Tag: predestination

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Romans

A God who is beyond us

Romans

One of the things that amazes me is the people who think that if they were to argue with God, they could win.

More than a few atheists, when posed with the question, “If God exists, what would you say when you stood before him in heaven,” respond by saying they could argue why they didn’t believe in God while they were on earth.

And they seem to think they could reasonably argue their position before God.

But in this passage, Paul shows the utter foolishness and futility of that way of thinking.

In chapters 10 and 11, he talks about how God used the disobedience of the Jews to bring the Gentiles to salvation, and how the result of the Gentiles coming to Christ will be the salvation of the Jews.

In short,

Just as you (Gentiles) who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their (the Jews’) disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.

For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. (Romans 11:30-32)

It’s here that you see a glimpse of how God’s foreknowledge works with predestination.

He knew how the Jews would react to Jesus, and he thus made plans to bring Gentiles into his kingdom.

But he also knew that if he did that, the Jews would then feel a longing for God, and thus turn to Jesus and be saved as well.

In short, God knows what his endgame is on the chessboard of the universe, and he knows how to achieve it.

God knows exactly what choices we will make, and he knows exactly how he will respond to each of our choices so that his will will ultimately be done.

People thus retain their free will and he maintains his.

As he contemplated this, Paul was simply overwhelmed, singing,

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34)

In other words, no one can match the wisdom and knowledge of God.

It’s hard to match all wisdom and all knowledge, after all.

And because he knows all things and we don’t, it’s impossible for us to understand all his decisions unless he reveals it to us.

And even if he does reveal it, we’re still limited as to how much we can truly understand.

So when people argue, for example, about how a good God could allow evil in the world, they do so from ignorance.

They don’t have all the information that God has, and so all their arguments against him essentially amount to nothing.

Yet people argue as if they do know everything. As if their arguments are unanswerable. And so they boast that they could debate against God and win.

But when they stand before him, he will lay out on the table all the motivations of their heart and all that they knew or should have known had they taken the time to find out.

He will lay out all the facts as they are, not as we perceived them in our pride.

And ultimately, every mouth will be silenced and every person held accountable. (Romans 3:19).

There is nothing that we can bring to the table that will stun God and make him say, “I never knew that.”

Nor will there be anything that we can point to in our lives to say, “Look at what I did. I deserve heaven.”

For as Paul concludes,

“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. (Romans 11:35-36a)

Everything we have is from him. All things came through him. And all things will return to him. That includes us.

So we have two choices. We can give glory to him, as Paul did, saying,

To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36b)

Or we can continue to rebel against him until the day come when we are silent before him.

How about you? What will you choose?

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 5)

Romans

I’d like to address one last question concerning predestination.

Assuming that what I have said is true, that none will ever come to God apart from his choosing to intervene in their lives, why is it that he doesn’t simply intervene in everyone’s lives so that everyone will be saved?

I don’t know the answer to that. There are probably many factors to that question that are beyond what my brain can comprehend.

But here are two things to consider. One is that God prizes faith above all other things. But faith that is seen is not faith at all.

For some people though, the only thing that will convince them is a direct appearance from God. They say, “I have all these other reasons to believe God exists, but I choose not to believe unless God appears to me.”

But quite frankly, that is a statement of defiance rather than faith, and because of that, God will not honor that request.

The other thing to consider is this: Most of his intervention in people’s lives comes through Christians. God has given us Christians the responsibility to preach the gospel and to tell the whole world about him.

He has given us the keys to the kingdom and ultimately he will hold us responsible if we don’t use them (Ezekiel 33:7-9).

But he will not force us to use those keys.

So then there are two main ways God can intervene. One is directly as in a personal appearance. And one is indirectly through other people.

But God chooses most often not to do the former because he desires faith. And the latter often doesn’t happen because he will not force his people to share the gospel.

Is he right in his ways?

Considering he is God and we are not, it’s hard to say he’s wrong.

Ultimately, as we consider the problem of predestination, we have to ask ourselves the question Abraham did.

Will not the Judge of all the earth do right? (Genesis 18:25)

I choose to believe he does and he will.

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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.

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 1)

Romans

One of the toughest concepts the Bible teaches is that of God’s election of the saints.

It seemingly flies in the face of our free will. It seemingly flies in the face of God’s love for all.

The best I can say before I say anything on this topic is that we only have partial answers. No matter how much we look at it, we cannot fully comprehend everything.

