The Doctrine of Election - John MacArthur

Originally Posted by cheachea

The Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of Man can sometimes be a challenging thing to decipher .
In the end a good scripture to remember is Proverbs 3:5- Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

This forum needs a "LIKE" button!

[NateR]

First of all, I just got off of work so I've been up all night, but I'm going to try to respond to some of these or I'll never be able to get to sleep. So please forgive any typos and hopefully I don't quote someone and forget to respond.

Originally Posted by Crisco

This is good enough for me.

Trying to understand the nature of God can often be discouraging and openly stating that if God doesn't choose you then your f'ed is counter productive to the great commision.

I believe in a fair and just God and the idea of pre-destination in the form that we perceive it is not fair or just. So to contemplate the mere thought of it can cause a crisis of faith.

Jesus loves you and wants to save you.. When did we decide that this was not true?

Of course it's true, but where does belief come from? If the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18) - which all of us were before we were saved - then how exactly do we get to the point of belief in Christ? If belief is something that we decide on our own because of some intellectual evidence or religious experience, then it is a work and you have just created a works based salvation, which is not the salvation described in the Bible.

The Holy Spirit convicts our heart and makes it possible for us to believe. Thus, even our faith is a gift from GOD.

As for the comments that it makes GOD seem unjust or unfair, I will just refer back to Romans 9, verses 14-16 (but please read the whole chapter):

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

It's called Divine Prerogative - meaning GOD's going to do exactly what He wants to do. It's not our place to pass judgement on or answer back to GOD. His actions are beyond us, but the simple fact that GOD does them makes them good.

Originally Posted by Crisco

The only reason I believe God needs to be fair is because that is the way he presents himself and God is not a liar or a deceiver.

Let's go back to Romans 9, verses 10-13 this time:

And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, “The older shall serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”

Was it fair that GOD predetermined Jacob to rule over his older brother before the twins were even born? Was it fair that GOD decided to hate Esau?

Furthermore, was it fair that Jesus had to come down to Earth to suffer and die for us when He created us in the first place, had never done anything wrong throughout all eternity, and we could never hope to repay His sacrifice? Was that fair of GOD to require that of His own Son?

"Fairness" is a human concept and for us to try to apply it to GOD is nothing but an indicator of our sinful pride.

Originally Posted by Tyburn

So you never rejected it...but because you were unfamiliar with it you rejected it enough to argue theologically against it with MacT

As for Quotes...well it was before the Jump wasnt it...Nothing remains of that era except memories

I'm pretty sure MacT would have been arguing against Calvinism, being that he was a Pentecostal.

Originally Posted by Tyburn

Yes it is. But we aint talking about what we Deserve. We are talking about what GOD wants. Nice deflection though, and I'm not put off by silly little catch phrases that sound, frankly, made for TV, Do you forget that I am in a relationship with GOD? I actually know an enourmous amount about what he wants, what he likes, and what he dislikes.

Ezekiel 33.11

Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'


I defy you to unify that with Calvinism...and before you dare mention it governs just the people of Israel...I give you the mirror from the New Testament that reaffirms it in Our Covernant also.

2 Peter 3.9

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

The Author of that does NOT use devine selection over free will. He pleads to the free will to fall in with his desire.

So which is it Nathan...is GOD telling the truth...or is he telling lies?

Originally Posted by Crisco

We have no choice but to accept the former as fact. The idea that salvation is not available to everyone is not biblical. The straight talk is more solid then the grey talk.

Both of you reference the same verse so I'll respond to both at once. Of course, the passage in 2 Peter is true, but Peter also wrote this:

1 Peter 1:1-2

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Peter references GOD's "elect" and states that they have been "chosen according to the foreknowledge of GOD the Father... to be obedient to Jesus Christ."

So, is Peter contradicting himself? How do you reconcile that?

Originally Posted by Chuck

I agree. But how do you reconcile that with the multiple examples of God imploring people to choose Him? Why does it have to be either/or? Why can't it be both?

The elect still have a decision to make about Jesus Christ. Divine revelation is not a guarantee of belief. Personally, I believe the mentions in the Bible of someone's name being blotted out of the Book of Life, is a reference to someone who was elect, but ultimately decided to reject Christ and never got saved. That's just my personal theory, however.

You can be elect and not be saved.

Originally Posted by Chuck

Nonsense. Freedom and Free will are different. Paul was imprisoned but still chose to worship. He still chose to pray. You can lack freedom but still have free will. Have you ever studied slavery? Read stories about POW's? They lacked freedom but exercised free will daily.

If you are a slave of sin, then do you have the freedom to not sin? Keeping in mind that sin is not just doing wrong, but failing to do good.

