Theological Term of the Week

salvation
The act of God’s grace in delivering his people from bondage to sin and condemnation, transferring them to the kingdom of his beloved Son, and giving them eternal life—all on the basis of what Christ accomplished in his atoning sacrifice.1 

• From scripture: 
  

  For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 2:3-7 ESV)

  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV)

• From the Belgic Confession:

  Article 17: The Recovery of Fallen Man
  We believe that our good God, by his marvelous wisdom and goodness, seeing that man had plunged himself in this manner into both physical and spiritual death and made himself completely miserable, set out to find him, though man, trembling all over, was fleeing from him.

• From Salvation - I Can Write No Other Theme by Wylie Fulton:

 Salvation means that long before you were born:

1. Your name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Revelation 17:8.

2. The immutable God had purposed, for reasons known only to Himself, to save you. Romans 8:29.

3. God loved you with an everlasting love. Jeremiah 31:3.

4. When the Baby Jesus was born into the world, He was God’s salvation for you. Luke

5. When Christ lived a perfect life and fulfilled all righteousness, it was for you.

6. Dying on the Cross, paying sin’s debt, your name was indelibly stamped on Christ’s hands and heart.

7. When Christ ascended to Heaven, He went there to intercede for you.

8. The Holy Spirit was assigned a job to do, and that was to reach you, regenerate you, plant faith and repentance in your heart, and bring you to the knowledge of Christ.

9. The angels of God were assigned a mission to watch over and minister unto you.

10. Christ went back to Heaven to prepare a place for you!

And there is more, so much more. One can never exhaust the unsearchable riches that are stored up for God’s elect in Christ the Lord. And remember, all of this was on purpose, by God’s eternal decree, and limited to those whom He chose to salvation.

Salvation means that during your lifetime:

1. The angels of God have ministered unto you, behind the scenes, protecting you, preserving you, keeping you for the hour when you would come to know God’s salvation.

2. The Holy Spirit has already singled you out and laid hold of your heart (or will, sometime before you die).

3. God will grant you repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; He will also give you saving faith.

4. God’s grace will keep you, preserve you, make you secure in Christ, so that you will not fall away.

5. The joy of the Lord and some knowledge of sins forgiven will become real to your heart.

Salvation means that when you come to die:

1. The angels of God will hover around you.

2. You will know that “Jesus led me all the way.”

3. You are going out to meet HIM.

4. There will be peace in the valley for you.

5. Even if you die in the dark, God’s Spirit is with you and you will be ushered into the presence of the LORD. “Absent from the body, present with the LORD.” “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD” Psalm 3:8.

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: Salvation
2. Tim Challies: The Essential: Salvation
3. GotQuestions.org: What is salvation?
4. The Trinity Foundation: What Must I Do to be Saved?
5. ESV Study Bible Notes: God’s Plan of Salvation
6. J. C. Ryle: Way of Salvation
7. John Samson: Saved by God, from God, for God
8. Greg Herrick: So Great Salvation
9. Wylie Fulton: Salvation - I Can Write No Other Theme, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
10. S. Lewis Johnson: Salvation, What It Is and Why It Is So Important (mp3)
11. Rob Lister: The Doctrine of Salvation (audio)

Related terms:

• adoption
• conversion
• election
• glorification
• gospel, the
• order of salvation
• regeneration
• repentance
• sanctification
• saving faith
• soteriology
• union with Christ

Filed under Salvation.

1From Salvation at Theopedia.

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Theological Term of the Week

sin
Any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature.1

• From scripture: 
  

  Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4 ESV)

  …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…. (Romans 3:23 ESV)

• From the Westminster Larger Catechism:

  Question 24: What is sin?

  Answer: Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature.

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof:

Sin always has a relation to God and His will. The older dogmaticians realized that is was impossible to have a correct conception of sin without contemplating it in relation to God and His will, and therefore emphasized this aspect and usually spoke of sin as “lack of conformity to the law of God.” This is undoubtedly a correct formal definition of sin. But the question arises, Just what is the material content of the law? What does it demand? If this question is answered, it will be possible to determine what sin is in a material sense. Now there is no doubt about it that the great central demand of the law is love to God. And if from the material point of view moral goodness consists in love to God, then moral evil must consist in the opposite. It is separation from God, opposition to God, hatred of God, and this manifests itself in constant transgression of the law of God in thought, word and deed. The following passages clearly show that Scripture contemplates sin in relation to God and His law, either as written on the tablets of the heart, or as given by Moses….

