Podcast: 10 Tough Questions about the Salvation of Doubters, the Elect, and the Unreached (Joel Beeke)

May 27, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Who Is Saved, and Why?

In this episode, Joel Beeke answers some of the most common—and most difficult—questions that Christians tend to have about salvation—questions related to how it's fair that God saves some and not all, why faith is so important, and the role of works in our lives as Christians.

Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 4

Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 4

Joel R. Beeke, Paul M. Smalley

In the final volume of the Reformed Systematic Theology series, Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley unpack important topics around ecclesiology (church) and eschatology (last things).

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:14 - What Is Original Sin?

Matt Tully
Dr. Beeke, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Joel Beeke
Thanks for inviting me, Matt.

Matt Tully
Today I’m excited to talk through a number of tough questions about salvation—tough questions about soteriology, to use the big theological word. My guess is that many of us have wrestled or wondered about at least some of these questions over the course of our Christian lives. Maybe for some, we’ve been Christians for a long time and study theology at a high level and so some of these are going to be very familiar, but even for some of those, sometimes we recognize that over the years we still wonder about some of these things. So I’m hoping you can help us think through some of these questions. The first one I wanted to start with is the issue of original sin. Do you believe in original sin? If so, what does that term mean? How does that relate to this big topic of salvation?

Joel Beeke
Yes, I definitely believe in original sin. It seems rather evident to me that you can see it on every human being, including yourself, in a short space of time. Original sin is a very, very serious thing. The Scriptures say God gave man the ability to stand. Everything was created very good. But God also left in man the freedom to not choose him by choosing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And I do take that literally in the Scriptures. And therefore, when Adam fell, representing the whole human race by eating of that tree, as the representative head of what we call the covenant of works, that was a very serious sin. This is not just someone taking an apple or a pear, as it often is mocked or joked about. Adam knew that the day he took of that tree, he would die and his posterity would die, and that he would be wreaking havoc God’s pristine creation. He also knew that he’d be challenging the authority of God when he took that. Let’s say it’s an apple. When he took that apple, he knew that he was believing this serpent, whoever that serpent was, over God, which was a flagrant, blasphemous sin. This is no small sin. This is a huge sin. I often say it this way when I preach: “My friend, God can save anyone in this building today. He can save the greatest of sinners. He can save you if you’ve got the most skeletons in your closet of anyone here. I mean, if he could save Manasseh, who filled the streets of Jerusalem with blood from one end to the other with the blood of the saints, he could save you. But even more, if he can save Adam, who plunged the whole human race into sin, he could save you.”

Matt Tully
Part of the idea of original sin is that Adam, when he sinned, he was representing the whole human race. And so because of his disobedience, we all are guilty and we share in his sin. One maybe Sunday school type of question that we could get from that is, Why would God do it that way? Why would God have one man represent all of his posterity, all of which hadn’t even been born yet? How is that just or fair? Why would he do it like that?

Joel Beeke
It’s a good question, but the first thing we got to do is say, Let’s remember he’s God. We’re just puny little men. So I like to say it this way, too, when I teach high schoolers. I say, “What would you think of a little ant crawling by your feet, looking up at you and saying,’’Why did you walk in this room this way? Why are you sitting there? Why are you doing what you’re doing? It’s not fair that you intrude in my space.’ You’d say, ‘You’re complaining to me, you little ant? I’ll just step on you. You’re done.’” God is God. He’s infinite. He has thousands of reasons for doing what he does, no doubt, that we don’t know about. So are we really going to, with our tiny, little, puny mind, second guess what God does? That’s the answer of Romans 9, of Paul saying, “Who are you, O man, to reply against God?”

Matt Tully
On this particular issue, the idea of God choosing some for salvation and some for destruction, that’s Paul’s response.

