Questioner: Did God indeed choose whom He would save before the foundation of the world? And if He did, how are those who do not believe responsible and held accountable for their unbelief?

John MacArthur: First of all, yes, God did predestine those who were to believe before the world began, because that’s exactly what the Bible says. You were chosen before the foundation of the world. Your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world. Predestination is a word in Ephesians chapter 1. We were predestined to be in Christ.

So yes, we have to understand God is God, and God is the one who ordains everything. And God is not a spectator. God is the one who acts. He doesn’t react. So the Bible is crystal clear. He chose Israel: Israel, His chosen people out of all the nations of the world. And He chose His church. He tells the apostles to go into a certain city. He said, “Because I have many people in that city.” Well, the gospel hadn’t even been there, but He knew who the people were that were chosen.

So yes, God chooses. That is clear in Scripture. Secondly, sinners are responsible for their unbelief. That is clear in the Bible. Jesus says, “Why will you die? Because you don’t believe in Me.” That’s clear responsibility. So you say, “Well, how do those go together?” And I say, “I don’t know. I have no idea.” But is it possible that the mind of God is beyond mine? Or does everything have to be understandable to me? Can I leave a little room for an infinite mind that may be able to grasp things that are beyond my understanding?

So throughout all the years that I’ve taught the Bible, I can teach without hesitation that God predestines people to salvation. That’s the only way they could be saved, because they’re dead in trespasses and sin. They don’t have the power to believe or the will to believe. So the Lord has to awaken the sinner and grant him the repentance and faith to be saved. At the same time that I believe that is a sovereign work of God, I also believe that it is not apart from faith, and that the sinner must believe.

How God harmonizes those two things is beyond me. And that’s very comfortable for me. And I’ll tell you why: I don’t want a God who fits perfectly into my own understanding.

Let me give you another illustration of this. If I ask you, “Who lives your Christian life? Is it you, or is it God?”

Questioner: Both.

John MacArthur: “What do you mean? How can it be both?”

Questioner: “I’m going to work out my salvation with fear and trembling, for it’s Christ who works in me.”

John MacArthur: “Yeah, but is it Him or you? So when something good goes, it’s Him, and when something bad goes, it’s you?”

So let me ask you another question. Who wrote the book of Romans? “Paul.” Paul? “The Holy Spirit.” Are you having trouble with this question? Yeah, exactly.

So it was all the Holy Spirit. Every word was inspired by God, and it was all out of Paul’s vocabulary and Paul’s mind. Any time you step into the world of God interacting with man, you are going to have this massive apparent paradox, because the infinite cannot be reduced to the finite mind.

The good news is God has chosen His elect, and they will be saved. Also, the good news is anyone who comes to Christ to believe and repent will be saved. You don’t have to find out if you’re elect. You come. And that’s where the harmonizing comes. But every doctrine, every major doctrine in the Bible that relates between God and man, has this strange reality: this is something beyond my comprehension.

Questioner: And I think you just answered it, Pastor John, but to the person asking, “Well, how do I know if I’m one of the chosen, one of the elect, one of the predestined?” you would say, “Have you come to Christ?” Would that be your response?

John MacArthur: Yeah.

Questioner: Yellow stripes, right?

John MacArthur: Right. So the way you know you’re elect is you repent and come to Christ. And He calls sinners to come. So come.

Questioner: Love it. No, that’s so helpful. Thank you so much.

When I was a small boy growing up in Chester, England, I wanted with all my heart to be a guard outside Buckingham Palace.

This was no passing fancy. I had the uniform, made to my size. I had the belt, the tall black bearskin hat, which as a boy I called a Busby, and a real rifle, unloaded, but a real rifle all the same. And I would stand for hours outside our house, perfectly still, refusing to move a single muscle. The other boys in the neighborhood would come out and ask if I wanted to play. I would not so much as blink. I had seen the real guards outside the palace, and they did not move for anyone. Children could shout, sing, and pull faces, and those guards stood like statues. So I did the same.

Every year we visited my uncle in London, and the highlight for me was always the same. My parents and I would take the Underground across the city to reach the palace in good time for the Changing of the Guard ceremony, and I would stand with my face pressed between the palace railings, trying to get as close as I could to the action, studying every movement of the guards.

One year an American tourist who had missed the Changing of the Guard asked if she could take my photograph. I looked the part. I am, to this day, in someone’s photo album in America, a small English boy at rigid attention.

And I had a secret hope. I used to imagine that the Queen might glance out of one of those tall windows, see this devoted little guard standing there outside the palace, and be charmed. I imagined her summoning a member of staff and saying, “Would you bring that little boy and his parents in? I should like to have tea with them.”

I genuinely hoped for it. I knew when she was in residence, because the Royal Standard flag would fly over the palace. She was in there somewhere, just beyond the glass. Surely all my effort would be noticed.

It never happened. Of course it never happened.

