In the study of theology, there's one word
that when it is spoken often strikes terror in the souls of the fainthearted, and that
word is the word "predestination." I know whenever the subject comes up at the
seminary where I teach, the students think that it's the most juicy and delicious of
all theological subjects, and it has a tendency to evoke instant controversy and debate. And we're going to look briefly in this session
at this concept of predestination, but before I do that, I want to give one word of caution. I think that the doctrine of predestination
is difficult, and it causes a great deal of perplexity and bewilderment whenever it is
discussed and whenever it is studied. And it's a question that requires, I think,
not only caution, care, and diligence, but also a special measure of patience with each
other as we struggle over the manifold implications that can easily be drawn from it. But I'm also convinced that as difficult as
the subject may be, it is equally, or even more important for us to study it. Martin Luther, for example, when he was engaged
in the leadership of the Protestant Reformation, of course focused his teaching on the central
issue of that time, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and Luther said of that doctrine,
namely justification by faith alone, that it is the article upon which the church stands
or falls. That is, he was trying to underscore, as emphatically
as he knew how, the importance of the doctrine of justification to the Christian faith. When it came, however, to the doctrine of
predestination, or the doctrine of election, Luther had this to say, "The doctrine of election
is the cor ecclesiae," the heart of the church. In fact, when he engaged in debate with Erasmus
of Rotterdam on the subject of election and predestination, he thanked Erasmus who obviously
disagreed with Luther on the matter. He thanked Erasmus that Erasmus had not pestered
Luther on trivial matters, but that he had undertaken to debate on matters that go to
the very heart of the Christian faith. And so what I'm suggesting is that this doctrine
of predestination is not a peripheral, tangential, secondary matter of concern for biblical Christianity. Now as soon as I say that, I realize that
in the popular understanding of our culture we hear statements frequently like the following
two statements: one, that the Bible doesn't teach predestination, and two, that nobody
in this day and age believes the doctrine anyway. I'd like to speak to both of those popular
statements that I regard as erroneous statements and misconceptions and take them by looking
at the second one first because it's the easier of the two, to refute the statement that nobody
believes in predestination anymore. Let me refute it with a simple syllogism. The syllogism goes like this: I am a body. I believe in predestination. Therefore, somebody does believe in predestination. And if I am the last in the world to do so,
I apologize for my obstinacy and my being so passé and out of date. But as long as I'm breathing and living, it
is simply not true to say nobody believes in predestination because I most certainly
do. And, of course, I'm being facetious because
I'm not into the Elijah syndrome where I have to say "I, I alone am left." There are tens of thousands and hundreds of
thousands, indeed, millions of Christians in the world today who still believe in predestination. And I think the chief reason for that is the
refutation of the first premise that I mentioned a moment ago, the statement that the Bible
doesn't teach it. The reason I'm convinced that millions of
Christians still adhere to the doctrine of predestination is because the Bible teaches
it, and I might add the Bible teaches it clearly and unambiguously. So clearly and unambiguously, dear friends,
that virtually every denomination in church history that has taken the time to articulate
their confession of faith, to write a creed of their beliefs, has been constrained to
confess some statement about predestination. What I'm saying simply is virtually every
church has a doctrine of predestination. Now, not all of those churches agree on the
meaning of the doctrine of predestination or the extent of the doctrine of predestination
or how the doctrine of predestination touches people's lives where they live, but because
the Bible so clearly speaks about it, every Christian church has been constrained to say
something in their creedal statements regarding predestination. Let me just take a moment to read a couple
statements that may be of interest to you from church history. First of all, from the classical expression
of faith that came from in the early days, the formative days of the Church of England
their classical confession, being the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and of the
Episcopal churches. It says this, "Predestination to life is the
everlasting purpose of God whereby and then in parentheses, before the foundation of the
