My Journey With The Ordo Salutis

In my latest posting I shared with everyone a bit of my past, especially the great struggle I endured as the Lord delivered me from pernicious error to glorious truth. When I look back, that which held my greatest attention in God’s Word were passages which concerned the new birth. Or perhaps I should rather say, they appeared to concern the new birth. I say it like that for a reason. You see, the rest of the Christian community reads Acts 26:18, Romans 1:16, the 10th chapter of Romans, James 1:18, and 1 Peter 1:23 basically the same.  They do not hesitate one bit in affirming that these passages teach that sinners reach the point of initial salvation upon hearing the gospel. There is no deliberation in the mind to consider an alternative because there is no pre-existing bias to look for one. With me, however, that was not the case, and it is not the case currently with those to whom I once belonged.

Probably the very first lesson the Lord taught me was that my views were unusual. They may have been true, that’s for sure. But I must at least admit that they were unusual. I had books from other authors galore (Matthew Henry, John Gill, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, A.W. Pink, Robert Louis Dabney, a few of the Puritans) and I could not find a single one who interpreted these pivotal passages in the way that I did. Of course the temptation existed to simply blanket them all with the label of ‘Calvinists’ as the reason. However, notwithstanding their theological bent, I recognized that they were very gifted. Brilliant! So genius that I seldom could understand them. Colossal giants of the ministry, some of which our Lord thrust into the great epochs of history. How could these towering figures of church history not see the distinction which I saw? Was it really true that the truth of God’s Word was held by a small, apparently insignificant group of folks, mostly residing in the southeastern U.S., of which I was a part, while the rest of the Christian world was wrong on the very basic concept of evangelism? But I had an answer for this. The ‘remnant’, ‘the few’, the ‘little flock’ which the Bible speaks of is talking about us. We were the ‘few’ while the rest of the world, albeit saved, is temporally lost. I could also argue the point another way. Since they were ‘wise’, they were the ones from whom things were hid (Matt. 11:25), and we were the ones to whom these truths were revealed. The only ones.

Ah, you must forgive me. It’s so easy for me to regurgitate my former heretical notions. But you see how I could still argue that side if needed.

Anyway, back to our thought.

I cannot remember exactly how it happened. When the Lord is dealing with someone, lots of things can be pondered by your mind. Sometimes it can get kind of foggy. The best I can remember was that the Lord guided me to 1 Peter 1:23 as the initial text for me to examine. It was here where I started to contemplate just how far one could carry the analogy between natural and spiritual birth. I began to ponder regeneration as a process containing a ‘conception’ stage and a ‘deliverance’ stage. The learned reader knows that this is something that not a few have contemplated before. I began to wonder if God initially touches a person, void of any instrumentality, in order to enable them to believe the report of the gospel (i.e. conception). Then, when the gospel comes….BOOM, they hear and believe, and regeneration is complete (i.e. deliverance)! I cannot overstate the excitement I felt at this point. After comparing scripture with scripture, looking at Greek words with my Strong’s concordance, I had figured out the mystery! To top it all off I read A.W. Pink’s The Holy Spirit and found in a couple of chapters where he had advanced the same sort of thing.

During this trial of mine though I can remember sharing my theory with a notable Primitive Baptist minister who was sympathetic to what I was going through. He related that he knew of one other minister who had shared this view. However, he simply felt that most of God’s elect were ‘spiritually conceived’ but remained in the spiritual darkness of the womb, and never got ‘delivered’. On another occasion I shared this in person with a few other elders. Knowing my company I made sure to preface it with ‘Hey, I don’t necessarily believe this. I’m just pondering things. Trying the spirits, you know?” They replied that they knew some ministers (in Georgia I believe) who had started teaching this, but they were quickly silenced. Not surprising.

It was at this point that the Lord used a very special place to help me in all of my struggles. Yet it started in an apparently insignificant way or ‘accident’, which I now know as divine providence. One day my roommate at the time came home with a book by one of the Puritans. On the back cover was listed the place from where it came from: Mount Zion Bible Church Library in Pensacola, FL. I decided to check it out. Here’s the thing. It was only about 2 miles from where I work. Glorious providence!

So one day I walked in during my lunch hour and before me lined rows and rows of books, tracts, pamphlets, some of which were free for the taking. As I drooled over the goldmine I had discovered, the associate pastor walked over and we began speaking. I began to tell him about the struggles I was having regarding the happenings around the new birth, and I was looking for material on this subject. He started nodding his head as I was explaining. “Ordo salutis”, he said.