Joel Beeke
Yeah. So that’s the first thought you want to get across. Then, you want to go to the answer to your question with that context, with that reverence in your attitude. And then you want to say something like this, It pleases God to have all of society, to have all of the world governed by representation. In America, we probably understand that less than almost any other nation on earth because we’re so individualistic. But think about it this way. How does society function? How does the nuclear family function? The father represents the family. How does the nation function? The president represents the nation. He’s a commander in chief. I still remember coming to my dad one day years ago when it was under President Reagan. I remembered the title across the top of the newspaper—great big letters, three inches tall—that said, “United States Bombs Libya.” (Let’s say it was Libya.) I went to my dad and I go, “I’m a US citizen, Dad. I didn’t bomb Libya. This isn’t fair.” He goes, “No, that’s fair because President Reagan represents us. And then he said God uses representation all the time.” The point of it is with our sinful hearts, which manifest themselves in actual sins every day, we would have done exactly the same thing Adam did. So it’s perfectly fair. It’s fair of God to say, I’m going to represent you through a leader. Thomas Boston says—and I love this statement—he says, “Why does a man complain that Adam represented him in the first covenant, but no one complains when Jesus Christ represents him unto salvation in the second covenant?” See, without Christ no one would be saved. So there, representation is our salvation, or we’d all go to hell.

Matt Tully
And Paul draws that connecting line to Adam. As he represented us in the fall, so Christ represents us in our salvation.

Joel Beeke
Romans 5:12–21. It’s the most powerful confirmation of the two covenant schema in Scripture. In the covenant of works, we fell in Adam. In the covenant of grace, if we’re true believers, we’re saved by Christ and he represents us.

07:45 - What Is It about Jesus’s Death That Actually Saves Us?

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about that—Jesus’s death and how he saves us. This gets to a very core, basic idea of the Christian faith, and yet my sense is that we don’t always think very deeply about these things. What is it about Jesus’s death that actually saves us? Put another way, how can the death of an innocent man atone for the sins of the guilty?

Joel Beeke
I like to put it this way: he saves us both by his life and by his death. By his death he saves us (I’m going to throw out a couple words here), and we call that his passive obedience. That comes from the Latin word passio, which means suffering. He suffers and dies, pours out himself, even though he is perfect. He didn’t have to pay for one cent for himself, but representing—going back to that word representation—he represents us, those of us who are true believers. And so what he’s doing there is because only an infinite God can satisfy an infinite God, since God is holy and hates sin. We cannot be our own representatives. I’m finite. I could never satisfy the infinite wrath of a holy God who hates sin with every fiber of his being. It’s got to be someone infinite. So if anyone’s going to represent me to save me in my place, that person has to be God. That person also has to be man, or to suffer in the very nature in which I have sinned in order to take my place. So Jesus has the perfect credentials. Hebrews 4:14–15. He’s got all three things I need. He’s Son of God who’s passed into the heavens, almighty God to help me; he’s Son of Man who suffered and died for me and can identify with me when I’m tempted with infirmities, even though he never fell; and number three, he’s yet without sin. So he represents me as that perfect, spotless, sinless Savior. He suffers and dies to pay for my sins, but that still doesn’t give me total salvation because I still don’t have a right to eternal life. I still have to find someone who’s going to perfectly obey God, perfectly obey the law if I’m going to have a right to eternal life. If Adam had not fallen over a period of time after the probation was done (that’s implicit in Genesis 2 and Hosea 6:7), he would have lived forever. So now I need a Savior who not only dies for me but also a Savior who lives for me and obeys the law perfectly, which means he had to love God above all his entire life without ever sinning, without ever straying from that, and he had to love his neighbor as himself his entire life.

Matt Tully
This is the active obedience.

Joel Beeke
This is the active of obedience. John Calvin said it’s through the double obedience of Christ that we get saved. So it’s not just atoning for sin, but it’s also living for obedience. Bring those two together, and when you, as a poor, needy, hell-worthy sinner, believe in Christ alone for salvation and surrender to him, that double obedience is imputed to you. Your hell worthiness and your sin is imputed to him, and the essence of the gospel, then, is fulfilled. Second Corinthians 5:21: “He who knew no sin became sin”—that is, he represented you and paid for your sin—“that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” So as the Heidelberg Catechism says, when that double obedience is imputed to me and reckoned to my account, it really becomes mine. My sins are really laid upon him and he’s paid for them all. And when his double obedience really becomes mine, it’s as if in God’s sight I have never sinned. That’s amazing. That’s how amazing the gospel is. It’s a total substitution. It’s a total imputation. It’s a total transfer.

11:42 - Is Salvation Contingent on the Human Work of Believing?