world was laid, end of parentheses, He hath constantly decreed by His counsel secret to
us to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind
and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honor." Here the Church of England professed faith
in a predestination that was unto life, and was by God's eternal secret counsel and decree
designed to bring the elect to Christ as vessels of honor. Now, here's another one from the 17th century,
from 1689. We read this statement, "Those of mankind
who are predestined unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according
to His eternal and immutable purpose and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will
hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, comma,
without any other thing in the creature as a condition or cause moving Him thereunto." That surely must've come from the Westminster
Confession of Faith or the Helvetic Confession or the Belgic Confession or some other Presbyterian
and Reformed tradition, maybe from the pen of John Calvin. No, this comes historically from the Baptist
Confession of Faith of 1689, a statement articulating the doctrine of predestination in terms so
precise and concise that would have delighted John Calvin in his most sanguine moments. But again, I say, why are these churches and
other churches making such a confession regarding predestination? Because predestination is not something invented
by Luther or invented by St. Augustine or contrived by John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards
or any of the others whose names are so often associated with the doctrine, but because
this doctrine comes to us patently from the pen of the Apostle Paul. Let me direct your attention for a moment
to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, in the first chapter where Paul in giving his greetings
to the saints at Ephesus says: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and blameless before Him, in love. He predestined us to adoption as sons through
Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of
the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved." In verse 11, "Also, we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of
His will." Now I want everyone to know, that in the 16th
century people like Beza and Calvin and Knox and Zwingli and Luther didn't run back into
the text of Ephesians and stick that word "predestination" in there, that word was in
there from the beginning. And the word in the Greek, proorizo means
"to foreordain," "to choose in advance," or as we say in English, "to predestine." Now we all know what the word "destination"
means, or destiny. When we're about to take a trip we may go
to the travel agent and ask to buy some tickets for an airplane or the train or the ship or
whatever, and obviously the agent has to know what? What is your destination? That is, where are you going? What is the terminus point toward which you
are heading? Now what the concept of predestination means
is that our destiny, our destination, in some sense, has been decided in advance -- pre-destination. And as we read in these confessions, it's
simply a reflection of what the Apostle is telling us in Ephesians that the "pre-," the
reference point of the "pre-" is defined biblically as being from the foundation of the world. That before the world was created God had
a plan, and that plan, according to His secret counsel and according to the good pleasure
of His will, He made a decision to do something, a sovereign decision to do something, namely
to predestinate something for some reason. And I think we will see clearly that what
He predestines are people, and what they are predestined unto or for is, as we are told
here in the Scripture, adoption in the Beloved, in Christ. That we are predestined in Christ unto salvation. That if you are a Christian, before you were
ever born, before your mother was born, before your father was born, before Adam and Eve
were made, God determined from all eternity your destiny in Christ, that you have been
chosen in the Beloved unto salvation and that you are His craftsmanship unto eternal life. Now, if that is true, that is an extraordinary
matter and a matter that again may be very perplexing, but I would think would be the
cause of great rejoicing among Christians who understand that God's grace is so powerful
that God's grace extends back so far into time that in the sovereign Creator's plan
for the ages, He determined to shed His grace on you, to prepare a place for you in heaven. The New Testament speaks of the time when
Jesus will say, "Come My beloved, inherit the kingdom which the Father has prepared
for you from the foundation of the world." Okay? All right, I haven't said anything controversial
yet, really. Again, just about everybody who struggles
with the doctrine of predestination understands that predestination is rooted in eternity
and that predestination is concerned for personal salvation in Christ and that it is a wonderful
