{"id":11350,"date":"2025-12-04T21:31:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=11350"},"modified":"2025-12-04T21:31:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:31:17","slug":"want-to-know-a-secret-youre-saved-before-you-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=11350","title":{"rendered":"Want to know a secret? You\u2019re saved before you know it"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Robin Schumacher<\/span><\/span>, Exclusive Columnist Wednesday, December 03, 2025<\/span>iStock\/Ladanifer<\/span><\/p>\n

Editors\u2019 note: The Christian Post Opinion Page has published two countering views on Calvinism. To read the opposing view in the piece titled \u201cWhich comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?\u201d click here.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Want to know a secret? If you\u2019re a Christian, you were saved before you knew you were.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ll bet that the vast majority of you reading this think that you made a personal decision \u2014 all on your lonesome \u2014 to receive Christ, and once done, you were a child of God in the faith. John Chipman believes this, as evidenced by his article, \u201cWhich comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?\u201d<\/p>\n

He says, \u201cFaith precedes regeneration. Always. For everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many think that the reverse is heresy and short-circuited. Still, I\u2019m going to ask you to give me a few moments to make a case for the position of regeneration (the Spirit\u2019s supernatural work of giving spiritual life to us, transforming the heart, and enabling faith, so that we become a new creation in Christ), preceding faith. I used to believe the reverse in my earlier Christian walk, but am now convinced that we can\u2019t make that move of commitment towards God until He enables us to do it.<\/p>\n

And few things glorify God more than that truth.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not you, it\u2019s Him<\/strong><\/p>\n

R. C. Sproul\u00a0was just like me. In a short article, he reflects back on getting his theological bell rung by one of his seminary professors who taught regeneration precedes faith,\u00a0saying, \u201cThese words were a shock to my system. I had entered seminary believing that the key work of man to effect rebirth was faith. I thought that we first had to believe in Christ in order to be born again.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sproul got a crash course on the topic and ended up becoming one of the staunchest defenders of regeneration coming before faith. What turned him around?<\/p>\n

First and foremost was the biblical teaching of our moral inability to choose God. Simply put, Scripture says we can\u2019t believe and have faith in God until He acts first on our behalf.<\/p>\n

This is why Jesus said: \u201cI have said to you, that no one\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father\u201d (John 6:65) highlighting our lack of moral power to choose God, and why Christ also showed a distinction between those granted faith and those not when He said: \u201cTo you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it has not been granted\u201d (Matt. 13:11).<\/p>\n

It’s also why Paul writes, \u201cYou were dead in your trespasses and sins\u201d (Eph. 2:1), indicating everyone\u2019s initial dead-to-God spiritual state. He goes on to write elsewhere: \u201cFor the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God,\u00a0for it is not even able to do so<\/em>\u201d (Rom. 8:6\u20137) and \u201cBut a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he\u00a0cannot understand them<\/em>, because they are spiritually appraised\u201d (1 Cor. 2:14).<\/p>\n

If a person\u2019s natural mind is not able to subject themselves to God, thinks \u201cthe things of God\u201d are so foolish to the point where they \u201ccannot understand them,\u201d can you tell me how they\u2019re able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, muster up faith that isn\u2019t there, and receive Christ?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Augustine saw this inescapable predicament and ruffled many feathers back in his day when he summed up Christ and Paul\u2019s points in this\u00a0short written prayer: \u201cGrant what thou commandest, and command what thou dost desire.\u201d The second part none of his contemporaries had trouble with, but the first statement? He got the same dirty looks from them that we, who believe God must first grant us the ability to trust Him, do today.<\/p>\n

Augustine\u00a0and those holding to regeneration preceding faith acknowledge that people have free will but lack\u00a0spiritual liberty<\/em>\u00a0when it comes to exercising our will towards God. Our initial state is one where we\u2019ve not lost the ability to make choices \u2014 it\u2019s just the choices are bad where God is concerned, meaning you can\u2019t exercise faith and choose God without Him enabling you first.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther takes this position when he\u00a0writes: \u201cFree will without God\u2019s grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Edwards\u00a0describes\u00a0it like this: \u201cHence the work of the Spirit of God in regeneration is often in Scripture compared to the giving of a new sense, eyes to see, ears to hear, unstopping the ears of the deaf, opening the eyes of them that were born blind, and turning from darkness unto light\u2026[it] is compared to raising the dead, and to a new creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is exactly what the Greek word \u201cregeneration\u201d (palingenesias<\/em>) means \u201cnew genesis,\u201d a \u201ccoming back from death to life.\u201d This being true, faith is understood as the\u00a0fruit<\/em>\u00a0of regeneration, not the\u00a0cause<\/em>\u00a0of it.<\/p>\n

So, given all the biblical evidence that speaks to our moral inability to exercise faith in God on our own, doesn\u2019t it become fairly difficult to believe that some of us just muscle through, overcome our spiritual deadness, and choose God on our own? We figure it all out where others don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

And thus, even the weeniest bit of credit for our salvation goes to us in choosing it?<\/p>\n

Nope. Instead, we see Christ affirming the proactive work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about our faith when He says: \u201cThe wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit\u201d (John 3:8). John says the same thing earlier in his Gospel when he references believers as those \u201cwho were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God\u201d (John 1:13).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s pretty clear, wouldn\u2019t you say? Your faith and new birth are not \u201cof the will of man, but of God.\u201d In other words, it\u2019s not you, but Him, where your faith is concerned.<\/p>\n

Or as Paul wrote, any faith we have \u201cis not your own doing; it is the gift of God\u201d (Eph 2:8). He underscores this again and again, telling us: \u201cWhen you were dead in your transgressions<\/em>\u00a0and the uncircumcision of your flesh,\u00a0He made you alive<\/em>\u00a0together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions\u201d (Col. 2:13, my emphasis) and \u201cFor to you it has been granted<\/em>\u00a0for Christ\u2019s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake\u201d (Phil. 1:29, my emphasis).<\/p>\n

These truths are why Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards referred to their books on this topic (Luther:\u00a0Bondage of the Will<\/em>; Edwards:\u00a0Freedom of the Will<\/em>) as their most important works. And why I\u2019m laboring hard on this point, where the regeneration preceding faith debate is concerned. If you\u2019re spiritually dead and morally unable to choose God as Scripture says, regeneration\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0to precede faith.<\/p>\n

In the end, I do agree with one thing John Chipman wrote in his article: \u201c\u2026if we get this wrong, we start down a path that leads to an unbiblical god and a hopeless corruption of the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good advice.<\/p>\n

To avoid that, remember two things:<\/p>\n

First, He chose you before you chose Him, just as Jesus said: \u201cYou did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain\u201d (John 15:16).<\/p>\n

Second, as much as we\u2019d like to think we\u2019re always on the same wavelength as God on these weighty matters, sometimes His way of doing things doesn\u2019t jive with our human logic. As He says in the Psalms: \u201cYou thought I was just like you\u201d (Ps. 50:21).<\/p>\n

Give all this some prayerful thought and see if you don\u2019t come around to embracing regeneration preceding faith.<\/p>\n

Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master’s in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Wednesday, December 03, 2025iStock\/Ladanifer Editors\u2019 note: The Christian Post Opinion Page has published two countering views on Calvinism. To read the opposing view in the piece titled \u201cWhich comes first in salvation order: Faith or regeneration?\u201d click here.\u00a0 Want to know a secret? If you\u2019re a Christian, you were saved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[529,1684,1278],"class_list":{"0":"post-11350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-christian-living","8":"tag-saved","9":"tag-secret","10":"tag-youre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}