Matt Tully
Both directions. It’s often called the great exchange, and that makes so much sense. So we’re talking about this great exchange that Christ makes with us—our sin for his righteousness. That kind of relates to this issue of faith. You talked about how when we believe, that’s when this can happen. And we read in the book of Acts where the apostle Paul says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” That’s the condition for salvation. One natural question that can come from that, though, is, Doesn’t that mean that then our salvation is based on something that we have to do? Namely, we have to believe. Doesn’t that make salvation contingent on some kind of human work?

Joel Beeke
We respond that way, I think, because the word believe is so—how must I say it?—in the English language it’s used for so many different things. I believe this is a chair. I believe that’s a tree. I believe you’re a human being. I believe God. And so the problem is the word believe is trivialized. All you got to do is believe. Raise your hand, sign a card, come down the aisle. You’re not truly believing. The word in Greek for believe means to surrender. To surrender your whole life. By nature, you’re never going to do that. That’s a gift of God, Ephesians 2:8–10 says. Faith is a gift of God. You can’t believe in your own strength, yet you’re called to believe. God comes with his call and his command, and then he gives you the grace to do what you can’t do.

Matt Tully
But it’s not something you’re doing on your own strength and power.

Joel Beeke
No, no, no. It’s like Jesus saying to the impotent man, “Stretch forth your hand.” Well, he tries to stretch forth his hand. He’s tried it a thousand times. He can’t do it. But Jesus commands him. As he stretches it forth, Jesus gives him the grace to do it. And lo and behold, he stretches forth his hand. So faith is not a work. Faith is a receiving with empty hands. There’s no merit in faith. I don’t have faith in my faith. Faith has one object, Jesus Christ. I have faith in Jesus Christ.

Matt Tully
Do you think we sometimes as Christians fall into this trap of kind of thinking about having faith in our faith?

Joel Beeke
Well, some Christians do, because they hear preaching that lends itself to that. I grew up in a more hyper-Calvinist background, actually. I never thought that because—

Matt Tully
What did that look like?

Joel Beeke
Oh, absolutely impossible for you to ever believe. And that’s true. But I wasn’t trained as much as I should have been, and it wasn't that that wasn’t there. My parents were very godly, and there were a lot of godly people in the church. So please don’t accept this as a major criticism. But God was so holy in the way he was presented in my upbringing, and I believe fully in that, but the mercy of God was not presented equally. And so I was raised with a conviction that it’s almost impossible ever for a young person to be saved. And it was the opposite of easy believism. It was kind of like a hard believeism. Now I tell my congregation, “Actually, it’s an impossible believism, but the good news is that God gives the faith to believe, and God is in the business of saving sinners. God delights to do the miracles. His greatest joy is to save sinners.” When you present it that way, that’s the biblical way. He’s in the business of saving sinners, and he loves to do it. And he says, “Anyone who comes to me, I will no wise cast out”—even though he himself is doing the drawing when you come.

Matt Tully
So faith is not a work because it is this posture of open hands, bringing nothing to the table. And it itself is a work of God’s Spirit in our hearts. If that’s all true, we still have the question of, Why did God choose faith to be this mechanism (maybe there’s a better word) through which we can receive salvation and through which we receive the atoning, sacrificial work of Christ on our behalf?

Joel Beeke
Number one, because it pleased him. Number two, because faith gives all the glory to God. You see, if you have empty hands and you’ve done nothing to merit, you’re going to give him all the glory. I just preached last Sunday on that text. “Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that”—what? What would be the one prayer Jesus would pray for Simon Peter? “That your faith doesn’t fail.” And Matthew Henry says, “Why did he pray for faith?” I would pray for love or hope or humility or other graces. Matthew Henry puts it this way, “Because faith honors Christ the most, and Christ honors faith the most.” So faith is so Christ centered, you see, because not 99 percent of my salvation comes from Christ; it’s 100 percent. There’s nothing in it of me. And that’s what faith does. It is empty hands.

Matt Tully
Faith is, in some ways, something that we do, yes, but it is something that is wholly pointing away from us. It points wholly at Jesus and centers salvation on him, not on us.

Joel Beeke
That’s right.

16:34 - Why Doesn’t God Choose to Save Everyone?

Matt Tully
Another question that we’ve all probably wrestled with at some point is if all this is true, and if God is glorified in our salvation as we come to him in faith and we recognize our need for him and to be saved, why doesn’t God just choose to save everyone? Why not draw everyone to himself and give everyone faith? Again, this would still be based on the atoning work of Jesus. The first question, Could he have chosen to do that, theoretically? We know that he didn’t, so why wouldn’t he choose to do that?

