No, one is not saved by the right desires, this confuses means with ends…cause and effect. In fact when God comes to a man, dead in sins and trespasses, we might add utterly and totally dead, He finds NO faith or repentance whatsoever. He speaks the Gospel and it is a “Let there be light” or “Lazarus come forth”. One is saved by Christ’s work alone, trusting in that is the breathing and heartbeat of the elect.

Secondly, one is no more saved by being self-serving than by pretending to be unself-serving, which is in fact self serving. No one can produce an unselfserving first cause. In fact man fallen cannot be anything but utterly self serving, either as an open sinner or pious false saint.

Do not let your ‘desires’ become a new work for you. Look and trust in Christ alone, nakedly, and do not look at your looking (faith in faith or trust in trust) which is to say stop not trusting in Him, which is to say don’t try to trust or not not trust in Him but LOOK to Him alone and then suddenly you are doing it. The life comes from His end not yours.

Do not look to election, the Father is to high for us. Look to Christ who is the revelation of the revealed God perfectly, listen to Him. One’s election is not found in election but in the Cross of Christ alone. If election was to be sought some other way then Christ need not be incarnate nor would we have need of the sacraments. To put it yet another way, the elect are not fixing their gaze upon election but Christ crucified and risen…all other “looking” is utterly vain and no peace (a fruit of the Spirit) can be had.

Blessings,

Larry

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Larry Hughes
Geologist
Tates Creek PCA
Lexington, KY
PCA

Galatians 4:29, "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also."