Sunday's Hymn: There Is a Land of Pure Delight

There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides,
And never with’ring flowers;
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heav’nly land from ours.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.

But tim’rous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea;
And linger, shivering, on the brink,
And fear to launch away.

O could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love
With unbeclouded eyes;

Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o’er,
Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore.

—Isaac Watts

Theological Term of the Week: Ordo Salutis

ordo salutis
“The order of salvation, or the way we are brought to salvation by the Holy Spirit and kept there. It encompasses effectual calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification, all of which are received in union with Christ.”1

• From scripture:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:29-30 ESV).

• From Salvation Belongs to the Lord by John Frame, page 183: 

We should be flexible as to what goes into the ordo and what does not. The Bible itself doesn’t use the phrase ordo salutis… And Scripture does not include anywhere a list of all the events theologians typically include under that label. Myself, I think that the ordo is mainly a pedagogical device. As you go through the various items on the list, there is no consistent principle of ordering. Some items precede other items because the first comes earlier in time, the other later. That is the case with effectual calling and glorification. Other items on the list precede others because one is a cause, the other an effect, as with regeneration and faith. Still others come before others not because of temporal priority or causal priority but because of what theologians call instrumental priority, as in the relation of faith to justification. And still other pairs of events are simply concurrent or simultaneous blessings, like justification and adoption. So the order means different things: sometimes cause and effect, sometimes earlier and later, sometimes instrument and object, sometimes mere concurrence. Nevertheless, the order does bring out important relationships between these events, relationships that the Bible does set forth.

• From Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 613:

Paul provides a clear order in Romans 8:29-30. He moves from foreordination to calling, justification and glorification. Assuring his readers of the unbreakable chain of salvation, he stresses that those whom God has foreordained to salvation will be brought to this goal. Foreordination is based on foreknowledge—not the foreknowledge envisaged by Arminius, which is simply God’s knowledge of the future actions of his creatures, but rather his knowledge of persons. The verb [proginosko] is used not so much for advance knowledge of this or that but as the equivalent of electing love. Such people are called powerfully into fellowship with God’s Son, are justified, and are certain of glorification.

In Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul explains how our whole salvation is in union with Christ. He begins with election in eternity (v. 4), moves to foreordination to adoption (v. 5), and advances to redemption through the death of Christ (v. 7) and then the sealing by the Holy Spirit (vv. 13-14). While the underlying leitmotif is Trinitarian and consists in union, there are clearly discernible aspects that Paul treats in progressive order.

Learn more:

1. Simply Put: Ordo Salutis
2. Tim Challies: Visual Theology — The Order of Salvation
3. Louis Berkhof: The Ordo Salutis
4. Derek Thomas: The Order of Salvation
5. Kim Riddlebarger: Basics of the Reformed Faith: The Order of Salvation
6. Derek Thomas: The Ordo Salutis Lecture Series

Related terms:

• order of God’s decrees
• historia salutis

1 From Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 945.

 Filed under Salvation

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Sunday Hymn: O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

—George Matheson