1 Corinthians 2:14

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Romans 3:10-12

As it is written:
“ There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”

Interesting that you use the example of POWs, because I was going to compare it to being in prison. If you are a prisoner, then you have a limited freedom within the confines of the prison; but you do not have the freedom to leave the prison. Therefore, your free will inside that prison is an illusion, because you can only choose from a selection of predetermined choices that have been approved by someone else. It's the same when we are slaves to sin.

Originally Posted by Chuck

Why does free will have to be elevated above God's sovereignty? Why can't it exist parallel to as opposed to above/below?

So you are arguing that we humans have an attribute that is equal to GOD's sovereignty? Doesn't that contradict the very concept of "sovereignty"? I'd be interested to know that Bible verses you would use to back that up.

Originally Posted by Chuck

I would argue that if there is no free will then God becomes a tyrant that simply imposes His will on us. If there isn't a choice even at it's simplest level then how can there be genuine love? Did the slaves love their masters or simply subject themselves to them because they had no other choice?

As I'm mentioned earlier, we have a limited form of free will being that we are either slaves of sin or slaves of Christ; but some people (not you) seem to want to claim that GOD can't do anything to violate our free will. That elevates human free will to the status of a false god.

That idea is not even Scriptural:
Jeremiah 1:4-5

Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying:
“ Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
Before you were born I sanctified you;
I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

By the modern concept of free will didn't GOD violate Jeremiah's free will by ordaining him as a prophet before he was even born? What if Jeremiah would rather have been a carpenter or a tailor? Did GOD overstep His bounds by making that choice for him?

Originally Posted by cheachea

The Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of Man can sometimes be a challenging thing to decipher .
In the end a good scripture to remember is Proverbs 3:5- Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

Thank you for posting that. It's something that I always try to remember. I don't want my view of GOD to be limited by my own understanding and intelligence, because that would only create a partial, false god. When we are faced with passages of Scripture that reveal parts of GOD's character that seem to be in contradiction to each other, then we simply need to retreat to faith. To quote the old hymn, "God says it and I believe it and that settles it for me." We might understand it all when we are all in Heaven, but we might never understand all the aspects of GOD (which seems more likely to me); but that shouldn't hamper our faith.

To be 100% honest, if I wasn't totally convinced that the Scriptural evidence for Divine Election was undeniable, then I would never believe it. Something in me wants to reject it, just like something in me wants to reject the idea of Hell; but that's just my sinful, fallen nature trying to impose my corrupted standards of justice and fairness onto GOD.

[NateR]

Charles Spurgeon has a really good sermon on the topic of Divine Election, here are a couple of passages from that, but I'll also include a link to the entire sermon:
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0041.htm

"But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."—2 Thessalonians 2:13-14.

If there were no other text in the sacred Word except this one, I think we should all be bound to receive and acknowledge the truthfulness of the great and glorious doctrine of God's ancient choice of his family. But there seems to be an inveterate prejudice in the human mind against this doctrine; and although most other doctrines will be received by professing Christians, some with caution, others with pleasure, yet this one seems to be most frequently disregarded and discarded.

But there are some who say, "It is hard for God to choose some and leave others." Now, I will ask you one question. Is there any of you here this morning who wishes to be holy, who wishes to be regenerate, to leave off sin and walk in holiness? "Yes, there is," says some one, "I do." Then God has elected you. But another says, "No; I don't want to be holy; I don't want to give up my lusts and my vices." Why should you grumble, then, that God has not elected you to it? For if you were elected you would not like it, according to your own confession. If God this morning had chosen you to holiness, you say you would not care for it. Do you not acknowledge that you prefer drunkenness to sobriety, dishonesty to honesty? You love this world's pleasures better than religion; then why should you grumble that God has not chosen you to religion? If you love religion, he has chosen you to it. If you desire it, he has chosen you to it. If you do not, what right have you to say that God ought to have given you what you do not wish for? Supposing I had in my hand something which you do not value, and I said I shall give it to such-and-such a person, you would have no right to grumble that I did not give to you. You could not be so foolish as to grumble that the other has got what you do not care about. According to your own confession, many of you do not want religion, do not want a new heart and a right spirit, do not want the forgiveness of sins, do not want sanctification; you do not want to be elected to these things: then why should you grumble? You count these things but as husks, and why should you complain of God who has given them to those whom he has chosen? If you believe them to be good and desire them, they are there for thee. God gives liberally to all those who desire; and first of all, he makes them desire, otherwise they never would. If you love these things, he has elected you to them, and you may have them; but if you do not, who are you that you should find fault with God, when it is your own desperate will that keeps you from loving these things—your own simple self that makes you hate them? Suppose a man in the street should say, "What a shame it is I cannot have a seat in the chapel to hear what this man has to say." And suppose he says, "I hate the preacher; I can't bear his doctrine; but still it's a shame I have not a seat." Would you expect a man to say so? No: you would at once say, "That man does not care for it. Why should he trouble himself about other people having what they value and he despises?" You do not like holiness, you do not like righteousness; if God has elected me to these things, has he hurt you by it? "Ah! but," say some, "I thought it meant that God elected some to heaven and some to hell." That is a very different matter from the gospel doctrine. He has elected men to holiness and to righteousness and through that to heaven. You must not say that he has elected them simply to heaven, and others only to hell. He has elected you to holiness, if you love holiness. If any of you love to be saved by Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ elected you to be saved. If any of you desire to have salvation, you are elected to have it, if you desire it sincerely and earnestly. But, if you don't desire it, why on earth should you be so preposterously foolish as to grumble because God gives that which you do not like to other people?

