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Chosen By God: Part 2

Romans 8:28-30, 9:1-29, Romans 8:28-30, 9:1-29, Romans 8:28-30, 9:1-29

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of predestination and election from Romans 8:28-30.


“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. 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.”

“I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption of sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’

Not only that, but Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 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.’ Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’

It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?’ But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? ‘Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” ’ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and making his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?

What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea: ‘I will call them “my people” who are not my people; and I will call her “my loved one” who is not my loved one,’ and, ‘It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” they will be called “sons of the living God.”‘

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.’ 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.’ ”

This is the Word of the Lord.

For reasons that will become obvious, I want to approach this great topic tangentially, so I shall begin by reflecting a little on the difficult doctrine of the love of God. “What’s this?” you say. “I came here to hear something about the difficult doctrine of election, and you want to talk about the love of God. I call that a cop-out. We all know there’s nothing particularly difficult about the love of God, don’t we? We all believe that.”

Yet there are extraordinary difficulties in the doctrine of the love of God. In fact, the difficulty of election and the difficulty of the love of God are so tied together that thinking about these two doctrines simultaneously proves to be a considerable advantage producing mutual clarification. So why is the doctrine of the love of God difficult?

Well, for a start, it’s difficult to get across today because most people in the culture, if they believe anything at all about God, believe that God is love, whatever he, she, or it is. If you believe in the spiritual power of crystals, if you believe in Krishna, or if you believe in some vague, pantheistic, impersonal divine being … somehow it’s benevolent.

Therefore, sometimes when Christians speak of the love of God, the way we’re heard in the culture is this catchphrase love of God divorced from what else the Bible has to say about God. We automatically slot God into a larger framework where we’re also confessing his transcendence, his personhood, his holiness, his unmitigated truthfulness, his judgment.… We automatically think in those categories as well because we’re Christian, but when we say “love of God” in the culture, that’s not how we’re heard.

“Well, of course God loves me. I mean, that’s His job. Besides, I’m sort of cute. He’s bound to love me. I mean, I’m no worse than the next person.” Isn’t that so? So that in every stratum of society, whatever else is believed or not believed about God, it is assumed that God (if he, she, or it exists) is a God of love.

It’s seen even in science fiction films. There are two kinds of science fiction films. There’s the shoot-’em-up kind. In the shoot-’em-up kind the alien beings have to be really ugly and perverse so that you can have some targets, so that you have the Alien series, Independence Day, or such things.

But in the other kind of space films, then there is this being out there somehow who is unimaginably benevolent. From the sort-of sentimental, teddy-bear ooze of E.T. to Jodie Foster’s latest, Contact, where this power out there is so benevolent, sweet, and ill-defined that it’s bound to turn out all right. It’s we human beings on earth that are right-broaders, but this divine other is okay.

Now in that kind of framework, to talk from a Christian perspective about the love of God is very confusing because people hear you to be saying things you don’t mean to say. There are some things people have to un-learn about love of God before they can learn what the Bible says about the love of God.

That’s the first reason why the doctrine of the love of God is difficult, but it is also intrinsically difficult. I don’t have time to unpack this, but Christians who think about what the Bible says about the love of God in conjunction with what the Bible says about his eternality, his transcendence (he’s above space and time), and his sovereignty find it hard, the harder they push, to put all of those things together. They see that these things are taught in Scripture, but how to put them all together is not as easy as mere formulations suggest.

But there is another element in this doctrine that is hard, and it is the one I want to focus on to bring us into election. The fact of the matter is the doctrine of the love of God is difficult because we who are Christians sometimes fail to recognize the different ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God. It doesn’t always speak of the love of God in the same way. Let me mention five.

First, the Bible speaks of the intra-Trinitarian love of God.

