The Gift of Faith: Discovering the Glory of God in Salvation

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1: By Grace You Have Been Saved

Chapter 2: And That Not of Yourselves

Chapter 3: Dead in Trespasses and Sins

Chapter 4: Chosen Before the Foundation of the World

Chapter 5: Redeemed Through Christ's Blood

Chapter 6: Made Alive in Christ

Chapter 7: God's Workmanship

Chapter 8: Saved to the Praise of His Glory

Also By The Author

Contact Information

The Gift of Faith

Discovering the Glory of God in Salvation

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© 2012 by Bryan D. Holstrom

All rights reserved

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Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN: 978-1-62020-003-2

eISBN: 978-1-62020-004-9

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Cover Design by Matthew Mulder

Page Layout by Kelley Moore of Points & Picas

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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In Loving Memory of Charlotte M. Holstrom

1929—2011

Now Resting from Her Labors

with the Lord who Loved Her Before Time Began

1

On any given Sunday, Christians in thousands of churches throughout the land will sing praise to God in words from John Newton that have become familiar to almost anyone acquainted with the English language:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.¹

In thousands of other churches they’ll raise their voices in unison to the words of Augustus Toplady’s immortal hymn Rock of Ages, the second stanza of which reads,

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfill thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and thou Alone.²

Still others will sing hymns with titles such as Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, ’Tis Not That I Did Choose Thee, and A Debtor to Mercy Alone. And in a great many of those same churches, the worship service will include a rendition of the Doxology, which begins with the words, Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.

The prevalence of those great old hymns in our worship hundreds of years after they were composed speaks of their timeless beauty and their ability to move Christians to praise. Yet with each passing year it is becoming increasingly relevant to pose the question: Do we still believe the theology that they proclaim?

Are twenty-first-century Christians willing to affirm that God is truly the Source (or Fount) of every spiritual blessing that they enjoy? It is reasonable to ask if we in sincerity of conscience can sing the words of Josiah Conder to the effect that

’Tis not that I did choose thee,

For, Lord, that could not be;

This heart would still refuse thee,

Hadst thou not chosen me.³

Will our modern religious sensibilities allow us to affirm, with Toplady and Newton, that it is God alone who must save wretches like us? Or have we simply lost the ability to be amazed by grace anymore?

It is not that Evangelical Christians⁴ have dispensed with the notion of grace altogether. On the contrary, the subject is still a popular one, proclaimed from many a pulpit with great regularity. Evangelicals readily acknowledge the necessity for God’s gracious provision in the salvation of guilty sinners. Without God’s grace—it is affirmed—no one would be saved.

But that unity breaks down when the subject turns to whether or not the blessings of salvation come upon the redeemed sinner by virtue of God’s grace alone. The issue may be stated in these terms: Does God purpose to save some individuals on the basis of their having first distinguished themselves from others by freely choosing to believe the gospel—a response which all who hear the call are equally empowered to perform? Or is the sinner’s response of faith itself a gift of God’s grace? Stated another way—is God’s grace the distinguishing factor in who will actually believe the gospel call to embrace Christ?

The question is hardly an academic one, though it is treated as such by many in the church today. Rather, it goes to the very heart of the gospel itself. It is wrapped up in issues of human ability and merit, the nature of God’s provision in calling sinners to himself, and the nature of saving faith. In short, it deals with the question of who does what in the matter of salvation. And what could be more fundamental to the Christian religion than such a subject as that?

Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that the importance of this issue was widely recognized within the body of Christ. The church that emerged from the Reformation of the sixteenth century was unified in its declaration that salvation was a work of God’s grace alone. The central work of the Reformers was accomplished in the reestablishment of the biblical doctrine that an individual is saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

And although detractors from that consensus would emerge within a century of the work of Martin Luther and his allies in reform, this principle remained firmly entrenched as the biblical understanding in the great majority of European and American churches during the centuries that the hymns above were being composed. Relatively few in those years took issue with Conder’s sentiment that we would still refuse God if he had not first chosen us to believe.