Joel Beeke
I’ve gotten that question a lot in my life, and I usually start out by saying this: God’s plan is like a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and we can only see one piece at a time. “The hidden things belong to the Lord our God . . . the revealed belong to you and your children” (Deut. 29:29). So there’s so much about this question that we don’t know. I’m not even sure we’ll know it all in eternity.

Matt Tully
So you would acknowledge this is a hard question that maybe starts to get at the mysteries of God that he hasn’t even revealed to us fully?

Joel Beeke
Yeah, it’s a hard question. I think we can say something about it. I think we can say something about it. One big piece of the puzzle I believe is this: God is glorified when all of his attributes are magnified. Think about this. If God had saved everyone, where would be the manifestation of his justice in condemnation? Where would be the exposition from God in his providence that he hates sin with holy hatred? I think this is what we can say: it pleased God for the full manifestation of his full character to choose some men to everlasting life, sovereignly and graciously, and to reject others sovereignly and justly. So the wonder is not that some men go lost. The wonder is that anyone gets saved, because we all deserve hell. We’re all sinners. I had a lady come to me one time and she said this—she was like fifty-five years old, and I didn’t recognize her—and she said, “I was in your youth group when you were president of the youth group as a teenager. I said then, ‘I just can’t believe in a God of reprobation!’ I’ve just driven fifty miles to thank you for this because you changed my life when you made this statement; you look so surprised and you said, ‘You can’t believe in reprobation? My struggle is how can you believe in election—that God would save people when he’s so holy and we’re so unholy, and that he would give the best he had (Jesus Christ) for the worst he could find (sinners like us)? That’s the wonder!’” And she said that just really turned the tables on her.

Matt Tully
Yeah. Reframed it.

Joel Beeke
This is the point that your listeners of this podcast need to get into their mind that we often don’t get. We think we’re on neutral ground or we think we’re positive because we’re comparing ourself with other people. We think we deserve something good. Anything above ground is the mercy of the Lord. And so election is the friend of sinners. It’s not our enemy. If there’s no election, you and I never would have been saved.

19:42 - Are We Justified by Works?

Matt Tully
The apostle Paul says that we’re justified by faith apart from works (Rom. 3:28), but James says that we’re justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24). So big question: Who’s right?

Joel Beeke
They’re both right. They’re both talking about different things. Paul is talking about justification. James is actually talking about sanctification evidencing justification. So Paul is saying you can’t be justified by any other way than by faith alone—the empty hands. James is not disagreeing with that. He’s just saying that when you receive Christ with empty hands, how do you know you’ve received him with empty hands? Well, you’ll bear fruit, because justification will produce sanctification. So if you’re not bearing any fruit, guess what? You’re not justified.

Matt Tully
It calls into question the true veracity of your faith.

Joel Beeke
It does more than call into question. It denies it, because when you are saved, you will bring forth fruit. What did Jesus say? “By their fruits you shall”—not maybe— “you shall know them.”

Matt Tully
So would you say that the struggle, then, for Christians when we think of this seeming contradiction is we’re just not reading these passages fully in their own context, not understanding more deeply what the author’s saying? Are we just looking at the surface of the words?

Joel Beeke
Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. And that’s why a good study Bible is helpful, a good Reformed study Bible. It’s why preachers are needed to help us understand these things.

Matt Tully
Sometimes I think in how we talk about Scripture, maybe pastors or leaders, we say Scripture is clear and we can understand what Scripture is teaching, but sometimes it seems like we give the impression that that makes it easy to understand in every situation. But it seems like sometimes that’s actually not helpful. It actually is hard sometimes to understand these things. We need to work at holding different passages together in the right way.

Joel Beeke
Yes, I think that’s a good point. The Bible is clear on all the basics of salvation. But there are a lot of more complicated areas. But what’s important—and this is what my dad used to always say to us when we were kids—what’s important is you’re 168 hours per week in the world. If you’re in church on Sunday for three hours, say you have two services.

Matt Tully
Three hours might be a little generous for most of us these days.

