Tag: free will

Categories
Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 4)

Romans

A question that often pops up when we talk about predestination is, “You say that God predestines who will go to heaven. So that must mean that God must predestine people to hell as well.”

I answered this to some degree on my last blog.

In a sense, I suppose you could say that he predestines people to hell.

But don’t get me wrong. God does not tell people, “I’ve decided you are going to hell! It doesn’t matter if you repent. It doesn’t matter if you choose to believe in Jesus. None of that matters, because I have already made my decision.”

Instead, he says, “My plan is to give you justice for your sins. That’s what you deserve.”

Then, as I said before, he waits to see if you will do anything to change his mind. That if on your own, without his intervention, you will start to seek him.

But the thing is, no one ever does.

So ultimately, what I believe is this: People go to hell by their own choice and to heaven by God’s.

God has given us free will. We can choose to follow him or to not follow him.

Yet left to our own devices, without any intervention on God’s part, all of us rebel against God, and all of us go our own way.

There is no exception. It is, ultimately, the story of humanity.

So God had to make a choice. He could do nothing and let all perish or do something and save some. God chose to do the latter.

That’s why Paul says,

It is just as Isaiah said previously: “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” (Romans 9:29)

Sodom and Gomorrah through their own free will chose to rebel against God. And God chose not to show mercy to them, but rather to give them what they deserved: judgment leading to death.

Israel also chose through their free will to rebel against God. But God chose to show mercy to them and gave them what they didn’t deserve: grace leading to life.

What was the difference between the two (I suppose, technically three)? Nothing. Except for one thing. God’s election.

And again, that’s the wonder of it all. We were no better than anyone else. Yet God chose to save us.

So yes, we are saved because God chose to intervene in our lives.

But if we go to hell, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Categories
Acts

Unless we go

Acts

This is one of two stories in the book of Acts where we see the election of God, the choice of man, and our need to go as God’s witnesses all interacting with each other.

Many people wonder about the first two in particular. How can God choose people to be his own, and yet be held accountable for accepting or rejecting him?

And for some, they wonder why we even need to go to the lost and share the gospel if God has already elected them?

I don’t have all the answers, but that all are true is made clear in this passage.

Here we see an Ethiopian eunuch who had a high position in his queen’s court. Yet, somehow, he had heard about the God of Israel, and had gone to Jerusalem to worship.

Note here that though he was a God-fearer, God did not simply say, “Well, he doesn’t know about Jesus, but that’s okay. That he fears me and is trying to serve me is enough.”

Instead, he sent an angel to Phillip and told him to go out to where this man would be. And when Phillip saw him, the Spirit whispered to him, “Go up to him.”

Phillip did and heard this man reading from Isaiah 53, a chapter that specifically prophesies about Jesus. And Phillip asked, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” The man’s answer is very striking.

How can I…unless someone explains it to me? (Acts 8:31)

Reading that brings to mind Paul’s question to the Romans.

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)

The answer: They can’t. The eunuch certainly couldn’t. And so he invited Phillip to join him on his chariot.

Phillip explained the gospel, and upon hearing it, the eunuch believed and was baptized. He then took the gospel back to his own country, and Christians in Ethiopia today trace their roots back to this man.

Several points to be made.

First, before a person can be saved, they must hear the gospel and believe. If it was possible for a person to simply be a God-fearer and go to heaven without the gospel, God would not have gone out of his way to send Phillip to this Ethiopian.

Paul, in the same passage in Romans I mentioned above, asks,

And how can they preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:15)

The answer again is that they can’t. But God does send us out to go and preach the gospel that people might believe, just as he sent Phillip to go to the eunuch.

Second, God clearly chose this man to be saved. This man was on the way to hell with no way of hearing the gospel. God intervened so that he could hear the gospel. Without that intervention, this eunuch would never have been saved.

Third, this man still had to make the choice to believe in order to be saved. He did, and was saved.

How do these all intertwine philosophically? I don’t know. But somehow in the mind of God it all makes sense. And that’s good enough for me.

The main point: Go.

There are so many people like this Ethiopian who are headed for hell. There are so many people like this Ethiopian who need to hear about Christ. And just like God called Phillip to go, he calls you to go as well.