• From What Is Sin? by J. Gresham Machen:

What, then, is sin? We have said what it is not. Now we ought to say what it is. Fortunately we do not have to search very long in the Bible to find the answer to that question. The Bible gives the answer right at the beginning in the account that it gives of the very first sin of man. What was that first sin of man, according to the Bible? Is not the answer perfectly clear? Why, it was disobedience to a command of God. God said, “Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the tree”; man ate of the fruit of the tree: and that was sin. There we have our definition of sin at last.

“Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” Those are the words of the Shorter Catechism, not of the Bible; but they are true to what the Bible teaches from Genesis to Revelation. The most elementary thing about sin is that it is that which is contrary to God’s law. You cannot believe in the existence of sin unless you believe in the existence of the law of God. The idea of sin and the idea of law go together.

That being so, I ask you just to run through the Bible in your mind and consider how very pervasive in the Bible is the Bible’s teaching about the law of God. We have already observed how clear that teaching is in the account which the Bible gives of the first sin of man. God said, “Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the tree”. That was God’s law; it was a definite command. Man disobeyed that command; man did what God told him not to do: and that was sin. But the law of God runs all through the Bible. It is not found just in this passage or that, but it is the background of everything that the Bible says regarding the relations between God and man.

…

This law is grounded in the infinite perfection of the being of God Himself. “Be ye therefore perfect,” said Jesus, “even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). That is the standard. It is a holy law, as God Himself is holy. If that be the law of God, how awful a thing is sin! Not an offence against some rule proceeding from temporal authority or enforced by temporal penalties, but an offence against the infinite and eternal God!

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: Sin
2. New City Catechism: What is sin?
3. GotQuestions.org: What is the definition of sin?
4. Blue Letter Bible: What Is Sin?
5. Tim Challies: The Essential: Sin
6. R. C. Sproul: Cosmic Treason
7. David Powlison: What Is Sin?
8. Ralph Venning: The Sinfulness of Sin (pdf)
9. Wayne Grudem: Doctrine of Sin: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (mp3s)

Related terms:

• fall (of man)
• original sin
• total depravity

Filed under Anthropology.

1From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Theological Term of the Week

regulative principle of worship
The teaching that everything done in corporate worship should be divinely warranted; that tenet that public worship should follow the directions and examples given in Scripture.

• From scripture: 
  

  And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20 ESV)

• From the Westminster Confession of Faith 1689:

  Chapter 21

  1… . But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture.

• From The Regulative Principle of Worship by Derek Thomas:

It is important to realize that the regulative principle as applied to public worship frees the church from acts of impropriety and idiocy — we are not free, for example, to advertise that performing clowns will mime the Bible lesson at next week’s Sunday service. Yet it does not commit the church to a “cookie-cutter,” liturgical sameness. Within an adherence to the principle there is enormous room for variation—in matters that Scripture has not specifically addressed (adiaphora). Thus, the regulative principle as such may not be invoked to determine whether contemporary or traditional songs are employed, whether three verses or three chapters of Scripture are read, whether one long prayer or several short prayers are made, or whether a single cup or individual cups with real wine or grape juice are utilized at the Lord’s Supper. To all of these issues, the principle “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40) must be applied. However, if someone suggests dancing or drama is a valid aspect of public worship, the question must be asked — where is the biblical justification for it?… The fact that both may be (to employ the colloquialism) “neat” is debatable and beside the point; there’s no shred of biblical evidence, let alone mandate, for either. …

What is sometimes forgotten in these discussions is the important role of conscience. Without the regulative principle, we are at the mercy of “worship leaders” and bullying pastors who charge noncompliant worshipers with displeasing God unless they participate according to a certain pattern and manner. To the victims of such bullies, the sweetest sentences ever penned by men are, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also” (WCF 20:2). To obey when it is a matter of God’s express prescription is true liberty; anything else is bondage and legalism.

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: Regulative Principle of Worship
2. Richard L. Pratt, Jr.: The Regulative Principle
3. Derek Thomas: The Regulative Principle of Worship
4. John Frame: A Fresh Look at the Regulative Principle
5. Brian Schwertley: Sola Scriptura and the Regulative Principle of Worship
6. G. I. Williamson: The Scriptural Regulative Principle of Worship
7. Trip Lee: Must All Regulative Principle Churches Look the Same?
8. Jonathan Leeman: Regulative Like Jazz
9. Sam Waldron: The Regulative Principle: Historical and Theological; The Regulative Principle: It’s Scriptural Support  (audio)
10. Reformed Forum: Discussion with Derek Thomas on the Regulative Principle (audio)

Related terms:

• authority of scripture
• sufficiency of scripture

 Filed under Ecclesiology.

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.