“You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’” Romans 9:19
Imagine for a second that you were wondering about something. Imagine if you were wondering whether you should take a new job that your company offered you and move the family to Chicago. Then imagine that you found, let’s say in Genesis 51 since this is an imaginary scenario, that you discovered this verse: “If you’re offered a good job in Chicago in March of 2022, take it. Yes, move the family there.”
Ah, yeah! You’d be absolutely gobsmacked (love that word!), wouldn’t you? That would absolutely settle the matter. You’d move because It is written!
Well, that’s exactly what we’re seeing with this verse. God is specifically answering a question presented to Him by virtually all of mankind – especially Christendom. Here’s the set-up: if God is absolutely sovereign (and He is) then why aren’t all people being saved? Why create anyone who goes to hell? You see, the Bible doesn’t stop halfway with the question of God’s sovereignty in regard to salvation as Arminianism does. It blows right past that question and goes for the jugular. Why does He find fault at all? That’s another way of saying, “why create anyone who goes to Hell if He’s absolute?
The fact that Romans presents this question at all is instructive.
Those who reject the Calvinistic approach to the doctrines of grace do so on the premise that it’s unjust of God. They’re trying to “protect” God from the issue of unfairness (at best) and/or trying to defend a flawed understanding of human free will. This ignores that by “protecting” God from the charge of unfairness (by human standards) it limits His sovereignty. We say again: if something limits God, then He’s not truly God. Too many of us have a small god view.
To address this, the Apostle Paul goes big. He brings the question to the root. Then he demolishes it.
In matters of such weight it’s important to start our reasoning from fundamentals and then move forward. Mistakes are avoided this way. Mistakes happen when we start reasoning mid-stream. That said, here’s what we know.
First, God is completely righteous and all-powerful. He created the world and everything in it – including you and me – for His purposes and His purposes alone. No outside force compelled Him to do anything. No outside force in reality has any power over Him, constrains Him, or limits Him in any way whatsoever. He is absolutely and totally free. No one and nothing has a claim on God. If something has a claim on Him, or is outside His power, then He’s not truly God, is He? Many Christians, not thinking this clear doctrine through and then following it to its logical applications, fall into heresy.
Second, there is none righteous. No, not one. All of turned aside and become worthless. Curses and bitterness flow from our mouths and our feet are swift to shed blood. We’re dead in our trespasses and sins…not merely ill, not comatose, not gravely ill, not on life support. Dead. That’s why Jesus said we must be born again.
These doctrinal facts are the answer for the “problem” of predestination. Since God is absolute and we’re contingent, and sin is man thinking his own thoughts upon his own premises and for his own glory, we must reject autonomous reasoning. In this case that means we must reject the question of God’s responsibility for evil out of hand. Why? Because, as our verse indicates, it’s a categorical fallacy. A categorical fallacy is like asking what yellow smells like. Yellow is a color, of course, and doesn’t have a scent. Likewise, as created beings, not the source of life, truth, and righteousness ourselves, we can’t think of these things – ultimate things – without reference to Him in the first place. Man demanding to comprehensively know God’s mind is like a fish trying to swallow the ocean. It’s impossible. It’s like taking your nose off your face in order to smell it.
It’s helpful to humble ourselves as we consider this. When Paul follows with:
“What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory – even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” Romans 9:22-24
This is God’s answer to the question of “why does He still find fault?” It’s the Bible’s answer to the question of predestination. God doesn’t stutter. The only controversy is why we don’t believe Him when the facts are so obvious. He’s saying that we can’t even begin to think about life’s ultimate questions without reference to Him in the first place. The subject is a rabbit hole of human pride. If we ask God why He did something, we must understand the previous point. He’s absolute freedom AND righteousness. We can’t begin to fathom these subjects without reference to Him so to question His decrees with anything except utter humility (to receive revelation) is a categorical fallacy. I can’t impose upon Him a standard of justice and logic that exist only in Him. He is the standard. Justice and logic aren’t phenomena of the natural world that He has to conform to! Justice and logic are attributes of God that He communicates to us, His image bearers. I know this is stuff that gets our heads spinning but the blessing of knowing this will literally change your life – as all truth about God does, but especially this one.