Joel Beeke
That’s 165 hours where you’re dealing probably almost exclusively with secular things. My dad would say to us as boys, “You’ve got to read. You’ve got to read good books that explain the Bible because you’re not going to get a really robust, strong, in-depth understanding of exegesis and what the word is saying in its deep recesses without reading good books.” And he instilled in us this love for reading. Crossway didn’t exist then, but good books by publishers like Crossway, Reformation Heritage Books, and Banner of Truth. These classics, and also good books by contemporary authors, that really elucidate Scripture. This is a treasure to the church, and we have access to more of these today than ever before in all of human history. We ought to be very mature Christians today because we have such rich resources.

15:09 - Can I Engage with Theology without Reading Academic Works?

Matt Tully
What would you say to the Christian listening right now who would say, I’m just not much of a reader. I struggle to get into that. The thought of reading a “theology” book just seems overwhelming and intimidating. I’m just not sure I can do that?

Joel Beeke
Well, I’d say two things. One would be compassionate. One would be pushing. The compassionate side of me would say, All right, but would you rather listen? Then go on SermonAudio and listen to some of the greatest preachers and feed your soul, and not just two sermons a Sunday. My mother did that actually. She didn’t like to read a whole lot. She listened to about twenty to twenty-five sermons a week. When she would iron, she’d be listening to a sermon. She learned a lot of theology just through sermons. So that’s one means. Or join a Bible study or two and just really get into the word. Maybe you’ll grow in liking to read.

Matt Tully
Let’s hear your slightly more aggressive answer.

Joel Beeke
My slightly more aggressive answer is you don’t learn to swim by not getting in the water. So you can learn to like to read, but the problem with a lot of people is they start at too high of a level. You’ve got to start simple. For example, a lot of people hear me say the best group of writers in all of church history are the Puritans.

Matt Tully
You’ve already quoted the Puritans about four times in this conversation.

Joel Beeke
Of course. It’s in me. It’s in my blood. I’ve been reading the Puritans for the last fifty-six years. So they say, “But how can I read them when I can’t understand them?” Well, we’ve got fourteen books right now. We’re going to have hopefully a hundred soon. Puritan Treasures for Today. Every single sentence is edited in that book without sacrificing content. And they’re all short books of fifty to 150 pages. And they are on very interesting subjects, like Triumphing over Sinful Fear by John Flavel. You can handle that book. A twelve-year-old can read that book. Often when people say, I’m not a reader, what they’re really saying is, The books are too deep for me. So start with simple books like that that have real good biblical substance, and then you work your way up, say, to Thomas Watson in his original, as the simplest Puritan writer, and then to John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, and John Flavel. And then finally, before you know it, you’ll love these books so much you’ll be reading Thomas Goodwin and John Owen.

25:22 - What Happens to Those Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?

Matt Tully
The peak of the mountain. Another question about salvation, one that we’ve all wrestled with at some point. You’ve kind of hit on some of these things, but what happens to those who have never heard the gospel?

Joel Beeke
Yes. That’s a pastorally painful question. And people want to say, like the Roman Catholic answer, if you just use your native ability, do the best you can, and our moral ability. That’s what the man on the plane coming down here told my wife and me. He said, “I don’t go to church. I believe the Bible, though. But I just believe the Bible’s only saying to just do the best you can. I don’t really believe Jesus is my Savior. I’m okay with God because I’m doing the best I can.” But you see, the problem with that is that nature will teach you some things about God. It may teach you how strong he is. It may teach you a little bit about his goodness. But nature will never teach you about Jesus Christ. And he’s the only way to be saved. So the fact that these people will be lost ought to grip the conscience of every Christian so that we say, Either I myself, or I’m going to give some of my money to help finance people, to go to every people group on earth that has not heard the gospel to give them this open door of the gospel. It’s a terrible thing that there’s still people on earth that haven’t heard the gospel, because they will be lost. They will be lost.

Matt Tully
So if you believe that God predestines some people for salvation, and as we said, some for judgment, what’s the point of evangelism? How should we think about our role in proclaiming the gospel to our neighbors, but even as you said before, to those who have never heard the gospel before?

Joel Beeke
I’ve got a very simple answer to this delicate question. And it’s this: every definition in any doctrinal book that defines election and only says those whom God chooses to eternal life is a weak definition at best. Every good theologian should at least add this thought to that definition—God not only chooses whom he will save, but also provides the means by which that salvation will come to them. And the primary means is preaching. Secondary means are Bible’s fellowship group, reading good books, prayer. So God provides the means. So evangelism is the means of God’s provision to bring many people in. And that’s evangelism from the pulpit, that’s evangelism in private, in a restaurant, one on one. That’s evangelism of your neighbor over the fence. That’s evangelism in the office. Those are the means that God provides. So there’s no inconsistency here.

