Assurance

Dear friends, we've been looking at a series that we call the Reformed Distinctives. What is there about our Christian Reformed churches that puts, yes, something an ethos on us that's maybe different from some of the other Christian churches. And we do so not in the boast that we are better or we've got it all together and they haven't. But at the same time, I think we have some strengths that we would love to share with our other Christians and other brothers and sisters. And today we want to look at what we call the doctrines of grace.

Now I want to go back again to the time of the Reformation, and if you know your world history, you will know that right during that time, the Muslim Turks were trying to invade Europe, and they almost got as far as Vienna. And Christianity said, well, whatever else, we don't want the Muslims here, so let us make a peace between Protestants and Catholics so that we can together fight this threat of Islam at the back door. And so they came up with a treaty known as the Treaty of Augsburg. And when it came to the matter of religion, they basically said, now, if you don't speak Latin, that means let whoever reigns decide what the religion will be. So if you had a king or a prince who was Roman Catholic, then you as a citizen were expected to be Roman Catholic.

But if your king or prince were Lutheran or Reformed, you would follow in that faith. Now, this did mean that if you felt bad about being in the wrong place, you could then go to another place where they did cater to your belief. So it was a kind of temporary solution that helped many people. But it also caused a bit of confusion because what happens if your king dies and the next guy to come along holds a different faith? And that's in fact what happened in Heidelberg because they started off with a Roman Catholic elector.

It wasn't a king, but the elector was the one who ruled. And his son became a Lutheran. Well, that was great, but his son turned to the Reformed faith. His son said, well, no, I think I'll go back to the Lutheran position again, and there were all kinds of reasons for that, marriages and so on, you know how it goes. But the people were wondering, what are we supposed to believe?

And there were actually a bit of fisticuffs going on in one church service over the matter of how do we do the Lord's Supper today? Do we do it in the Reformed way or the Lutheran way? And I don't want to give the idea it's all that different except for that Lutherans do believe that the bread, while it still looks like bread, is actually the body of Christ, and we say, no. It stands for the body of Christ. But the other matter on which Lutherans and Reformed were not quite in agreement is on the question of whether you could know you were saved.

In the Lutheran church, it was said, well, as long as you're a Christian, you know you're headed on the way of salvation. But if you should depart from that path, then you will be lost. And so the Reformed held another position that once you know you're a child of Christ, you know you will always be saved. That's guaranteed. And in Heidelberg then, the Lutheran king actually called two theologians.

One was a friend of his dead son, and he was Reformed, not Lutheran, earnestness, and I forget the other one now. But, anyway, he asked him to put together this catechism that we know is the Heidelberg Catechism. And I would like for the first question and answer of this Heidelberg Catechism to come up, and I'm gonna ask you the question and expect you to answer. What is your only comfort in life and in death? Life and in death to my faithful saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious work and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.

He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. And that represented the Reformed position, and it's a great comfort to us, one that we wouldn't want to lose. We have assurance because we belong to Christ, and nothing can separate us from the love of God as we just read in Romans. And the key here is that it's not our faithfulness that determines whether we will be saved, but it's God's faithfulness, and it's that that gives us assurance that we belong to Christ. Now later on in the Netherlands, this was again challenged by a few that we know as Arminianism, and it wasn't just in the Netherlands, which you found it in various Reformed churches, but came to a head in the Netherlands.

And therefore, the Reformed churches decided to have a special synod to look into this question, and the synod was held at the town of Dort. And what we find is it wasn't a synod of Dutch churches. Now all the Reformed churches were invited, and they came a far away from Hungary and from Scotland and, well, all kinds of little princedoms in Germany and the provinces of the Netherlands all had separate church bodies. They sent their delegates, and they put together the document that we know as the Canons of Dort. Nothing to do with shooting cannons, but meaning the rules of Dort.

And we know them today probably by the acronym TULIP. Right? If you remember, it stands for Total Depravity, etcetera, and, well, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints. Yeah, just had to think of that a moment. Now, there are people today who said, oh, that Synod of Dort, that is the height of scholasticism.

These were scholars trying to argue on a logical basis how we are saved. Well, if anybody says that to you, ask them, have you ever read the Canons? And I bet you, they'll say no, if they're honest. Because if you read those Canons, you realise it's not a logical exercise at all. These are people who are genuinely trying to bring Scripture together to give an answer to this question.

And, of course, the important aspect, again, of the synod was the question, can we have assurance of salvation? That's where the rubber hit the road. That's why we believe in doctrines like election and predestination because without those doctrines, you cannot have assurance of salvation. And so, there are many passages in Scripture to make it very clear that we can have such assurance. I think of John 6:37 and 39. All that the Father gives me will come to me, says Christ.

And whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He's given me, but raise them up on the last day. And again, we could go to 2 Thessalonians 3:3. But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

Notice it's the Lord's faithfulness. Hebrews 11:1, now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 1 Peter 1:5, here Peter writes of Christians as those who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. And in Jude 1:24, Jude gives the benediction to Him who is able to keep you from falling. Now what is the common factor in all these texts?

