R.C. Sproul (0:00)

James said on one occasion, with sarcasm dripping from his pen, you believe in God. You do. Well, even the demons believe and tremble. And so what James was saying is that there is a kind of faith that if you have that all that it qualifies you to be is a demon and is not something that will necessarily save you or yield your justification.

Nathan W. Bingham (0:36)

Now that's a scary thought, isn't it? Realizing that to merely believe that God exists, even to believe that Jesus died on the cross to save sinners, isn't sufficient to be considered saving faith. So what does it mean to believe? Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. We're continuing our series from RC Sproul in the Book of Ephesians. And whether in the classroom, the studio, or in the pulpit, whenever Dr. Sproul would teach from the Bible, you can hear his urgency, passion, pastoral care and commitment to the text. And it was all of his teaching in Ephesians that formed the basis of his expositional commentary dedicated to this letter of the Apostle Paul. Before we get to today's message, remember that you can request your own hardcover copy of this commentary when you give a donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. So what does it mean when Paul speaks of those at Ephesus having believed in him in Jesus? Here's Dr. Sproul on saving faith and the good news of the Gospel.

R.C. Sproul (1:50)

In Him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of his glory. Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us, who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principalities and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in awe. We get now to verse 13, where he says, in him that is in Christ. You also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of his glory. Initially, Paul speaks about trusting in Christ. And when he talks about trusting in Christ, he is talking about the essential aspect of saving faith. You recall when James wrote his Epistle, he talked about faith. And he said on one occasion, with sarcasm dripping from his pen, you believe in God, you do well, even the demons believe and tremble. And so what James was saying is that there is a kind of faith that if you have that, all that it qualifies you to be is a demon and is not something that will necessarily save you or yield your justification. So the Reformers, in analyzing saving faith, spoke of three distinct aspects of that faith that redeems, and the first aspect of it they called the noticia. And that has to do simply with the information that is communicated. Saving faith has a content. There is information, there is data. And if we look at the gospel that is recorded for us in the New Testament, the basic substance of that data has to do with the person and work of Jesus. The good news of the Gospel is the proclamation that Jesus has come in the flesh following from the seed of David, and that he lived a life of perfect obedience and died as a propitiation for our sins on the cross, was raised for our justification, and ascended into heaven, and so on. Those are our elements of our confession of faith. That's the essential content of the gospel. And so in the first instance, before you can have saving faith, you have to be believing something, and that something is the data of the gospel itself. And then the second element of saving faith, the reformers distinguished according to the Latin term asensus. Ascensus is translated into English in terms of ascent, intellectual ascent. If I were to ask you tonight, do you believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States of America? I suspect most of you, if not all of you, would raise your hand and you say, yes, I believe that in the sense of saying, not that you're putting your personal faith or trust in George Washington for your salvation, but what you're saying is, I assent to the truth of that proposition. I don't think that George Washington was a myth or a Fig Newton of somebody's imagination, but that he was a real character with a real history. And so, yes, I affirm or assent to the proposition that George Washington was the first President of the United States. So when you have this element of a sensus with respect to the gospel, what you're saying is not only do you have the information in your head, but that you believe in its truth. You affirm what the Gospel affirms. You give intellectual assent to, to the truth claims of what the Bible says was accomplished by Jesus. Now, again, though these two elements the Reformers said were necessary conditions for saving faith, they were not sufficient. Why? Well, again, looking back at the demons and Satan, we could give Satan a theology exam and quite quiz him on the content of the information of the gospel, and he could score 100% and get a plus on that examination while still being extremely far from the kingdom, and he would not only be able to give you the information, but the first people who recognized Jesus during his earthly ministry were the demons. Not only did they have the right information, but they knew it was true, and they assented to the truth that Jesus was the Holy One of Israel and the Son of God. So they had the noticia, they had the ascensus. Why weren't they justified? Because what they didn't have was the third and most critical element of saving faith. The Reformers used the term fiduciary to describe, and that Latin