Let us remember the words of our Lord, who commanded us,

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Categories
Matthew Matthew 27 Matthew 28

A God who cannot be thwarted

Matthew

This is perhaps one of the more humorous incidents in the Bible if you really think about it.

The Pharisees and chief priests were concerned that perhaps the disciples might come to steal the body and claim that Jesus had risen from the dead as he had prophesied. And so they asked Pilate to make the grave secure so that no one could come and steal the body.

Pilate assented, and gave them a guard (that is, a group of soldiers), to protect the tomb from any robbers.

But on the third day, there was an earthquake, and an angel rolled away the stone and sat on it. This so freaked out the guards that they fainted dead away.

Imagine the consternation of the priests and the Pharisees when they heard this.

They had to have been questioning themselves, “Why in the world did we set that guard? All we did is make it more inexplicable that the body has disappeared?”

But it all goes to prove one thing. People can make all their plans to achieve their purposes while denying God’s. But God is not someone who can be thwarted. And his purposes will stand.

Many people wonder about the tension between God’s sovereignty and our free will.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think you catch a glimpse of the answer here. By their free will, the priests and Pharisees put out a guard to prevent Jesus from coming out from that grave.

God didn’t interfere with that choice at all. But after they made their choice, God made his. He raised Jesus from the dead, rolled away the stone, and scared the living daylights out of the guards in the process.

In the same way, we make our choices, and God lets us do so.

But then God makes his choices, and his purposes will not be thwarted. It wasn’t thwarted then back at the tomb. Nor will it be thwarted now nor into eternity.

So let us praise him and walk with confidence knowing that no matter what happens, God is in control, and his purposes will be accomplished.

Categories
2 Chronicles 2 Kings Jeremiah

God’s choice, our choice

Kings,Chronicles, and Jeremiah

The sovereignty of God and the free will of man is one of those things that has been a long-standing debate in the Christian world.

We see this tension in this passage, so we’ll discuss it a bit here, but I won’t claim to have any new answers on the subject.

At this point in history, Jehoiakim was deposed by the king of Babylon after Jehoiakim rebelled.

His son Jehoiachin took over, but his reign lasted only three months before Nebuchadnezzar came again and took him prisoner too, along with a bunch of other people.

The king’s mother, his wives, his officials and leading men, the entire army, as well as a thousand craftsmen and artisans were all taken as well.

In Jehoiachin’s stead, Nebuchadnezzar made his uncle Zedekiah king.

It was during this time that God gave Jeremiah a vision of two baskets of figs, one of very good figs, and one of very bad figs.

God told Jeremiah that he considered the people that were taken into exile the good figs and the people that remained in Jerusalem the bad figs.

And while he would ultimately destroy those remaining in Jerusalem, God promised to restore the exiles to their land and bless them.

The question is why would God spare one group and destroy the other? God said, of the exiles,

My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land.

I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them.

I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord.

They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart (Jeremiah 24:6–7).

Certainly some of the people taken into exile were innocents, so to speak. Daniel and Ezekiel were two examples of this.

But there were many others who were not so innocent. Why would God spare them? I don’t know, other than to say it was due to God’s mercy.

Some people would say, “Well, it’s because of God’s foreknowledge. He knew they would return to him eventually, and so that’s why he spared them.”

But that ignores the passage where God says that the reason they would return to him is that he would give them a heart to know him. He was the one that would change their hearts.

Why didn’t he do the same for Zedekiah and the people remaining in Jerusalem?

I don’t know.

What can I say for sure?

First, people are condemned directly by their own choices. Had Zedekiah and the other people chosen to follow God, he would have blessed them. But they chose not to.

Second, nobody would come to God unless he started to work in their lives and gave them a heart to know him. This is true of the exiles. It is true of us.

As someone once put it, “He fixed our broken antenna so that we might hear him.”

Third, God is never arbitrary in his choices. God always has his reasons.

The problem we have is that he never gives us those reasons in his word. We have a lack of data because God has chosen not to reveal it to us. And so there we have to stop.

The question we ultimately have to ask ourselves is this: What will we choose?

Nobody can ever come to God and say, “It’s not my fault I didn’t follow you.”

We are responsible for our own choices. And so God will hold us responsible for the choices that we make.

We can choose to follow him or choose not to. What will you choose?