Want to know a secret? You’re saved before you know it

[Michie]

Editors’ note: The Christian Post Opinion Page has published two countering views on Calvinism. To read the opposing view in the piece titled “Which comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?” click here.

Want to know a secret? If you’re a Christian, you were saved before you knew you were.

Now, I’ll bet that the vast majority of you reading this think that you made a personal decision — all on your lonesome — to receive Christ, and once done, you were a child of God in the faith. John Chipman believes this, as evidenced by his article, “Which comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?”

He says, “Faith precedes regeneration. Always. For everyone.”

Many think that the reverse is heresy and short-circuited. Still, I’m going to ask you to give me a few moments to make a case for the position of regeneration (the Spirit’s supernatural work of giving spiritual life to us, transforming the heart, and enabling faith, so that we become a new creation in Christ), preceding faith. I used to believe the reverse in my earlier Christian walk, but am now convinced that we can’t make that move of commitment towards God until He enables us to do it.

Continued below.

Want to know a secret? You’re saved before you know it

Want to know a secret If you re a Christian, you were saved before you knew you were

www.christianpost.com

 

[Michie]

Which comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?

Here s how getting the order of salvation wrong leads to a corruption of biblical truth and a serious defilement of the Gospel

www.christianpost.com

 

[Always in His Presence]

Rom 10: 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

 

[fhansen]

Editors’ note: The Christian Post Opinion Page has published two countering views on Calvinism. To read the opposing view in the piece titled “Which comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?” click here.

Want to know a secret? If you’re a Christian, you were saved before you knew you were.

Now, I’ll bet that the vast majority of you reading this think that you made a personal decision — all on your lonesome — to receive Christ, and once done, you were a child of God in the faith. John Chipman believes this, as evidenced by his article, “Which comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?”

He says, “Faith precedes regeneration. Always. For everyone.”

Many think that the reverse is heresy and short-circuited. Still, I’m going to ask you to give me a few moments to make a case for the position of regeneration (the Spirit’s supernatural work of giving spiritual life to us, transforming the heart, and enabling faith, so that we become a new creation in Christ), preceding faith. I used to believe the reverse in my earlier Christian walk, but am now convinced that we can’t make that move of commitment towards God until He enables us to do it.

Continued below.

Want to know a secret? You’re saved before you know it

Want to know a secret If you re a Christian, you were saved before you knew you were

www.christianpost.com

What's not understood here is that it's not either/or, but both/and. Yes, we must first be enabled, by grace, by God, to turn to Him, to respond when He calls. And yet, that grace is still resistible. We can refuse to open the door, we can say "no" either at the beginning of a potential walk with Him or later on down the road after we've embarked upon it.

To maintain that we don't need that grace, that we do it all ourselves, would be Pelagian. To maintain that God so overwhelms the will and totally changes/regenerates man first is to completely misread and misunderstand His purposes for man: that of drawing him back from the originally willful-and unjust-rejection of Him in Eden and to a chosen relationship/communion with Him that man was created for along with the ever-increasing justice/holiness -the ever-increasing love, to put it best- that is intrinsic to that relationship.