Matt Tully
Divine sovereignty isn’t at odds with God using human means to accomplish those purposes.

Joel Beeke
Right. Spurgeon talked about that, Charles Spurgeon, the great nineteenth century Baptist preacher. And someone said to him, “How can you reconcile these things—God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility?” Spurgeon said, “Oh, I didn’t know that friends needed reconciliation.” And then he used this example. He said a train needs two tracks to run on. And if you’re the conductor in the engine and you’re looking out ahead of you, those tracks look like two things. But if you look far enough in the distance, it looks like they’re one. And he said God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are the two tracks on which the salvation of sinners runs. And one day in glory, we’ll see them as one.

28:56 - Why Do I Still Struggle So Much with Sin?

Matt Tully
That starts to strain our understanding as humans, but Scripture clearly teaches those things, and we need to hold them together. Maybe the last few questions we’ll do more quickly here. This is a question about our lives after salvation. If I’m really saved, why do I still struggle so much with sin? Why doesn’t God just completely take away our sin nature once we’re saved?

Joel Beeke
I had an elder in my church that asked me that question once a year, every year for a couple of decades. There’s no easy answers to that, but let’s just play the devil’s advocate sort of on this question. Let’s say God did do that. Let’s say the moment you were born again, you’d never struggle with sin at all anymore.

Matt Tully
Sounds pretty nice.

Joel Beeke
Sounds pretty nice. But what’s heaven for? Would you really long for heaven? Because you’d have kind of like a heaven on earth, and you wouldn’t appreciate the magnitude of salvation. God sovereignly chooses to leave the struggle of the old nature trying to regain lost ground from the new man—which is the real, new you; you’re a new creation—but all these forces from outside of you and your own old nature, which still is hanging out with you a bit, they’re all attacking. It’s frontline warfare. And it’s through that militant warfare that God, over a period of time, through ups and downs, slips and falls and progress, sanctifies you, makes you more holy, ripens you for glory, so that the day you arise from the grave and you leave, as the Puritans would say, your sin clothes back in the grave and you’re adorned with his perfect white robe of righteousness, and you enter into glory spot free, wrinkle free, sin free, you’ll give all the glory to God. And you’ll enjoy heaven in a way you could never have enjoyed it if you hadn’t gone through those struggles with sin.

Matt Tully
It can be such a helpful and even encouraging way to think about it. I want to be careful here because we don’t want to feel complacent about our sin. But recognizing that God, in the mystery of his sovereignty, ordained that we would continue to struggle with our sin as Christians. He could have taken it all away, but he wants us to continue to struggle and he knows we’re going to continue to struggle as we pursue more and more righteousness.

Joel Beeke
That’s correct. And that’s Roman 7. Vintage Roman 7. This is not Paul in an unconverted state saying, “the good that I would, I find myself often not doing, and the evil that I would not do, I often find myself doing. Oh, wretched man that I am.” an unconverted person can never say Roman 7:22: “I love the law of God in my inward man.” You can’t say that when you’re unsaved. The thing about Jesus and God is that they are so holy that the closer you get to them, the more you will see your sin. And the more you know of God, the more you know of your sin. I compare it to a woman, say a mother, coming down early in the morning, wiping the furniture of all the dust in the living room. And then the sun comes out. Well, she thought she got all the dust. The sun comes out and she looks in and she says, Wow! There’s more dust than there ever was before! There’s not more dust. There’s less dust. She got some of the dust, but now with the light she sees it more clearly. And so spiritually, when we’re close to the Son of righteousness, we see our filth much more, and that grieves us. But that grief turns us to cry out, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?” And don’t stop there. Paul has an answer in the next verse. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So it’s my indwelling sin that makes me never become self-sufficient. But I see my shortcomings every day, and it makes me just fly to Christ every day and throw myself upon his righteousness and his perfection and his obedience and his atonement and his constant intercession for me.

32:55 - Do We Have to Confess Every Sin in Order to Be Forgiven?

Matt Tully
As Christians, must we confess every sin of ours for them to be forgiven?