Years later, as a teenager who had traded the dream of being a guard for the dream of playing football, I read in the Chester newspaper that the Queen was going to visit my own city. The paper printed the exact route her car would take the next morning. I knew Chester like the back of my hand, and I worked out that if I climbed a particular lamp post on a certain street, I would be above the crowds with a clear view of Her Majesty as she passed.

The next morning I climbed up and waited. And as her car came slowly down the street, for one brief moment, her eyes and mine met. I gave a small nod. And the Queen, just for a moment, nodded back.

That was it. That was the whole of my relationship with royalty: a nod from a passing car. She never wrote to me about it. It did not feature in the royal records. But for a boy who had once stood for hours in a miniature uniform, it was a moment.

I tell that story because it captures something the apostle Paul says in one of the most important verses in the whole Bible. Writing about why God saves the people He saves, Paul concludes: “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” – Romans 9:16

Not on human will. Not on human exertion. Not on the man who wills, nor on the man who runs.

All my striving as a boy could never have made me royalty. I could stand still for a hundred years. I could wear the uniform, learn every detail, climb every lamp post in England, and still none of it could bridge the gap between a subject on the street and a son in the royal house. The most that striving could ever earn me was a nod from a passing car. Adoption into the family was never on offer to my effort, however sincere, however devoted.

But if I leave the picture there, I have told you only half the truth, and the smaller half at that. For at least the boy in the uniform admired his Queen. He loved the Crown and longed to serve it.

That is not what the Bible says we were.

Scripture does not describe us as wistful subjects standing politely on the street, hoping to be noticed. It describes us as rebels. We were “enemies” of God (Romans 5:10). The mind set on the flesh “is hostile to God” (Romans 8:7). We did not tip our hats to the King and hope for an invitation. We took up arms against His throne and did everything in our power to unseat Him from it.

That is what makes the doctrine of election so staggering.

If we were merely admiring subjects who failed to earn our way in, grace would be wonderful enough. But we were traitors to the Crown, and the King reached down not to reward our striving, but to rescue us from our rebellion. He did not adopt us because we wanted in. He adopted us while we were doing all we could to dethrone Him.

Yet this mercy was not cheap. The King did not pretend our treason did not matter. The Son of God bore the judgment His people deserved, rose from the dead, and brought rebels home by blood-bought grace.

And here is the gospel, better than anything my boyhood imagination could invent. The King of all kings, entirely of His own free mercy, has taken rebels who hated Him and made them His own children. He did not wait to be impressed. He did not respond to our effort, because our effort was all bent against Him. He set His love on His people before they were born, before they had done anything good or bad, “not because of works but because of him who calls” (Romans 9:11).

And He did not merely permit us to squeak into a back room of the palace. He brings us near, names us as His own, and bids us “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).

The boy in the guard’s uniform could only hope to be noticed. The rebel, by sovereign grace, is welcomed home as a son.

If you are in Christ, you did not earn your way in, and you never could have. You did not even want in until He made you willing. You were adopted by sheer sovereign mercy while you were still in rebellion against the throne, and that is not cold doctrine. It is the warmest news in the world.

The believer’s place in the family does not rest on the strength of human striving, which rises and falls. It rests on the unchanging will of the God who has mercy on whom He has mercy, granting repentance and faith to those He saves.

I never did have tea with the Queen. But by grace alone, and not by any effort of mine, the King I once resisted has adopted me as His own, brought me near through Christ, and welcomes me to dine at His table.

“So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” – Romans 9:16

Some time back I posted a video of a conversation where seemingly unannounced, a young man walked up to Paul Washer asking him if he could explain the doctrine of election (with another friend standing by with a video camera). The result was a very poor quality audio recording but with the transcript provided, it is fairly easy to follow.

I spent some time writing out a full transcript of the conversation. There are some people who for some reason find the viewing of videos to be problematic. I hope adding the transcript below serves you.

So, here’s the video once again, this time with the transcript (which starts after the initial question has been asked). God bless, John

What it all comes down to is this. You have to answer one question: is man radically depraved?

That’s the only question you have to ask. Because if he is truly dead in his sin, if he truly hates God, if all men are equally evil, and they are, then the question is, how are you standing here right now believing God while some of your friends who are more moral than you still hate Him?

What happened?

If you say you opened up your heart, I’ll say, “no you didn’t” because the Bible says God opened up Lydia’s heart.

If you say, “well I repented.” Well, repentance is an evangelical grace in all the confessions. That means it comes from God as a gift.

If you say, “well I believe.” Ephesians 2. It is also a gift.

Questioner: (I know the Bible says that no man can come to God unless he is drawn by God. I know that well. My question is, “is the offer of salvation for all men or did God sit back in eternity and say, ‘its for you, you, you and you, and you, you, you, you are going to go to hell”?)

