Featured Are the Elect under wrath of God Until actual salvation then?

Perhaps a way to attempt to justify their insular, anti-missions notions?

 

An Article On Justification From Eternity

GRACE FOR TODAY Radio Message #464



Justified From Eternity



Pastor Don Fortner

Grace Baptist Church of Danville

2734 Old Stanford Road

Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438



Faith in Christ is the evidence and manifestation of our justification, but not the cause of it. God’s elect were justified in Christ from eternity. Justification is one of those “all spiritual blessings” with which God’s elect were blessed before the worlds were made (Eph. 1:3).



Christ stood before God as our Surety in the covenant of grace from eternity. In that covenant the Son of God voluntarily engaged to pay the debts of his elect and make full satisfaction for them. God the Father accepted him as our Surety. “Thenceforward,” wrote John Gill, the Father “looked at him for payment and satisfaction, and looked at them as discharged, and so they were in his eternal mind.” As soon as one person becomes surety for another, the debtor is freed and the Surety is accepted. Thus all God’s elect were justified in eternity, as soon as Christ became our Surety (Rom. 8:30).



Our justification did not commence in time, but in eternity. Paul, speaking of God’s eternal decree of predestination, declares that all of God’s elect were justified in his eternal purpose of grace (Rom. 8:30). Gill was right on the money when he said, “God’s will to elect is the election of his people; so also his will to justify them, is the justification of them.” God’s act of justification is entirely an act of his grace. It is God accounting and constituting us righteous, through the righteousness of his Son. From all eternity God has looked upon his Son as our Substitute, and looking upon us in Christ we are, and always have been, righteous in his sight. In the mind and purpose of God, Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8; Isa. 53). God set up his darling Son as our Surety, our Substitute, and our Redeemer before the world began; and as such, in his own mind, he looked upon Christ as having been slain for us from eternity. Just as Abraham, in his heart sacrificed his son at Moriah, and looked upon Isaac as one dead, so the Lord God looked upon his Son as slain from eternity because in his heart the deed was done.



Because God our Father looked upon Christ as one already sacrificed for us before the world was, all the blessings of grace were given to us in him (Eph. 1:3-7; 2 Tim. 1:9). The Holy Spirit tells us plainly that “all spiritual blessings” were bestowed upon all God’s elect in Christ before the world began. All the blessings of salvation and grace were irrevocably given to us in Christ our covenant Surety in eternity according to the purpose of God in election. Astonishing grace! Adoption, acceptance with God, redemption, forgiveness, and an eternal inheritance in Christ, all were given to us in Christ because he agreed to pay our debt and became totally responsible for all our obligations as our Surety in eternity. Thomas Goodwin wrote - “We may say of all spiritual blessings in Christ what is said of Christ himself, that ‘his goings forth are from everlasting.’ In Christ we are blessed with all spiritual blessings (Eph. 1:3). As we are blessed with all others, so with this also, that we were justified then in Christ.” He goes on to say that God the Father, in that everlasting transaction of grace with his Son, “told him, as it were, that he would look for (our) debt and satisfaction (from) him and he did let the sinners go free. So they are in this respect justified from all eternity.”



In addition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture, two facts compel us to look upon justification as an eternal act of God. 1st Had it not been for the fact that God looked upon his elect as being righteous and justified in Christ from eternity, he would have destroyed our race as soon as Adam sinned. God spares the wicked for the sake of the righteous. Just as the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were preserved for Lot’s sake, so the human race is preserved for the sake of those who the Father has chosen and justified in his Son from eternity. 2nd The Old Testament saints were justified by Christ, just as we are today. Their justification was just as full, complete, and perfect as ours (Heb. 9:15, 22; Rom. 3:25). If they were justified before Christ came, it could not be upon any grounds except the fact that they, like us, were justified by the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the earth.

 

Huh?:null:

 

From the scriptures. ....why? :laugh:You have posted 8 times with no scripture:laugh:..though:laugh:

 

and I couldn't disagree more in many points.

 

all these discussions on election are a waste of saliva until we understand the passivity of eternal election re the elect, and the reciprocity of gospel salvation between God and the elect who come under the hearing of the gospel, and until we understand that not all the elect come under such preaching.

one can call himself an adherent to the doctrine of grace until he's blue in the face, and for as long as he does not see the difference between eternal salvation vs gospel salvation he will come right around to the usual Calvinist contention that one needs the gospel in order to be eternally saved, which, bottom line, is no different from the classic Arminian doctrine.

