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The PURPOSE & INTENT for Salvation “when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” (1 Cor. 11:32) “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (1 Cor. 5:5) |
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You may argue that God does all of His “rebukes” (Heb. 12:5-6, Rev. 3:19) for the intention and purpose of salvation and not condemnation, in love and not in wrath, but that is to say that God has no will, desire, purpose, counsel, mind, emotion, and heart which can be fallen short of and resisted, as if there is no condescension of God in the ways of man, and as if there is no simultaneous will in God working within time which genuinely desires salvation but does not always obtain it. The scriptures are very clear – saved, righteous men are judged in this life for the specific purpose that they are saved in the life to come. Therefore for this intent and purpose are the righteous plagued, chastened, and troubled by God’s wrath. As it is written, “when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32). Will you stand on this, that it does exactly mean therefore that no man can be lost, condemned, and under eternal wrath at the final Judgment, only because this is God’s intent or purpose for all these things? Then you are claiming that God can never come short of His salvific intents or purposes, and that there is no condescension of God which makes plain that salvific intent can be resisted by men and changed in God.
PURPOSE & INTENTION #1
PURPOSE & INTENTION #1
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“O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever” (Deut. 5:29)?!
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Did not God desire the salvation of Israel so as to seek it through mighty revelations of His fear, as Moses explained the purpose for these things, “that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not” (Ex. 20:20)? And did not God so earnestly desire the salvation of this generation that He exclaimed the lamentation, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever” (Deut. 5:29)?!
PURPOSE & INTENTION #2
PURPOSE & INTENTION #2
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“O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea” (Isa. 48:18)!
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Did not God do all that He did to Israel so that they would be saved (Isaiah 5:1-5), that that very purpose of salvation was HIS DESIRE behind all that He did? And it was resisted! And so, like God lamented over Israel in Deuteronomy 5:29, He also says of the dispersed generation, “O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea” (Isa. 48:18)!
PURPOSE & INTENTION #3
PURPOSE & INTENTION #3
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“Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways” (Ps. 81:13)! |
Again, to the generation which was commissioned to take the Promised Land to rule it forever, God lamented, “Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways” (Ps. 81:13)! And again, when He destroyed His House, He cried, “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street” (Lam. 4:1)!
PURPOSE & INTENTION #4 & #5
PURPOSE & INTENTION #4 & #5
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“How long will it be ere they attain to innocency (Hos. 8:5)!? |
God desired for His people to be righteous and cried again on this matter, “How long will it be ere they attain to innocency (Hos. 8:5)!? Likewise also God lamented over the first century Jews, even weeping (Lk. 19:42), and He clearly declares that He desired to save them but they “would not” (Luke 13:34-35)!
Reader, God desired to save all of these generations and peoples, and I could cite more. God desired to save them and He used judgment, fire, rebukes, and affliction with the intent that the people He is lamenting over would have been so exercised – “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5) – but just because this was God’s purpose and intent, nevertheless it was resisted! Thus did God lament as He did. Therefore, when we see the salvific intent of God in the New Testament scriptures, as in 1 Corinthians 11:32 & 1 Corinthians 5:5, these verses do not mean that men cannot come short of that intention, purpose, desire, and pursuit of God! Now please, let me reason in another direction.
1) Your heresy is coming from the fact that you view God only in His sovereign ways – that He cannot change His mind, purpose, will, and desire when conditions are transgressed, resulting in a breach His word of promise. In other words, you are negating the condescension of God, God in the ways of man.
2) Furthermore, you are doing the work of a false prophet when you give unrepentant saints false peace, because, if the saved men in biblical history did not see that they were under the damning wrath of God at certain times in their lives, when indeed they were, they would not have been moved to repent.
You say that men cannot come short of this salvific intent and purpose, and therefore, God always fulfills His intentions, and I ask you this: why did God desire to give King Saul an eternal Kingdom (1 Sam. 13:13-14), and yet, he came short of that salvific desire in God? I could cite many more, but the bottom-ling two points are these: 1) Your heresy is coming from the fact that you view God only in His sovereign ways – that He cannot change His mind, purpose, will, and desire when conditions are transgressed, resulting in a breach His word of promise. In other words, you are negating the condescension of God, God in the ways of man. 2) Furthermore, you are doing the work of a false prophet when you give unrepentant saints false peace, because, if the saved men in biblical history did not see that they were under the damning wrath of God at certain times in their lives, when indeed they were, they would not have been moved to repent.
It is proven throughout biblical history that a fear of falling short of salvific promises, which is also an awareness of damning wrath alive in God when one is presently fallen short of the salvific promises of God, enabled saints to persevere and repent! God always was intent on Jeremiah’s eternal salvation (Jer. 31:3), but within time God was angry with him so as to damn him. Jeremiah did not always abide in His delivering favour, though God said that He was with him “to deliver him”, and that men “shall not prevail against” him (Jer. 1:19). In Jeremiah 15, God was intent on leaving Jeremiah in the hands of wicked men to be destroyed under God’s wrath, along with the condemned people. We can see by his life and many others which we have covered, that, if the higher, hidden, and sovereign ways of God had been Jeremiah’s sole meditation, had he believed that there could be no danger, damnation, or anger of God because of an everlasting love in God, it is then that he would have perished in his own self-justifying, unrepentant deceit. Likewise with Jeremiah, Hezekiah and Josiah believed the report of their condemnation and thus arose as the elect by that means of grace – grace to fear (Heb. 12:28-29)! “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh” (Heb. 12:25), dear reader.
