The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-13, titled "Bible Questions and Answers." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 1992 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.
Question
First, I’d just like to ask a couple of quick "yes-or-no" questions before I get to my main question, if that’s alright. First of all, there’s nothing in us that would obligate God to save us, is there?
Answer
“No.”
Question (continued)
We’re all sinners saved by grace?
Answer (continued)
“That is correct.”
Question (continued)
And then, once saved, there’s nothing we can do to lose our salvation?
Answer (continued)
“That is correct, but let me say it another way. There is neither anything you could do to lose it, nor anything you would do to lose it.”
Question (continued)
I need to ask you a question about a quote you made a couple of months ago, in the second part of the Biblical View on Abortion. I’d just like to read what you said that night, and then ask you to reconcile it with your answers to the first two questions. You said, “It is my conviction that God redeems murdered infants, that His grace reaches out and takes those little ones to be with Himself. The Bible is very clear that people perish in Hell because they refuse to believe, that Hell is for those who rejected God and who rejected Christ, something an unborn infant could never do. And so God, not having a just basis, either internally or externally, by virtue of the attitude or the action of an unborn child, would have no basis on which to sentence them to Hell, except for the depravity they inherited in Adam, which is never a cause for damnation, apart from its evidence in behavior or attitude. God must then embrace them into His own kingdom.” I had a problem with this, a couple of problems with it…
Answer (continued)
“Boy, I thought that was a great statement; did I say that? Go ahead, what’s the problem?”
Question (continued)
Well, the problem I had with it was that, if an unborn child is saved until he becomes unsaved by a sinful attitude or action, then what does that do to the doctrine of eternal security? And also, the other problem I had is that...
Answer (continued)
Let’s take the first problem. The unborn child is not saved. He’s not saved until he...what was that you said? If he’s not saved until...?
Question (continued)
"In your quote, you said that “God, not having any just basis, either internally or externally, by virtue of the attitude or the action of an unborn child, would have no basis on which to sentence them to Hell, except for the depravity they inherited in Adam.”
Answer (continued)
Right, but that doesn’t mean they’re saved. An unborn infant--a child, a baby--before the age of accountability is not saved. Otherwise, they would lose their salvation when they reached the age of accountability. That’s your question, right? Then you don’t have eternal security, because if all infants and all babies are saved before the age of accountability, when they get to the age of accountability, they lose their salvation and they have to get saved over again.
No, they’re not saved. God redeems them when they die. There’s a difference. They’re not saved. They’re in a situation where they are sort of in the middle ground: they’re not saved, or in the technical sense, they’re lost, of course, but not in the sense of having rejected God in unbelief or unbelief of Christ--they are not saved, which can only occur through faith in Christ. So, there they are: they’re not saved and they’re not--how can I say it? I don’t want to say they’re not unsaved…but they’re not confirmed in unbelief. They’re neither. If they live, they maintain the same situation of being unsaved. If they die, I believe God saves them.
So, the salvation doesn’t come into play unless they die and at that point.
Question (continued)
Well, doesn’t it say in Psalm 51, verse 5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin, my mother conceived me”?
Answer (continued)
Yes, there’s no question about the fallenness of man, but Jesus said people are damned because they believe not on me. Unbelief is always the damning action. In other words, no one is damned, singularly and only because of their fallenness. They are damned because they chose to reject God. Read Romans 1, “That which may be known of God is in them. But, instead of accepting what was known of God and believing it, they turned away from that, they created gods of their own, they followed their own flesh…” You know what Romans 1 says, “And therefore the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against them, against all unrighteousness and ungodliness.”
And these are very difficult questions. You know, you’re dealing with a very difficult issue. All I can say is this: no one is ever saved unless they believe in Jesus Christ, personally. Whatever may be said about election and sovereignty and predestination and choice by God, no one is ever saved unless they believe. Conversely, no one is ever damned except through the rejection of the truth of God, which is in them and around them and made manifest to them. So that a child can neither be saved, because the child or the infant, born or unborn, cannot comprehend the saving truth, nor can that child be, in the confirmed sense, doomed to judgment, because the child cannot willfully reject God either. So, in that state, God has to exercise His own wisdom and mercy, and I believe, in mercy, He would redeem that one, because there is no basis in terms of unbelief and rejection by which to condemn them. That’s what I was trying to say in that statement.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
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