Exploring the doctrine of salvation—how sinners are saved by grace through faith in Christ.
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7045. Scripture says plainly that Jesus died for all, and just as plainly that not everyone will be saved. Put those two statements next to each other and many people feel a contradiction opening up. Either the death of Jesus did not accomplish what it set out to do, or the all is not…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 7043. Unlimited atonement is my answer to the oldest question in this discussion: for whom did Jesus die? Did He die for every human being who has ever lived, or only for those who would finally believe? The question sounds abstract until you are sitting with a dying man who wants to know whether…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7041. The perseverance of the saints, or final perseverance, is the fifth point of the Calvinist system, and it teaches that everyone God has chosen will certainly continue in faith and holiness to the end. The elect cannot fall away finally, and anyone who does fall away permanently demonstrates by that fact that their…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7040. Prevenient grace is a term drawn mainly from Wesleyan and Arminian theology, and the word prevenient simply means going before. It describes a work of God in a person that comes before conversion, enabling a response that would otherwise be impossible. The doctrine exists to answer a genuine problem: if sin has damaged…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07039. Limited atonement, also called particular redemption or definite atonement, is the third point of the Calvinist system and the one that causes most trouble even inside Calvinism itself. It teaches that Jesus did not die for every human being, but died specifically and efficaciously for the elect, so that the cross actually secured…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07038. Irresistible grace, sometimes called efficacious or effectual grace, is the fourth point of the Calvinist system. It teaches that when God sets out to save one of His elect, that saving work cannot fail and cannot finally be refused. The person will come, and will come willingly, because God has changed the will…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07037. The phrase eternal covenant appears at several points in Scripture, and the question it raises is a fair one: what makes a covenant eternal, and which covenant is being spoken of? The answer matters more than it might first appear, because covenants are the framework on which the whole storyline of the Bible…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07036. The argument between Calvinism and Arminianism has been running for four centuries and shows no sign of tiring, which tells you either that the questions are unanswerable or that they matter enormously. I think it is the second. What is at stake is how God saves, what human beings contribute, for whom Jesus…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07035. Effectual calling is the Reformed teaching that alongside the outward call of the gospel, which goes to everybody who hears a sermon, there is an inward call which God issues only to the elect and which always achieves what it was sent to do. On this understanding the outward call can be refused…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07034. Predestination and foreknowledge are two words that make many Christians flinch, and the flinching usually has more to do with what they have heard about the words than with what the Bible does with them. Predestination sounds like fatalism. Foreknowledge sounds like a divine spreadsheet. Neither impression survives an honest look at the…