Paul talks first about how he mourned for Israel because it was to them that God had originally revealed himself to.

Paul himself was a Jew. Yet his people had chosen to turn their backs on Jesus, and murder their own Messiah.

But Paul says this does not mean that God’s promises to Abraham’s descendants have failed.

He gives two reasons for this. One is found in chapter 11 which we’ll look at later, and one is found here in chapter 9.

The first answer Paul gives here is that the true Jew is not the person who is merely of Jewish lineage.

Paul then gives a slightly different slant on his illustration of Isaac and Ishmael given in Galatians 4.

There he focused on the difference of trying to be made right before God through human effort to keep the law rather than through His promise.

But in this chapter, he contrasts children born because of a promise with those born by natural means.

“Natural means” in this case meaning children born through the joining of a man and a fertile woman (Hagar).

This is in contrast to Sarah’s pregnancy which could hardly be called completely “natural” because she was well beyond her child-bearing years. She was only able to give birth because of the promise that God made.

In the same way, people do not become Abraham’s descendants simply through “natural” means, that is, through being born into Jewish lineage.

Rather we become his spiritual descendants solely because of God’s promise and his grace.

Yet he makes a key point here: the promises of God are not based upon anything we do.

Paul then illustrates this in the election of Jacob over Esau.

Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad–in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls–she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” (Romans 9:11-12)

The whole point here is that God didn’t choose Jacob over Esau because he was better than Esau. Jacob didn’t earn his election by his good works.

Rather, God in his grace chose and made promises to Jacob for his own purposes.

Some people say that God chose people to elect through his foreknowledge. That because he knew they would be good or bad, or put another way, because he knew they would choose him, he in turn chose them.

But to hold that view completely blows up Paul’s entire point in verse 11.

You would be in effect saying, “God chose them not because of what they had done, but because of what God knew they would do.”

But Paul doesn’t even come remotely close to saying this. He says, “Not by him who works (and by extension, ‘by him who God knows will work’) but by him who calls.”

That’s the whole sense of the passage.

He then quotes Malachi where God told Israel,

“Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated.” (Romans 9:13)

I’ve explained this further here, but the main point again is that God did not choose Jacob because of his works, but because of his grace and his purposes alone.

But isn’t this unfair? Isn’t then God choosing capriciously who to save and who to damn to hell?

We’ll address that question in the next blog.

Categories
Romans

A reason for hope (part 2)

Romans

As I look at this passage, I see another reason for hope through the struggles that we go through: that from eternity past, God had a plan for us.

Paul writes,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30)

A lot of people struggle with the problem of predestination versus free will. I’ve talked about it in past blogs and will hit it again head-on in chapter 9.

But for now, I want you to consider the implications of Paul’s words as a Christian.

God knew you before you were even born.

In Ephesians 1, Paul says before the creation of the world, he knew you.

He knew all your good points; he knew all your bad points.

He knew all your strengths; he knew all your weaknesses.

He knew what good things you would do; he knew what evil you would do.

And yet, he chose you.

He specifically tailored a plan for you and your good. A plan to transform you so that one day you would be like his Son.

Though he knew you would be sinful, weak, and rebellious toward him, nevertheless, God chose to show grace to you, and made plans to transform your weak, sinful, rebellious self into something glorious.

To put that plan in effect he called you.

Though you were not even seeking him, he called out to you.

And when you turned to him, and responded to him in faith, he justified you. He declared you “not guilty” because of the price Jesus paid for you on the cross.

And the day will come when he will glorify you. He will give you a body like the one he gave his Son. Incorruptible, sinless, and imperishable. Glorious.

That’s what God has in store for you. And it is certain.

How could it not be? Can anything really change God’s plans?

With him knowing everything from the very beginning, can we really believe he looks down on us now and is saying, “Whoops. That was a mistake choosing him. He’s a total mess. He’s hopeless. He’s beyond even me to save.”

No! He knew you from the first, and despite knowing everything about you, he chose you. And as Paul would later say,

God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)

Are you looking at yourself depressed at who you are? Are you discouraged by how little progress you’ve made as a Christian?

God isn’t. He knew you from the first.

He chose you knowing exactly how much time it would take to transform your life into the likeness of his Son. So he will never, ever give up on you.

And no matter what trial you’re going through, those trials cannot derail his plans for you either. Nothing catches God by surprise. God already has in mind how he will bring you through.

So hold on to hope though you go through the fire. And remember what Paul said earlier.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

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)