Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07094 Few theological questions carry more pastoral weight than this one. Get it wrong in one direction and you have added a human work to the gospel, corrupting the message of grace. Get it wrong in the other direction and you have effectively disconnected baptism from any serious obligation, reducing it to a personal…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7046 Union with Christ is one of the richest and most comprehensive concepts in the New Testament, and it functions as the theological foundation on which virtually every other aspect of salvation rests. It is also among the most underappreciated. Believers who have sat under solid Bible teaching for years can sometimes be unfamiliar…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7047 The phrase “in Christ” appears in Paul’s letters more frequently than almost any other expression, and yet it tends to wash over readers without registering its full weight. It is not filler language or pious decoration. It is Paul’s most concentrated shorthand for the most fundamental thing that is true of a person…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 7041 “The perseverance of the saints” is a technical term from Reformed and Calvinist theology where it forms the fifth point in what has become known as the five points of Calvinism. But the underlying question it addresses, whether genuine believers can lose their salvation and what the relationship is between present faith and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7043 Did Christ die for every human being who has ever lived, or only for those who would ultimately believe? The question of the extent of the atonement is one of the most theologically significant in Christian history, and the answer has practical consequences that reach all the way into how the gospel is…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7045 Scripture repeatedly and plainly states that Jesus died for all people, and yet it is equally plain that not everyone will be saved. For some, this seems like a genuine tension requiring a theological resolution. Understanding how the biblical picture holds together not only resolves the apparent difficulty but opens up the full…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07039 Limited atonement — also called particular redemption or definite atonement — is the third point of the Calvinist TULIP system and, arguably, the most contested. Even within Calvinist circles, this doctrine has generated significant debate, with many who accept the other four points declining to follow the argument here. The doctrine claims that…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 7040 “Prevenient grace” is a term drawn primarily from Wesleyan and Arminian theology, and it addresses a question that no serious theology of salvation can sidestep: given that the fall has seriously affected human nature, how is it possible for any person to respond to the gospel at all? Understanding what the doctrine claims,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07036 The debate between Calvinism and Arminianism is one of the most enduring in Protestant theology, and it touches on questions that cannot be avoided by anyone who takes Scripture seriously: Is salvation ultimately God’s choice or the human’s? Does God’s rule over all things override human freedom, or do they coexist? Can a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07038 Irresistible grace — sometimes called effectual grace or efficacious grace — is the fourth point of the Calvinist TULIP system. It is the doctrine that God’s saving work in the elect cannot fail and cannot be resisted: when God determines to bring a person to salvation, He works in them in such a…