Stott on the Cross of Christ

The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 160

No Half-Jesus

Jesus will not be divided. People have tried. Even those closest to him.

In Mark 8:27-33, Peter tried to divide Jesus. After Peter proclaimed Jesus to be the Christ—the Messiah, the King—Jesus prophesied of his own death that would make him the Savior.

Peter’s immediate response is to divide Jesus by trying to prevent Jesus from going to the cross. You see, Peter liked a King Jesus, one with great miracles, great teaching, and great power; he didn’t like a Savior Jesus, one who would be rejected and die.

Jesus called him Satan for this division because Jesus will not be divided. Peter, by trying to have a half-Jesus, was acting as a tool of Satan.

Interestingly, in the very next verses, Jesus now calls the crowd to him. He is no longer speaking only to his disciples, the already committed. He is now speaking to everyone. 

To this crowd, he warns them against accepting him as Savior but not as Lord. These are people who want the Savior Jesus but do not want the King Jesus. They want to live as their own master, while pretending to trust in someone else as Jesus. They want Jesus on the cross, but they do not want to pick up their own cross.

To these, Jesus says, “If you are going to follow me, then you are going to have to follow me. To fail to deny yourself and take up the cross is to lose your existence—your life, your soul, the very thing you are trying to save.” And that life is lost at the return of Christ when Jesus is ashamed of you.

I think it very difficult to make the case that Jesus is saying merely that he will be embarrassed by one of his children at his second coming. I think he is saying what he says in Matthew 7 and other places: “Depart from me. I never knew you.” Or Matthew 10:33 where Jesus says, “I will deny him before my Father in heaven.”

You can pretend that Jesus is calling on those already committed to take some extra step of commitment to discipleship. But I think it hard to reconcile that with the fact that Jesus is speaking to the crowd, not the core. And I think it hard to reconcile that with the fact that Jesus ties eternity to it. And I think it hard to reconcile with the fact that the Bible, the New Testament which is our final rule of faith and practice, has no apparent use for a distinction between salvation and discipleship, between the saved and the disciples. And if Jesus had no room for that, either in his own ministry or in his early church, then we must question why there are some who pretend to know more than Jesus did.

You see, Jesus will not be divided. He will not be a King without being a Savior. And he will not be a Savior without being a King.

Yes, it’s a hard saying.

But it’s Jesus’ saying.

And we have no right to say anything else.

Horton on Election

Horton answers the charge that Election is unfair. How can God tell people, “Sorry, folks, but you’re just no on the list'”?

I believe that the accusation of God’s injustice in choosing one person and no another is rooted in the fact that we have really lost our doctrine of grace. We no longer really believe that nobody deserves salvation. We no longer really believe that God could send us all to hell without giving us time to think about it, and that this would be perfectly just. If we did believe that people were saved in spite of the fact that they really do deserve the very opposite, election would appear to us to be a very logical as well as biblical conclusion …

Election does not exclude anybody from the kingdom of God who wants in. Rather, it includes in God’s kingdom those whose direction is away from the kingdom of God and those who would otherwise remain forever in the kingdom of sin and death. …

None of have the faintest idea of what life would be like if God gave us what we deserve. For example, we don’t even deserve the air we breathe, having declared our independence from the God who supplies it everyday.

—Michael Horton, Putting Amazing Back into Grace, pp. 78-79.

Why People Go to Hell

One of the core elements of biblical evangelical theology is that people die and go to hell. While that doctrine is distasteful to many, and should be hard for anyone to preach gladly, it is what the Bible teaches and what the church has historically believed. It is hard to imagine that one will long be an evangelical after denying the reality of eternal conscious torment. However, my point here is not to address the reality of hell, but to think for a moment about why people go there.

It is common to hear people say something like, “People do not go to hell for their sins because Jesus died for all sin. They go to only only for their unbelief.”

Let’s consider this along two lines. First, the Bible plainly declares that people go to hell for their sins. For instance, Revelation 21:8 says, “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” It is hard to imagine that the list of sins is somehow not a part of the reason that they are there.

Second, unbelief is a sin (cf. Revelation 21:8 for starters). If Jesus died for all sin, then he must also have died for the sin of unbelief. Therefore, their unbelief, like all their other sins, would have been paid for. So why would they be in hell for a sin that was paid for?

If the sin of unbelief was not paid for, then unbelief is a sin that is atoned for by doing something, namely, by believing. That is to say that Jesus atoned for all sins but unbelief, and we atone for unbelief by belief. It becomes, in effect, a self-salvation, or salvation by replacement of one thing for another. One might as well deny the reality of hell as affirm the possibility of self-atonement.

“Well,” one might object, “unbelief is not a sin.”

Then we must ask why would one be punished in hell for eternity for something that was not even wrong to begin with? And why is it listed along with other sins in places like Revelation 21:8, Titus 1:15, and 2 Thessalonians 2:12.

People who usually make this argument do so, at least in part, as an argument about fairness, that it would be unfair for God to pay only for the sins of some and not the sins of others. The idea of fairness is crying out for a post, and perhaps shall have its own soon. But to entertain the argument, how is it fair for God to send someone to eternal conscious torment for something that was not wrong? It makes no sense.

Yes, this is, in some sense an argument for a limited atonement of some sort. Before you cry foul, remember that everyone (except universalists) limits the atonement in some way, either in its provision or its application or both.

But I think there are some who need to think a bit more rigorously about the idea that people do not go to hell for sin; they go for unbelief.

Hopefully, this might jumpstart a thought or two.

Say What? Ordo Salutis Edition

It is reported that someone recently said: “No offense, but there is no ordo salutis in John 6; but there is ‘believe.’”

It leaves me wondering about John 6:40:

This is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."

Does it seem clear that belief precedes glorification? This is why most ordos have belief prior to glorification.

What about John 6:44:

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.

Assuming that “come” is virtually synonymous with “believe” (as vv. 35, 37 seem to make clear, and I can’t imagine anyone would disagree, though I have been accused of having a weak imagination), isn’t it clear that drawing of the Father precedes belief, and belief precedes glorification. So here we have drawing, belief, glorification. That, my friends, is an ordo salutis.

What about John 6:65:

And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”

Not to be pedantic with the text, but isn’t it clear that “coming” (see above) comes after the “granting”?

If the above comment that started this post is a proper representation of what was said, perhaps we have another reason why some are dissatisfied with institutional fundamentalism: Too many of them preach in spite of the text, and not because of it. They preach whatever they believe, and the text becomes a prop for it. They will easily gloss or ignore whatever does not make their point, or whatever makes it weaker.

Define coming, drawing, giving, belief, granting however you will. It is impossible to say that John 6 has no ordo salutis.

Wait, I take that back. It is obviously possible to say it.

Perhaps the greatest need in fundamentalism is a revival of studying the Word itself.