Do I understand the doctrine of predestination? Not completely because I’m His creation – His clay. I do know truly that He’s righteous and in Himself the standard of justice and truth and that, behind it all, He knows all things comprehensively (He’s omniscient). No fact of reality has existence except through the creative control of God and for His glory. This is, be sure, a staggering fact of life and one that’s impossible for a mere man to comprehend. But, again, we know this truly and He knows things comprehensively. The creature-Creator distinction is the key. Faith, in this regard, isn’t the absence or negation of logic, but the non-contradictory logic of both man and God’s nature.
So, did God decree from creation that some men, like Pharaoh and Judas would freely choose sin? Yes. Were they created by Him, predestined, and responsible to Him? Again, yes. Did Judas choose to betray Christ? Yes (John 13:27:30). Was He predestined to do so? Yes (Matthew 26:23-25). Was Rehoboam free to decide what to do about Jeroboam’s request in 1 Kings 12? Yes, he was. Didn’t God tell Solomon that He was going to judge his (Solomon’s horrible idolatry) in this way? Again, yes.
We keep running into this again and again. Was Jesus predestined to go to the cross? Yes. Did Pilate freely choose to have Him crucified? Yes.
The doctrine of predestination doesn’t obliterate man’s free will – it explains it. It puts it in context. Our problem is that we’re thinking (in humanistic pride) that free will means “absolute freedom.” But we’re created beings. Only God has absolute freedom. I don’t have the choice to become 20 years-old. I don’t have the choice to be Michael Jordan. I didn’t have a choice to be born. I do have a choice of whether or not I eat this or that. On foundational issues, man is always derivative and reacting; he doesn’t have absolute freedom.
Therefore, the question of free will is the standard of his choices. In sin, our standard is damaged. We’re like a guy going to a Ford dealership trying to buy a Toyota. The purpose and meaning of life is fellowship with God to the glory of God. The joy of men and women, their felicity and security, is in knowing God in Jesus Christ. He’s the end and goal and we only have our identity in Him since He created us and the world. But “free will” in sinners is the distortion of this truth. The free will of sinners is for self-glory in all sorts of various shades. That’s why sinners routinely choose instant gratification over long term happiness.
These are tough doctrines, I know. But here’s the point to remember: God is absolutely sovereign and absolutely righteous. We aren’t. Pretending to be a sort-of god, and refusing to acknowledge these elemental facts, we tear ourselves asunder. Oh, how many emotional traumas are caused by this basic fact of sin! A man or woman who lives a life thinking less of God than He is, worshipping a little god, harms their own soul. Trying to live in a world “sort-of” ruled by God and sort-of ruled by you is a recipe for disaster. Knowing that He’s absolutely sovereign, however, is the most glorious fact of life in the saved soul. It frees us of that elemental sin of playing god. The reformed mind, saved by grace alone, through faith alone, adores Him and is pleased to let Him define Himself in His word. The old mind, the one that’s set on the flesh, isn’t “all-in” and, therefore, tries to share the epistemological and ethical throne with Him.
But remember: there is nothing unfair in God being God and you being you. Come to Him in humility and receive His abundant mercy and then pray that He opens your mind to the wondrous truths of His revelation (in Scripture). His absolute freedom will put into context your very real, though limited, choices. Predestination is a mystery to us for the reason that He’s God (Romans 11:33-36) but it’s a glorious one.
By His sovereign and absolutely free act of grace He alone has given us the gift of faith so that we might be saved. None of us may boast. If there was something that we did to be saved, that would mean that Jesus didn’t need to die. It would also make Romans 9 superfluous.
Understanding this doctrine will take humility but the goal of it here is to bring us to be in loving awe of Him who saves!
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