thing properly understood. But where it gets sticky, where it gets controversial,
is when we ask the question, "On what basis does God make His choice?" How and why, and upon what conditions does
God determine who will receive this amazing gift of saving grace? Does God potentially predestine everyone to
salvation, or does He only predestine some to salvation, and if so, what about those
who aren't predestined to salvation? Do they have no chance, no opportunity, no
hope? I remember once when I was sitting in a seminary
classroom and the president of the Presbyterian seminary happened to be the lecturer that
day, and one of the students raised his hand and said, "Dr. So and So, do you believe in
the doctrine of predestination?" And is the president of a Presbyterian seminary
who's bound by vow, ordination vow, not only to believe it, but to teach it. He reacted as if he were having an allergy
attack to the doctrine of predestination and he said, "No." He said, "I don't believe that God brings
some people kicking and screaming against their will into the kingdom who don't want
to be there, while at the same time refusing admittance to others who desperately want
to enter." So that this professor, I mean this was a
trained, skilled theologian who understood predestination to mean that God coerces and
forces some reluctant sinners into His kingdom and arbitrarily refuses entrance to others
who so much want to be there. What a horrible caricature of the Presbyterian
and Reformed doctrine of predestination! But let's take a moment and look at some of
the cardinal features of the different approaches to the doctrine of predestination. The doctrine found its earliest point of theological
debate in the fourth century when a monk in the Roman Catholic Church took issue with
the bishop of Hippo, the great, and certainly the greatest theologian of the first millennium
of church history, Aurelius Augustine. This monk, whose name was Pelagius, and we'll
put his name up here. We want to always remember Pelagius' name. Pelagius responded in outrage to a statement
that Augustine had made, and that statement that Augustine had made and it taught was
this, it was in a prayer, really. Augustine had written, "God, command what
Thou wilt and grant what Thou commandest." "Command what Thou wilt and grant what Thou
commandest." And what Pelagius didn't like about that was
that it seemed to suggest that God required from people something that they wouldn't be
able to do unless God gave them extra grace to make it possible. Well, this I have to say for Pelagius. He understood exactly what Augustine was saying. Augustine was in fact saying, "Yes, O God,
I cannot do what you require me and command me to do, unless You intervene somehow and
give me the power to do it." The Bible says of man in his fallen condition
that he's dead in sin and trespasses and that he's by nature a child of wrath since the
fall in Adam and goes on to say that the natural man is at enmity with God, and he doesn't
obey the law of God, neither can he obey the law of God. Jesus, teaching and debating with the Pharisees
on the extent of the fallenness of the human race, made this extraordinary comment, "No
man can come to Me unless it is given to him by the Father." Now let's look at that for a minute. "No man can come to Me." The term "no man," if we would set that in
a propositional phrase and apply the rules of logic and the rules of immediate inference
to it, we would immediately identify the statement, "No man," as a universal negative. "All men," would be a universal affirmative. "No man" is a universal negative. Now, no man what? "No man can." Now the word "can" there translates the Greek
word that means "to be able." Now ladies and gentlemen, many of us have
made the simple mistake frequently in the English language confusing two words, "may"
and "can." When I was a kid and I would raise my hand
and the teacher would say, "Yes, R.C.?" and I said, "Can I sharpen my pencil?" She would always answer the same way, "I'm
sure you can." And I said, "Yes ma'am, may I sharpen my pencil?" She was trying to drill into us the difference
between, "may," which talks about permission and "can," which describes ability, or power. Now Jesus is not saying here that no one is
allowed or permitted to come to me unless it's given to him by the Father. He's talking about ability. No man can. Now our Lord, in that teaching, put a universal
negative limitation on human ability. There's something, at least one thing, that
nobody can do. What? Unless something else happens, unless a necessary
precondition is met. Now, what is it? "No man can come to Me," Jesus said. Now, let's go back to this debate between
Pelagius and Augustine. Does God command all men everywhere to come
to Jesus? Is it man's moral obligation to come to Jesus? Yes, but in and of themselves, without some
kind of help from God, unless God gives it to them somehow, can't do it. So there we find exhibit A of what Augustine
