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Topic 4: The Blessings that Are Effectually Conveyed by These Means to the Lord’s Elect or Chosen Ones

“For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14 ESV).


By these outward ordinances [listed in Topic 3], our Lord makes the reprobate inexcusable. Likewise, by the power of His Spirit, He effectually applies to the Elect all of the saving graces purchased to them in the Covenant of Redemption, and makes a change in their persons.27 In particular:

  1. He converts, that is, regenerates them by giving spiritual life to them by:

    1. Opening their understandings

    2. Renewing their wills, emotions, and mental abilities for giving spiritual obedience to His commands

  2. He gives them saving faith by a sense of their deserved condemnation so that they heartily consent to the Covenant of Grace and embrace Christ Jesus unfeignedly.28

  3. He gives them repentance by making them turn from all iniquity to the service of God by godly sorrow in the hatred of sin and love of righteousness.

  4. He sanctifies them by making them go on and persevere in faith and spiritual obedience to the Law of God. Both of these are manifested by fruitfulness in all duties and doing good works as God offers occasion.



Together with this inward change of the persons of the Elect, God also changes their states; for as soon as they are brought by faith into the Covenant of Grace:

  1. He justifies them by:

    1. Crediting to them that perfect obedience that Christ gave to the Law

    2. Crediting to them the perfect satisfaction that Christ gave to justice on the Cross29 in their name [in their place as their substitute]

  2. He reconciles them, and makes them friends of God, who were before enemies of God.

  3. He adopts them so that they will be no longer children of Satan, but children of God, and thus enriched with all spiritual privileges of His sons.

  4. After their warfare in this life is ended, at their deaths, God perfects their holiness and the blessedness of their souls in Heaven.

  5. Finally, on the last great Day when Christ comes again:

    1. The souls and resurrected bodies of believers will be joyfully joined together again.

    2. In His glorious judgment, all the wicked will be sent away to Hell with Satan whom they have served.

    3. But Christ’s own chosen and redeemed ones—true believers, students of and strivers after holiness—will remain with Christ forever in the state of glorification.


Navigation:

Past: The Sum of Saving Knowledge, especially salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God

Present: The Practical Use of Saving Knowledge, or how to put the saving knowledge, especially of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, to good use

Future: Appendices


27 Do you want to be among Elect by the power of the Holy Spirit? Then count the cost; there will be things in your life, often cherished relationships, that will have to change in obedience to God. Then persevere in commitment and trust in Jesus Christ, by exercising the grace of faith. And God the Father, Who can neither lie nor fail in a promise, has promised: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13 ESV). So ask with a sincere heart and God will give you His Holy Spirit to give you saving faith and repentance and to be in you forever. If you do these things in sincerity and persevere to the end of your earthly life, know that it was not of yourself, but of God’s choosing you for eternal life and giving you His Holy Spirit for the power to live the Christian life. (You can safely leave God’s mysteries to God.)

28 The word unfeigned (meaning not feigned, not counterfeit, not hypocritical, real), appears multiple times in this Sum as a warning that only genuine believers are saved and go to Heaven. Hypocrites, including self-deceived hypocrites who do not take their Christianity and Christ wholeheartedly and seriously, go to Hell.

29 Partly by the visible emotional, spiritual, and physical sufferings He endured as man from His betrayal to His death, and partly by His Divine capacity and power, our Lord Jesus Christ endured the equivalent of eternity in Hell in the place of each of the Elect. Put another way, He took the rap for us. Since Christ paid the full penalty due to the sin of each of the Elect, there is nothing left for God to punish.

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