Theological Term of the Week: Ordo Salutis

ordo salutis
“The order of salvation, or the way we are brought to salvation by the Holy Spirit and kept there. It encompasses effectual calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification, all of which are received in union with Christ.”1

• From scripture:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:29-30 ESV).

• From Salvation Belongs to the Lord by John Frame, page 183: 

We should be flexible as to what goes into the ordo and what does not. The Bible itself doesn’t use the phrase ordo salutis… And Scripture does not include anywhere a list of all the events theologians typically include under that label. Myself, I think that the ordo is mainly a pedagogical device. As you go through the various items on the list, there is no consistent principle of ordering. Some items precede other items because the first comes earlier in time, the other later. That is the case with effectual calling and glorification. Other items on the list precede others because one is a cause, the other an effect, as with regeneration and faith. Still others come before others not because of temporal priority or causal priority but because of what theologians call instrumental priority, as in the relation of faith to justification. And still other pairs of events are simply concurrent or simultaneous blessings, like justification and adoption. So the order means different things: sometimes cause and effect, sometimes earlier and later, sometimes instrument and object, sometimes mere concurrence. Nevertheless, the order does bring out important relationships between these events, relationships that the Bible does set forth.

• From Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 613:

Paul provides a clear order in Romans 8:29-30. He moves from foreordination to calling, justification and glorification. Assuring his readers of the unbreakable chain of salvation, he stresses that those whom God has foreordained to salvation will be brought to this goal. Foreordination is based on foreknowledge—not the foreknowledge envisaged by Arminius, which is simply God’s knowledge of the future actions of his creatures, but rather his knowledge of persons. The verb [proginosko] is used not so much for advance knowledge of this or that but as the equivalent of electing love. Such people are called powerfully into fellowship with God’s Son, are justified, and are certain of glorification.

In Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul explains how our whole salvation is in union with Christ. He begins with election in eternity (v. 4), moves to foreordination to adoption (v. 5), and advances to redemption through the death of Christ (v. 7) and then the sealing by the Holy Spirit (vv. 13-14). While the underlying leitmotif is Trinitarian and consists in union, there are clearly discernible aspects that Paul treats in progressive order.

Learn more:

1. Simply Put: Ordo Salutis
2. Tim Challies: Visual Theology — The Order of Salvation
3. Louis Berkhof: The Ordo Salutis
4. Derek Thomas: The Order of Salvation
5. Kim Riddlebarger: Basics of the Reformed Faith: The Order of Salvation
6. Derek Thomas: The Ordo Salutis Lecture Series

Related terms:

• order of God’s decrees
• historia salutis

1 From Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 945.

 Filed under Salvation

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Theological Term of the Week: Mortification

mortification
The believer’s lifelong fight to put to death self and sin by the power of the Spirit. 

• From scripture:

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:3-10 ESV)

• From The Second Helvetic Confession: 

Chapter XIV 

Of Repentance and the Conversion of Man

… We also disapprove of those who think that by their own satisfactions they make amends for sins committed. For we teach that Christ alone by his death or passion is the satisfaction, propitiation or expiation of all sins (Isa., ch.53; I Cor. 1:30). Yet as we have already said, we do not cease to urge the mortification of the flesh. We add, however, that this mortification is not to be proudly obtruded upon God as a satisfaction for sins, but is to be performed humble, in keeping with the nature of the children of God, as a new obedience out of gratitude for the deliverance and full satisfaction obtained by the death and satisfaction of the Son of God.

• From 18 Words by J. I. Packer:

This is our aim; so to drain the life out of sin that it never moves again. We are not promised that we shall reach our goal in this life, but we are commanded to advance towards it by assaulting those inclinations and habits in which sin’s presence is recognized. We are not merely to resist its attacks. We are to take the initiative against it. We must seek, in Owen’s phrase, ‘not a mere disappointment of sin, that it be not brought forth … but a victory over it, and pursuit of it to a complete conquest’; not merely the counteraction, but the eradication of it. Killing, so far as we can compass that, is the end in view.