was talking about, "Grant what Thou commandest, command what Thou will." No one of us has the moral power and ability
to be perfect since we are fallen, yet we are commanded to be perfect. But that command can never ever be satisfied
unless God does something gracious to make it possible. "No man can come to Me," Jesus said, "unless." That "unless" points to the absolute necessity
of God's work of grace in us before we will ever come to Jesus. Jesus spelled it out a different way to Nicodemus
when He said, when He said this, "Unless a man is born of the Spirit," unless a man is
born again, "he cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless he is born of the water and of the
Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God." Do you see that word "unless" again? Unless A takes place, B cannot follow. A is a necessary condition for B to happen. You can't have B without A. And this is what
this Pharisee couldn't understand. And Jesus said, "Hey, you have to be born
again before you can even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter the kingdom of God." This is why people like Augustine, people
like Luther, people like Calvin, people like Edwards, and I keep citing these giants of
the faith for a reason. I know that people struggle with the classical
doctrine of predestination, and I don't think Christians struggle enough with it. And it certainly is possible that Augustine,
Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Calvin, Edwards, who were virtually universally regarded as
the most gifted and brilliant teachers that God has given His church since the end of
the Apostolic age, and that those five men do not agree with each other on every single
point of doctrine, that's obvious. But when they, all five, agree on one point
-- they could all be wrong -- we don't carry any brief for the inspiration or the infallibility
of any of those men individually or all of them collectively, but I'll tell you what. Before I disagree theologically with a point
that Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, Luther and Edwards all agree on, I'm going to do it in
fear and trembling, and I'm going to do my homework beforehand. And I put that for your consideration that
something -- they could all be wrong, but it's unlikely, folks. But all five of them understood this, that
regeneration, the work of the Holy Spirit, changing the disposition of the human heart,
which is a work that God does, and God alone does, must take place before anyone will ever
come to faith. That all of those men agreed, even Aquinas,
that regeneration precedes faith. And they also all agreed that all who are
regenerate come to faith, and they also agreed that the grace of regeneration is what Aquinas
calls "operative grace," not cooperative grace, but operative grace, a grace that works. That when God sheds his grace of regeneration
in the heart of man for the purpose of bringing that man or woman to faith, it works. It does what it is designed to do, that those
who are quickened are indeed made alive. As Paul says in the second chapter of Ephesians,
"And you who were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you formally walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the
lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh, and of the mind, and were by
nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the
great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, quickened
us together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised up
with Him in high places and so on. For it is by grace you have been saved through
faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. What is at issue in the doctrine of predestination
is not ultimately the debate between God's sovereignty and human free will. The ultimate issue here is the central focus
of the matter of God's saving grace. And a grace that is given on the basis of
human merit is not grace. A grace that is dispensed on the basis of
human works, if the human works are the ground of that is not grace, and certainly there
would be nothing amazing about it. But the amazing thing about grace is that
it is altogether gracious. Now the difficulty is that the Bible is saying
that there is a kind of grace that God gives to people to save them, to bring them to faith
in Jesus that He doesn't give to everybody. God does not elect everybody, and that's where
the stumbling point is, isn't it? It seems like it's undemocratic, it's un-American,
God is not an equal opportunity Savior. We somehow want God to treat everybody equally
and if He doesn't treat everybody equally, He's not treating everybody fairly. Well, even a cursory reading of the Bible
will demonstrate to anyone that God doesn't treat everybody equally. God comes to Abraham in the midst of his paganism
and appears to him in a miraculous way, reveals himself to Abraham in a way that He didn't
do to the Pharaoh of Egypt or Hammurabi. Jesus had enemies in the New Testament, people
