This is so good. Often I see those outside the Reformed tradition, and sometimes even those within it, suggesting that we somehow look to our election to be confident in our salvation. This is not now, nor has it ever been, the source of our confidence, but rather Christ, and him both crucified and resurrected is our confidence. His promises, his power, his sacraments, and his comfort given to us through prayer and the reading of the scriptures are what we rest on to be assured in our salvation and election.
3 weeks ago | 1
I believe calvinism is a great example of "puny man endeavoring into the hidden reccess of God's wisdom". When scriptures only says elected to be saved, it adds "elected to believe". If scripture says Jesus died for the saved, it immediately adds "Jesus died ONLY for the saved". If scripture says man is depraved so as to being unable to save himself, it adds "man is unable to believe unless he is one of the elect." All for the name of satisfying man's logic (all be it flawed)
3 weeks ago | 2
Biblical Understanding
"Among the temptations with which Satan assaults believers, none is greater or more perilous, than when disquieting them with doubts as to their election, he at the same time stimulates them with a depraved desire of inquiring after it out of the proper way. By inquiring out of the proper way, I mean when puny man endeavors to penetrate to the hidden recesses of the divine wisdom, and goes back even to the remotest eternity, in order that he may understand what final determination God has made with regard to him. In this way he plunges headlong into an immense abyss, involves himself in numberless inextricable snares, and buries himself in the thickest darkness...
But if we are elected in him, we cannot find the certainty of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we look at him apart from the Son. Christ, then, is the mirror in which we ought, and in which, without deception, we may contemplate our election. For since it is into his body that the Father has decreed to engraft those whom from eternity he wished to be his, that he may regard as sons all whom he acknowledges to be his members, if we are in communion with Christ, we have proof sufficiently clear and strong that we are written in the Book of Life."
- John Calvin, "Institutes of the Christian Religion," Book III, Chapter 24, Paragraphs 4, 5
3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 30