That is, the love of the Father for the Son, the love of the Son for the Father, and so forth. Thus, in John 3 the Father loves the Son and pours out upon him the Spirit without measure. In John 5 the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he does so that the Son does everything that the Father does. Then in John 14 the Son loves the Father and, therefore obeys him perfectly. In fact, Jesus says, “The world must know that I love the Father and always do those things that please Him.”

Now this intra-Trinitarian love of God is not the love of redemption. The Son doesn’t need redeeming; neither does the Father. The Son’s love for the Father is expressed in terms of obedience. The Father’s love for the Son is expressed in terms of constant, eternal disclosure, but there’s no redemption.

Second, we might speak of God’s providential love.

He’s the God who sends his rain upon the just and upon the unjust. He’s the God who feeds the lion when it roars. He’s the God without whose sanction not even a sparrow falls from the sky. There is this providential love. If he responded in mere justice, this whole universe would collapse, but providentially he rules over the just and the unjust.

Third, the Bible speaks of what might be called his yearning love for the redemption of rebels.

He’s the God who cries, “Turn! Turn! Why will you die? The Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. All day long I have held out my entreating hands to you.” God so loved the world that he gave his Son. Do not let people deceive you into thinking that world there means the elect.

Fourth, there is his electing love, his choosing love.

He fastens on a race or on individuals and chooses them. He loves them specially. “Why does God choose Israel?” Deuteronomy asks in chapter 7, chapter 10, and beyond. Well, not because Israel was mighty, not because Israel was wise, not because Israel was powerful. God chose Israel out of love. He chose Israel out of his regard for his own covenantal promises to Abraham, whom he chose out of love.

Malachi can actually summarize the whole thing in his opening verses and have God saying, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” We’ll come back to that text, but God is clearly making a distinction. There is a sense in which the Bible may speak of God’s love in a selecting sense, an electing sense, a choosing sense.

Fifth, the Bible sometimes speaks, in a sense, of God’s conditional love.

For example, in Jude 21: “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” Or again, Jesus says in John, chapter 15, that as he remains in the Father’s love by constantly obeying him, so he says, “You also must remain in my love by obeying me.” The implication, of course, is that if we don’t obey him, we don’t remain in his love.

Nor is that so difficult to understand. I have two teenagers at home. If I give my daughter the keys to the car and say she must be in my midnight, she must be in by midnight. If she is not in by midnight, she will face some sanctions. Tiffany must keep herself in the love of dad. Now there is a sense, of course, in which I would like to think that no matter what she did, even if (God forbid) she became a drug addict and a slut on the street, I would still love her. She’s my daughter!

There is one element of love, surely, that should prevail always, constantly, for her regardless. But there is another element of love, another way we speak of keeping oneself in the love of someone else that includes some obedience. If she wants me to shine upon her with my approval, as opposed to descend upon her with my sanctions, she had better get in before midnight, not five minutes after. She must keep herself in the love of dad.

In exactly the same way, once human beings’ relationships with God are closed, we are in the covenant; we are children of the living God.… God does say, “Keep yourself in the love of God.” Jesus does say, “You remain in my love by doing everything I command you,” or else you will face sanctions.

Now observe what happens if you absolutize any one of these various ways the Bible has about speaking of the love of God and dismiss the rest. Now we are not so crass as to dismiss the rest, but what we sometimes do is slip the others under one of those categories without thinking about it.

For example, if you focus exclusively on the intra-Trinitarian love of God and forget everything else, then you’ll keep saying, “Well, God’s nature is to love. Before eternity, there was still this God who loved. God is not only subject; he is also object. Unlike the Muslim god, the Holy Trinity is a God of love from the beginning; that’s his nature.” So it just sort of slops out and gets everybody along the line in exactly the same way, doesn’t it? Uh … not quite.

Well then, his providential love. You push that one hard enough and you can drift off into a kind of vague pantheism. Then his yearning love. He does actually cry, “Turn, turn! Why will you die?” But if you absolutize that one, pretty soon you’re left with a dear, old granddaddy type in the sky who’s doing the best he can (poor chap), but now it’s all up to you.

