Many of us who are born-again Christians think of salvation as an outward act of receiving the Lord by repeating the sinner’s prayer, repenting from our sins, renouncing Satan and making Jesus Christ the Lord of our lives. Now we are saved and ready to go to heaven. Although there is nothing wrong with this scenario, it only tells a portion of the miracle of salvation. The complete story of salvation actually begins before the foundations of the earth were established and has nothing to do with man’s efforts other than being a channel to bring the “good news” in the right season. (Eph 1:4-5) When we examine the scriptures we find that salvation is All God and Nothing of Man. Let’s look more closely at this.

The doctrine of salvation covers a large area of Biblical teaching and human experience. The Bible talks about conversion and regeneration, which deals with the change in our inward nature and our spiritual condition. Conversion is this change as viewed from the human perspective; regeneration is the change as viewed from God’s perspective. While there is human responsibility in salvation, there is First a Divine side to salvation in which God sovereignly acts to secure the sinner’s salvation.

The antecedent or what precedes salvation is predestination. Of all the doctrines we find in the Christian faith, predestination is probably the least understood. When we finally start putting all the elements of salvation together, the idea that God chose “the many” to salvation before anything existed on earth goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and doesn’t seem to have any practical significance. However, when we look to the Bible we find versus such as Eph 1:4-5, which tell us that God did choose a people for Himself before there was anything on this earth, for the “good pleasure of His will.” In Ro 8:29-30, Paul gives us a sequence of steps in the process of Salvation that is all God. The word predestination comes from the Greek, proorizo, which means “to mark out beforehand”, and occurs six times in the new testament (Ac 4:28; Ro 8:29-30; 1Co 2:7; Eph 1:5, 11). It is saying that God by His sovereign choice marked out His elect in eternity past.

Predestination includes all events, not just individual salvation, however for our purposes, we will only deal with it according to the election of the children of God. The paradox of election and predestination is that it doesn’t take away man’s responsibility to act on the faith given to him by Grace. Eph 2:8 says a man is held accountable for his choices. We don’t see anything in the Bible that gives man a reason for being lost because he wasn’t elect or predestinated. What we do see is the emphasis in scripture that man is lost because he doesn’t want to come to God. The Bible gives us several characteristics that show what predestination does with respect to salvation. It determines our status as adopted sons of God (Eph 1:5), those that are “elect” will be “conformed to the image of His son.”

The elect will also know their calling and as Peter says in 2Pe 1:10, those who have been predestinated to salvation (elect) are also justified. The righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed to them. Salvation is truly a miracle of God.

Predestination ultimately assures the elects’ glorification. Paul tells us in Ro 8:31. It is ALL GOD! Salvation is of God! That is why when God chooses someone to salvation He has predestinated him before the foundations of the world. They are adopted sons of God, being conformed to the image of His Son, called, justified and glorified – therefore they can never fall away. God doesn’t go back on His Word. God doesn’t change His mind, (Mal 3:6) ”For I am the LORD, I change not…” Remember the author of salvation is God and NOT Man.

The idea of “once saved always saved” is a valid statement, and herein lies a great controversy that has raged since the 4th century when the views of a British monk by the name of Pelagius brought forth the heresy that had two major tenets of error. The first was that the fall of Adam has no direct bearing on man’s ability to do that which is good, and therefore man doesn’t inherit from Adam the sin nature, which is the bent to do evil continuously. The second was that Grace is available equally to all persons and it consists of man’s free will to choose or apprehend God.

Pelagius was saying that man, based on his own merit, can choose God. God’s predestinating of persons is based entirely on His foreseeing goodness in the individual’s life and knowing this He would choose that individual as a candidate for salvation. The early church father Augustine fought this heresy which ultimately led to the condemnation and demise of the doctrine by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. This, however, was not the end of Pelagianism. It continued to prevail in a semi-Pelagian mode whereby some have called it a doctrine of “synergism”, which holds that man must HELP God in His salvation. This semi-Pelagian system does acknowledge that Adam’s fall caused man to inherit his sinful nature, but says man still can make good choices.

This semi-Pelagian system is predominate in contemporary Christianity. Most of the present day Pentecostals/Charismatics, Evangelicals and Baptists hold to some form of this free will doctrine. The present form of belief that man has FREE WILL comes from the teachings of Jacob Arminius, a Dutch reformed pastor (1560-1609). The interesting note is that most of those who hold this form of salvic belief do not realize that it was condemned as heretical. Therefore, even though a person confesses Jesus Christ as their Lord, yet still somewhere in the deep recesses of their heart believe that they are a little bit good and not dead in sin, totally separated from God. Their confession is not Biblically valid. Eph 2:5 says “we were dead in sins”. Dead means dead. Sin dominated our lives.

Mother Theresa was known to say that other systems of religion can get one to God and heaven; if this was true of her, then she is Biblically incorrect and could not be in Christ. Although she did many wonderful deeds, the Bible would consider her a lost humanitarian sinner. All her good works would not help her in the least to secure her salvation in Jesus Christ. This is the danger of Arminians or any system where man has to cooperate with God for salvation.

In many Pentecostal churches you have the same people going forward every week when the altar call is given, because under the Arminian system of “works salvation” a person feels as though they can lose their salvation and has to get saved again and again. The Roman Catholic system is another “works salvation” system whereby your salvation is in jeopardy from week to week. A person can say they love the Lord and be a devout Christian, yet be as lost as a goat. There are many scriptures in the Bible that show this truth, but one of the clearest is Eph 2:8-9. Did you notice it says “not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Man cannot do anything to help God with salvation, it is all God, Amen!

Finally, if you are truly saved by the gracious hand of God, we find that by its very nature the Christian life represents something quite different from the way in which we previously lived. We were once “dead in sins” totally separated from God, but now we have a “new life” in Jesus Christ. 2Co 5:17 In that new life in Jesus Christ we should find some proofs of genuine true Christianity, and I’m not talking about things like visible morality, religious involvement, intellectual knowledge, an active ministry and even a conviction of sin. These are outward evidences that neither prove nor disprove a person’s faith. A true Christian will demonstrate genuine humility, a love for God, true repentance, separation from the world, spiritual growth, continual prayer and study, selfless and obedient living. These are the evidences that show the fruit of true Christianity. If these are the things that characterize your life then you can have the assurance that you’re one of God’s elect and He is preserving you as you persevere day by day. Amen!