09/04/2022 – Chapter Two – Discussion: “A Radically Life – Changing Idea”
Romans 8:28: “Who could even make up such a story ?”
“We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28 “All” things means just that, nothing is outside of this truth.
Perhaps, it will help us if we go just a couple of verses beyond 8:28: “For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would 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.”
I encourage y’all to read the entire “The Believer’s Triumph” that completes the chapter, 8:31 through 8:39. My “Apologetics Bible Study Bible” footnotes to 8:28 : “Despite any alleged evidence to the contrary, nothing can separate God’s people from His perpetual love.” And it notes: The “good” concerns our final salvation.
As Peter explains in the last two pages, for this to be true, it requires that God have these three perfect attributes: 1) omni benevelent, a God who wills our best good for all time. And then the more familiar: 2) omni-potent – all powerful , and 3) omnisient – all knowing and infallible.
So, the best good, could only have been accomplished through the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. He took our place on the cross. “How to be Holy” – only through God just as our conversion was, no?
So, “How to be Holy” , as the book notes, we still sin. But we have been transformed by an in-dwelling Holy Spirit, an “all in” to His glory! And through that, a sanctification process until our death is a given. How could it not translate. No? I will continue to wrestle with this.
In my “Puritan Theology – Doctrine for Life” by Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, here is the ordo Salutis, the order of salvation presented, conceptual steps as it were:
- election / 2) the gospel call / 3) regeneration / (4) conversion / (5) justification / (6) adoption / (7) sanctification / (8) perseverence / (9) death.
From the link below, I think a key for me right now is to take this as a basic building block to heart:
These steps are just distinctions within a single process , that depend upon the work of God.
https://www.gotquestions.org/ordo-salutis.html
I’m not done wrestling with it though. If you allow me to cheat here, a look ahead through just a preview:
Chapter 12 – The Epistemology of Holiness, just the first paragraph:, pg. 67:
“Holiness is as much a matter of seeing as it is a matter of trying; as much a matter of thinking as it is of willing. But the seeing that makes us holy is not seeing with the first eye, the eyes of the body. Nor is it seeing with the second eye, the eye of reason. It is seeing with the third eye, the eye of the heart. And that seeing is called faith (and also hope, and also love, which are all parts of one attitude, which De Caussade calls “abandonment”). De Caussade’s “abandonment”= my “all-in”.
p.s. – Wrestling pays off: I think I found more in the answer: Look at the commentary on our Semikkah7 Bible reading for today: Phillipians 3:4, specifically: within John Gill’s commentary on Phillipians 3:13. The question connects with our “How to be Holy” study here. How is it significant to our mission to His kingdom? How does Paul set a pathway for us to the “abandonment” that De Caussade was speaking of?
Your brother in Christ,
Jimmy