And I could have mentioned more. The common factor is that it is the Lord's doing. He is the one who preserves us. And instead of perseverance, it might be better to speak of preservation, recognising it doesn't depend on us.

Thank God because I wouldn't like it to depend on me. Would you like your salvation to depend on you? We know how fickle we are. Thank God, it doesn't depend on us, but it depends on God. And so we want to come to our text which we find in Romans 8:29 and 30.

For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called. And those He called, He also justified. And those He justified, He also glorified. Now Matthew Henry referred to the doctrines we have here as the golden chain which cannot be broken.

Notice how it says He foreknew them, He predestined them, He called them, He justified them, and He glorified them. And it's very clear here in the English as it is in the Greek that it's the same people He's talking about. It doesn't say, now some of those He foreknew He predestined, and some of those He called, and some of them were justified because others didn't follow or so. Now it's always the same group of people all the way through. None are left out.

And now we want to see how that works out then in the life of a Christian by looking at the past, looking at the present, and looking at the future. So in the past, it begins by saying those God foreknew. And this is where Arminian friends immediately say, see, God foreknew. He looked into the future, and he could see that you were gonna make a decision for Christ, and therefore, he says, I will choose him because I foresee what is gonna happen. Well, at first sight, it might look like they have a point here except for that the word translated as foreknew doesn't mean what we mean by foreknown.

Because there was a time when the Greek word for foreknew did mean that you knew something that was gonna happen in the future. But we all know that words change meaning. Now when you say this is terrific, do you mean it's terrifying? No. You probably mean the opposite.

Right? That word has changed meaning. When we explain something, do we think of laying out a tablecloth? Because that's what the word used to mean. You would explain a tablecloth.

What about words like cool, gay, gender, woman? We've seen how there's been debate about the meaning of these words, and people are trying to change the meaning to have a completely, sometimes opposite meaning of what it used to have. And that's true not just of the English language. That's true of all languages. And it's certainly true of that Greek word that we see here for know.

Yes. It used to mean know what's gonna happen in the future. But you see, in the Greek culture, something central to their worldview and religion was this shrine at Delphi where they had prophetesses. And if you wanted to know what was gonna happen to you, you would go to Delphi, and the prophetess would give you a prophecy. And she was so accurate supposedly that once you got the prophecy, it was gonna happen.

There was no way you were gonna dodge it. It became your fate. It became your destiny. It became your often doom, something that's inescapable. And if you know anything about Greek literature of those days before Christ, you will know that the most famous plays and so on are tragedies, and they're all about fate.

And perhaps I can mention one just to give an example. You probably heard the story of Oedipus. Now this was written by Sophocles around April, and he tells the story about how King Laius of the town of Thebes went to the Oracle at Delphi. And the Oracle of Delphi told him, King Laius, your wife is gonna give birth to a son, and the son is gonna grow up, kill you, and then marry your wife. Now as you can imagine, that's not something you want to happen.

And the king said, well, there's one way to stop this from happening. And when the boy was born, he called one of his soldiers out and said, here, take this boy out into the hills and kill him. And the soldier went, grabbed the baby, probably felt very bad about it, killing a baby, but then he heard some wolves howling and he said, you know what? I'm not gonna stick a sword in him. I'll let the wolves do the dirty work.

So he put the baby down and walked off. But before the wolves came to the crying baby, a farmer walked by and also heard the baby cry. And he found his little baby and said, oh, thank you, God. We wanted a baby, and here you've given us a baby, and he took the baby home. And Oedipus grew up. I can't remember if he knew he was adopted, but he did himself then get a prophecy, and that is that he was gonna kill his father and marry his mother.

That was his fate. And Oedipus also thought it wasn't a good idea, so he left home. He thought, well, if I leave home, then this won't happen. But as he travelled, he came close to Thebes, and there at the crossroads, he met this man and got into an argument. And, anyway, he stuck the man and he died.

Now as you can imagine from the story, this was his real father, the king of Thebes. And he then answered some riddle questions from trying to think of what it was guarding the town there. There was some mythical animal. And, anyway, because he was able to answer the riddle of the sphinx, yeah, of the sphinx, the queen said, oh, that was wonderful. Why don't you marry me?

And that, of course, was his mother. Now the point of the story was that once it has been predetermined, once it is foreknown, no matter what you do, you can try and escape it, but it's gonna happen. And that was the Greek worldview. And so the word foreknow didn't just mean looking into the future. No.

It began to mean foreordained. It was your destiny. There was no escaping it, and that's the way the Bible uses the word, which is very clear when you look at how the words, how it's used in Acts 2:23. This man, Jesus, was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. Now, obviously, it means more than God looked into the future and saw it was gonna happen.

It obviously meant it was God's purpose, as it says. 1 Peter 1:20, Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world. No. Sorry. We are foreknown.

No. Sorry. It is Christ. Yeah. Before the foundation of the world.

Now some versions actually translate the word as chosen or destined, but the ESV still uses the word foreknown because the Hebrew word knowledge means to have a relationship with, and so to foreknow means God wanted a relationship with us, but it was determined that this was to happen. And Galatians 4:9, but now that you know God or rather are known by God, shows that relationship where God foreknows us and calls us to be His own. And that brings us then to the present. So how does that come in our life? Well, we are called.