Joel Beeke
That’s what Luther was trying to do. I do think it’s good to examine your heart and confess those sins that you see and you observe and you’re acquainted with. And I do think that most people today don’t take enough inventory of their soul. There are certain people that are—Rabbi John Duncan, who was a Scottish divine, and he was called “Rabbi” because he knew Hebrew so well—he said some people are afflicted with conscience overspeak. And what he meant by that is there’s some people that just feel like if they can’t think of one sin, they just can’t have any peace. I don’t read that anywhere in the Bible, do you? I think we have to confess our sins. And we’re never going to confess all of our sins, because there are hidden sins that we will never be aware of in this life. But the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I can’t know the bottom of it. You can’t know the bottom of it. But when I come to Christ and say, Lord (I’ll say it crudely), I’m just a big, fat sinner in myself apart from thy grace. Please, please save me! Have mercy on me, O God! He’s willing to receive us just as we are.

Matt Tully
But probably for most of us, we would do well to try to be maybe more intentional in confession, specifically to God.

Joel Beeke
Absolutely. The reason we have slight views of Christ, as the Puritan Richard Sibbes said, is because we have slight views of sin. And so when we don’t hate sin, when we don’t see the insanity of sin, when we don’t see the detestableness of sin, we may still be Christians but we may not have much profound appreciation of Christ—compared to when you do. So today in our woke culture, cancel culture, transgenderism, and all the stuff that’s come in the last ten years, it’s common for people to say, What is happening to this world? This is insanity! I was preaching about this about a week ago. I was saying, “Have you ever said that about yourself? it’s insane that I would sin against a God who’s been so good to me.”

Matt Tully
And it really is. It makes no sense.

Joel Beeke
It’s dastardly. It’s heinous. Oh God, help me to hate sin! So books like Thomas Watson, The Mischief of Sin; Ralph Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin; Jeremiah Burroughs, The Evil of Evils—these are just three Puritan titles that just go after sin tooth and nail. If you read those books, that is so good for a Christian to read, because you become much more aware of your own sinful heart, you flee to Christ, and you grow in grace.

Matt Tully
So often non-Christians look at Christians and they characterize us as being obsessed with sin, almost like we revel in talking and thinking about and naming sin. And sometimes I think even Christians can fall into that thinking, that that’s what the Christian calling is, to sort of revel in sin for its own sake. But I think as you’re saying, the reason we might want to spend more time thinking about our sin and confessing our sin is because it drives us to Christ all the more.

Joel Beeke
Yes. And it makes us repent. And repentance is a sweet thing, when we repent before God.

36:06 - How Can I Feel Confident I Am Saved?

Matt Tully
As a final question, what would you say to the person who says, I struggle with assurance related to my salvation. I know all the doctrine. I know I believe, or I believed at one time at least, but I just struggle, whether it’s because I’m looking at the fruit in my life or the lack thereof, or I’m looking at my ongoing struggle with sin. I have questions and doubts at times that I wrestle with. Whatever it might be, they just feel like, I just don’t always feel confident, and I want that sense of peace and assurance that Scripture seems to talk about, that people in church history have talked about, but I don’t feel it. What should I do?

Joel Beeke
Let me preface that by saying that this is exactly what I dealt with with hundreds of people in my ministry. So many people, especially in my early decades of ministry, that when I went to get my PhD at Westminster, this was the topic I chose. So my dissertation is on assurance of faith in the Reformers and in the Puritans.

Matt Tully
What was that like? People in a church context were coming up to you and just saying, I need help?