 

Yeshua1... I want to show you the elect of God!... When people think of election they think of a small number. How wrong they are! Behold the election of God!
Rev 7:9 After this a beheld, and lo, a multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
10: And cried with a loud voice, saying, SALVATION UNTUR GOD WHICH SITTETH UPON THE THRONE, AND UNTO THE LAMB.

Brethren is that the elect of God or not?

 

Ahhhh yes:thumbs:

 

Who is this great God that declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying . My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure, Isa 46:10 He is the one that said to Jeremiah before I formed thee in the belly I (knew thee); and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Do you mean that Jeremiah was a saved man before he was born, in the mind of God. Well you might say, that was just one case and if I can't find more I will not believe. What of Isaiah. This is what our great God said of him. And now the Lord that formed me ( Isaiah) from the womb to be a servant, to bring Jacob again to him. Isa 49:6. But wait there is more, remember John the Baptist that was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mothers womb. Yes, you might say but these were prophets that were hand picked. Turn to Eph the first chapter and learn of Gods elect. Verse 4 According as He (God) hath chosen us (elect) in Him (Christ) before the foundation of the world. This scripture proves before Christ went to the cross, before we ever believed, we were elected by God to be in Christ Jesus when he went to the cross. Notice in the first and second chapter of Eph how many times the words in Him or in Christ are mentioned. Some of these verses, in him or in Christ are after we believed but some are before we believed as verse 4, verse 3, verse 6, verse 20, verses 5-6. Still not convinced, turn to Heb 2:11-13, For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call then brethren, Saying I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. And again, I will put my trust in him, and again, Behold, I AND THE CHILDREN WHICH GOD HATH GIVEN ME. St. John 6:39 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in know wise cast out. In St. John 17:2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou (God) as given him (CHRIST).

 

hell, the lake of fire and brimstone, and all those things that today's preachings in many churches like to froth about, to scare listeners into 'accepting' Jesus, were never created for God's people.
the very reason Jesus sent His apostles out to preach the gospel to the nations is to inform His people, scattered among the nations, that the Son of God Himself have come and redeemed them with His blood, independent of the law, or any rituals that the religions they grew up on may have inculcated into them, and that they have been set free by God from the slavery of sin, and given the power within them (the Holy Spirit) to resist sin, and if they fail, they have an intercessor in Heaven, the very One who is their Hope.
they are to turn to Him from their idols and He will call them out into a body wherever they are whose purpose is to exalt Christ and glorify God in their midst and to live peaceably with those around them.
the elect was never and will never be under the wrath of God, in the eternal sense.

 

you are right.
only Jesus qualifies for that.
HOWEVER, God's sovereignty and the faith of the three Persons of the Trinity on each other allows them to consider the redemption of all whom they have decreed FOR heaven to be a finished and done deal from eternity past, sealed HERE IN TIME at the cross, therefore God calls His elect 'MY PEOPLE', 'SAINTS', and consider them "MY SHEEP" before time began.
Not one of them will be born without the sin nature, everyone who passes through time, EXCEPT CHRIST, has that nature.
MANY OF THEM will knowingly and unknowingly, willingly or unwittingly, commit acts of sins of omission and commission, as well as sins of presumptions, in accordance with that nature, the exception (I believe) being infants and babies.
But NONE of them were, or will ever be bound for hell, precisely because, in as far as the Triune God is concerned, what needed to be done is as good as done, else there would have been no need for a covenant between the Three Persons, if they doubted neither of them would go through with the agreement.
This does not mean, however, that the elect is exempt from the timely consequences of sin in their lives here in time, or David would never have been subjected to the tribulations and sufferings he suffered as a result of his adultery and murder.
also, the wrath of God does not necessarily equate to eternal wrath or eternal punishment.

 

They had no doubt for they had foreknowledge.

 

If your understanding of foreknowledge is they looked down through time to see who would repent and believe, you have totally put salvation in the hands of men. You believe in a checkerboard salvation. God makes a move, the devil makes a move, but man makes the deciding move.

 

foreknowledge as to who would accept Christ and who would reject Christ ?
man, you have no idea of the implications of what you are saying.
let me just try to put the implications in words.
if the Triune God, who created the entire universe, and everything in it, and who created the earth, and everything in it, simply by speaking them into existence, and who created man from the earth, and woman from man, finally rests their faith and trust in each other, on the feeble faith and clouded decisions of fallen man, who could not get from point a to point b, without moving a muscle, then the entire Bible is a myth and everything that that Bible describes about God, they are all lies.

 

...and you would have God playing both sides of the board...

 

I don't know if "looking down through time" would be considered foreknowledge since God knows all things before time.

 

Maybe you could demonstrate how your interpretation of God's foreknowledge was involved in Adam's fall? This could clear things up a bit.