The Order Of Salvation
The Bible has so much to say about the doctrine of salvation. It is one of the great cornerstone doctrines of the Christian faith. It is the bright hope that humans can be forgiven of their rebellion against God and brought back into right relationship with Him. And, it is this doctrine, understood rightly, that launched what we now call the Protestant Reformation. To say that it is monumentally important is a great understatement indeed!
But, it is also a doctrine that is greatly misunderstood. Why? Let me offer you two reasons.
1) The Bible does not say everything that can be known about salvation in a single passage. It does not lay out the entire doctrine in a single verse. So, if we want to understand the doctrine Biblically, we will need to consult the entire counsel of God’s Word. That is the only way and few endeavor to find it.
2) I think it is also difficult to understand because the Bible does not arrange all of the concepts about salvation in chronological order. There are some teachings that tell us what God is doing in the present to save us, others speak about what God will do in the future to save us, and still others describe what God has already been done in the past to save us. When you consider that the passages are not organized in any sort of linear order and that they are scattered all throughout the Bible, it is no wonder so many fail to understand.
My hope is to erase that confusion in this blog.
To do that, I will pull from the most relevant passages in all the Bible on salvation. I will arrange those passages in the order that God executes or accomplishes them in the life of the believer. And I will begin with the most distant historical events and work my way to the most future.
My goal is twofold. First, I want to lay this all of this out in easy to understand language that is clear and brief. I do not want to inundate you with everything we could say, but to give you a clear picture of what the Bible does say. Second, I want you to have joy, knowing God has been working in the past, present, and future to save you. My prayer is that you will see this more clearly than you have ever seen it before, which will cause you to worship more ardently than you ever have before.
So with that, let us begin with what God did to save you in the past.
GOD’S SAVING WORK IN THE PAST
Foreknowledge
God has always existed and He has been thinking perfect thoughts for an eternity. This is important to understand and we call that foreknowledge.
Before God said, “Let there be light”, He had already knew He was going to save you. He knew this before there were seconds in a day, before their were atoms in motion, and before there were photons racing around the universe. Before the invention of time, God knew you, and knew you would be His. That is astounding.
Paul says in Romans 8:29
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
The meaning of that is simple. God has always known you. And always known that you would be His child. This is amazing!
Predestination
But, it is even better than that! He not only knew everything about you, including that fact that you would end up in His family, He also willed that this would be so. He not only knew it, He chose it. He decided it. He determined it. This is called predestination.
Predestination means “to determine a destination beforehand”. More simply, it is to choose where a person will end up before that person arrives there. So, in the context of salvation, God not only knew the outcome of our lives (Foreknowledge), He also determined the destiny of our lives through predestination. He decided to choose His people, knowing who we would become in our sin, with His perfect sovereign choice, in order to ensure that we would end up right where He desired. In His arms.
Paul says in Ephesians 1:4-5
He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will
Do you see what Paul is saying?
God kindly and graciously chose His people to be in Christ Jesus before Jesus even came. He chose the benefits of the cross to be applied to us before He made the world and before Christ died. If you are a Christian, you were eternally determined to be clothed with the robes of Christ. And that decision was not based on on the good things we would do, He chose people who would be wicked and unholy to make them blameless and holy through Jesus. And He did that because He is infinitely creative and kind.
A Quick Note On A Very Big Word (Supralapsarianism)
I think that theologians make up really big words to feel special about themselves. My theory is that theologians need more friends and far more hugs so that they will not find their identity in big words… But, I could be mistaken.
Either way, supralapsarianism is not a complicated concept even though it is a complicated word. It just means that God chose His people before humanity sinned. He did not wait for Adam and Eve to fall, He chose them and all of us before that even happened.
Now, we know this is true from the above two verses, but this makes people nervous. Because if God chose you and I before Adam and Eve sinned, that means God created Adam and Eve knowing that they would fall. That means He not only allowed it to happen, He designed human history and the redemption of His people around the fact that it certainly would happen. To say it more simply, when God determined to save His people, He also determined that a fallen world was necessary for that purpose.
This does not mean that God authored the evil or the sin. May it never be! But it does mean that He chose to make the world knowing it would collapse into wickedness. And apparently, this was the most glorious story for God to tell. Instead of creating the world and human beings to be perfect, God made a people who would fall, a people who would need rescuing, and a people who could only be delivered by His Son.
He created the world knowing Jesus Christ would die for His people. We may wonder why God would make the world in this way, but let us not forget that He made it knowing His own Son would need to die. He made the world with real skin in the game, quite literally. And this was the story that God determined to tell.
PROTOEVANGELIUM (First Gospel)
In Genesis 1 and 2, God made the world that He knew would fall. He created the world by giving chaos order. But, in Genesis 3, that world led by humans abruptly fell, plunging the cosmos back into the state of chaos from which it came. This is where redemption ceases being an idea in God’s mind and begins being a reality in space and time.