Then if you absolutize his selecting love and forget everything else the Bible says about love, pretty soon it becomes a pretty mechanical sort of thing. God chooses this one (“Mmm … yes”), and not that one (“Mmm … no”). There is no sense of morality or justice; it’s just mechanics. Then there’s his conditional love. If you absolutize that one, you bring back merit theology through the back door. Provided I try hard enough and I’m good enough, then God loves me; otherwise he’s going to clobber me.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment there are not different loves of God. I’m not suggesting for a moment you can farm these things out into categories. “Now I’m talking about the yearning love of God.” Nothing like that. God is love, but just as in human relationships, we use the verb to love in a variety of ways and mean slightly different things depending on the context, so too with God.

I love woodworking. I love my wife. I love to preach the gospel to university students. Let me tell you, they’re very different. Preaching the gospel to university students is.… It breaks me out in a cold sweat. It’s high tense stuff. I never know what’s going to happen. It may turn out into a real hate fest. The meetings turn out to be unpredictable. Some people get converted, and sometimes I get hissed. I lose sleep. I come out collapsed and fatigued.

Well, that’s not exactly what I mean when I say I love my wife. You see, there are different kinds of ways we use the verb to love in English, are there not? It’s the same in the Bible, and if you absolutize a mere slogan and force everything into it, you will not understand the Scriptures. You will force a form of doctrine on the Scriptures that is finally alien to the Scriptures.

Now the passage assigned obviously has to do with election, so it is related in some way to God’s election love. That is now how I’ve come in through the side door. Romans 9:1–29 is part of a sustained argument in Romans 9, 10, and 11 dealing with the place of the race of Israel in God’s redemptive purposes. This was an important question in first-century Christianity.

After all, God had disclosed himself to the Jews, but most of those Jews, once Jesus came on the scene, did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. So part of the Jewish polemic against Christians was that Jesus couldn’t properly be the Messiah if most Jews didn’t accept him as the Messiah. He must be another false pretender, which is one of the reasons why so many pages in the New Testament (not only here but elsewhere) are devoted to helping Christians understand what Israel’s role really is in redemptive history.

For if large swaths of Israel are put aside with the coming of Jesus, then what happens to God’s election of Israel? What happens to God’s choice of Israel? What happens to God’s sovereignty? What happens to the faithfulness of God’s promises? If God’s promises weren’t all that reliable for Israel, why should we think that they’re all that reliable for us? You can understand, therefore, why this issue in the first century was not simply a sort of theoretical question about some esoteric element of doctrine.

It came to the very essence of the faith. You had to sort this one out. Before launching into this theme, Paul begins by insisting on his own profound love for his own race, for his fellow Jews. Chapter 9, verses 1–5. Apparently, some thought that Paul’s activities as Apostle to the Gentiles meant he was now so distanced from his own people that he no longer particularly cared for them. Not so!

“I speak the truth in Christ.” Positive. “I am not lying.” Negative way of saying the same thing. “My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit.” Putting himself under a solemn oath. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” Why? “For I could wish that I myself were anathema …” Damned, we would say. “… and cut off from Christ for my brothers, those of my own race.”

That is extraordinary love. I know it’s hypothetical. I know that Paul knows it’s hypothetical, but it’s still extraordinary. I could just about imagine saying that sort of thing with respect to my children. I find it very difficult to imagine how someone could say that with respect to a whole race.

As Paul deals with these themes then, they’re not distant matters for him. Even when he evangelizes Gentiles, in every place he goes he starts with a synagogue. “To the Jew first,” he says, “and also to the Greek.” Part of Paul’s passion for the people of Israel, his own people, rests on his recognition of their enormous privileges.

