Category Archives: Election & Predestination

Choose Life!

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Question: How can you reject free will? Does not Moses say to the Israelites “Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live?” (Deut 30:19)

My good friend, John Hendryx of monergism.com answers:: Yes it is indeed true that God commands the Israelites to “choose life”, but when read in the context of the whole chapter, Moses reveals that the power to obey this command comes from regenerating grace:

“And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deut 30:6)

In other words, God commands people to obey, but he also supplies all the grace needed to do so. The command to believe does not itself contain the power to do so. God commanding obedience (what we ought to do) does not mean a person can do this apart from grace. God must set them free from innate love of sin and natural hostility to God, if they have any hope of moving toward Him. Left to ourselves we are too proud to let go of our self-complacency and self-righteousness and so we will never rightly understand our woeful, guilty, and lost condition unless God grants it.

So why did not all Israel believe? Because not all were children of promise. Some God left to their own boasted free will, letting them do what they wanted. In Romans 9: 6-8 it says of Israel:

“For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”

This means that spiritual circumcision was not given to all physical descendants of Abraham but to the children of promise in their midst. The rest were commanded but refused to obey. Some get mercy but the rest get justice.

In 2 Chronicles 30:6-12 we also are given a glimpse of what takes place behind the scenes of how it is that some people believe the gospel while others do not:

So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. 7 Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see. 8 Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. 9 For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”

10 So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. 11 However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. 12 The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord.

Why did some believe? According to this passage, it is because God had mercy on them and gave them a heart to follow God’s command to repent. Notice that the rest scorned and mocked God’s word.
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Redemption Planned

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by Don Kistler

In Reformed circles, we hear much about the covenants. We are a people who place our trust in God’s covenant faithfulness. We hear about the covenant of grace and the covenant of works, but we hear very little about the covenant of redemption. We also hear much about the saving work of Christ, but give little thought to the fact that the triune God conceived the work that the second person of the Trinity would do that would save sinners.

Simply stated, the covenant of redemption is a covenant God the Father made with God the Son before the foundation of the world was laid, that if the Son would offer Himself up as an offering for sin, the Father would give Christ all those for whom He would die as a love gift. The elect, then, are a gift from the Father to the Son for suffering and dying to redeem them.

God the Father chose from all eternity past, in His eternal and unchangeable decrees, to save some people. God the Son, from all eternity past, agreed to redeem those people from the fallen state that God ordained, from all eternity past, they would be in. If you ask why God ordained the fall of man and the sinful state into which he would go, the answer is that God ordained sin so that we would know Him in the fullness of His revelation of Himself. If God had not ordained sin, we would know Him only as the Creator; because God has ordained sin we can know Him as the Redeemer. Our knowledge of God is much more complete because of sin.

In Zechariah 6:13, this is referred to as a “counsel of peace … between them both,” that is, between the Father and the Son, between God and “the man whose name is the Branch” (v. 12). It is “the Lord of Hosts” who is speaking about the counsel of peace that will be between Himself and “the Branch.” When Christ speaks in John 17 of having been given people as a gift, He is praying to God, whom, He says, gave them. “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me” (John 17:6 kjv). The “thou” and the “thine” both refer to God the Father.
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James & John

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VIDEO INTERVIEW
Dr. James White and I (lurking somewhere behind the microphone stands) had a great time yesterday discussing my new eBook and Reformed Theology on James’ “Radio Free Geneva” Dividing Line Broadcast. Here’s the youtube video of the interview segment.

FULL LENGTH AUDIO
Dr. James White writes: Today on a Mega Radio Free Geneva: John Samson and Emir Caner

“I bet John never expected to see himself mentioned quite like that before. But, Twelve What Abouts, which you can find here. We then went back to reviewing Emir Caner’s sermon against Reformed theology, and then took calls on the topic for the last half hour.” Here’s the full 2 hour program.