sins. I could spend many more paragraphs getting into details (maybe in some future post) , but that is enough for this post.

This truth of God's sovereign choice is coupled with man's responsibility to respond in faith throughout the Gospel of John. I don't want anyone to be confused by this statement. God not only chose who would be saved, he also chose the manner in which all men will lay hold of this salvation (through faith). The order and precedence is essential: God calls and man responds.

As an example John 3:16 is a very well known verse. "For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish..." And this verse is used often to demonstrate the idea that every man is able to choose to believe the Gospel or to reject it. But read the verse again, nowhere in the text of this verse does it say that everyone can choose to believe in Jesus (only begotten son), it only states that everyone who does believe will have eternal life. It is up to us to read the surrounding text to determine who will believe and be saved. And in my next post we will examine chapter 3 of John along with other passages.

At this point I will end this post and begin next time in going through the Gospel of John and relaying the prominent places that John affirms God's sovereignty in salvation throughout the text of John.

Assurance of Genuine Faith

Over the past several months, I have been teaching through 2 Peter. This past Sunday morning, I arrived at the concluding verses of chapter two. Verses 20-21 are troublesome verses for many believers, because they seem to teach that a believer can lose his or her salvation. The passage reads, “For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them” (NASB).

I explained that, in the context of the passage, Peter is talking about the false teachers and their followers whom he has been discussing throughout the chapter. Peter was explaining that they had a complete understanding of the Gospel and had even cleaned up their lives, but that they were not genuine believers. Consequently, when they fall back into their old patterns of their sinful lives, they were even greater slaves of sin than they were previously.

Peter says they have come to a knowledge of the Word of God. They have heard the gospel. They have heard the proclamation of deliverance of sin and newness of life. They have professed to have laid hold of it for themselves. They have cleaned up their lives externally so that there is a certain attractiveness to them. In one sense they have escaped the defilements of the world because they have come to the knowledge of the gospel, the true knowledge of the gospel. In fact, they know it so well that they are able to give it forth. But they are not true believers.

Jesus explained that no true believer can ever lose his salvation, when He said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:27-29). In other words, believers receive eternal life (in contrast to eternal death) and no person or being—including Satan himself—is able to remove one of God’s children from His hand.

In the “Bread of Life” discourse, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives me will come to Me” and “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all He has given Me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:37, 39). So all those who are the elect of God will come to Christ and He will lose none of them to anyone or anything else.

Paul expanded on this thought with these words: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35, 38-39). Paul is not speaking in the passage of a generic, general love of mankind, but of God’s special love for His elect (cf. Romans 8:28-34), so the clear idea is that a believer’s salvation is assured and cannot be lost.

But despite all of this clear evidence from the Scriptures of the eternal security of the believer, there are, admittedly, passages in the Bible (such as 2 Peter 2:20-21) which seem to teach that a Christian can lose his or her salvation. Another is Hebrews 6:4-6, which reads, “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.” Once again, if someone does not understand the context of what the writer of Hebrews is explaining, it would seem to teach that believers can fall away and return to an unsaved state.

The book of Hebrews was written to those who were coming out of Judaism and beginning to follow Jesus as their Messiah. When they did that, there was a great deal of persecution that began to come down upon them. They were excommunicated from the synagogue, rejected by their families, and cut off from virtually all aspects of social life, including their work and business life. Consequently, some of those who were sort of “tagging along” with what initially seemed to be a wonderful way of life—who had adopted the patterns of Christianity, but did not have the reality of it—suddenly found themselves suffering for the name of Christ. So, many of them decided that it would be easier if they went back to the old ways of Judaism. Life would certainly become much more tolerable for them if they did that. So the writer of Hebrews explains that to leave behind the truth of the Gospel and all that they had experienced of Christ would result in their eternal damnation.

The words used in this passage indicate that their salvation was not genuine. “Tasted” refers to a sampling food for the purpose of examining it, not the full consumption of it. The word translated “partakers” refers to companionship or association with, rather than possession or being indwelled by Him. There are many people today attending churches all over our land who are associated with the Holy Spirit, but do not truly possess Him.

So this passage is not talking about believers losing their salvation, but rather those who associate themselves with Christianity, but are not genuinely saved. And then, for whatever reason, if they decide to turn their back on the truth and reject it, the writer says they cannot be renewed to repentance. Why not? Because they heard the truth, understood it, and experienced the beneficial effects of the Holy Spirit, yet willfully chose to reject all of that revelation and walk away.

