I'm wondering, John, if it is proper to think of glorification in terms of restoration. In other words, God's original plan for all of creation was accomplished, right, in, or will be accomplished in our glorification. Is that? Yeah, I think, particularly that Romans 8 passage where he says the whole creation is in labor pains, groaning, anticipating, there's going to be a restoration of his creation as well as, in our glorification, a removal, a new glorified body and a removal of the very presence of sin. So all of that is going, and that ties into the kingdom and the partial restoration and on into the new heavens and a new earth, the inhabited oikumene in Hebrews 2, the inhabited earth to come and so forth. Yes, absolutely. His will done on earth, all that is tied together. His original creative intent will be restored.

I'm not trying to beat up on other religions, but in the religious system that I grew up in, I don't ever remember having any security in salvation. And I'm just wondering, do you know, I mean, is that their official stance, you can't ever know? Absolutely. It's called the sin of presumption in the Roman Catholic Church. So the reason you can never know, we've talked about this before, is because there's no such thing as justification in that you're always trying by your suffering and your works. The official doctrine says that we, by our alms and giving and suffering and acts of charity, make up for what was lacking in the cross of Christ. So we contribute to that salvation by all those things.

And so I've told you before, my dad, when he was dying, he was dying of cancer, and he went to First Friday Masses because he wanted to gain indulgences to spend less time in purgatory, because purgatory is where you would go to suffer for the sins that were not yet expiated, either by Christ's merit or your own. So your merit is combined with Christ's merit, and there's a level, right, to meet. The problem is no one knows what the level is. Obviously, on its face, it's impossible, but they don't understand the things we talked about this morning, and that is that we've sinned and therefore—see, religion says you do bad and you do bad and you do bad and you do bad, therefore you become bad. 

So the remedy of religion is to do good and do good and do good and do good to become good, kind of outweigh the bad with the good. But that's not how law works, right? You could drive up to Hurley on 51 a hundred times and go the speed limit 99 times, and if you go 120 miles an hour the hundredth time and he pulls you over, you can't tell him how you were good 99 times. Well, God's perfect law, God is just and holy, has to punish every sin. But in the Roman system, you could never say—as a matter of fact, Council of Trent says to say that you know that you have eternal life condemns you to hell, which is what John taught in 1 John 5:13. 

I write you these things that you may know that you have eternal life. So it's a sin of presumption to say that you know, and you can never know because you're in a progressive justification where you're trying to earn your way and you never know if you've done enough.

Anyone else? I noticed as you were going through the scriptures this morning in Romans chapter 8, it says that those whom he foreknew he predestined, those whom he predestined he also called, those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. And my understanding is that all of that is aorist past tense, that glorified even is past tense. How is that possible? 

Well, because in the mind of God it's accomplished, and it's accomplished by his grace and his will. So we are living in time, obviously, and you know, I wanted to emphasize the glories of our salvation, the grace of God. Peter says, set your hope fully on the grace, ready to be revealed. But it's these truths that cause us, like John says, those who have this hope in him purify themselves. Law and works and trying to be good enough and trying to please, those things can't produce holy living in our lives. 

But the truth of our salvation and understanding who we are in Christ, understanding the power of the Holy Spirit, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us, works in us, all these, you know, Ephesians 1 to 3 and 1 Peter 1 and all these kind of passages, those truths are what allow us to put our faith in God. And he then can work that out. So God has this, he knows the end from the beginning, right? He's outside of this time. So he can say, those whom I justified I glorified, because that is true. And in our perspective, it's going to come to pass, and in his perspective, it's done.

Okay, anything else? This is a less controversial subject than the other ones we've done, hey? Alright. Well, I didn't want to get into kind of the logistics so much, timing and events and all that kind of thing, but I wanted you to think about hope. I wanted you to think about assurance and setting your hope fully on his grace. That's the message, of course, this morning.

Alright, I think there is, Don, did you have something? Yep. Praise God for glorification, and justification especially, and sanctification. But the point is, when people get lost in trying to be good enough in their sanctification or whatever, just remember that Jesus' standard was the cross, and we can't attribute to that. As Paul said, I pressed toward the mark of the high calling of Christ, of God in Christ Jesus. However, he did not attain there, because he knew he could never attain. 

