Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

Ambassador Baptist College, Sunday night, December 11

Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25 - Only one service @ 11 AM

What we believe @ SALVATION

Previously:

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ “died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

We believe that a person is saved when he repents of his sin and exercises faith by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.

Continuing on:

We believe that the atonement of Christ is not limited, but that God desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the Truth; that it is not His will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

We believe...

The Atonement of Christ is not limited.

What is the Atonement of Christ?

Noah Webster defines atonement:

In theology, the expiation of sin made by the obedience and personal sufferings of Christ.

I know what your thinking,

What does expiation mean?

EXPIA´TION, n. [L.

expiatio.]

The act of atoning for a crime; the act of making satisfaction for an offense, by which the guilt is done away, and the obligation of the offended person to punish the crime is canceled; atonement; satisfaction.

Among pagans and Jews, expiation was made chiefly by sacrifices, or washings and purification.

Among christians, expiation for the sins of men is usually considered as made only by the obedience and sufferings of Christ.

Putting that all together:

Substitutionary or vicarious atonement simply means that Christ suffered as a substitute for us, that is, instead of us, resulting in the advantage to us of paying for our sins.

Christ died in our place!

He took the punishment that, rightly, we should endure.

The atonement is an Old Testament teaching/truth.

We see the truth of the atonement even before God gave Israel the law.

It was illustrated/demonstrated when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

Notice, in that last verse, it says:

“…Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”

This truly was a picture of what Jesus Christ one day would do for the world!

The entire Jewish nation was given another picture of this truth on the night that the Lord delivered them from Egypt.

Isaiah’s prophecies looked ahead to the substitutionary & atoning work of the Messiah:

Isaiah 53:3–5 (KJV 1900)

He is despised and rejected of men; A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: And we hid as it were our faces from him; He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, And carried our sorrows: Yet we did esteem him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him; And with his stripes we are healed.

The atonement was fulfilled by Christ’s death on the cross.

John the Baptist made the connection between the Old Testament law of the substitutionary lamb

God even gave us one last demonstration of the meaning of Christ’s substitutionary atonement when Christ took Barabbas’ place on Calvary.

John 18:38–19:1 (KJV 1900)

Pilate...went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews?

Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas.

Now Barabbas was a robber.

Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.

The atoning work of Christ is taught throughout the New Testament.

Romans 5:6 (KJV 1900)

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Romans 5:8 (KJV 1900)

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

1 Corinthians 15:3 (KJV 1900)

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

1 Peter 2:24 (KJV 1900)

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Why is Christ’s substitutionary atonement so important?

Romans 6:23 (KJV 1900)

For the wages of sin is death..

We are all sinners; our sin must be punished.

There is penalty that must be payed!

Without Christ’s atoning work upon the cross, mankind would be doomed to spend eternity in Hell!

Yet, because of Christ’s atoning work, we now have the opportunity to experience and enjoy everlasting life instead of everlasting death!

Now that we’ve looked at the atonement of Christ, let’s look at the second part of that statement:

We believe...

The Atonement of Christ is not limited.

As you look at that statement, you may think:

“Well, that’s obvious,” or

“I don’t see the point,” or

“What does that mean that the atonement of Christ is not limited?”

Previously, as we began to look at our doctrinal statement regarding salvation, I mentioned, and touched on, Calvinism, which is an unbiblical way of thinking about salvation.

Allow me to give you, again, a brief definition of Calvinism:

So, what is Calvinism?

It is a theological error of mammoth proportions that undermines the will of God for the lost, that restricts the death of Christ to only an elect few and that takes away the free will of man either to accept or reject Christ as his or her Saviour.

Ultimately it robs the Gospel of its open invitation to all men to be saved and dooms most men to a lost eternity with no Saviour to save them.

That, my friends, is not the message of the Bible!

The teachings of Calvinism are usually divided into five basic points.

These 5 points make up an acrostic which spells:

T.U.L.I.P

Those 5 points are:

Total Depravity (or Total Inability)

Unconditional Election

Limited Atonement

Irresistible Grace

Perseverance of the Saved

You’ll notice that the third point is Limited Atonement (which, according to our doctrinal statement), we do not believe.

We believe that the Christ’s atoning work on the cross is not limited.

So, to understand why this has been included in our doctrinal statement, we need to understand what Calvinists mean by Limited Atonement and to understand that we must also understand what Calvinists mean by Unconditional Election.

What is Unconditional Election?

In his book, The Dark Side of Calvinism, writer George Bryson quotes John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism:

By predestination was meant God’s decree concerning the eternal destiny of His rational, moral creatures.

And this counsel of predestination was distinguished again according to the different objects as election and reprobation.

Calvinist Loraine Boettner, whom I referred to last Wednesday night, said:

We believe that from all eternity God has intended to leave some of Adam’s posterity in their sins, and that the decisive factor in the life of each is to be found only in God’s will.

Dr. Chris Shepler, in his book, Forewarned and Forearmed, states:

Calvinists see this [Unconditional Election] as meaning that our sovereign God elected or chose those who would go to Heaven and those who would go to Hell without regard to man’s own individual will or choice in the matter at all.

He goes on...

The God-chosen ones are referred to as “the elect,” and the God-rejected ones as “the non-elect.”

In a nutshell, a Calvinist believes that God has chosen certain to be saved to eternal life and conversely, that God has chosen certain to be damned to eternal hell.

To believe this, the Calvinist must severely twist the truth of God’s sovereignty.

They do this to the detriment of the truth of man’s freewill.