MORE ABOUT WHO ARE THE SAVED
Ivan Panin*
1•••
It is reported that an Irishman and an American
once disputed as to which is correct: Six and seven is eleven; or six and
seven are eleven. The Irishman was sure that six and seven are eleven; the
American was sure that six and seven is eleven. They appealed to a German,
who told them: Six and seven bees dirteen.
Now the dispute about the exact way of salvation,
with the involved question therein,
Once in grace, always in grace,
is precisely of the same sort as that dispute about
is and
are. Against
the Romish assertions that six and seven now is eleven and now are eleven,
the Reformers of the sixteenth century, with Protestantdom in their train
ever since, have stoutly stood for the right; that six and seven neither is
nor are eleven. But the Reformers have erred, and Protestantdom has been for
centuries erring after them as to the copula. Instead of answering six and
seven are thirteen, they put in their bees before the true number, with much
confusion to the faith.
2•••
There are in Scripture NINE ways of salvation:
(1) By faith: “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31).
(2) By calling on the name of the Lord:
“And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21;
Romans 10:13).
(3)
By baptism: “Baptism, which corresponds to
this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal
to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ[…]”
(1 Peter 3:21).
(4) By confession:
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your
heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10: 9).
(5) By works:
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James
2:24).
(6) By spiritual guides, teachers:
“In doing this you will save both yourself and them that hear you;” (I
Timothy 4:16); “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I
might save some” (I Corinthians 9:22); “And indeed have mercy on those who
doubt, save others by snatching them from the fire.” (Jude 1:22); Whoever
turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and
cover over a multitude of sins. (James 5:20).
(7) By enduring to the end:
“But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13);
“Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which
you received, and in which you stand firm. By this gospel you are saved, if
you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.” (I Corinthians 15:1,2).
(8) By martyrdom,
suffering in the flesh: “[…] but whoever
loses his life for My sake and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35;
Luke 9:24); “[…] anyone who has suffered in his body is done with sin.” (I
Peter 4:1); “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the
point of shedding your blood.” (Hebrews 12:4); In accordance with this the
early church, held that only martyrs were deemed worthy to come immediately
after death into the presence of their Lord; and were received at once in
Paradise as a special reward.
(9) The woman, moreover, is saved in addition by
the child-bearing, combined with endurance
on her part and her husband’s: “But women will be saved through
childbearing‒ if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”
(I Timothy 2:15).
3•••
There are thus in Scripture not one way of
salvation, of being saved, but nine ways:
not just the one way of faith, which is deemed
such an immovable fixity in Protestantdom. This much is certain, it is
Scripture, it is in the word. But if these are the ways of salvation, all
necessary, if not as a whole, at least in part, then it can only be asked
with the disciples of old: “Who then can be saved?” thrice recorded in
Matthew 19:25; Mark 10:26; Luke 18:26; and the answer is, No one can. If man
is to be saved by his faith, then he can only cry with the centurion of old:
“Lord, I believe (am trying hard enough, but) help my unbelief!”
If
folk are to be saved by baptism, then as only he that believes AND is
baptized shall be saved, children who are too young to believe cannot be
baptized, and their case is hopeless indeed. If salvation is by faith,
baptism and works, works being summarized by love, then until the love of
God shed abroad in his heart is perfected, Christian is in a very bad way
indeed. Then poor Paul of the seventh chapter of Romans, and every other
saint in like condition is unsaved; moreover the verdict as to works is:
“After having done all things commanded you, say (still), We are unworthy
servants” (Luke 17:10). If salvation is by faith, baptism, obedience and
endurance to the end, then poor Christian in all his pilgrimage never knows
as to his end. Not until he is laid away stark and stiff can the disciple
thus know whether it is well with him. If salvation is by faith, baptism,
obedience, endurance unto the end and martyrdom, then alas! of all the
disciples of the last two centuries, only some dozen, perhaps a few hundred
at most, have indeed been saved, and the rest having been permitted to live
at ease and comfort instead. And as to being saved by the child-bearing, woe
to the many godly virgins, and the rest of Christian unwedded womanhood.
Something here is clearly at fault. Is this the
Gospel, the good news for the children of men? Is this what the great
Reformation and the struggles that followed for decades were all for?
