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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Wayne Grudem
Started reading
February 9, 2021
among the members of the Trinity it is especially God the Son who in his person as well as in his words has the role of communicating the character of God to us and of expressing the will of God for us.
This problem is not unique to the Christian who is arguing for the authority of the Bible. Everyone either implicitly or explicitly uses some kind of circular argument when defending his or her ultimate authority for belief.
The preceding section has argued that all the words in Scripture are God’s words. Consequently, to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God himself. Thus, Jesus can rebuke his disciples for not believing the Old Testament Scriptures (Luke 24:25). Believers are to keep or obey the disciples’ words (John 15:20: “If they kept my word, they will keep yours also”). Christians are encouraged to remember “the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles” (2 Peter 3:2). To disobey Paul’s writings was to make oneself liable to church discipline, such as
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Throughout the history of the church the greatest preachers have been those who have recognized that they have no authority in themselves and have seen their task as being to explain the words of Scripture and apply them clearly to the lives of their hearers.
The fatal shortcoming of modalism is the fact that it must deny the personal relationships within the Trinity that appear in so many places in Scripture
modalism ultimately loses the heart of the doctrine of the atonement—that is, the idea that God sent his Son as a substitutionary sacrifice, and that the Son bore the wrath of God in our place, and that the Father, representing the interests of the Trinity, saw the suffering of Christ and was satisfied (Isa. 53:11).
We may define sin as follows: Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. Sin is here defined in relation to God and his moral law. Sin includes not only
The perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept by God’s power and will persevere as Christians until the end of their lives, and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again.
I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:38–40)
those given to the Son by the Father will not be lost.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
if the possibility remained that we could remove ourself from Christ’s hand, the passage would hardly give the assurance that Jesus intends by it.
“He who believes in the Son has eternal life” (cf. also John 5:24; 6:4–7; 10:28; 1 John 5:13).
“And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
This is true of all those who are called and justified—that is, all those who truly become Christians.
“In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory”
When God gave us the Holy Spirit within, he committed himself to give all the further blessings of eternal life and a great reward in heaven with him.
“I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ”
“who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time”
He stresses that this is by God’s power. Yet God’s power does not work apart from the personal faith of those being guarded, but through their faith.
Ultimately their attainment of final salvation depends on God’s power. Nevertheless, God’s power continually works “through” their faith. Do they wish to know whether God is guarding them? If they continue to trust God through Christ, God is working and guarding them, and he should be thanked.
“Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ ”
“He who endures to the end will be saved”
“in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard”
they are addressing groups of people who profess to be Christians, without being able to know the actual state of every person’s heart.
How can he avoid giving them false assurance,
Paul knows that those whose faith is not real will eventually fall away from participation in the fellowship of the church. Therefore he tells his readers that they will ultimately be saved, “provided that you continue in the faith” (Col. 1:23). Those who continue show thereby that they are genuine believers. But those who do not continue in the faith show that there was no genuine faith in their hearts in the first place.
“For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm to the end.”
One way in which we know that we have come to genuine faith in Christ is if we continue in faith until the end of our lives.
Attention to the context of Hebrews 3:14 will keep us from using this and other similar passages in a pastorally inappropriate way.
We must remember that there are other evidences elsewhere in Scripture that give Christians assurance of salvation,11 so we should not think that assurance that we...
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“Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God”
in all of the passages where continuing to believe in Christ to the end of our lives is mentioned as one indication of genuine faith, the purpose is never to make those who are presently trusting in Christ worry that some time in the future they might fall away (and we should never use these passages that way either, for that would be to give wrongful cause for worry in a way that Scripture does not intend). Rather, the purpose is always to warn those who are thinking of falling away or have fallen away that if they do this it is a strong indication that they were never saved in the first
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“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us”
John says that those who have departed showed by their actions that they “were not of us”—that they were not truly born again.
For example, Judas, who betrayed Christ, must have acted almost exactly like the other disciples during the three years he was with Jesus.
John later wrote in his gospel that “Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray him” (John 6:64). But the disciples themselves did not know.
Paul also speaks of “false brethren secretly brought in” (Gal. 2:4), and says that in his journeys he has been “in danger from false brethren” (2 Cor. 11:26). He also says that the servants of Satan “disguise themselves as servants of righteousness”
they give several external signs that make them look like genuine believers.
Not every one who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.”
the ability to do such works did not guarantee that they were Christians. Jesus says, “I never knew you.” He does not say, “I knew you at one time but I no longer know you,” nor “I knew you at one time but you strayed away from me,” but rather, “I never knew you.” They never were genuine believers.
“Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil; and when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root it withered away”
they have no root in themselves,
The fact that they “have no root in themselves” indicates that there is no source of life within these plants; similarly, the people represented by them have no genuine life of their own within.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. . . . If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.
if Jesus had wanted to teach that there were true and false believers associated with him, and if he wanted to use the analogy of a vine and branches, then the only way he could refer to people who do not have genuine life in themselves would be to speak of branches that bear no fruit (somewhat after the analogy of the seeds that fell on rocky ground and had “no root in themselves” in Mark 4:17).
If we try to press the analogy any further, by saying, for example, that all branches on a vine really are alive or they would not be there in the first place, then we are simply trying to press the imagery beyond what it is able to teach—and in that case there would be nothing in the analogy that could represent false believers in any case.
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.
For land which has drunk the rain that often falls upon it, and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed; its end is to be burned.
When we recall the other metaphors in Scripture where good fruit is a sign of true spiritual life and fruitlessness is a sign of false believers (for example, Matt. 3:8–10; 7:15–20; 12:33–35), we already have an indication that the author is speaking of people whose most trustworthy evidence of their spiritual condition (the fruit they bear) is negative, suggesting that the author is talking about people who are not genuinely Christians.