After explaining 2 Peter 2:20-21, as well as this passage, I concluded teaching the class and most people went their way. However, one class member spoke to me about the lesson and asked, “So based on all those passages that deal with people who are deceived into thinking they are believers but really aren’t, how do I know that I’m a genuine Christian?”

My response was, “The internal witness of the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of obedience in your life. Evaluate your motives for doing the things you do. Do you do them to look good to other people, or do you do them in order to bring glory to God? Anyone can clean up their life and look good to others, but the real evidence is the driving passion of your life. Is it to glorify God or to glorify yourself?”

What do I base that answer upon? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus twice said, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16, 20). That is the way to identify a false teacher and that is the way to examine your own life regarding the genuineness of salvation. What is the evidence of true faith? It is the fruit of righteousness in your life.

In his first epistle, John explains in great detail what the evidence of genuine belief will be. He talks about practicing the truth, walking in the Light, loving and fellowshipping with other believers, confessing sin, not loving the world, avoiding sin, and sharing material blessings with others. He then comes to 1 John 5:2-5 and he wraps it up with these words: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

So who are the true Christians? They are those who love other believers, love the Lord, and obey His commandments. As they obey God’s commandments, they find that they are not a burden, but rather there is great joy in their obedience. And they have victory over the world and sin through their faith in Jesus Christ.

Those are the marks of a genuine believer. Are you one?

Expanding this Blog

When I started this blog, I told several of the elders at my church (Lakeside Community Chapel, Clearwater, FL) that my desire was that they would also write articles to post on the blog on a semi-regular basis. Thus, the blog could become a means by which church members, friends, and others could read articles that express the views of the elders on doctrinal and ministry issues, as well as issues facing the American evangelical church.

That desire has come to fruition, and in the future, you will periodically see articles posted here by other men with whom I serve as an elder at LCC. This will provide others an opportunity to gain an understanding of the perspective of the men who shepherd the flock at LCC, and will provide more opportunities for interaction on a wider variety of subjects so that readers gain a better understanding of the approach to ministry and the teaching of the Word which takes place at LCC.

I hope you'll keep reading and will refer others to the blog. Our goal is to reach more people with articles on important biblical matters. So stop by, read an article or two, and post a reply!

With All Your Heart

I have been thinking about what it means to be completely committed to serving the Lord, to pursuing His purposes, His interests, His holiness in my life. So I went back through the Scriptures to find what God has to say about this subject. What I found is that nineteen times in God’s Word, He speaks of loving Him, seeking Him, serving Him, returning to Him, and trusting Him “with all your heart.”

That is an extraordinarily high number of times for God to repeat Himself. Since He is God, He really only has to say something once for us to be required to obey. But in this case, He doesn’t say it once or twice, or even ten times. He says it NINETEEN times. So I must conclude that God considers absolute devotion, service, and allegiance to Him to be of primary importance for His people.

This has a tremendous impact on how we live our lives. This means that every moment of every day of every week of every year, we are to be consumed with glorifying God in and through our lives. Our actions at work, home, neighborhood, and community are to be conducted in such a way that they demonstrate our complete commitment to Christ as our Lord and Master. His glory and honor is to be the foundation of every act of commission and omission that we undertake.

What this does not mean is that we superficially clean up our lives and undergo some kind of moral reformation. That accomplishes nothing but to make us look good in the eyes of others, but a hypocrite in the eyes of God. Rather, we must undergo a moral transformation in which we place our trust in Christ and Him alone for the forgiveness of our sins. All the way down, at the very core of our being, we must be transformed into the character of Christ through His indwelling Holy Spirit. Only then can we live lives which are not only good on the outside, but which honor Him on the inside as well.

If we are to live a life which is completed devoted to Him and His honor, we will make it our passion to examine everything we do with the lens of God’s Word. We will not examine only our actions, because those may appear to others to be good and honoring to God. But we will also examine our motives, thoughts, and reasoning to determine whether or not they match up with the standards of Scripture. When we do that, we will often find that pride and self-interest are the real motives that underlie what we do rather than the motive of doing only that which glorifies God, even when it goes against our own self-interest.

True devotion and service to Christ with all our heart is impossible if our pride is involved. Only a heart which is truly humble and submitted to God’s purposes, willingly accepting whatever He brings, can be said to be completely devoted to Him. God said that Job was “a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil” (Job 2:8). In other words, Job was a man who loved, served, and obeyed the Lord with all his heart. And when he lost all he had, including his children, he said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 2:21).

May we willingly humble ourselves before the Lord, abandoning all vestiges of pride, self-interest, and self-control, and devote ourselves wholly and completely to the task of loving, honoring, and serving our Lord.