So he says. Verse 4: “Theirs is the adoption as sons” first of all. Here he does not mean adoption of sons the way he refers to Christians using the same category. He is talking about the adoption of Israel as the son of God. That starts in Exodus, chapter 4. In Exodus, chapter 4, God says to Pharaoh, through Moses, “Israel is my firstborn son, and I say, ‘Let my son go that he might worship me.’ ”

From that point on, Israel becomes the son of God. In the ancient world, the son was to imitate the father. The son usually took up the same job as the father. If your father was a baker, you became a baker (in 99 cases out of 100), so to be the son of God was to reflect God, to take up what it means to display God.

Of course, nobody was denying that there are some incommunicable attributes of God. That is, there are some attributes of God that can’t be communicated, that can’t be shared, that we can’t reproduce; but God has so many lovely features, and we, his image bearers, ought to reflect them.

We ought to be his sons, which is a comprehensive term. We would say, perhaps today, “sons and daughters.” The sons category, though, reflects the Semitic way of thinking, repeating who God is, repeating what the Father is. “Israel is my son.” That was the calling; they received the adoption of sons.

Not only so, they enjoyed the divine glory. Did not the divine glory lead them out of Egypt? Did not the divine glory hover over the tabernacle? When the temple was built, did not the divine glory so come upon the temple before Solomon’s magnificent prayer that the priests were expelled from temple by the sheer glory of the presence of God?

Then there were the covenants: the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant … massive covenants with implications for land, for a future coming King, and for forgiveness of sin. The promises of the new covenant came to them. Then there’s the receiving of the Law itself with all of its massive structuring of their entire culture and their anticipation of all the righteousness to come. The temple worship, the promises of God …

To them belong the patriarchs. From this race finally comes Jesus Christ. What a heritage! But the climax of the heritage is Jesus Christ, so that, at the end of all of this, Paul bursts out in a doxology to Christ. At the end of all of this, he does not say, “So, therefore, this proves the Jews really are better.” Rather, he says at the end of all of this, “This proves they’re a wonderfully privileged people, but the One to be praised is Christ, who is God over all, forever praised.”

Now here there are clearly some pastoral implications of grieving over people who have enjoyed great advantages and then thumbed their nose at God. We may merely be exasperated with such people. Paul could wish himself accursed for them, and the more he recognizes the privileges they’ve received the more he feels compassion for them.

Now all of this Paul lays out before he now introduces his subject proper, because he does not want to be thought cold, calloused, or unloving as he lays out what Scripture actually says about the election of Jews. He does not want this discussion to descend to some merely mechanical level.

So now, having insisted on the depths of his love for his own people, Paul launches into his argument. We may summarize it in three points. God’s word with regard to Israel has not failed and God’s justice with regard to Israel has not failed. Thus, God’s word and justice with regard to Gentiles have not failed.

First then, God’s word with regard to Israel has not failed.

Verses 6–13. The general point is made in verse 6. “It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” That is, from the beginning, who Israel is has never been a question of mere race. That is, of who descends from Israel. From the beginning, “Not all who are descended from Israel are really Israel.”

Now this is not here suggesting that there are people outside of the Jewish race who are brought in and made Israel. Paul can elsewhere talk in terms very much like that. For example, at the end of Romans, chapter 2, he says in verse 28, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.” Now he’s expanding the categories beyond mere race.

Here, however, that’s not his point. Here he is restricting the categories. There is a sense in which God did choose the entire Jewish race, but he never chose the entire Jewish race in such a way that every single member of that race would know eternal life. There is a choice that God sometimes makes to something other than eternal life.

From the beginning God made choices within the mere descendents of Abraham. That is made clear by verses 7–9. “Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary …” The very first generation out from Abraham, the head of the entire race, there was a choice made that brought Isaac to the fore. “It is through Isaac that your offspring with be reckoned.” Not through Ishmael, not through the packet of progeny from Keturah, only through the son of promise.

Paul goes on to say, “In other words, it is not the natural children (all of them) who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return …’ ” God takes a hand in this. “ ‘… and Sarah will have a son.’ ” Moreover, this principle of choice among Abraham’s progeny was not restricted to the first generation; hence verses 10–13.

