John Phillips on God's sovereign election-  Some have thought that the word “foreknown” is the key to the problem. All knowledge is based on fact, the argument runs; fact is not based on knowledge. A fact has to be established before it can be known. Human knowledge is largely after-knowledge of a given fact, but God is not restricted to after-knowledge. He is omniscient and therefore has foreknowledge. But whether it is after-knowledge or foreknowledge, the knowledge is based on fact. For example, John Brown accepts Christ as Saviour on a given day in his personal history and thereby establishes a fact which can be known. His friends and relatives come to know of this fact after it happens, but God can see the same fact a week, a month, a year, an eternity before it happens. Nevertheless, His knowledge, like that of John Brown’s friends, is based on the fact of John Brown’s acceptance of Christ. “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.” There is only one thing wrong ...

When Jesus comes back he isn’t coming to free you from sin. He isn’t coming back to do that because he did that the first time around. Jesus has freed you from sin. Sin is a noun. It’s a cosmic power that you were enslaved to. You died. New you was raised with Christ with newness of life. Therefore sin has no power over you anymore. Yes you are still capable of committing sin, but you actually don’t have to. You are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You are the righteousness of God in Christ. So instead of glorifying sin’s power why don’t we lift up the one who is able to keep you from sin Jesus Christ the righteous. Give honor to him as Lord and see yourself in him. Then you will be living in the reality that was created for you in him.

 Paul’s readiness to share in Christ’s sufferings. One was his belief that they were necessary for the evangelization of the lost. The world could not understand the message of the cross unless those who preached it were themselves marked by its suffering and shame. This is the meaning—at least in part—of Paul’s enigmatic claim “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).  This verse has nothing to do with the extent of the atonement, of course, but everything to do with missions and evangelism. What is still lacking is the communication of the gospel by a suffering church. The unsaved people of the world cannot see Jesus hanging on the cross, but they can see a community that shares in his sufferings and thus confirms the truth of his passion. The sufferings of the apostles—and, by implication, of the church and its ministers today—were public exhibitions of Christ and his cross.  Paul thus described himself as part of a procession b...

  Rom 8 v 29 (CSB)       29       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 sisters.  Verse 29 is sometimes interpreted to mean that God predestines on the basis of his prior knowledge about how each of us will in fact respond. But this would mean that in election God would not be sovereign; he would be dependent upon what he would see happening in the future. Theologians rightly point out that prior to knowledge must be the divine decree. Unless God determines in some sense that something will happen, he cannot “know” that it will. For God to foreknow requires an earlier decree. Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 188–189.

  Charles Hodge on why "foreknew" does not mean foreknowing what people would have faith.  It contradicts the apostle’s teaching. It makes the reason for our calling and election the result of something in us, our works, whereas Paul says that this is not the reason for our being chosen: “… who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9; see Romans 9:11, where the opposite doctrine is not only asserted but proved and defended).  To say that faith as distinct from works is what is foreseen and constitutes the basis of election does not help the matter. For faith is a work or act, and it is the gift of God, the result of election, and therefore not its foundation. Charles Hodge, Romans, Crossway Classic Commentaries (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), Ro 8:29.

  God “foreknew” (ginōskō [1097] (which is the equivalent of the Hebrew verb ad [H3045]) describes a scrutinizing knowledge that goes beyond mere awareness. When used of people, the verb depicts thorough knowledge of one person by another. In fact, it was a common euphemism for sexual intimacy shared between a married couple. Those God foreknew in this intimate, active sense does not include everyone. This has led some to suggest that God deliberately passed over some, electing them to damnation. That may be a logical inference, but we must be careful not to take Scripture beyond what it actually says. This is Paul’s teaching about believers; he wasn’t commenting on nonbelievers at this point. Charles R. Swindoll, Romans, vol. 6, Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2016), 192.

  In Scripture, words like foreknew and predestined do not apply equally to both good and evil. For the careful student of the Bible will realize that these words are used only of the good.… When God speaks of evil people, he says that he never knew them [Matt 7:23; Luke 13:27].…  They are not said to be foreknown, not because there is anything which can escape God’s knowledge, which is present everywhere and nowhere absent, but because everything which is evil is considered to be unworthy of his knowledge or of his foreknowledge. Origen, Ad Romanos, CER 4.86, 88, 90. Cited in Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text, ed. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016).Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text, ed. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner, New International Greek Testament Comment...

  It is never easy to be a Christian.  The Christian life can still bring its own loneliness, unpopularity, and problems. It is human nature to dislike, resent, or regard with suspicion anyone who is “different.” This is one of the great problems of the world today.  Tribal differences, class differences, ethnic differences, cultural differences separate people. Such differences often lead not only to misunderstanding, but to war. When the Christian brings the standards of Jesus Christ to bear upon life in a materialistic and secularistic world, it is often resented. Because the moral and spiritual demands of Jesus Christ are so high, they often set the Christian “apart.” This can bring about misunderstanding, fear, and resentment. Billy Graham and Franklin Graham, Who’s In Charge of a World That Suffers? Trusting God in Difficult Circumstances (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2021), 99.