See, first of all, your problem is this: let’s say there’s no election. None. Ok. Let’s just start fresh and say there’s no election. Alright.. now, let’s say that men really are radically depraved and no man can come to God unless God draws him. So God comes down to every man and says “Anyone who will bow the knee to Me, anyone who will accept my Son as their Savior will be saved.” Since every man is radically depraved, they all hate God, they all blaspheme Him, turn around walk away and go to hell. The whole world goes to hell. Is that God’s fault?

(No.)

Alright, let’s say that really is the reality. Let’s say the Bible is true and that men hate God that much. So, who is going to be saved? Absolutely no one!

And if God saved no one because everyone is evil and rejects Him, is God wrong in doing that?

No, so that is what you’ve got without election – you’ve got the whole world hating God and going to hell.

That’s it…. and the other option is this:

Among these evil men, for His own glory and to demonstrate His own kindness before the foundation of the world He chooses a group of men out of there to demonstrate His glory in them. Is that wrong?

Did He rip the other men off?

What did He do?

You’ve got two choices: God saves a group of people by His own sovereignty or everybody goes to hell. Everybody!

Because men are that evil.

See, what you need to realize is that if God, right now, were to throw open the door of hell and say “everyone who wants out of hell, the only thing you have to do is bow your knee to Me and recognize My Lordship.” they’ll slam the door and stay in hell.

See what you don’t realize because of the humanistic Christianity in America, you don’t realize that men are really evil. They really ARE evil.

I’ll give you an example.

Have any of you seen Lord of the Rings?

Saruman makes these orcs, they come out of the ground evil. EVIL.

Alright, Aragon, all the heroes in the movie, slaughter them like they were insects. Slaughter them. And every time an orc gets killed, what do you do…

Yay! (Cheer)

Why?

Because those orcs really are evil. They are evil.

There’s your problem. You don’t think men are.

Men really are evil. Men really deserve hell. They really do.

(I believe that)

We talk about the doctrine of inability – that men cannot come to God. Jesus said that. Alright, men CANNOT come to God.

Now, if you say, “if men can’t come to God then how can God judge them? Its like judging a blind man because he can’t read. If men can’t come to God then man is not a culprit, he’s a victim.”

But here’s what you have to understand. Men cannot come to God because they WILL not come to God and they will not come to God because they hate Him… and therefore they are responsible.

Men are evil. God is good.

So, men hate God, they hate His law, they hate everything about Him. OK.

It says of Joseph’s brothers: they could not speak to him peaceably.

Now they spoke Aramaic. Why couldn’t they speak to him peaceably?

They could not because they hated him.

Alright, that’s why no man will ever come to God.

If God comes down and says, “Alright, everybody make their choice.”

No one is coming to God.

Why?

They hate Him.

And that is why they are judged, for their moral inability. Their inability is moral. They really hate God.

So, you’ve got the whole human race, every one of them is fallen, everyone of them hates God. God comes down to them and says, “who wants to be saved?”

Everybody blasphemes the name of God, walks into hell and slams the door. That’s what you’ve got. Because men really are evil.

and if out of that God says, “For My own glory, I am going to redeem a people and give them to My Son, by My own choice and by My own Sovereign election. He’s done wrong to no one.

Now how does He save them?

Here’s a question: Are you spiritually dead prior to salvation?

(Yes)

Well then, how did you come to Christ?

If you are spiritually blind, how do you now see Him?

(He draws me unto Him)

But you’re a dead man.

If some of it has to do with you, you’re a dead man.

If God calls your name, you hate Him. You’re not going to come, you’re going to run farther away from Him.

That is why in all.. now listen very carefully… in all the Christian confessions – the old Christian confessions, in the Reformation, early Baptist confessions, … you have been raised on this” ‘If you believe in Jesus you can be born again.’

ALL the early Baptist confessions say you must be born again in order to believe in Jesus.

That’s the difference.

Because if I tell a dead man, “Look, you’re dead, but there’s a hospital over here, where they can put some electrodes on you – so get up and follow me over to the hospital.”

Its nonsensical. He’s dead.

If he can get up he doesn’t need to go to the hospital.

So when Jesus looked at Lazarus and said, “Lazarus come forth” – there’s a problem – Lazarus is dead.

How does he hear the command?

The command was not only to be given, the moment the command is given, Lazarus must be resurrected to be able to even hear the command and respond.

That’s why you probably heard the Gospel for many years, and you’re sitting there and you didn’t care, it’s no big deal, maybe you made a profession of faith.. nothing.

And then one day, the Gospel is preached and wooosh – the blinders are taken off and not only that but you want Him.

Some people say, “well, what God does is He draws us to a certain point and then gives us a choice.”

There’s a problem. If God only illuminates the mind of the sinner then the more the sinner sees God, the more he’s going to hate Him.

So He not only illuminates the mind, He changes the heart.

With a new heart, for the first time you want Jesus and say, “I love Him and am irresistibly drawn to Him. I want Him more than anything.”

That’s what it is.