I’ve been memed. Shaun Tabatt (of Bible Geek Gone Wild) tagged me. Apparently the meme has been around a while, as Nick Norelli (of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth) has been tagged twice now this year.
The rules are simple. 1) Pick up the nearest book and find page 123. 2) Count the first five (full) sentences. 3) Then quote the next three sentences. So here goes!
Thus, the “once saved, always saved” notion is incomplete, as if the justification of the sinner were the whole salvation of God, to the exclusion of the “things that accompany salvation,” such as repentance unto life, faith, and holiness. Advocates of this view deny that an important aspect of assurance is the ability to say, “Yes, I do belong to Christ because I find in myself changes which He alone can work and changes which only His unbought love prompted Him to work.” Ultimately, this view teaches that faith can exist in a vacuum and that the believer does not need the law as a rule of life””the essence of antinomianism.
Side-note: I thought it interesting that this quote is a critique of a simplistic “once saved, always saved” view of eternal security. One of my better blog posts is my own critique of that idea.
The book is Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, by Joel R. Beeke (Reformation Trust).
One more rule, you’re supposed to tag 5 other people with the meme. So I nominate, Scott, John, Will, Rhett, and Seth.
Bob,
I went to do this, but the nearest book to me was “A Generous Orthodoxy” by Brian McClaren. I used it as a reference in a small group and set it next to my laptop.
It was just a hair’s breath closer to me than Winslow’s “Morning Thoughts”, which barely beat out Calvin’s “Sermons on Job”.
I feel a deep sense of shame. :o)
LOL
Bob,
Thanks for being a good sport. 😉
Josh,
That’s funny. At first I thought it was just a book you were reading, then I found the official rule. But I was covered either way, I was reading a pdf version of that book and it was open on my computer right then when I first saw the meme!
Glad you’re still snooping around my site! 😉
Blessings to you,
Bob
Thanks for the tag, Shaun. It was fun.
Hrm. I haven’t ever done one of those meme things – but the closest book to me at the moment is “A Fly Went By” – there probably isn’t much doctrine to live by in that book – nor 123 pages to even look up… 🙂