A Faith to Confess: The Baptist Confession
of Faith of 1689
Rewritten in Modern English
©1975, Carey Publications, Ltd.,
75 Woodhill Road, Leeds, U.K., LS16 7BZ
AT a time appointed by and acceptable to God, those whom
God has predestinated to life are effectually called by His Word
and Spirit out of the state of death in which they are by nature,
to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ.Their minds are given
spiritual enlightenment and, as those who are being saved, they
begin to understand the things of God. God takes away their
heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh.He renews their
will, and by His almighty power He sets them to seek and follow
that which is good, at the same time effectually drawing them to
Jesus Christ.And to all these changes they come most freely,
for they are made willing by divine grace.
Deut. 30:6; Ps. 110:3; Song 1:4; Ezek. 36:26,27; Acts 26:18; Rom. 8:30;
11:7; Eph. 1:10,11,17,19; 2:1-6; 2 Thess. 2:13,14.
God's effectual call is the outcome of His free and special grace
alone.Until a man is given life, and renewed by the Holy Spirit,
he is dead in sins and trespasses, so is entirely passive in this work
of salvation, a work that does not proceed from anything good
foreseen in him, nor from any power or agency resident in him.
The power that enables him to answer God's call and to embrace
the grace offered and conveyed in it, is no less than that which
effected the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
John 5:25; 1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 1:19-20; 2:5,8; 2 Tim. 1:9.
Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by
Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how
He pleases. The same is true of all elect persons who are incapable
of being outwardly called through the preaching of the gospel.
John 3:3,5,6,8.
Men who are not elected, even though they may be called
upon to embrace salvation by the preachers of the gospel, and
may be the subjects of some common operations of the Spirit,
cannot be saved, because they are not effectually drawn to Christ
by the Father, for which reason they neither can, nor will, truly
come to Him.Much less can men who do not receive the
Christian religion be saved, no matter how diligent they are to
frame their lives according to the light of nature and the teachings
of the religion which they follow.
Matt. 13:20,21; 22:14; John 4:22; 6:44,45,65; 17:3; Acts 4:12; Heb. 6:4-6;
1 John 2:24,25.
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