Joel Beeke
I was part of that hard believism background I was talking about the beginning. That was part of it, but also I do believe today there’s a lot of easy believism Christians out there who have no struggle with assurance but should, because there’s not the fruits in their life that reveal it. But anyway, two quick things. One would be that dissertation got published by Banner of Truth Trust. Next, the average person in the pew (some of them) still find it difficult. So about five years ago, Christian Focus asked me to simplify it and to bring the next thirty years of my thinking on it to bear on a simple book for the layman, which I did. It’s called Knowing and Growing in Assurance of Faith. And if someone’s struggling with that, that book, honestly, has helped a lot of our own people and other people that have read it. And basically what I’m saying there is I’m following the Westminster Confession of Faith, which really is a masterpiece. Chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession of Faith is a masterpiece on assurance. Basically, what they’re saying is there are three grounds of assurance, not three grounds of faith. That’s all Jesus. But there are three grounds of assurance. Number one is the promises of God. Believing the promises of God, trusting the promises of God. That’s your underpinnings. That’s your daily meat of your meal and the foundation of all assurance. All assurance is tied to trusting the gospel, trusting the promises, trusting Christ. On top of that, however, is because there are a lot of people that say, Well, I trust Christ. I believe in the Bible. I believe in the promises. All the threatenings in the Bible for someone else. All the promises are for me but they don’t show the fruit, we need to be able to see the fruit. “By their fruit you shall know them.” So Westminster said this: we get our assurance from the promises of God and from the inward evidences of faith that are within us. So what are those inward evidences of faith? Well, 1 John has eleven of them. First John is the book on assurance of faith in the Bible. “We know we’ve passed from death to life because . . . we love the brethren . . . because we keep the commandments of God.” Whatever it may be. Galatians 5:22–23 has eight fruits of the Spirit by which you can examine yourself. Jesus has eight beatitudes. Second Peter 1 has seven marks of grace. So right there, you’ve got about thirty different marks of grace you can examine yourself by. Now, how do you do that? Let’s just take one mark of grace. “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, and they shall be filled.” Puritans would say you look at the text and you say all those—and only those—who hunger and thirst after the righteousness of Christ shall be filled and they are saved. And they only are saved. Minor premise: I’ve prayed about this, I’ve examined my soul. I cannot deny, but I really long and I really hunger and thirst after the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, I’m saved. We don't quite put it in major, minor syllogism and conclusion today, but we do it subconsciously with all kinds of things in daily life too.

Matt Tully
If this is true and this is true, then that means this is true.

Joel Beeke
Right. So that’s the second. And then here’s the third ground of assurance. I compare it this way. This is really making it simple, but promises are like your daily meat, and inward evidences are like your daily potatoes, especially if you’re from a Dutch background. And then the dessert, which you could live without, is the direct testimony of the Holy Spirit. And the Puritans saw that as being God taking his word and applying it to you directly.

Matt Tully
And it’s a subjective kind of experience of the Holy Spirit testifying to our salvation.

Joel Beeke
To your spirit that you’re a child of God, through bringing his word home to you with power.

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful, and helpful to have all that founded, as you said, on the promises of God. That ultimately, this is God’s doing. It’s not something that we have to do or work up. I feel like that’s one of the dangers in talking about assurance like this is that we can start to subtly look to the fruit and even look to these subjective experiences of the Spirit’s testimony in our hearts as the grounds of our salvation in some way.

Joel Beeke
They’re not the grounds of salvation, but as John Murray said, the grounds of salvation and the grounds of assurance are not one and the same. Now we’re getting into technical theology here, but it’s important to understand that to grow in assurance, you want to grow in all three of these kinds of assurance. I like to add, actually—and I say that in my book, and maybe the Puritans would put this in one of these categories—I like to add one more thing that really, I think, buttresses assurance. That is God’s track record with us. And so what I mean by that is this: I’m married to my wife, and we’re in our thirty-fifth year of marriage. I love that woman so much. I love her like crazy. And I know she loves me. I’m absolutely assured she loves me. But wasn’t I absolutely assured the day I got married? Yep, I was. But I’m far more assured now. I’m absolutely, absolutely assured. Why? I’ve seen thousands of tokens of it. I’ve seen even probably twenty-five tokens of it today. She loves me. So when you look back in your life and you can say, You know what? I’ve needed every affliction God has ever set in my path to make me what I am, to make me more compassionate with other people, to give me ability to comfort others with a comfort with which I myself have been comforted by God. So God has never made any mistakes with me. He’s faithful. I love him like crazy. He’s so good. He’s so good. He’s so merciful. So that long track record. That’s why the Puritans would say, “Great measures of assurance wear battle scars.” You’ve been through something. You’ve been around the block a few times in life. You’ve been in some battles and God has brought you out.

Matt Tully
Because it’s in those battles that God often shows himself most faithful to us.

Joel Beeke
So you grow and you grow and you grow in assurance as the years go by because you learn to trust God more and more and more.

Matt Tully
Dr. Beeke, thank you so much for answering some of these tough questions that we all struggle with when it comes to our salvation. We appreciate it.

Joel Beeke
Thank you.

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