like Caiaphas, people like Pontius Pilate who pronounced His death sentence. Jesus prayed for their forgiveness because
they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't recognize Him for who He was,
and the apostles tell us that had they recognized Him for who He was they wouldn't have crucified
the Lord of glory. They were responsible to have recognized Him. God had given enough information in Scripture
and through the testimony of Jesus' own works that they should have recognized Him, but
the fact remains they didn't. And so what happens, if you remember the book
of Acts, is that after Jesus died and was raised from the dead and even after He ascended
into heaven, God made a special dispensation for the enemies of Jesus so that one day Caiaphas
was walking down the road in Jerusalem and suddenly Jesus appeared to him and a bright
light overwhelmed him, and a voice spoke in Hebrew to Caiaphas, saying, "Caiaphas, Caiaphas,
isn't it hard for you to kick against the ox goad?" And Caiaphas responded by saying, "Who is
it, Lord?" And Caiaphas, and the voice came to Caiaphas
and said, "It is Jesus, whom you persecuted." And then in Acts 72, we read about Pontius
Pilate going on a trip to Rome. And while he was crossing the sea, in the
middle of the night Jesus appeared them on board that ship and said, "Pontius, Pontius!" And this great light shone round about Pontius
Pilate, and there Jesus revealed His true identity. And then it says another man who was breathing
out fire and hostility, going from church to church dragging believers out of their
homes and throwing them into prison and persecuting them, his name was Saul, got a commission
to carry on the persecution in Damascus, and as he was going along the Damascus Road, suddenly
this bright light brighter than the noonday sun appeared, and he heard a voice speaking
him in Hebrew saying, "Saul, Saul…" But wait a minute, stop the music. What's wrong with the story I just gave you? Saul, is a vehement enemy of Christ, became
the number one apologist of the Christian faith in all of history, but not before or
until the Lord of glory gave him special grace to open his eyes, grace that God gave to Paul
that he did not give to Caiaphas, that he did not give to Pontius Pilate. Do you see what I'm saying? If God treats everybody equally, why didn't
he do that for Caiaphas and for Pontius Pilate? Paul never saw that it was a matter of credit
to him that he came to saving faith. He saw his own salvation as a matter of extraordinary
grace from beginning to end and so must you, my friend. Do we really mean it when we say, "There but
for the grace of God go I," or are we like the Pharisee in the temple that says, "Lord,
I thank you that I'm not like other men, I thank you that I had the good sense, the insight
and the righteousness to make the proper decision when I heard the gospel." See, Pelagius said that grace is a wonderful
thing and grace facilitates faith, grace facilitates righteousness, that is it helps it, but it
is never necessary. Augustine said that grace and the grace of
election is absolutely necessary for anyone to come to faith. Now those were the two positions and Pelagius
was condemned as a heretic by the church. However, in the dispute a moderate position
emerged that was called "semi-Pelagianism." I like to say it was named after Pelagius's
cousin, Semi Pelagius, and Semi Pelagius lived in Florida. No, no, no. Semi-Pelagianism taught this, that man is
fallen to such a degree that he can't redeem himself without the assistance of grace. However, what grace does is this, that grace
is offered to everybody, but it is still left for the sinner to cooperate with that grace
or to reject it. And here's how predestination works, according
to semi-Pelagian views, most semi-Pelagian views hold to what is called "the prescience
view" of election or predestination. It's based on the premise of divine foreknowledge. It goes like this, that from all eternity,
from the foundation of the world God looks down the corridors of time, and He knows in
advance who will cooperate with offered grace and who will reject it. Do we understand that? He knows from the very beginning that if this
person here hears the gospel and is offered the grace of salvation that this one will
say, "Yes," and this one will say "No." And on the basis of that prescience, pre-knowledge
or foreknowledge, God predestines. That is, predestination rests upon God's knowledge
in advance of how we will respond to the gospel, of how we respond to the offer of grace. And those whom He knows will say, "Yes," He
elects unto salvation. Those whom He knows will say, "No," are passed
over. I would say that the vast majority of evangelical
Christians in the world today hold that view or one similar to it of predestination. They say this is what predestination is, it's
basically God's foreknowledge. And in this, in the final analysis the decision