But the situation in our own day is quite different. One might even say that the broader church has done a 180 on the issue of God’s grace in the last century or two. Nowadays, relatively few who attend Evangelical churches accept Conder’s words as conveying the biblical teaching on salvation by grace.

Of course, neither the Bible nor its message of grace has changed over that period of time. What has changed is the willingness of modern men and women—even those of the Christian persuasion—to accept that message in all its fullness. Under the influence of contemporary humanistic theories that tend to exalt man as the measure of all things, the notion that we are wretches who are not even capable of mustering up faith out of our own moral resources is wholly out of sync with the tenor of the times. As a result, we are urged to jettison the doctrine of salvation by grace alone as one whose day in the sun has long since passed. And sadly, the response of a great many Christians in our time has been to simply bid it a fond adieu.

What a tragedy—especially since the witness of Scripture to the truth of that doctrine is so clear and unequivocal. Perhaps no passage speaks more clearly on the matter than Ephesians 2:8–9.

A CRUCIAL TEXT—EPHESIANS 2:8–9

Ephesians 2:8–9 reads,

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

This is without a doubt one of the most important passages in all of Scripture. One could argue that it is as close to a summary statement of the work of salvation as the Bible gives us anywhere. And especially when it is viewed in the larger context of the first two chapters of the epistle to the Ephesians, Paul’s intention for including it becomes abundantly clear. Indeed, those two chapters serve as the backdrop for our entire study of the issue, as each of the chapter titles in the present work is drawn from that section of Paul’s letter. As a result, a full treatment of this particular text is reserved for a later chapter, after we have looked at what Paul had to say leading up to his statement here.

For the moment, however, our interest is twofold: 1) to briefly introduce how this passage (even on its own) supports the thesis that salvation is a work of God’s grace alone and 2) to demonstrate how the contours of the debate are most starkly illustrated by the difference in interpretation that has arisen with respect to this text.

Grace has often been defined as God’s unmerited favor toward undeserving sinners. While it is possible to make a distinction between grace and mercy, the concepts are so closely intertwined in the work of salvation that Scripture often seems to merge the two into one. A popular way of distinguishing the two is to say that grace is the granting of undeserved blessings, while mercy is the withholding of deserved punishment. Obviously, both concepts are involved in the work of saving sinners.

But Scripture also makes clear that love is the motivating factor behind God’s decision to grant mercy to those who are estranged from him on account of sin. Thus, we may define biblical grace as God’s loving mercy toward undeserving sinners. This definition seems to accord best with Paul’s emphasis in Ephesians 2:4–5: But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). . . .⁵

As we stated earlier, Evangelical Christians agree that salvation is a work of God’s grace. No one who takes the Bible seriously could assert otherwise. Both Ephesians 2:5 and 2:8 state in the most explicit of terms this basic scriptural truth. Nor is there any disagreement that we are saved through the instrumentality of personal faith in Christ, and not by works, as verses 8 and 9 go on to assert.

Rather, what is at issue with respect to this passage is what to make of the two clauses sandwiched in the middle. Debate centers on what Paul is referring to when he says, And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. Is he directing us back to the fact of our salvation being accomplished by grace, or to the faith through which that salvation is imparted to us? In other words, is Paul referring to salvation or faith as being the gift of God? Most modern Evangelicals argue for the former, presumably because they are concerned to retain the notion that faith is available to all on an equal basis and that God himself does not determine its recipients.

Two things need to be said in response to that argument. First, there are good grammatical and exegetical reasons for rejecting that interpretation. We’ll cover this ground more thoroughly in Chapter 6, but for now it is sufficient to point out that faith is not only the immediately preceding reference point in Paul’s statement in verse 8, but it is also the item which distinguishes this statement from his earlier reference to salvation by grace. Paul had already stated that we are saved by grace back in verse 5, but what he adds here in verse 8 is the qualifier that we are saved through faith. Thus, it makes more sense to see the subsequent clauses which speak of the gift of God as referring to the act of faith. In fact, it would seem to serve no purpose whatsoever for Paul to point out that grace (or being saved by grace) is not of ourselves but the gift of God—for isn’t that definitional of grace in the first place?