And with that I need to try to get some sleep.

Nice work NateR. I just read a old letter from Jonathan Edwards about "Men Naturally are God's Enemies." It is quite an interesting read for everyone that is part of this forum.

http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/enemies.htm

[NateR]

I'm only resurrecting this to answer one false argument which states that, if GOD chooses who is to be saved, then GOD also chooses who goes to Hell. The Bible most definitely does not teach that. However, you can easily refute it with 3 simple questions:

1. Does GOD know the future?

Yes - go to question 2

No - then He can't be GOD can He? It also means that Jesus Christ was a fraud and the Bible is a lie.

2. Did GOD know exactly which people would accept Him and which people would reject Him before He even created the universe?

Yes - go to question 3

No - then He doesn't really know the future, does He? That's puts you right back at the problem posed in question #1.

3. If GOD knew exactly which people would accept Him and which people would reject Him, then why did He even bother to create those people who He knew would reject Him? Why even allow them to be born? Isn't that the exact same thing as creating people for the purpose of sending them to Hell?

So you can't escape it. The only way around it is to create a god who doesn't know the future, or only knows portions of the future. But then you've created for yourself a god who is not the GOD of the Bible.

The Bible is clear that GOD chooses who will be saved before they are even born:

Ephesians 1:4-5
Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.

The Bible never once states the GOD predestines people for Hell. That is a case of someone taking a Biblical doctrine and attaching it to a non-Biblical doctrine for the purpose of discrediting GOD's Word. It is also a very dangerous form of heresy.

Of course, it might seem logical to our puny, contaminated brains; but we should consider ourselves lucky that GOD does not think like we do:

Isaiah 55:8-9
“ For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."

I understand why people object to predestination and, if it wasn't so clearly taught in Scripture, I wouldn't believe it either. In our sinful pride, we desperately want to take at least some credit for our own salvation. We want to be able to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for being smart enough to see the truth. But salvation is purely a work of GOD, not a work of man.

If we get the credit for our faith in GOD, then it becomes a works-based salvation. The only reason we have faith is because GOD grants us faith and He only grants faith to His elect.

[adamt]

so people have no free will at all?

Originally Posted by NateR

The Bible never once states the GOD predestines people for Hell. That is a case of someone taking a Biblical doctrine and attaching it to a non-Biblical doctrine for the purpose of discrediting GOD's Word. It is also a very dangerous form of heresy.

Of course, it might seem logical to our puny, contaminated brains; but we should consider ourselves lucky that GOD does not think like we do:

Isaiah 55:8-9
“ For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."

This is a serious question, I'm not trying to be an ass (amazing right, I'm not trying to be an ass for once). If God predestines me to go to Heaven and you not to, what happens to you when you die?

[VCURamFan]

Originally Posted by Max

This is a serious question, I'm not trying to be an ass (amazing right, I'm not trying to be an ass for once). If God predestines me to go to Heaven and you not to, what happens to you when you die?

It's not God flipping a coin for Heaven or Hell. All of us are going to Hell. We have all sinned & fallen short of the glory & perfection of God. Some God has predestined to save. Those who do not hear the irresistible call of his Grace will continue on the path to Hell.

Originally Posted by adamt

so people have no free will at all?

based on one of the scriptures that Nate posted I'm gonna say we have ot have atleast some form of free will.

Acts 13: 44-48
On the next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him.

Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. 47 For this is what the Lord has commanded us:

“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”

When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.

It clearly says in the scripture , "Since you reject it" which means it was their choise to reject it and not something that was decided for them. I could be wrong though and most likely am.

Originally Posted by VCURamFan

It's not God flipping a coin for Heaven or Hell. All of us are going to Hell. We have all sinned & fallen short of the glory & perfection of God. Some God has predestined to save. Those who do not hear the irresistible call of his Grace will continue on the path to Hell.

so the ones that are not predestined to be saved are predestined to go to hell?