Definite Redemption

  "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,  just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep."

John 10:14-15

      I remember as a youngster just sitting there thinking about my eternal salvation. As a church kid I had been told time and again that I would go to hell if I sinned and that I needed Jesus to come into my heart. All I had to do was ask. Then I heard countless sermons describing something known as backsliding. That is to say, after being saved a person can then "slide" into sin thereby nullifying his salvation. This of course, all hinged on accepting and subsequently keeping the free gift offered by Jesus Christ to every human being on the face of the planet. So there I was, literally "tripping out" for lack of a better phrase, over whether or not I, the person known as Dan Peterman, would be in Heaven with God when I died. I would allow my mind to go back and forth looking at the only two realities of the state of my being after death I knew to be true from Scripture; this destiny I had that God knew, but I did not.  You see, I also understood as a boy that if God is actually God, then He knows all things from beginning to end. The ramifications of all these things meant that although I did not know if I would make it, God did, and it was set in stone. So I just wasted time looking at the vascilating paradox of the unknown absolute of my eternal salvation.
      It has been said that bad theology will ruin your life. Without going into detail, let's just say that I could be a poster child for this statement. While I am thankful for being raised with a general Biblical worldview, the quality of that worldview left much to be desired. The blame for this rests solely at the foot of the church as for the last hundred years she has promulgated wrong-headed theology and compromised the Gospel. Did you know that nowhere in Scripture does it say that we must, "ask Jesus into our heart"? Additionally, and more importantly, nowhere does the Bible describe God ever losing those He has saved.

      Praise God for His amazing grace and His divine sovereignty! Just as Christ is constantly intercessing to bring about any good at all through church organizations despite many and varied shortcomings, so it is that the Holy Spirit reveals the true nature of God to those whom He chooses.

      The fact is, what Christ accomplished on the cross was definite and final for all those He has decided to save! This is the greatest news we could ever hear for at the end of the day, when we are alone and honest with ourselves, we know that there is no way we could ever do anything whatsoever to gain or keep the righteousness required to exist with God for all eternity. In fact, most of the time we fail miserably as Christians to follow Christ's commands. In other words, nothing you or I can ever do will trump what Christ has done on the cross. What He has done will prove out in the lives of His elect and it can never nor will it ever be undone.

I give them eternal life, 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 10:28-29


        Are you a Universalist? That is, do you believe that God will ultimately save everyone and no one will go to hell? If so, you are believing in something un-Biblical. Likewise, when we say that Christ died for everyone meaning that He took their sins upon Himself then we make Him out to be a liar and a failure, because we know people go to hell. Take a moment to think about it before contnuing on with what you have been told. If Christ has died for a sinner, then that sinner is saved. Period. If the sinner for whom Christ dies were to go to hell, then his sins would be paid for twice and Christ would have failed. This view that Christ died for all, but that His death has no saving effect without an added faith and repentance not forseen in His death is what we would term a Hypothetical Universalism. This too, is completely un-Biblical.
 
       We may say that Christ reconciled the whole world to Himself, but He REDEEMED a certain people. That is, by His atonement on the cross is the enemy bruised and by the longsuffering of God because of Christ's sacrifice does the world still turn on its axis and men still roll out of bed in the morning. At the same time, by His imputation of righteousness into the accounts of the elect and the propitiation of our sins onto Him, based on nothing in us but based on everything in Christ, are men saved to the uttermost! This is our assurance! This is our blessed song!
 

        Telling people they can lose their salvation has been a man-made way of scaring folks into holy living. This camp of believers will say in opposition that if we tell someone that they will be saved to the uttermost then they will live like hell! To this I say that man will always test God as far as he can if left to his own schemes. Seeing God as someone who cannot even hold on to what He has picked up, will cause man to live more dangerously than if he sees God as actually God! If he sees God as forever shaping and sanctifying that which God has justified, causing him to look forward to when he will be glorified, well my friends, then he will forever be seeking his ultimate joy and reward in the giver of all these things!
     The doctrine of Limited Atonement or Definite Atonment and the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints are closely linked. What we are talking about is the fact that Christ on the cross said,
                             "It is Finished."
      Christ has saved a people on Calvary. That day were many preserved unto election, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and eventual glorification.
      Likewise, eternal life is just that.... eternal. It is a gift from God that one can never lose, because it is not theirs to lose. It is God's, He is the giver, and He has promised that it is eternal and will never fade.
 If someone finds themselves without Christ when they die, then you can be assured they were never regenerated at any point in their life.

      The reality is Christ died for a particular people. This does not mean that we do not proclaim the Gospel to the entire world. The New Testament teaches that God chose for Himself  a great number of the fallen race and sent Christ into the world to save them. Christ is said to have died for a certain people, with the clear impliction that His death secured their salvation. Without questioning the infinite worth of Christ's sacrifice or the genuineness of God's sincere invitation to all who hear the Gospel, we see clearly from Scripture that Christ in dying intended to take away the sins of God's elect, and to ensure that they would all be brought to faith through regeneration and preserved through faith for glory.

           Before He died Christ prayed for those the Father had given Him and not for the world.
"I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.  All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them."
John 17:9-10


           Sound doctrines like Limited Atonement were what I was missing as a child, and you can be certain my own children will have these prescious truths of the nature of God written on the tables of their hearts.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:37-39