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Thursday, March 12, 2015
The Bible, when read in the context of the passage and the context of the entire Scriptures reveals a God who wants all to be saved, so much so that He gave His life to save not just the elect, but the whole world. (John 1:29; 3:16; 1 Tim. 4:10; 1 John 2:2. He desires all to be saved and has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. (Ezek. 18:23, 32; 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9) I conclude that when Christ died, he freed mankind from the power of Satan (John 12:31-32; Col. 2:14-15; Heb. 2:14-15) and now offers the hope of eternal life to all through the gospel. (See Romans 1:16; 10:14-17; 1 Cor. 15:1-2; Eph. 1:13; 2 Thess. 2:13-14) Based upon these and other Scriptures, I believe the method God has chosen to call people to Himself is the proclamation of the gospel. All who hear the gospel have a genuine chance to believe, and their refusal to believe is not because God did not do what was in His power to bring them to Himself, but because they chose to resist Him. I believe that God, in creating us in His image, gave us sovereignty over such matters in our lives. We have a real choice to believe or to not believe. It is not a choice programmed in us by our Maker. He is great enough to create us to be moral agents, not preprogrammed robots. I believe the answer to the bondage of the will described in Romans 3 is the coming of Christ also described in Romans 3. I believe that His death was sufficient to break the bondage of the will so that we, upon hearing the gospel, have the power to believe.
Having said this, I will give you my view of predestination in a nutshell. The Greek word which we translate “predestination” is only found only six times in Scripture (Acts 4:28; Rom. 8:29, 30; 1 Cor. 2:7, and Eph. 1:5, 11). Only the Romans and Ephesians passages use the term in the context of the Christian life. In Romans, certain people are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. In Ephesians, certain people are predestined to adoption as sons and are predestined to be to the praise of His glory. The question raised by these passages is whether the predestination is for salvation or for sanctification. I believe that the passages are saying that those who believe in Christ have a sure destiny that has already been ordained. I do not read the passages as saying that certain unbelievers have a pre-ordained destiny to be saved. Thus, all believers will be conformed to the image of Christ. All believers will receive the adoption of sons (which Paul has explained already for us in Romans 8 to be the fullness of our inheritance). I believe that all believers will be to the praise of of His glory. A. W. Tozer, in his book “The Knowledge of the Holy,” likens predestination to two great ships leaving New York harbor. Each ship has a predeterimined destiny. Each is going to a different port. We cannot change that destiny. But we can decide which ship we want to board. I agree with his view. I think the Bible always puts the responsibility for our choice on us, not on God. This can only occur with a just God if the choice is real and not illusionary. As Abraham so pointedly said, shall not the God of all the earth do justice? We have a right to expect God not to be unjust. And we do not need to redefine justice to make God appear to be just. He is just in the ways we would expect Him to be, and beyond.
“God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, “What doest thou?” Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.”
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, chapter 22 “The Sovereignty of God”
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
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