there is simply a translation of the Greek term for faith, pistao. To believe. And here in this case, to believe in a saving way is to put your personal trust in Christ as your Redeemer. You're trusting in him and what he has done, not in yourselves on what you have achieved or what you have accomplished or any of your works or any of that sort of thing. But you rest solely and completely in Christ for your salvation. And of course, the Reformers were saying, if you have authentic faith, you will at that very moment have your justification established. And so here Paul speaks about in him, whom you also trusted. Jim Kennedy used to give the illustration in his evangelism explosion about trying to distinguish among these aspects of true faith. And he uses his favorite illustration, the illustration of a chair. He would point to an empty chair, and he would say to the person he was speaking with, do you see that chair? And a person would say, yes. He said, do you believe that really is a chair? Yes, I believe that really is a chair. Do you affirm? Are you confident you'd be willing to assent to the proposition that if you sat in that chair, it would hold you up. And the person would say, yes, I believe it looks sturdy to me. I think that if I sat in it, I wouldn't crush it. I think it would support my weight. And yeah, I assent to that proposition. And then Jim would say to them, well, is it holding you up now? The person would say, no. Jim would say, why isn't it? And the person would say, because I'm not sitting in it. And that's what Jim was saying. This is what saving faith is. You can believe that Christ can save you, you can believe that he is the Savior, but unless you're actually trusting in him for your salvation, you don't have that third and necessary essential element of trust that is so important to the gospel. Now, having said that, Paul says in him, you also trusted after you heard the word of truth. Now, that little expression that Paul's using here, to the Ephesians, the word of truth is structured in such a way that we call the way of eminence, which is to say that Paul's not saying simply that you have believed in a truth or a particular doctrine, but that you have put your trust in the supreme truth, the most important truth. And he identifies that word of truth with the gospel he said in him. You also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the supreme word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now, when we look at this concept of sealing in sacred Scripture, it has a couple of references to it. The first one has to do with authentication. In the ancient world, if a decree went out from an emperor or a king in order to authenticate that it wasn't just the local plumber making a commandment that everybody was supposed to bow the knee to, but that it actually came as a royal edict from the king, it would have to have the seal or the imprint of the king's signet ring on wax on the document to make sure that people understood that this was an authentic decree coming from the real, genuine sovereign. And so that concept of the royal seal was extremely important in the ancient world. Now, following up on that, the question in the text here is, so what is Paul talking about here when he says that after believing you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise? Now, many commentators understand this to mean that the seal of God is that indelible mark that he puts on every believer's soul that authenticates that you belong to him, and that you carry the mark of his possession authentically in your soul, which is what the Holy Spirit does for every believer. Now, please don't get me wrong. I don't disagree with that interpretation. In fact, I am inclined to think that's probably the main thrust of what Paul had in mind here. But there is another viewpoint, and one that was championed and espoused particularly by John Calvin. Where Calvin is saying here that what is authenticated by the seal of God is not simply the believer who trusts in God, but it is that word of truth in which he has trusted. Namely, it's the guarantee and the authentication that the gospel itself comes from God, and it is his gospel. Now, when Calvin wrote his epic book on the institutes of the Christian religion, he had lengthy chapters on the place of Scripture in the life of the Christian. And he went through all of the details of what Scripture consists of and then goes through many, many arguments to show that the Scripture is the inspired word of God and ought to be received by believers as if it were delivered orally from heaven, directly from the lips of God, in spite of its having been mediated through the pens of the apostles and the prophets who were the human instruments of giving us God's word. Then Calvin makes an interesting distinction between proof and persuasion. He says the Bible manifests objective indicia, objective proof that it is the word of God. But as objective and as compelling as that evidence is, the heart of human beings in an unregenerate state are so indisposed towards the things of God, will not acquiesce or submit to this evidence until we experience what Calvin called the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Now, that doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit that Calvin taught has caused all kinds of controversy and theology, which I won't get into. But the thing I like to tell people, you