GOD'S ORDER IN THE APPLICATION OF SALVATION

When God begins to apply salvation to the elect sinner, He begins by saving him from the pleasure or love of sin, long before He delivers him from the penalty or punishment of Sin. This is necessarily so, because it would neither be an act of holiness, nor of righteousness were He to give a full pardon to one who was yet a rebel against Him, and who loves that which He hates. God is a God of order, and nothing more evidences the perfections of His works than their orderliness. Now, the question arises, ''How does God save His people from the pleasure of sin/ The answer is; ''By imparting to them a nature which hates evil and loves holiness.'' This takes place when they are born again, so that salvation begins with regeneration. You see, fallen man can never perceive his desperate need of salvation, nor come to Christ for it, until he has been renewed by the Holy Spirit. Solomon wrote in Ecc. 3;11, that ''He hath made everything beautiful in his time.'' Much of the beauty of God's spiritual handiwork shall be lost to us, unless we duly oberve their ''time.'' The Holy Spirit emphasized this in Romans 8;29-30. In verse 29 Divine foreordination is announced, while verse 30 states how it is actualized. How strange it is that with this before them, many preachers begin with our justification, instead of with that effectual call [from death to life, our regeneration] which precedes it. Regeneration must first take place in order to lay a foundation for our justification. Justification is by faith [ACTS 13;39; ROMANS 5;1; GAL. 3;8],and the sinner must be divinely quickened before he is capable of believing savingly. Preachers today are so thoroughly imbued with free-willism, that they have departed from the sound evangelism pf our forefathers. The radical difference between Arminianism and Calvinism is that arminianism revolves around the creature, whereas Calvinism has the Creator as its centre of orbit.