of whether you are redeemed or are lost is based upon your free will, on the choice that
you make. One prominent evangelist has said it this
way, "God does 99% of what has to be done, but He leaves you responsible for that 1%." I've heard two analogies frequently. One is this, that man is in serious trouble
as a result of his sin, as a result of his fall. He is sick unto death. He is like a man in intensive care in the
hospital who most certainly is dying. He has no hope of recovery unless a special
miracle drug is offered to him, and that miracle drug indeed that alone can save him is there
by his bedside. He is too weak, too sick, too critical to
even reach up and help himself to the medicine. Somebody has to pour the medicine on the spoon. Somebody has to come to his bedside. Somebody has to take the spoon with the saving
medicine to his very lips. But unless that man opens his mouth to receive
it, he will most certainly die, you see? The other analogy is that fallen man is like
a man who can't swim, and he's cast adrift into the ocean. He's gone under twice already, he's going
out down under for the third time. His head is already under the water. He's got one arm stretched out, and only the
top part of his fingers are above the surface of the water and unless somebody throws a
life preserver, and they better throw it accurately, that preserver has to come right up against
his hand. He most certainly will perish forever, and
so God throws the life preserver right against his fingers. But if that man doesn't grasp the life preserver
on his own strength, he will drown. See, that's not what I find in Scripture. I don't find saving grace being offered to
people who are sick unto death in a hospital room. That saving drug is given and administered
to a corpse, ladies and gentlemen, who is already pronounced dead, who cannot on his
own strength even respond to the gospel. What God did for you, if you're in Christ,
is that after you went down the third time and you were stone cold dead at the bottom
of the sea, God the Holy Spirit dove into the water, picked you up out of the water,
took you up on the shore and resuscitated you and brought you alive again through the
power of his creation. You are a new creation in Christ, and that's
grace. But you're still saying, "Wait a minute, I
don't like it. Two things I don't like about it. Number one I don't like about it at all is
that God doesn't do it for everybody, and the other thing I don't like about it all
is that it seems to rest in God's eternal counsel, and it has nothing to do with my
actions. What does the Bible say? I used to hate this doctrine, and I fought
it kicking and screaming for five years. I had a sign up in my study, it said, "You
are responsible to God to believe, to preach and to teach what God says is the truth, not
what you want the truth to be." And when I wrestled with this doctrine, I
kept coming back to Romans 9 again and again and again, and it was Romans 9 I couldn't
escape where the Apostle Paul writes these words: "It is not the children of the flesh who are
children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. For this is the word of promise, 'At this
time I will come and Sarah shall have a son,' and not only this, there was Rebecca also,
when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac, for though the twins were not
yet born had not done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose according to his
choice might stand not because of works, but because of him who calls, it was said to her,
'The older will serve the younger.' And as it is written, 'Jacob have I loved,
but Esau have I hated.'" What? What shall we say then? There's no injustice in God, is there? Isn't it strange that Paul anticipates that
protest? If Paul were semi-Pelagian, I think a question
like that, "What? Is there injustice in God?" would be a waste
of apostolic breath. One of the things that comforts me that the
Reformed doctrine of predestination is the biblical one is that the same reactions that
the apostle Paul got and it's the same reactions that Jesus got when He taught the doctrine
are the reactions that we get all the time. Nobody gets mad at the Arminian doctrine of
predestination. Nobody gets mad at the prescient view of predestination,
and I'll tell you why, because the foreknowledge prescient view of predestination is not an
explanation of predestination, ladies and gentlemen, it is the denial of predestination,
pure and simple. Because in the final analysis, the decision
rests with man. I don't know of any place in Christian doctrine
where I'm convinced that humanism has made a deeper inroad than this. Because it will not take seriously the dimensions
of the fall of man that have brought us to the place where we are morally and spiritually
dead, and that only the electing grace of God can save us in our spiritual death. In order that God's purpose, according to