• From A Discourse of Mortification by Stephen Charnock:

Let us labour to mortify sin. If we will not be the death of sin, sin will be the death of our souls. Though the allurements of sin may be pleasant, the propositions seemingly fair, yet the end of all is death, Rom. v. 21. Death was threatened by God and executed upon Adam; death must be executed upon our sins, in order to the restoration of the eternal life of our souls. Love to everlasting life should provoke us, fear of everlasting death should excite us to this, the two most solemn and fundamental passions that put us upon action. ‘Why will you die?’ was God’s expostulation, Ezek. xxxiii. 11; Why should thou, O my soul, for a short vanishing pleasure, venture an eternal death? should be our expostulation with ourselves. This would be a curing our disease, bringing our soul into that order in part which was broken by the fall; by this the power of that tyrant that first headed and maintained the faction against God would be removed, and the soul recover that liberty and life it lost by disobeying of God. This would conduce to our peace. We have then a sprouting assurance when we are most victorious over our lusts: after every victory, God gives us a taste of the hidden manna, Rev. ii. 17. Unmortified lusts do only raise storms and tempests in the soul; less pains are required to the mortification of them than to the satisfaction of them. Sin is a hard taskmaster; there must be a pleasure in destroying so cruel an inmate. Gratitude engages us; God’s holiness and justice bruised Christ for us, and shall not we kill sin for him? An infinite love parted with a dear Son, and shall not our shallow finite love part with destroying lusts? We cannot love our sins so much as God loved his Son: he loved him infinitely. If God parted with him for us, shall not we part with our sins for him? He would have us kill it because it hurts us; the very command discovers affection as well as sovereignty, and minds us of it as our privilege as well as our duty. And to engage us to it, he hath sent as great a person to help us as to redeem us, viz, his Spirit; he sent one to merit it, and the other to assist us in it and work it in us, who is to bring back the creature to God by conquering that in it which hath so long detained it captive.

Learn more:

1. Erik Raymond: A Primer on Mortification of Sin
2. Derek Thomas: Putting Sin to Death
3. Sinclair Ferguson: How to Mortify Sin
4. Dane Ortland: You Need to Put Your Sin to Death
5. Kelly M. Kapic: The Mortification of Sin
6. Barry York: Mortification and Vivification
7. John Owen: The Mortification of Sin in Believers

Related terms:

• glorification
• regeneration
• repentance
• sanctification

 Filed under Salvation and Reformed Theology

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Theological Term of the Week: Monergism

monergism
“[T]he doctrine that the Holy Spirit is the only efficient agent in regeneration—that the human will possesses no inclination to holiness until regenerated, and therefore cannot cooperate in regeneration.”1

• From scripture:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10 ESV)

• From The Canons of Dordt, The Third and Fourth Main Points of Doctrine: 

Article 11: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Conversion

Moreover, when God carries out this good pleasure in his chosen ones, or works true conversion in them, he not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed to them outwardly, and enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, he also penetrates into the inmost being of man, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. He infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant; he activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds.

Article 12: Regeneration a Supernatural Work

And this is the regeneration, the new creation, the raising from the dead, and the making alive so clearly proclaimed in the Scriptures, which God works in us without our help. But this certainly does not happen only by outward teaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a way of working that, after God has done his work, it remains in man’s power whether or not to be reborn or converted. Rather, it is an entirely supernatural work, one that is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing, a marvelous, hidden, and inexpressible work, which is not lesser than or inferior in power to that of creation or of raising the dead, as Scripture (inspired by the author of this work) teaches. As a result, all those in whose hearts God works in this marvelous way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectively reborn and do actually believe. And then the will, now renewed, is not only activated and motivated by God but in being activated by God is also itself active. For this reason, man himself, by that grace which he has received, is also rightly said to believe and to repent.

• From Concise Theology by J. I. Packer:

Regeneration is monergistic: that is, entirely the work of God the Holy Spirit. It raises the elect among the spiritually dead to new life in Christ (Eph. 2:1-10). Regeneration is a transition from spiritual death to spiritual life, and conscious, intentional, active faith in Christ is its immediate fruit, not its immediate cause.

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: Monergism
2. John Hendryx: A Simple Explanation of Monergism
3. Ligonier Ministries: God’s Sovereignty in Regeneration
4. Steve Lawson: Regeneration is Monergistic
5. Gannon Murphy: A Defense of Monergistic Regeneration

Related terms:

• effectual call
• synergism
• regeneration

 1 Century Dictionary

 Filed under Salvation and Reformed Theology

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Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured as a Theological Term of the Week? Email your suggestion using the contact button in the navigation bar above. 

Clicking on the Theological Terms button above the header will take you to an alphabetical list of all the theological terms.