6.24.2001 | CHRISTIAN TERMINOLOGY- "Predestination vs. Free Will" (Calvinist, Arminian, Pelagianism, Supralapsarian)

I’m not going to claim to have all the answers...I will do my best to explain it from my years of study..

”Predestination is a difficult doctrine that demands to be handled with great care and caution.”

Jeremiah 1:5 (God knows us and has a preordained purpose for our lives even before we are born.) Romans 8:28-30, 9:10-29 Ephesians 1:3-14

Predestination defined:

“We are elected for salvation prior to our birth, prior to Adam's fall, prior to the creation of the world.” Our ultimate destiny is in God’s hands.
(Calvinist... John Calvin… A Frenchman who came to Christ about 1532 Wrote “The Institutes of the Christian Religion” A very influential reformed theologian.)

How does God choose?

(Non-reformed and reformed view...as in The Reformation we mentioned last week…)

1. Non-reformed view: “God, based on his foreknowledge, chooses those whom he knows will choose him.”
   
   
2. Reformed view: The decision rests entirely on God and has nothing to do with us. God election is sovereign. Why? Because left to ourselves, no fallen person will ever choose God. God has to plant that seed in our minds. The elect do choose Christ, but only because they were first chosen by God. John 15:16, “You did not chose me, but I chose you…”

The bottom line is that God knows who would accept or reject Him, based on predestination. The only “free will” we have is to make non-moral decisions. There is no goodness in us. So, the ability to accept Christ comes from his grace solely.

This is where Palegianism can sneak into our thoughts.

Pelagian was a monk who lived in Britian, 5th. Century. He said that moral responsibility always implies moral capability or ability. That there is an “island of moral goodness” in us. He denied original sin. “We don’t need the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, because we have the capacity in and of ourselves to become righteous.”

• In reality, we are not born in a neutral state of innocence. We are born in a sinful fallen condition. The is the doctrine of original sin.
  
  
• One example...were drowning, God throws the life ring, we grab it...NO
  
  
• We’re dead in our sins, stuck on the bottom. God swims down and gets us and breaths new life into our lungs….we are “born again” Eph. 2:1-9
  
  
• See magazine pg. 26 & 27

Thoughts, questions?

God knows the answers ahead of time already, since God is not limited by the "time-space continuum" like we are. Those of us whom He had already knew would accept Him, He "predestinated" us to be more like Christ, and to give us a hope, a calling and a destiny.

The doctrine of the Supralapsarians

A class of Calvinists who held that God decreed the Fall of Man and the consequent introduction of sin into the world, and that the "election" of some to everlasting life, with the rejection of others, was formed beyond or before these decrees and was in no way consequent or dependent upon man's Fall in the Garden of Eden.

I know it seems crazy that God would save some and condemn others….but God can do whatever he wants. Romans 9:18 “God is not obligated to be merciful to any or to all alike.” That would be a universalist theology.

Here’s the key...SINCE WE DON’T KNOW WHO IS ELECTED AND WHO ISN’T, WE MUST ASSUME ALL WE COME INTO CONTACT WITH ARE ELECTED AND TREAT THEM AS SUCH.

• We don’t need to “give up” on anyone and assume they are not elected or beyond God’s grace.
  
  
• The entire process (election, redemption, regeneration) is the work of God and is by grace alone. Thus God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation.
  

Free will (Arminian)

Jacob Arminius [1560-1609]
Dutch theologian and minister of the Dutch Reformed Church who opposed the strict Calvinist teaching on predestination and who developed his own system of belief known later as Arminianism. He rejected predestination.
(I can see how someone would want to reject it, it’s no fun thinking of God sending someone to Hell.)

What actually is free will? Do we have the choice to decided what color shirt we put on in the morning? What flavor we order at B & R? What beach we go surfing at? Absolutely, I fact I don’t think God really cares about that stuff…yet he still knows. Here we are choosing according to our desires.

As we all know, free will is also a curse. Because we can still choose according to our desires, we make all kinds of stupid choices including sin and thus become accountable to the judgment of God. As fallen humans we retain our natural freedom (the power to act according to our desires) but lose moral freedom.

We always need to be careful not to take the three “big O’s” away from God…Omniscience...all knowing...Omnipotent...all powerful...Omnipresent...everywhere
If we do that cheapens God..