And what does that mean to be called? Does it mean an invitation? In one sense, yes. It's an invitation, and we read that in Scripture in Revelation 3:20, behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone opens, I will come in. Matthew 7:7, knock and the door will be opened to you.

Matthew 22, Luke 14, the parable of the guests who were invited to the banquet. Matthew 19, Luke 19, the rich young ruler who was invited was called to follow Christ. And this call, of course, calls for a response on our part, a decision. And therefore, I don't think there's anything wrong with singing something like, I have decided to follow Jesus because it is a decision we must make that we can make in the strength of God. And we know that that decision that we make is because of God's grace, but it's something we can rejoice in, that we can make such a decision, and it's right that we should sing about it.

But the calling is more than an invitation. It really is a summons. It really is a command. And to say no amounts to disobedience. It amounts to insubordination.

If the ruler of your country invites you to come, you better have a good reason if you're not going to come because, well, it's more than an invitation, isn't it? Especially in some circumstances, it will be a command. And so this is the sense in which the Bible uses the word calling. For example, Luke 5:32, it says, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. The problem is sinners are steeped in sin.

They are enslaved to Satan. In fact, they are spiritually dead. So how can they respond when God calls them? Now it's not a sight you see often in this country, but certainly in Africa, we often saw dead dogs along the road. And it might look like he's sleeping there and you can say, hey, Fido, stand up.

Stand up. Come on. Roll over. But no matter what you say, nothing's gonna happen because that dog is dead. Well, that's how it is in a sense with sinners.

We might be called to follow Christ, but we are dead, so we can't respond. And so we can only respond when God calls us, when He opens our heart to receive the gospel. We read about that again in our reading, how while we were dead in sin, God's grace came to us so that we could respond to Him. And that, of course, is talking about the miracle of the new birth. That's how it was experienced by people like Lydia where we read that the Lord opened her heart to give heed to the gospel.

And Christ explained this in some way to Nicodemus, who said, how can a man be born again? And Christ explains how we must be born of the Spirit so that we can be born again. And in this sense, those who are called are those who respond to the call in the Spirit's power. And that's why we are known as a church. The Greek word for church is ekklesia, and the word ekklesia means those who are called and, obviously, those who are called and responded to the call.

And we read in 1 Corinthians 1:9, God has called you into fellowship with His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And this kind of calling only happens to those God foreknew, those who He predestined. They have been called to become part of Christ's body, and we refer to this calling as the internal calling, the Spirit calling within us. And the other calling where people are invited to come to Christ, we refer to as the external calling. And when the Bible says that many are called, but few are chosen, the many called is the external calling, but a few who are chosen also have the internal calling or what we sometimes call effectual calling that has the right effect.

But that's not all that is involved because we then read that those who are called are justified. And that is a word that's very easy to remember what it means because justified means that we are just as if I'd never sinned, and that's how it is for us. God looks at us as if we had never sinned because of the righteousness of Christ. God looks at us but sees Christ. And with this justification comes our sanctification, our being transformed to become more like Christ, to follow in His likeness.

And that's why we must struggle to overcome sin, why we began this service again with a reminder how we need God's help in our sanctification. And this is an ongoing task that will never be completed in this life. But we look forward to the future. And our sanctification, which has begun in this life, and that's why we're called saints, by the way, because we're being sanctified, ends with our death, and that's when sanctification is complete. That's when that man of sin that we read about earlier is put to death.

That's when we will be completely conformed to that image of Christ. Our text states that we were predestined to this end, to be conformed to Christ. That is our destiny. That is what we can look forward to, a time when we don't have to struggle with sin, when what we read in Romans 7 before about wanting to do this but doing that instead, that won't happen anymore because we will only do what is right and pleasing to God. Isn't that wonderful?

That is the time of our glorification, the last link in that chain, that golden chain that we meet here in Romans 8. And that's why we value that biblical teaching of predestination, not for itself, but for what it means, for what it implies, for what it leads to because it's our predestination that guarantees our salvation because all those who are predestined and foreknown are called and justified and will be glorified and conformed to the image of Christ. And this is not an exercise in logic, friends. This is biblical teaching clear and plain. It means that for Christians, that glorification is not just a hope, but it is a certainty.

You can bet on it. Philippians 1:6 says, and I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Yes. We can be sure of this. And the reason why we can be sure is because it doesn't depend on us, but it depends on God who's faithful and who tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ when we belong to Him.

And that's why we hold on to this Reformed distinction of the doctrines of grace, election, predestination, calling, justification, glorification. God joined us to Christ so that we may share in the incomparable riches of God. Thank God for His electing love, and thank Him for our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father, we do thank you for this teaching that reminds us that we need not fear that we will be lost because once you have chosen us as your own, those you who have foreknew are predestined, and they will be called.

They will be justified. They will be glorified. And, Lord, we look forward to that glorification when the struggles that we have with sin will be no more, when we can live fully for you. Help us to already get a foretaste of this in this life as we draw closer and closer to you, Lord. Help us to become more like Christ and to love you more.

We pray it in His name. Amen.