The Gospel...

Friday morning: Yesterday in class we talked about the Salvation Equation: Gospel + Saving Faith = Salvation (Rom. 1:16, Eph. 1:13, 1 Cor. 15:1-2).

We defined the Gospel from 1 Cor. 15:3-5 and described Saving Faith from Heb. 11:1,6; Rom. 4:3-5, 19-21.

We then spent a great deal of time discussing and mining the truths behind the statement: Almighty God saves sinners BY grace alone THROUGH faith alone IN Christ alone, but that the faith that saves is NEVER alone, but will (& must) give evidence of itself through the treasuring and trusting of Jesus Christ.

We unpacked the concepts of grace, faith, Jesus’ identity, work and accomplishment and the relationship between justification and sanctification.

We also connected the above salvation equation (which is looking at salvation from a human perspective) with the previous list of God’s great works in saving sinners (salvation from God’s perspective)…

1. Divine Election,

2. The Gospel Call, in which the Gospel message is heard (often many times),

3. Divine Call to salvation, in which God draws dead, rebellious sinners to Himself,

4. Conviction of sin by the Spirit that makes sinners feel uncomfortable with their sin,

5. Regeneration by the Spirit, which enables dead sinners to truly repent of sin and taste, treasure and trust Jesus Christ alone,

6. Conversion by which a sinner repents of sin tastes, treasures and trusts Christ alone to save him/her,

7. Justification…God’s instantaneous declaration that the believing sinner is righteous in His sight because Jesus’ righteousness is credited to him/her,

8. Sanctification…God’s identifying of the believing sinner into Jesus’ death and resurrection so he/she is truly changed (old becomes new) and in which Christ through the Spirit permanently indwells the believing sinner and enables him/her to live by faith,

9. Physical death and the gracious refining judgment seat of Christ that removes everything of the flesh and rewards all that was done in the Spirit,

10. Glorification of our bodies (& of all our being) to be fit for an eternity in the presence of our glorious God.

It was way cool how the men were really intent on understanding and being impacted by the weight of truth that we were considering today. The GOSPEL truly is God’s way to save sinners and produce in them a treasuring of Christ that is supernatural (not natural to mankind).

Today, (Friday) we will continue this discussion and show how everything fits into the salvation equation, show what Biblical assurance of salvation is based on, and discuss the differences (pros/cons) of the Reformed and Arminian perspectives concerning salvation. I am really looking forward to this afternoon.