Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The New Testament analogy of the Old Testament Fish Gate. Efficacious Grace.
Friday, July 6, 2012
ROM 9:15-16, For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
Grace is the policy of God in blessing mankind totally apart from any creature merit or ability. The grace policy of God provides blessings for believers and provided these blessings in eternity past before man was created.
EPH 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,”
What God provided for man in grace in eternity past cannot be earned, merited, or deserved.
Mankind was not around when God provided blessings for him.
Our portfolio of invisible assets, our escrow blessings for time and eternity, 10 PSD, the blessings of dying grace, resurrection, and the blessings of the eternal state.
ACT 10:34, God is not one to show partiality,
GAL 3:26-28, For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all equal in Christ Jesus.
Grace is also the divine policy in creating a new spiritual species for the utilization of divine power.
What a relief it is for us that we don’t have to make ourselves presentable to God, God has given us a new nature and has crucified the old.
EPH 5:25b Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her;
EPH 5:27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.
COL 1:22 yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach–
Grace is also the divine policy of keeping both winners and losers alive through logistical grace support.
In MAT 5:45, we read “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good,”
Grace is also the divine policy of blessing winners and losers through this logistical grace system.
Grace is the divine policy of providing divine revelation in writing.
Grace is the divine policy and provision of a spiritual I.Q. for perception, metabolization and application of Bible doctrine.
We should expand our understanding of grace through the spiritual skills–the filling of the Holy Spirit, cognition and inculcation of Bible doctrine, and execution of God’s plan.
Efficacious grace is the theological term for the delineation of the work of the Holy Spirit related to faith in Christ at the point of salvation.
This doctrine might be classified as the doctrine of effectual faith, since the faith of the spiritually dead person would be ineffective without help from God (Holy Spirit).
EPH 1:13, “In whom [Jesus Christ] you also, when you heard the message of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, in whom also, when you had believed.”
Grace does not give us what we want, but grace gives us what God wants, which is far better for each one of us.
You cannot have fellowship with God until you have a permanent, eternal, and secure relationship with God……and that is only through the grace of God.
Through His policy of grace, God has solved the problem of fellowship in time just as He has solved the problem of relationship with Himself for all eternity.
Knowing what all of our failures would be, when the fetus emerged from the womb, God still imputed human life to our souls; that’s grace.
JER 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”
After salvation, the most important thing we can do is learn about who and what God is.
Spiritual death is the dichotomous state of mankind at birth under three categories of condemnation from God.
(1) Total separation from God through the imputation of Adam’s original sin.
(2) Total depravity resulting from personal sins.
(3) Total inability to do anything to gain the approbation of God.
When we stop using the power of God which is given to us in grace and substitute our own power, we are the most useless creatures in the world.
(1) The grace of God the Father in E/P used His divine omniscience to program the divine decrees, sent our Lord into the world, imputed our sins to Christ on the Cross and judged those sins.
God the Father planned salvation –
Doctrines of unlimited atonement, redemption, reconciliation, propitiation, imputation, and justification.
(2) The grace of God the Son is revealed by the fact that He received the judgment of our sins on the Cross.HEB 10:4-10.
(3) The grace of God the Holy Spirit takes the gospel and makes it a reality to those who are spiritually dead, the unbelievers, as a part of common grace.
Then the Holy Spirit makes the divine call to believe in Christ by making the gospel understandable.
The Holy Spirit also makes our faith effective for salvation as a part of efficacious grace.
The unbeliever is under total depravity, total separation from God, and total helplessness to do anything to gain the approbation of God.
Under this principle, grace is all that God is free to do for mankind on the basis of the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Salvation is the work of God en toto.
At the moment of salvation we received perfect righteousness from God.
Faith is the one thing that God the Holy Spirit can make effective.
If you don’t understand that faith is non-meritorious, then you will never understand the fantastic victory that non-meritorious faith brought to God in the angelic conflict.
a. Rationalism which is reliance on reason.
b. Empiricism which is reliance on experience and the senses.
c. Faith.
The merit of faith is in the object.
LUK 17:6 “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you.”
It’s not how much faith you have but who your faith is directed towards and what you’re is trusting in!
The spiritually dead person can make legitimate decisions to listen to the gospel.
This is called pre-salvation grace or common grace.
Common grace in which the Gospel is presented and made understandable,
TIT 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
2. The divine call which is the personal invitation to the hearers, MAT 11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
3. Efficacious grace in which the unbel’s faith is made effectual, EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
A good soul winner is someone who presents the proper information accurately and properly.
PRO 11:30 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, And he who is wise wins souls.
DAN 12:3 “And those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
This means that both hearing the gospel and believing in Jesus Christ are totally non-meritorious and therefore totally compatible with the grace of God. Efficacious grace, the work of the Holy Spirit in making faith in Jesus Christ effective for eternal salvation.
ROM 11:29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
2CO 6:1 And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain–
Common grace in which the Holy Spirit makes the gospel understandable.
The divine call which is the invitation of God the Father to believe in TLJC.
Efficacious grace which is the Holy Spirit making faith and faith alone in Jesus Christ effective for salvation.
It is true there is an acceptance that takes place before salvation but that is accepting the information that God the Holy Spirit has presented.
JOH 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, {even} to those who believe in His name,
The spiritual death of mankind makes it necessary for the grace of God to function on our behalf.
1. Spiritual death at birth which is total depravity, total separation from God and total helplessness.
Because mankind is born dichotomous which means that he has a physical body and a soul but no human spirit.
The dichotomous status of mankind is described in
JUD 1:19 These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the spirit.
worldly-minded is the word psuchikoi means soulish-persons.
The TCNT says that they are animal and unspiritual.
psuchikos – man, the soulish man,
As Elihu said in JOB 32:8 “But it is a spirit in man [that is a human spirit], And the Spirit of the Almighty [God the Holy Spirit] gives them understanding [perception].”
ROM 8:16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our [human] spirit that we are children of God,
Only the believer in TLJC as Royal family is a trichotomous being.
We are said to be “body, soul and spirit”, as believers.
Before salvation we have a body and a soul, we are “dichotomous”.
At the moment we personally believe in TLJC, God the Holy Spirit actually creates a human spirit or a “pneuma”.
Soul life is human life.
Eternal life is God’s life.
1JO 5:12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.
The unbeliever in spiritual death has no human spirit therefore spiritual death demands an act of grace on the part of God the Holy Spirit.
In that act of grace, the Holy Spirit functions as a human spirit when we hear the gospel message.
This is “common grace”.
Category number 1. moral degeneration.
Category number 2. Immoral degeneration.
There is also common grace which is the ministry of the Holy Spirit again in revealing the gospel to the unbeliever.
Common grace therefore emphasizes the inability of the unbeliever to understand the Gospel apart from the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit.
Grace always emphasizes the inability of man and the ability of God.
He invites you through God the Holy Spirit and your understanding of the gospel to believe in Christ.
This is called the call of God.