Paul goes on to say, “Not only that …” In the first generation, the case of Isaac. “… but Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad …” So it’s not a case now of God choosing the nicer one or the less naughty. “Before either had done good or evil, precisely 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.’ ”

Now there are many, many people who read these verses and think that the election in view.… Election simply means choice; it doesn’t have anything to do with democratic voting. The selection, we might say, the choosing that is in view, is only at the sort of corporate level, the big picture, the whole race. Likewise today, they say, God chooses the whole church, but that’s got nothing whatever to say about whether God chooses individuals to be in the church. That’s a very common view.

I have no doubt that there are texts that show that God does choose the whole church. Indeed, Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, yet I don’t think you can restrict yourself here to a merely corporate election. Jacob and Esau are individuals, nor are they individuals who merely represent entire groups. God made his choice before these individuals had done anything good or evil. Later on in the chapter, moreover, there is further remnant theology introduced. That is, right through the history of Israel God didn’t choose the whole nation.

Hence, for example, in 9:27 only the remnant will be saved. In chapter 11, this theme of the remnant is very strong. In the days of Elijah God reserved for himself 7,000 who never bowed the knee to Baal. In 11:5, “So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.” A remnant of Jews chosen by grace. Paul says, in effect, that the Jews who become Christians are like the remnant that has always been chosen by grace. At every stage in Israel’s history there was a remnant that believed, but a lot didn’t believe.

It’s no different today. In fact, one of the proofs that God has not simply forgotten the Jews is that Paul himself was a Jew. So in other words, this entire section is interested not only in Israel as the whole race, it’s interested in God’s selection of individuals within the race, his selection of individuals to life, his selection of individuals to blessing, forgiveness, and eternal life, and that, the text says, is actually exemplified in the choosing of Jacob over Esau before they were born to make sure that the primacy of election stands.

The text goes so far to say God did it this way precisely so that election would stand. Why? So that all might see that salvation is, finally, according to grace and not according to works. If God chose Jacob over Esau only after it was disclosed that Esau was a right blighter and Jacob was a bit shifty but on the right track, then someone could say that God chose this chap, Jacob, because he was the lesser of two evils perhaps.

Somehow, sneaking through the back door would be a suspicion again that it turns, finally, on who’s the nicer person or at least who is less malicious. “No!” God says. Precisely so that the primacy of election might stand, God did it this way so that grace might be magnified. That’s what the text says. So then this is actually summarized by one of the last prophets of the Old Testament. “Just as it is written …” God, speaking to Malachi. Chapter 1, verse 2. “ ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ ”

Now the form of this is a Semitic contrast. In Semitic language, you can say, “this I love; this I hate” without necessarily meaning that you hate this implacably with horrible rage or the like. But what it does mean, very forcefully, is that when it comes down to a right choice, I choose this one and not that one. The choice is based on love. God chose this one and not that one. No matter how you look at it, this was God’s selecting love.

Second, we find not only that God’s word with regard to Israel has not failed, but now God’s justice with regard to Israel has not failed.

Verses 14–21. Paul raises the question himself. “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!” he responds. Verses 15–16 are very important. To prove that God is not unjust, the Apostle quotes words from Exodus 33.

God says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” How does that prove that God is not unjust? You see, it proves that God is not unjust only under the assumption, which Paul certainly makes, that you’re talking about a guilty race. After all, that’s what he spent his first three chapters trying to prove.

We’re not dealing here with a situation in which God confronts a whole mass of morally neutral people and then says, “I like your face; you go there. I don’t like your face; you go there. You’re morally neutral; I consign you to holiness. You’re morally neutral; I consign you to sin. You’re morally neutral; you go to heaven. You’re morally neutral; you go to hell.” Otherwise the whole notion of mercy would not make sense.

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.