Right. But he put all of his faith in Jesus, and he said, I want to know Jesus and him and the cross. And that's it. And that's what he preached, and preached, and preached. And Peter was coming to his end here, too. Right. Because it was around the same time that Paul was martyred, then Peter also. Right. So, same thing. But he just looked to the grace of God, and through Christ's work on the cross, and that's it. And yes, like you said, it's a great point. We should be kind to one another, and we should be peaceable as much as possible in us. 

And because God knew, we still had that sin that Adam did in the garden that we would have done there, too. Right. You say, well, if I were there, well, if I were there, I probably would have picked the apple, or not the apple. The apple gets a bad rap, but the fruit myself. I wouldn't have even waited for Cindy to do it. So, but that's the point. We need to look at that cross. We need to come to the foot of the cross and say, thank you, Jesus. Absolutely. Because it says we were crucified with Him there. Right. So, we shared that. 

And that's what we need to do. And just, as you said and mentioned, and you mentioned, we need to look to the eternal perspective. Right. Amen. Yeah, we live by grace through faith. The just shall live by faith. Dean? 

In Romans 8, who are those that He predestined? Those who believe. Okay. He predestined them in Christ. And so, that's the focus there. The focus is, that's why I said, in the sermon, I said, faith is inherent in that verse. It's not apart from faith. All the way back to Romans 5:1, those who have been justified by faith, these things are true. Only those who believe become children of God. 

So, what that's saying is, those who are in Christ, all these things are true. All these things are going to happen. So, we're predestined in Him, in that sphere, that these things are ours in Christ. And we are in Christ. Now, who's in Christ? Those who believe. Right. Saying that we didn't choose Him, He chose us. 

Yeah. And obviously, there's mystery here. We don't, we are firmly against, like a Reform perspective here. We don't, because we believe that excludes the will of man as taught in the Scriptures, whose will becomes all those things. But we also believe in the sovereignty of God. We are not of the Arminian perspective, that somehow it's what we do, or something in us. 

We just believe what the Scriptures say, as Spurgeon did, in kind of a compatibilist or biblical sense, that God chooses and men believe. And how that comes together, I don't know. Just like I don't understand the deity and humanity of Christ. Yet, we don't fight about that and write a thousand books, right? We just accept it by faith, because God says that Jesus is fully God and fully man. God says He chooses some for salvation, predestines them. God says, whosoever will may come, that Christ died for the sins of all men, that salvation is available to whoever believes. 

So, we accept both those things and let that sit. It's something I've been struggling with as far as, like, I don't know, a question came to my mind. Did Judas, who betrayed Jesus, did he have a choice? Right, yes, he had a choice. Considering it was prophesied. Right. And I think I may have found an answer to that. In that, you know, when you look at the Lamb's Book of Life, I guess I was mistaken. I thought that names could be added to it, but I found that's not true. 

It's more or less that names can be blotted out from it. Yeah, when I think of Judas or Pharaoh, you often get that question. If you read Genesis, it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart, and then God hardened his heart for further purposes, to raise him up. It's not hard for God to find a Pharaoh or a Judas in this world. Right? Do you know any of them? So, it's not that Judas never had a choice, or God made him do this and damned him to hell before the creation of the world. But Judas chose, and God then used him like Pharaoh, hardened his own heart against God, and then God further hardened his heart to cause him to do what he wanted for his will and his glory. 

That's not unjust, because I don't believe that God desires that anyone should perish. You know, he desires that all should come to the knowledge of the truth, believe, and be saved. But men, there's plenty of men who are not willing, and are willing to do the devil's work, right? So, yeah, those are difficult questions, Dean. You and, like, everyone else has struggled with that. 

And the best way I can understand that is, I'll give you an example. When I was first saved, I had a pastor friend down in Lake Geneva, and we called this God's Sovereignty, Human Responsibility was the file name. I had over 600 emails that I sent to him in that file, and more coming back from him on this one subject, God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, trying to understand that. 

And what I came to understand was, God teaches both. God teaches his sovereignty in his word, he teaches his human responsibility in his word. Now, what would it be best for us to be concerned with? Do I have to worry about what God's going to do? I should probably be most concerned with what I'm supposed to do, and what God says to do.