The perfections of God are not like a pie, as if we sliced up the pie into different pieces, love being 10 percent, holiness 15 percent, omnipotence 7 percent, and so on. Unfortunately, this is how many Christians talk about God today, as if love, holiness, and omnipotence were all different parts of God, God being evenly divided among his various attributes. Some even go further, believing some attributes to be more important than others. This happens most with divine love, which some say is the most important attribute (the biggest piece of the pie).  -Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 72–73. Ask yourself that question that often entertained the brightest minds of the late medieval era: Is something good because God wills it to be good, or does God will something because it is good? This famous conundrum is the ultimate puzzle, situating God between a rock and a hard pla...

  In fact, even before we believed, His Spirit was already working in us, convicting us of sin and drawing us to God. After we believed, His Spirit didn’t stop working; He came to live permanently within us! The Bible says, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” (Romans 8:9). If you know Christ, you don’t need to beg for the Holy Spirit to come into your life; He is already there—whether you “feel” His presence or not. Don’t confuse the Holy Spirit with an emotional feeling or a particular type of spiritual experience.  Instead, accept by faith what God promised:When you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. The Bible says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Billy Graham, The Journey: Living by Faith in an Uncertain World (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

James knows that so much of our relationship with God will be shown by our relationships with other people. As a Christian, my primary obligation in this life is not to myself. It is to God and to the body of Christ. You and I must realize that our selfishness hurts others , and that God will judge us for it. Really, we are to use ourselves for others. We must learn to cherish the opportunity of living in peace through valuing each other. I have been in more than one church meeting where someone has made sharp comments about what he or she wants, or what must happen in the church for them to be satisfied; and I have feared how little that person must know of Christ.  What but a loss of perspective and a lack of love for Christ and his body could lead to that sort of talk? Our Christianity, if it is to live up to its name, must affect other people in a loving and godly way. What does it mean to say we are followers of Jesus Christ, who literally gave his life for others, if we do no...

  Rom 6 v 19 19 I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification. This verse opens an interesting window on the Pauline conception of slavery to sin. Unbelievers are totally subservient to sin as a power that exerts authority over their lives, but the slavery envisioned is not coercion.  People don’t submit to sin against their will. Rather, they “freely” and spontaneously choose to sin. In other words, unbelievers are slaves to sin in that they always desire to carry out the dictates of their master.  This does not mean that those with addictions (e.g., to alcohol, pornography, or gambling) never wish to be freed.  It means that the desire for these things is ultimately greater than the desire to be freed from them. Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, ed. Robert W. Yarbr...

  There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ.  On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion.  The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin.  The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

  When Adam sinned, he stepped from the halls of light into a chamber of darkness. Though he was physically alive, spiritual life was gone. When the moment came for him to face God, he fled in terror to hide among the trees. He feared to meet the One who had given him all things, and whom he had disobeyed. Sin had done its work. Man had broken fellowship with his Creator, and feared to face Him. This is why men fear physical death. Written in our very being is the fact that physical death ends delay. The God who has been wronged must be faced. The reckoning day has come. Some men profess to believe that death ends all, but the majority are honest enough to admit that something lies beyond, and they are afraid of it. Epicurus expressed the thought of the former group in his letter to Donald Grey Barnhouse, God’s Grace: Romans 5:12–21 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959), 31.

  Rom 5 v 13- 14 (CSB) 13 In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person’s account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression. He is a type of the Coming One.  "Paul proves his point regarding the imputation of Adam’s sin by surveying the landscape of redemptive history and dividing it into three sections: Adam Adam ➔ Moses  Moses ➔ Present day It is easy to understand why Adam died and why people after the revelation of the Mosaic law died: They all transgressed expressly revealed commandments of God. God explicitly told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge lest God punish him with death. And Israel, like Adam in his state in the garden, received expressly revealed commands from God, who threatened them with death for violating them (e.g., Ex. 21:15–17). But what about the people who lived and died between Adam and Moses? On what bas...

  Adam had been appointed by God to be the representative of the race so that if he stood, we too would stand, and if he fell, we would fall with him. Adam did fall, as we know.  So death passed upon everyone. “But isn’t that terribly unfair?” someone protests. “Isn’t it cruel for God to act in this fashion?” ... the federal way of dealing with us was actually the fairest and kindest of all the ways God could have operated.  Besides, it was the only way it would later be possible for God to save us once we had sinned. In other words, federalism is actually a proof of God’s grace, which is the point the passage comes to (vv. 15 ff.). It was gracious to Adam first of all. Why? Because it was a deterrent to his sin. God must have explained to Adam that he was to represent his posterity. That might have restrained him from sinning. A father who might be tempted to steal his employer’s funds (and would if only he himself were involved), might well decide not to do it if he kne...

  The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form.  The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works.  Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts.  But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

  Pride is a source of sin out of which so many other sins and their bad fruit grow.   Pride crushes compassion and sympathy. Pride makes it very hard for you to be patient and understanding. Pride makes you entitled and demanding. Pride never produces a willingness to forgive. Pride makes you judgmental and condemning.  Pride makes you far more concerned about the sin of others than you are about your own. Pride is the enemy of self-sacrificing love. Pride makes you picky and easily irritated. Pride forces you to deny your wrongs and to shift blame to someone or something else. Pride makes it easier for you to complain than to give thanks. Proud people don’t tend to be peacemakers. Proud people don’t suffer well. Proud people don’t tend to be generous. Proud people tend to think they deserve what is comfortable and tend to hate what is difficult. Proud people envy the blessings of others. Proud people resist confession and are defensive when confronted. Proud people find...