Salvation from the Pleasure of Sin


Arthur W. Pink (1886-1952) 

 

T is here that God begins His actual application of salvation unto His elect. God saves  us from the pleasure or love of sin before He delivers us from the penalty or punishIment of sin. Necessarily so, for it would be neither an act of holiness nor of righteousness were He to grant full pardon to one who was still a rebel against Him, loving  that which He hates. God is a God of order throughout, and nothing ever more evidences  the perfections of His works than the orderliness of them. And how does God save His  people from the pleasure of sin? The answer is, “By imparting to them a nature which  hates evil and loves holiness.” This takes place when they are born again, so that actual  salvation begins with regeneration. Of course it does: where else could it commence?  Fallen man can never perceive his desperate need of salvation nor come to Christ for it,  till he has been renewed by the Holy Spirit. 

“He hath made everything beautiful in his time” (Ecc 3:11), and much of the beauty of God’s spiritual handiwork is lost upon us unless we duly observe their “time.” Has  not the Spirit Himself emphasized this in the express enumeration He has given us in  “For whom he did foreknow, he did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of his  Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he  justified, them he also glorified” (Rom 8:29-30). Verse 29 announces the Divine foreordination; verse 30 states the manner of its actualization. It seems passing strange that  with this Divinely defined method before them, so many preachers begin with our justification, instead of with that effectual call (from death unto life, our regeneration) which  precedes it. Surely it is most obvious that regeneration must first take place in order to  lay a foundation for our justification. Justification is by faith (Act 13:39; Rom 5:1; Gal  3:8), and the sinner must be Divinely quickened before he is capable of believing savingly. 

Does not the last statement made throw light upon and explain what we have said  is so “passing strange”? Preachers today are so thoroughly imbued with free-willism that  they have departed almost wholly from that sound evangelism which marked our forefathers. The radical difference between Arminianism and Calvinism is that the system of  the former revolves about the creature, whereas the system of the latter has the Creator  for its centre of orbit. The Arminian allots to man the first place; the Calvinist gives God  that position of honor. Thus the Arminian begins his discussion of salvation with justification, for the sinner must believe before he can be forgiven; further back he will not go,  for he is unwilling that man should be made nothing of. But the instructed Calvinist begins with election, descends to regeneration, and then shows that by being born again  (by the sovereign act of God, in which the creature has no part) the sinner is made capable of savingly believing the Gospel. 

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