123 Book Meme

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.