4•••
Fortunately what is
indeed impossible with men is possible with God, with whom all things are
possible. The Reformers did not strive in vain. They did battle stoutly and
bravely for God’s truth; for the thirteen that is made by six and seven;
they rightly fought six and seven being eleven. But they put in the wrong
copula: they kept the bees for are, with unspeakable confusion as to the
salvation in entire Protestantdom for these nigh four centuries as the
inevitable result.
For be it once for all understood that it is not
with these nine ways of salvation, or eight, or seven, or six, or anyone of
them, not even the way of faith, no, not even the way of obedience, that the
Gospel, the good news concerning the Son of God is primarily concerned. In
giving His Blessed Son, the God of love, thus providing salvation unto
perishing men, did not change His character. The Unchangeable One is ever
the same. The Gospel is given unto men indeed to save them thereby, but so
was the Law, which is in itself good and honorable: which if a man keep, he
shall live thereby. But through all the dispensations of the ages, the great
God had one primary object with man:
to teach him by the Law: that before God every
mouth must be stopped; to teach him by the Gospel that no flesh should glory
before God. That was the primary purpose of the Law; that is the primary
purpose of the Gospel. Without his lesson
being burnt into his very bones, man’s salvation is of little avail to him.
5•••
If salvation by faith, the great watchword of
Protestantdom, had been the primary object of the Gospel, making all the
other ways mere byways, playgrounds, vacation camps, the great God would not
have set James to correct the misapprehension that speedily arose as it was
bound to arise as to the meaning of the Spirit through Paul. The Gospel, the
good news, is primarily concerned with the one fact taught not only through
Paul, but through the entire Book from Genesis to Revelation,
that salvation, if man is to get it all, is by GRACE, not by faith, or
works, or ordinance, or obedience, or martyrdom, by none of these at all, by
nothing that man has any part in, be that part ever so small; but entirely
by grace, free, undeserved favor of a merciful God,
without a tittle of merit on the part of man; that everlasting life is a
gift, that by no manner of effort, character, status, can man CLAIM anything
whatever of God except his deserts as a fallen creature at the hands of a
just God.
6•••
The true watchword of the Gospel is not therefore
Salvation by Faith as opposed to Salvation by works, or ordinances, or
obedience; but salvation by GRACE as opposed to merit.
It so happens that such a salvation of free unmerited grace can be attained
only along the first path leading to: the way of faith, belief of God’s
Word, trust in the merit of the God-given substitute for sinful man, even
the Lamb of God, Jesus. God’s free grace thus becomes available only to him
that starts on the right path, the God-appointed narrow way of faith;
but it is not the faith that saves, it is the
grace of God that saves; there is no merit in the faith; indeed this very
faith, the ability to enter by this narrow way is itself God’s gift, part of
His very grace.
This way of faith
continues in and widens with another way; and God’s further grace becomes
available only on the path of love (the summary of obedience, works); for,
who loves not abides in death. But it is not the love that saves (the
obedience, works) any more than the faith, it is itself part of the same
heaven-given grace: the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit given us. “A man can receive NOTHING except it has been given him
from heaven.”
7•••
This grace is available, further on, moreover,
only on the path of endurance, unto the end. But it is not endurance that
saves any more than faith, or love, or obedience. The verdict is still:
After you have done ALL things commanded you, (keep on) say (ing) “We are
unworthy servants.” And so with the rest. The nine ways of salvation in
Scripture are only the nine diverse paths along which a Christian must be
found: now in the one, now in the other; the man here, the child there, the
woman yonder, in order to be at all under the grace of a gracious God, in
order to have it at all rest upon him, work with him.
But he is saved not by the paths, be they ever so
straight, ever so beautiful; he is saved solely by the grace of God.
Faith is good, obedience is good, and endurance
is good, but without the gracious God over it all at the other end, it is
all to no avail.
The Gospel, the good news, is thus not that there is faith, love, hope, the
teaching, the martyrdom, but that it is
all of grace: that man of himself is undone, that by no manner of effort of
his own can he attain unto what the great God FREELY GIVES, but only in
Christ.
Ivan Panin; Once in Grace Always in Grace?; 1937;
p94ff
* See more about Ivan Panin at “Critique of
Numerics” page.