While God had already foreknew and predestined redemption for HIs people, in Genesis 3:15 He announces it. About a week into His creation project, God offers humans the first glimpse of His eternal plan, which is that His eternal Son would be crushed to make atonement for their sin.
God said to the serpent in Genesis 3:15:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
As early as Genesis 3, God announced that His eternal plan to save His predestined people, was not thwarted by their sin. On the contrary, He created the world knowing it would fall and ready to send His Son.
With that, the rest of the Old Testament is the story of how ruined sinners plunge into deeper and deeper darkness while the remnant of God’s people await His serpent crushing Son to come and free them from the Satan.
Atonement
At just the right time, after thousands of years of sin and darkness, where people were subjugated under the rule of the serpent, God brought His rule and reign back to earth through His Son. The same Son He promised in Genesis 3 was born of a virgin, inaugurated God’s Kingdom on earth, and spent 33 years showcasing it, preaching it, and living it before His people.
At the end of Jesus’ life, the serpent loving people took Him, killed Him, and crushed Him on the cross, making it look like the story of redemption collapsed in utter defeat. But in so doing, they unintentionally fulfilled the plan of God. For in piercing God’s one and only Son, they accomplished for God what God eternally determined to do (Acts 2:23). This act by Christ was an intentional act to make the payment for our redemption.
Think about it this way. God foreknew us, and predestined us, to be delivered by His Son. He chose us knowing how much it would cost Him. And at Calvary Jesus paid the price for His Father’s decision. There was nothing accidental about it.
The Apostle Peter says it like this:
and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.
As we have seen, God laid the entire foundation for our salvation in the past. He knew us and chose us in eternity, He made promises at the beginning of history to deliver us, and 2000 years ago He purchased that salvation that was chosen and promised on the cross. It really is breathtaking.
But how does He apply that salvation to us who live in the present?
GOD’S SAVING WORK IN THE PRESENT
Gospel Drawing
After all that God has done in the past to choose us, promise us, and pay for us, that salvation still needed to be applied to us. God knew we were chosen. We did not. We were born temporally under the power of sin. We were born ignorant of His calling. So, God determined to take everything that He had been working in the past for us, and apply that to us in our present. He did not determine to have us born righteous or born with understanding. He chose to allow us to experience the depths of sin, before awakening us to His eternal calling.
The way God wakes us up, is by drawing us to His Son. Jesus tells us in 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.
God’s eternal choice to save His sinful people intersects with His temporal work to draw His people. To say that another way, those whom God chose in eternity will come to God in time because God decided to allow them to be born under the power of sin, so that He alone could draw them out. And whether the sinner realizes it or not, most of their life is the story of how the sovereign God was drawing them, dragging them, and pulling them away from their sin and towards the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Gospel Calling
The way God draws His people to Jesus is through the preaching and sharing of His Gospel. Paul tells us that this is the way people come to Jesus (Romans 10:14-15) because the Gospel is God’s chosen means and power (Rom. 1:16) to wake His eternally chosen people up.
This teaches us that every single Christian, who was predestined by God to come, will eventually come to Him because of the Gospel. Whether they hear it preached in a church (1 Cor. 1:18), explained by someone during the week (Acts 8:26-40), or simply read to them (Rom 1:16); every single person who was chosen by God in the past, at some point in their lifetime will be confronted with and awakened by the Gospel in the present. This is just the beginning.
Regeneration
Once God gets the sinner in front of His Gospel and uses His Gospel to wake them up, He puts new life inside of them. He takes formerly dead souls that were incapable of seeing Him and He causes them to burst forth from the tombs of sin and pulsate with new life for the first time. Why? He does this so that they will be able to choose Jesus.
Because, in our sin, no human being would choose Jesus. And since God has chosen His people to be saved, He graciously awakens them with the Gospel, and gives them the new life power to be able to choose His Son. Let us say it this way, when we choose Jesus, we choose Him with an alien power that was given to us through regeneration.
Paul describes this in Titus 3:5
He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
Paul is showing us that we choose Jesus (a righteous work), not by our power. We have none! We make that choice for Jesus because God got us in front of His Gospel, and then deposited His new life power into us so we could understand it and respond to it. But there is more.
Conversion
Once the Gospel awakens the sinner and God gifts them the new life power to choose His Son, they are converted. That power fuels them in a new found hatred and sorrow over their sin as well as a new found love and desire for Christ and righteous living. This power would have been impossible for them just moments earlier. But with the help of God, they are no longer acting in accordance with their sin nature, but according to the new creation nature given them.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:10
For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
Once eternally chosen, God drawn, Christ-redeemed, Gospel awakened sinners are given new regenerating life from God, that new life propels them into deep sorrow over sin and new desires for righteousness that converts them to Christ as their only hope. This, Paul tells us, leads them further onward toward salvation, because the process of salvation is not completed at conversion.