And so it was that I heard this phrase meaning ‘the order of salvation’ for the very first time in my life. I figured that men had already contemplated what I currently was, but I did not know that it had become a focal point of systematic theology denoted by a fancy Latin phrase. I should not have been surprised however to know that others had already toiled over this subject and went way beyond my own research, for I had experienced something like this before. When I first began to exercise in the church long ago, or “introduce services” as it is referred to, I did not know there was such a thing as ‘the five points of Calvinism’. I of course knew the doctrines of grace but I did not know that other great men of the past had wrapped them up into a scheme called TULIP. Rather in my own studies the Lord blessed me at an early convert to notice that there were five major doctrines in the Bible that make up salvation.

The reason for these episodes of “Hey, somebody else in the world believes this too!” is all very simple. Exposure to the rest of the Christian community is generally limited within the Primitive Baptists as the people listen to only their preachers and read only their material. Their mindset is conditioned to view themselves as the only ones believing in the doctrines of grace, and that everyone else is an ‘Arminian’. John Gill, J.C. Philpot, and Arthur W. Pink are probably the only other men I knew anything about.

As I began to put the new birth more and more under the microscope I went through all the expected theories which others have proposed.

1) Men are regenerated apart from the gospel. They then spend some time in spiritual darkness before they are converted by the gospel. Just like a babe in the womb. But were they converted five seconds later, 1 day later, 1 week later, or 10 years later were some of the questions I would ask myself.

2) Men are regenerated without the gospel but without any passage of time they are converted by the gospel. There is a logical order but not a temporal one.

3) Men are regenerated with the gospel, because regeneration includes conversion.

These are the three positions which I think a man may believe, and I count it a blessing that the Lord led me to ponder each of them over the years. Coming from a position which held that the gospel has nothing to do with salvation at all, it was a slow but sure way of bringing me to the sound position that I occupy today. I feel somewhat like the blind man who in his gradual healing first saw men as trees walking but then saw every man clearly, the Lord holding his hand along the way (Mark 8:24-25).

Lord, I see clearly now! Praise his Holy Name!

It was during all of this mental juggling that my church took notice that I was starting to see things a bit differently, and I was eventually charged with teaching gospel regeneration. In the days leading up to the called conference, I had all this knowledge stored up in my mind that I had accumulated. I had writings from 19th century Primitive Baptists. I had a copy of the Old Baptist Test by Elder John Watson. I had articles of faith from churches during that time. I had citations from the trial of Mt. Carmel. More importantly, I could tell them about the ordo salutis and that a distinction could be made between regeneration and conversion. And I could use the Greek language to prove it! Almost immediately my joy turned to sadness. For reasons stated above I knew that if I proceeded along this line the people whom I would address would not have the foggiest idea what I was talking about.

 “For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

What if you’re about to address a group of folks who you feel have been destroyed for lack of knowledge? And you know you’ll be given ten, maybe 15 minutes to respond before you are ostracized? Grief and sorrow. I hear ya Solomon.

My heart goes out to those elders who came to see that the primary error of the Primitive Baptists lies not in “making a distinction between regeneration and conversion” for others have done the same. Rather they saw that the error was in divorcing the two and making conversion optional. I can at present think of a handful of men, some of whom I’ve spoken with on the phone or read their writings.  Hungry for knowledge they laid their tradition to the side, dug their heels into both scripture and history, grew in the knowledge of the truth, and were ultimately ostracized for it. Very, very sad.

After my departure from my former friends I was still not settled in the exact happenings of the new birth. Is the gospel the means not of regeneration, but of a conversion that was certain to occur? Do they occur at the same time, or is there a millisecond between them? Or what if the gospel is the means of the initial spark of regeneration, and I am trying to rely on logic to avoid that conclusion? What if this whole thing is a mystery into which men are not meant to gaze?

Anyone who has spent anytime whatsoever in systematic theology knows that these are common questions that great men of the past have tried to elucidate. And let me tell you, it will give you a headache.

Over time I became discouraged from this pursuit and came to see that we only have a rudimentary grasp of the Holy Spirit, especially in this area. So I simply defer to plain scripture statements which God has chosen to reveal to us. Probably the most powerful text in all of scripture, in my opinion, which speaks to this subject is Ephesians 2:8.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:8)

We know that this wonderful passage which captures the hearts of all God’s people is treating of regeneration. The key expression is ‘saved through faith’, but what do we learn from it specifically? We learn that it is something which is not complete until faith has been imparted. If you are saved “through” faith, then the saving under consideration is not done or finalized until the faith component has been put in place. Otherwise, it would read ‘saved in order to faith’. Do you see?

And I am content with that.

I thank the Lord for this journey. It was a tough one with lots of tears, fears, sorrows, and joys.

But He held my hand along the way.