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It seemed to me that the only way I could know I was saved was by knowing the status of my eternal election. Was I chosen by God for salvation or was I eternally damned before I had done anything good or bad? To be sure, the Calvinist theologian in me had responses to this question, yet none of them sufficed…my Calvinistic theology presented my needs for assurance with an epistemological problem: in order to have assurance I needed to know the status of my election, something that by definition is secret and cannot be known. 

https://ochuk.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/why-i-am-not-a-calvinist/

This objection was articulated in an article by William Lane Craig entitled “Lest Anyone Should Fall”: A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Perseverance and Apostolic Warnings where he essentially argues that the “means of salvation view” is actually more coherent in a “middle knowledge” perspective. Middle knowledge is the view of God’s knowledge that contains what his creatures would freely do in any given circumstances (or “possible world”) before he creates the world.

Erik Raymond

Most pastors develop a rhythm with their sermon preparation. You find a way that “works” for you and you pretty much stick with it. But until you have the pattern established, it can be messy. And one of the areas with which I struggled at the beginning was how prayer fit into my sermon preparation.

I knew that I should pray, that in fact I must pray, as part of getting ready to teach God’s Word. But I don’t remember getting much advice about how to pray when preparing a message. And while there’s obviously not just one helpful way to do it, here are eight brief prayers that can be used while writing a sermon:

1. Lord, please help me to understand the meaning of this text and how it points to Christ.

2. Lord, please increase my love for the people who will hear this sermon.

3. Lord, please give me wisdom to apply this text to the lives of the people in our congregation.

4. Lord, please use this passage to help me grasp and love the gospel more so that I might help my hearers do the same.

5. Lord, please help me to see how this passage confronts the unbelief of my hearers.

6. Lord, please help me to be obedient to the demands of this passage. Help me to enter the pulpit having already submitted my life to this truth before I preach it.

7. Lord, by your Spirit please help me to preach this sermon with the necessary power and with appropriate affections.

8. Lord, please use this sermon to bring glory to your name, joy to your people, and salvation to the lost.

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence."

Did you read that?  Jesus was heard BECAUSE of his reverence.  He was not simply heard because He was ontologically righteous as the Second Person of the Trinity.  But he was heard because he obeyed as a flesh and blood human being. So what? you say.  Well, this demonstrates that Jesus obedience as a human being, his life, not just his death was critical in our redemption.  His obedience to God's law in his life was part of the righteousness that was imputed to us that we might be right before God.

That is why Paul declares to the Corinthians, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." The "no sin" aspect speaks of a necessary aspect of Christ's redemptive work.  His atonement for sin requires a sinless sacrifice, one which obeyed God in every way. Paul also says "For as by the one man's disobedience [Adam] the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience [Jesus} the many will be made righteous." He did not merely mean to say that Jesus was obedient in offering Himself up to death (although it includes that), he also means the obedience of His whole life.  Otherwise Jesus could have merely been killed by Herod as a small baby and that would have been sufficient for us. His death is not all that mattered. Jesus declared there were things he needed to do  in his life "to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15)

You sit down to eat your lunch and begin peeling your orange, when your lunch buddy makes a strange comment. “Why in the world do they call it an orange if it is green?”

After gaining your composure, you realize your friend is likely color blind and unable to see the difference between orange and green. To him this orb in your hand is green and nothing you say is going to change that “fact”.

He insists that the burden of proof is on you. In order for him to believe that this orange is actually orange you will have to prove it. Secondly, he insists that only six colors exist and every other “color” is just a myth created by the greedy tyrants at Crayola. Lastly, he cares little about what others believe on the issue—he won’t believe it until he sees it with his own eyes.

Apart from the discovery of a cure for color blindness you’ll never win this debate. But what has actually been proven in this debate?

By your inability to win the debate your friend has not disproven that oranges are actually orange. Nor has he shown that oranges are actually green. All that has really happened is that we’ve shown that a fruit that is the color orange cannot and does not exist in your friends view of the world.

When Christians Lose the Debate

The above scenario is played out in lunch rooms every day, but over things far more significant than the color of an orange. There are those who insist that the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales and that God does not exist.

Just as the color-blind dude in the above scenario insisted that the burden of proof was upon you, so also unbelievers insist that we must prove that God exists in order for them to believe. They will say things like “if something is true then it must be scientifically proven” even though such a statement itself cannot be scientifically proven.