know, is that Calvin is not resorting to subjectivism here. And it's saying that when you read the Bible, in addition to reading the Bible, the Holy Spirit whispers in your ear, it's really true. It's really true. But what Calvin said is what the Holy Spirit does is not that he gives us new information, he doesn't give us a new argument, but he melts our hearts. He changes the disposition of our hearts so that where we were resistant to the truth of God, now we willingly, to use Calvin's language, acquiesce into the indicia, surrender to the evidence, and rest on it. Also, Paul would write to the Romans and say how the Holy Spirit, in his internal testimony, bears witness with our Spirit. That we are the children of God. And so I'm not sure whether Paul here is doing what Calvin said when he talks about the Holy Spirit attesting to this, or is Paul more thinking in terms of the Holy Spirit confirming to our hearts that we are indeed his children. Both of those, I think, are consistent with, with the teaching of the apostle and all that he teaches elsewhere as well as in here. But the point is that having believed, we're sealed. And we're sealed not just simply by the Holy Spirit, but we're sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now, when God makes a promise through you, puts his imprimatur on it, puts his signet ring in the wax and seals it, it's impossible for that promise ever to be broken or to ever fall short of complete fulfillment. That's why in the very next breath, Paul is saying, who that is. The Holy Spirit of promise is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of his glory. Now, some of you have different translations from the one I'm reading, and you may have in the older translation, not the guarantee, but rather the earnest of the Spirit. And where that came from was the idea in the commercial world of a down payment that is made as a promissory note to pay the rest. Take that and elevate it a thousand times. In the ancient world, in the commercial world, people would make a down payment and sign the promissory note that they were now obligated to pay the full price of whatever the purchase was at some point in the future. Now we know that human beings, even with the highest level of integrity and with the best intentions, will often make promises and sign promissory notes that due to whatever circumstances come along, they don't end up fulfilling the promise. And we've all been burned and hurt when we have put our trust in people who have made promises to do something. We relied on those promises and the promises were not kept. We've all had that experience. But the difference between us and God is precisely at this point, we are by nature covenant breakers. We don't keep our promises, but God is eternally a covenant keeper. And we do violence to his sacred name when we project upon him the inconsistencies of which we are commonly guilty. The point is this, that when God puts earnest money down, when God makes a promise to fulfill in the future, the rest of the payment, to use the vernacular, you can take it to the bank, because there's no possibility that God would fail to keep his promise. Now, in a Doctrinal sense. This is one of the most important biblical references to our conviction of the concept of the perseverance of the saints. We have the arguments among Christians, can a Christian lose their salvation? And there are many believers who believe that yes, a person can be in a state of grace and then they can fall out of it and they can once be saved and then lose their salvation. Reformed theology doesn't take that position. We take the position if you have it, you never lose it. If you lose it, you never had it. Like John said, those who went out from us were not really with us. That he who has begun a good work in you will finish it to the end. And here is this glorious text where once you receive the Gospel and believe in it, put your trust in it and God seals you in that he also gives you the guarantee, the earnest of the inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession. Now, we talked before about the meaning of redemption. When something is redeemed, it is purchased. And what God does in Jesus Christ is He has purchased our redemption. And we will possess all of the benefits of that redemption which we don't possess in its entirety. Now, we don't have the full measure of our glorification, the full measure of heavenly bliss and felicity as we are walking through this earthly veil. But we have the promise that all that we have received guarantees not only that we're going to keep what he has already given us, but that he's going to give us the rest. And again, not because we have the stellar ability to. To persevere in the faith and in godliness, but because God is the One who preserves his people. He has bought us, he has sealed us. He's given us the guarantee of the full measure of that redemption for our well being, certainly, but not ultimately. Again, the end goal of divine election in Jesus Christ is to honor Jesus Christ, but above and beyond that, this whole work of redemption is to the praise of God's glory. Why am I saved? Why are you saved? In the Children's Catechism, the answer is simple. For his glory. Because the whole history of redemption is like a magnificent shining light that displays through all of the details of history God's plan of salvation that redounds to his eternal glory.