Election was never intended to prevent men making a diligent use of all means of grace. On the contrary, the neglect of means is a most suspicious symptom, and should make us very doubtful about the state of a man’s soul. Those whom the Holy Ghost draws He always draws to the written Word of God and to prayer. When there is the real grace of God in a heart, there will always be love to the means of grace.…
The Elect of God can only be discerned from those who are not Elect by their faith and life. We cannot climb up into the secret of God’s eternal counsels. We cannot read the book of life. The fruits of the Spirit, seen and manifested in a man’s conversation, are the only grounds on which we can ascertain that he is one of God’s Elect. Where the marks of God’s Elect can be seen, there, and there only, have we any warrant for saying “this is one of the Elect.”…
2 Peter 3:9 ‘The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.‘
Does this verse support universalism?
According to Barclay (DSB):
…‘Ever and again there shines in Scripture the glint of the larger hope. We are not forbidden to believe that somehow and some time the God who loves the world will bring the whole world to himself.’
Regenerations, according to T.C. Hammond, is ‘a spiritual resurrection into a new sphere of life, in which he is alive to God and united to him in Christ. God has implanted in the new-born soul a totally new principle of life.’ (In Understanding Be Men).
We look, accordingly, for signs of life in the new-born Christian.
J.I. Packer writes that ‘the signs whereby a regenerate person may be known correspond to the natural actions of the newborn child.’…
1 Timothy 4:10 – ‘…the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of believers.’
Obviously, Paul was no universalist. So what interpretative options are left?
1. All, potentially, and believers, actually? Some, including Fee, think that Paul means that salvation is available to all, but effective for those who believe. This would be consistent with 1 Tim 2:6. Understood in this way, the verse becomes a strong support for the doctrine of universal (as opposed to particular) atonement. …
Hebrews 6:4 For it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, become partakers of the Holy Spirit, 6:5 tasted the good word of God and the miracles of the coming age, 6:6 and then have committed apostasy, to renew them again to repentance, since they are crucifying the Son of God for themselves all over again and holding him up to contempt.
This is, perhaps, the most challenging passage in Hebrews. …
I have found much to disagree with in Steve Chalke’s book The Lost Message of Paul.
Is there anything I can applaud? Actually, yes, there is.
I can see that he often attempts to support his arguments from Scripture. I recognise that he gives a central place to Christ. I think he’s correct to say that evangelicals have sometimes neglected the resurrection of Jesus in their presentation of the gospel. He emphasises that the gospel has corporate, as well as individual, elements. …
Murray Harris:
The final state of the saved may be characterized by six adjectives.
Colossians 1:19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son 1:20 and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross—through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
Steve Chalke (The Lost Message of Paul, ch. 19) argues that, if Paul’s words in Colossians 1:19f mean anything, ‘all’ must mean ‘all’, and that the ‘reconciliation of all things’ must include all people, without exception.…
As a Licensed Reader within the Church of England, it is of some interest and importance to me to know whether the doctrine of penal substitution is an Anglican doctrine.
Well, the doctrine is not clearly espoused in the Prayer Book of 1662, to which all clergy must assent. The nearest it comes to it is this:
‘…who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.’…