However, when it comes to making the biggest moral decision in our lives, (accepting or rejecting God) what do we as humans naturally desire? In our very core, evil.
That’s where our “free will” ends and predestination comes in. We are spiritually dead, like the drowning illustration (separated from God who is holy/sinless). This is spiritual death. If we continue in this state by continuing to reject Christ, spiritual death leads to eternal separation from God. i.e. Hell….ouch!

What brings us to the place of needing God’s grace? (Sin of course…) but there’s more:

T.U.L.I.P.

• Total depravity: There is not an island of (moral) goodness in us. Humans still reflect the image of God. By nature, we are inclined toward many good things, because we are made in God’s likeness. But because we lost the Holy Spirit at the Fall in Eden, we are born selfish and self-centered, with lust and wrong desires prevailing. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality -- his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11f). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without a knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God's making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5). Sadly, even after conversion, when the Holy Spirit has come into our lives, the old nature remains and must be fought every conscious hour of our lives.

Unconditional election: God choses who he choses. Not fun to think about, but that’s the way it is. Unconditional Election is the doctrine which states that God chose those whom he was pleased to bring to a knowledge of himself, not based upon any merit shown by the object of his grace and not based upon his looking forward to discover who would "accept" the offer of the gospel. God has elected, based solely upon the counsel of his own will, some for glory and others for damnation (Romans 9:15,21). He has done this act before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 1:4-8).

This doctrine does not rule out, however, man's responsibility to believe in the redeeming work of God the Son (John 3:16-18). Scripture presents a tension between God's sovereignty in salvation, and man's responsibility to believe which it does not try to resolve. Both are true -- to deny man's responsibility is to affirm an unbiblical hyper-calvinism; to deny God's sovereignty is to affirm an unbiblical Arminianism.

The elect are saved unto good works (Ephesians 2:10). Thus, though good works will never bridge the gulf between man and God that was formed in the Fall, good works are a result of God's saving grace. This is what Peter means when he admonishes the Christian reader to make his "calling" and "election" sure (I Peter 2:10). Bearing the fruit of good works is an indication that God has sown seeds of grace in fertile soil.

Limited atonement: Christ’s atonement is for the elect. Limited Atonement is a doctrine offered in answer to the question, "for whose sins did Christ atone?" The Bible teaches that Christ died for those whom God gave him to save (John 17:9). Christ died, indeed, for many people, but not all (Matthew 26:28). Specifically, Christ died for the invisible Church -- the sum total of all those who would ever rightly bear the name "Christian" (Ephesians 5:25).

This doctrine often finds many objections, mostly from those who think that Limited Atonement does damage to evangelism. We have already seen that Christ will not lose any that the father has given to him (John 6:37). Christ's death was not a death of potential atonement for all people. Believing that Jesus' death was a potential, symbolic atonement for anyone who might possibly, in the future, accept him trivializes Christ's act of atonement. Christ died to atone for specific sins of specific sinners. Christ died to make holy the church. He did not atone for all men, because obviously all men are not saved. Evangelism is actually lifted up in this doctrine, for the evangelist may tell his congregation that Christ died for sinners, and that he will not lose any of those for whom he died!

Irresistible grace: If you are chosen, there is nothing you can do about it. The result of God's Irresistible Grace is the certain response by the elect to the inward call of the Holy Spirit, when the outward call is given by the evangelist or minister of the Word of God. Christ, himself, teaches that all whom God has elected will come to a knowledge of him (John 6:37). Men come to Christ in salvation when the Father calls them (John 6:44), and the very Spirit of God leads God's beloved to repentance (Romans 8:14). What a comfort it is to know that the gospel of Christ will penetrate our hard, sinful hearts and wondrously save us through the gracious inward call of the Holy Spirit (I Peter 5:10)!

Perseverance of the saints: That is, “Once saved, always saved.” Perseverance of the Saints is a doctrine which states that the saints (those whom God has saved) will remain in God's hand until they are glorified and brought to abide with him in heaven. Romans 8:28-39 makes it clear that when a person truly has been regenerated by God, he will remain in God's stead. The work of sanctification which God has brought about in his elect will continue until it reaches its fulfillment in eternal life (Phil. 1:6). Christ assures the elect that he will not lose them and that they will be glorified at the "last day" (John 6:39). The Calvinist stands upon the Word of God and trusts in Christ's promise that he will perfectly fulfill the will of the Father in saving all the elect.

“The truth is that we are so far gone, so dead in our trespasses and sins, that none of us can find our way to God. God must find his way to us. God must do it. God has to come in, and move upon us.” Thoughts/questions?

What does this all have to do with what is really important...i.e. the gospel?

Head back to Sermon Archive.