Which brings us to the second (and more important) point that needs to be made about the modern interpretation of Ephesians 2:8: Isn’t this a classic case of missing the forest for the trees? If Paul can speak of salvation by grace (through faith) as being the gift of God, what room does that leave for the assertion that faith is nevertheless man’s contribution to that salvation? It is difficult to see how salvation can retain its character as a gift of God’s grace if the determining factor in who will receive it is based upon adherence to a moral command, a command which some (supposedly) obey in their own strength while others do not. Doesn’t that understanding thereby render a person’s faith the meritorious ground upon which salvation is dispensed? And doesn’t it thereby destroy the very definition of grace—as mercy that God extends to the undeserving?

The point should be obvious: it ultimately makes no difference to the understanding of the passage whether Paul’s statement that it is not of ourselves is referring to the act of faith or to salvation in general. We end up in the same place either way. To say that we are saved by grace is to say that we are saved by grace alone. And that is to assert that even the faith which unites us to Christ is a gift from God to the individual sinner. That is why salvation always redounds to the praise of his glory, not ours (Eph. 1:11–14).

In the chapters that follow, we will lay out the biblical case for the doctrines of grace, that interconnected set of teachings that undergirds the larger principle of salvation by grace alone. Although each of the chapter titles represents a teaching found in the first two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we have not limited our discussion to that section of the Bible. On the contrary, it’s our burden to demonstrate how the doctrines of grace permeate all of Scripture and provide the spiritual lens through which the redemptive plan of God is unfolded in both the Old and New Testaments.

In addition, though a great many books have already been undertaken in defense of these doctrines over the centuries, the present work is designed to both trace the historical fault lines in the debate and interact with the very latest of arguments against those doctrines. Moreover, while Chapters 3 through 7 follow the format in which these doctrines are customarily presented (summarized by the acrostic TULIP), I have written with an eye toward drawing out how the individual parts hold together and complement one another, as well as upon how they provide further support for the notion that faith is a gift from God.

It is my conviction that when faith is rightly apprehended and understood as the product of God’s grace and not of man’s free will, all objections to the individual components of the doctrines of grace dissolve into nothingness. Most importantly, when that happens, the glory of God is magnified in our sight. And to see that happen should be the consuming passion of every Christian alive.

¹ John Newton, "Amazing Grace!," Trinity Hymnal, Rev. ed. (Suwanee, GA: Great Commission, 1990), 460.

² Augustus Toplady, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Trinity Hymnal, Rev. ed. (Suwanee, GA: Great Commission, 1990), 499.

³ Josiah Conder, ’Tis Not That I Did Choose Thee, Trinity Hymnal, Rev. ed. (Suwanee, GA: Great Commission, 1990), 471.

⁴ The term Evangelical is popularly used today to designate those Protestant Christians who, unlike their counterparts in the mainline churches, are committed to the inerrancy and authority of Scripture. Thus, the term is often used as a substitute for conservative Christian. Though we use the term in that basic sense here, we will refine the definition somewhat in Chapter 2.

⁵ Although Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version, which capitalizes personal pronouns for God, I have chosen to follow the modern convention of not doing so in my own comments. My apologies to the reader for the potential confusion caused by this difference in treatment.

2

In the fall of 1997 a group of men from two distinct theological traditions met in New York City for the purpose of issuing a joint statement on salvation. The work was a follow-up to a meeting held three years earlier which culminated in the issuance of a document entitled Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium. While that earlier document (usually referred to as ECT) was concerned with laying out a common vision for political cooperation, the goal of this second meeting was to produce a document that would be decidedly more theological in nature.

A short time later a statement signed by 35 men (19 Evangelicals and 16 Roman Catholics) was released under the promising title The Gift of Salvation.¹ The document purported to be a statement of unity in the Gospel, characterizing both justification and faith as entirely God’s gift, conferred through the Father’s sheer graciousness. It even goes so far as to state that the signers understood that what they were affirming was in agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by justification by faith alone (sola fide).