No, reader, you do not love God enough so that you will follow Him and be faithful just because you love Him. That is not true! You need to look up and meditate upon God’s condescension, not only His eternality, sovereignty, and changeless glory. You need to recognize it when you look up, if haply, at a specific time in your life the wrath of God is kindled against you, even to damn you, because God has changed His mind toward you. At such a time, there can be simultaneous desires in God wrestling with one another! God no longer desiring to save you, and still yet desiring to save you! At such a time when God repents of desiring to save you, if then you repent and/or intercede against God’s wrath, God can repent of the desire to destroy you – thus your salvation will be persevered. But you will say, perhaps, that there is no possibility of God’s repentance in the NT, affirming this by claiming there is no evidence of its existence, that the NT is clearly absent from and unlike the numerous accounts of God’s repentances as seen in the OT. Not so, reader!
Reader, God desired to save all of these generations and peoples, and I could cite more. God desired to save them and He used judgment, fire, rebukes, and affliction with the intent that the people He is lamenting over would have been so exercised – “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5) – but just because this was God’s purpose and intent, nevertheless it was resisted! Thus did God lament as He did. Therefore, when we see the salvific intent of God in the New Testament scriptures, as in 1 Corinthians 11:32 & 1 Corinthians 5:5, these verses do not mean that men cannot come short of that intention, purpose, desire, and pursuit of God! Now please, let me reason in another direction.
1) Your heresy is coming from the fact that you view God only in His sovereign ways – that He cannot change His mind, purpose, will, and desire when conditions are transgressed, resulting in a breach His word of promise. In other words, you are negating the condescension of God, God in the ways of man.
2) Furthermore, you are doing the work of a false prophet when you give unrepentant saints false peace, because, if the saved men in biblical history did not see that they were under the damning wrath of God at certain times in their lives, when indeed they were, they would not have been moved to repent.
You say that men cannot come short of this salvific intent and purpose, and therefore, God always fulfills His intentions, and I ask you this: why did God desire to give King Saul an eternal Kingdom (1 Sam. 13:13-14), and yet, he came short of that salvific desire in God? I could cite many more, but the bottom-ling two points are these: 1) Your heresy is coming from the fact that you view God only in His sovereign ways – that He cannot change His mind, purpose, will, and desire when conditions are transgressed, resulting in a breach His word of promise. In other words, you are negating the condescension of God, God in the ways of man. 2) Furthermore, you are doing the work of a false prophet when you give unrepentant saints false peace, because, if the saved men in biblical history did not see that they were under the damning wrath of God at certain times in their lives, when indeed they were, they would not have been moved to repent.
It is proven throughout biblical history that a fear of falling short of salvific promises, which is also an awareness of damning wrath alive in God when one is presently fallen short of the salvific promises of God, enabled saints to persevere and repent! God always was intent on Jeremiah’s eternal salvation (Jer. 31:3), but within time God was angry with him so as to damn him. Jeremiah did not always abide in His delivering favour, though God said that He was with him “to deliver him”, and that men “shall not prevail against” him (Jer. 1:19). In Jeremiah 15, God was intent on leaving Jeremiah in the hands of wicked men to be destroyed under God’s wrath, along with the condemned people. We can see by his life and many others which we have covered, that, if the higher, hidden, and sovereign ways of God had been Jeremiah’s sole meditation, had he believed that there could be no danger, damnation, or anger of God because of an everlasting love in God, it is then that he would have perished in his own self-justifying, unrepentant deceit. Likewise with Jeremiah, Hezekiah and Josiah believed the report of their condemnation and thus arose as the elect by that means of grace – grace to fear (Heb. 12:28-29)! “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh” (Heb. 12:25), dear reader.
No, reader, you do not love God enough so that you will follow Him and be faithful just because you love Him. That is not true! You need to look up and meditate upon God’s condescension, not only His eternality, sovereignty, and changeless glory. You need to recognize it when you look up, if haply, at a specific time in your life the wrath of God is kindled against you, even to damn you, because God has changed His mind toward you. At such a time, there can be simultaneous desires in God wrestling with one another! God no longer desiring to save you, and still yet desiring to save you! At such a time when God repents of desiring to save you, if then you repent and/or intercede against God’s wrath, God can repent of the desire to destroy you – thus your salvation will be persevered. But you will say, perhaps, that there is no possibility of God’s repentance in the NT, affirming this by claiming there is no evidence of its existence, that the NT is clearly absent from and unlike the numerous accounts of God’s repentances as seen in the OT. Not so, reader!