Justification
At the same time that a person is converted, they are also justified. This means that they not only believe in Jesus, but are surgically connected to Jesus so that He will forever be in them as they are in Him. This happens when God makes an astounding and necessary legal declaration called justification that binds the sins of the believer to Jesus and binds the righteousness of Christ to the sinner, so that the two become one flesh.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Amazingly, Jesus already paid for all of our sins 2000 years ago on the cross. And those sins no longer have any power because He left them dead in the grave when He was raised. He died once for all for all our sins and accrued an infinite supply of righteousness to share with His people that is applied to us when we are converted. When we believe, God legally dismisses the case against us and gives us the righteous merit Jesus accrued on the cross to be our treasure. That binds us to Him in such a way that the writers of Scripture can say that we are actually “In Him” (Gal. 2:20).
Adoption
After God binds us to Jesus so that we are in Him, He brings us into His family through Jesus. We becomes sons and daughters by being in the true son. God adopts us into His family as His true children with Christ as our true older brother.
Paul describes our adoption in Galatians 4:5-7 when He says:
So that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
Notice that the same God who eternally chose us, has done everything to have us. At His own expense He brought us into His family. Today, we call Him Father, because He did everything to make us His kids.
Sanctification
As Paul demonstrated in the verse above, becoming a child of God comes with an incredible blessing that is crucial to our salvation. We not only become His kids, we are indwelled by His Spirit, who makes us look like Jesus over the course of a life time. Think about it this way, we are adopted into an eternal divine family (Father, Son, and Spirit) that we do not look like, act like, think. like and do not deserve to be a part of. But God, by sheer grace, brings us into His family by the work of His Son and graciously makes us look like that family by the work of His Spirit.
Like a child through the effects of nature and nurture will come to look like their parents, so we come to look like God through justification (our new nature) and sanctification (God’s plan to nurture us).
But, even this is not the end of the story. Because while God did all of this to save us, He is also preserving us, keeping us, and protecting us for the full culmination of that salvation in eternity. Think about it this way: He chose us in eternity for eternity. That means He chose us, bought us, draws us, awakens us, converts us, justifies us, adopts us, and sanctifies us so that He can prepare us to live with Him forever.
GOD’S SAVING WORK IN THE FUTURE
Perseverance
The same God who chose us will preserve us. The one who began that good work in eternity past will see it to completion in eternity future, which easily means we cannot lose our salvation. If we ever were saved we will remain saved because that detail was chosen before time and space began. What is happening to us now is the working out of God’s eternal plan that He began and will complete. Paul admits this in Philippians 1:6 when he says:
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
The day of Christ Jesus, is the day that He returns to call His people home. It is the day that God’s time and space work ends. It is the day, when the final Christian, chosen by God, is born on earth, drawn to the Gospel, awakened, converted, justified, adopted, sanctified, and preserved. When that happens, God will end human history, begin eternity, and make His dwelling with the family He selected in eternity. His final work will be to glorify His people.
Glorification
Paul says in Colossians 3:4
When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
He is telling us this so we will not be confused. Christ is our life. We did not choose life, we did not turn to God, we did not choose to be a Christian, we could not justify ourselves, convert ourselves, adopt ourselves, or perfect our selves. We are who we are because His life is coursing through our veins. We are who we are because God has done everything to save us. And what we await now is the return of our great Lord to do His final remaining work in us... Glorification.
On the last day, He will return in glory to call us into glory. He will make us to be like He now is (1 John 3:2). Those who are dead will be reunited with a new and glorified body, while those who are living will be caught up into a glorified body as they meet Christ in the air (1 Thes. 4:16-17). In that new body, we will be ushered into a brand new heaven and earth that has been freed from the plague of sin and death where we will live with our God forevermore. (See Revelation 22)
This is what salvation is. It was a plan God decided to enact in eternity past. It is a plan God has been working out in our present time and space. And it is a plan that will culminate in the future when we are brought into eternity with God. This is not a plan that we can choose, we must be chosen. This is not a plan we can lose, we are being held. And when we understand that, we understand the pure joy that is available for all who are His!
THE ORDER OF SALVATION
He always knew us.
He chose us in eternity
He promised us salvation in Eden
He paid for that salvation on Calvary.
He drew us to salvation by His power
He called us to salvation with the Gospel
He regenerated us to choose Jesus
In that choice we were converted
In our conversion we were justified
In our justification we were adopted
In our adoption we are being sanctified
As we are being sanctified we are being preserved
And we are being preserved for eternal glory!