His choice, not because of works, but because of Him who called. Is there any injustice in God? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." You see what happens? If the whole world is judged guilty before
God, if the whole world is spiritually bankrupt, if the whole world is in hostility towards
God and spiritually dead. We have this American idea that if God reaches
down and sovereignly, according to the good pleasure of His will, gives grace to some
of these people and brings them to life and saves them from hell that He's now therefore
morally obligated to do the same thing for everyone else. And somehow if He doesn't, we will stand in
protest to say, "That's not fair!" No, that's not equal and what God is doing
here is saying very clearly, "Don't you remember what I taught you through the lips of Moses? 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.' I'm not obligated to be merciful to anybody." If mercy were an obligation, it wouldn't be
mercy; it would be justice. And if I want to give my mercy to Jacob and
not to Esau, what's unfair about it? What's unjust about it?" Now, granted if God punished Esau and Esau
were an innocent man, then there would be injustice. But the biblical doctrine of election, get
this point, teaches that some people receive grace, the rest receive justice. No one ever receives injustice from God. Do you understand that? And finally, he said, "So then, it does not
depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy." Every discussion I've ever been in on the
doctrine of election and of predestination has come down to this point, folks, on what
does it depend in the final analysis? And my Arminian friends, I'm convinced in
the final analysis, have to say, "It depends on him who wills. It depends on your free will. It depends on your choice that God sees down
the corridors of time. That's what it depends on, the decision is
yours." How many times have you heard the evangelist
say, "There's an election going on here. God votes for you. Satan votes against you, and it's a tie, and
you have to cast the deciding vote." If you have to cast the deciding vote, ladies
and gentlemen, you are destined to hell with no hope. Because you, in your own strength, unregenerate,
will never vote for God, ever. But according to salvation, according to election,
yes, there's an election, but only one person votes. The devil doesn't have a vote. Only one vote that counts, and from the foundation
of the world God cast His ballot with your name on it if it so be that you are in Christ,
so that it depends not on him who runs, not on him who chooses, not on him who wills,
but on the sovereign grace of God. I have to be candid. If the Apostle Paul came in this room right
now and heard a bunch of theologians arguing about election and salvation, and they couldn't
get past the final point, and they said, "Look, where are you, Apostle? On a final analysis what does my salvation
depend on, on my will or on God's will? Which is it, Paul? Please tell us." Can you think of any way that the Apostle
Paul could answer that question more clearly than he just did in that statement? I urge you, my beloved brothers and sisters,
that if you find this doctrine distasteful, look at it again. I just got a letter from a fellow the other
day who said he hated this doctrine. He read my book Chosen by God, and I was so
glad it was useful to him. He said, "I picked it up." He said, "I want to find the flaws so I can
refute it." He said, "I took copious notes, I underlined
everything." I got to the last page and I said, "Gee, I
couldn't find it!" And he said, "So what I decided to do," he
said, "is I decided to read the Bible through from cover to cover three times." He said, "And I did." He said, "And it seemed like this doctrine
was on every page." He said, "When I was done with my searching
of the Scripture," he said, "not only did I embrace the doctrine, but I began to see
the beauty of it and to rejoice in it." Oh beloved, how many times have I heard that
testimony from people who have kicked against the ox goad of God's grace until they saw
the sweetness of His mercy and the purity of His power. And so that we humbly confess, "O God, we
couldn't in our natural state have possibly turned ourselves to Christ. We had no inclination towards Christ. We were altogether indisposed towards Christ. We were like these people Paul talks of in
Ephesians who were dead in sin and trespasses. We walked according to the course of this
world, according to the power of the prince of this world and so on, just like everybody
else. But God, who is rich in mercy, brought us
into His kingdom, not kicking and screaming against our will, because what electing grace
does is to make us willing and eager to pursue the Christ we formerly hated, to love the
Savior we formerly despised, to embrace the truth we previously ran from. That's what predestinating grace is all about. And once we understand that, and once we discover
it we get on our knees and we say, "O God, command what Thou wilt and grant what Thou
dost command."
