Romans 9–11 is challenging on so many levels. Predestination and apostasy walk side-by-side in this part of the letter without even a line of explanation of how the two work together. This is the way things are. No explanation is needed.

As much as these realities are focused upon by exegetes and theologians, these doctrines are not the focus of this somewhat climatic part of the letter. They (and other Scriptural presuppositions with them) provide the foundation for Paul’s main subject: how God maintains his righteousness by keeping his promises to the fleshly children of Abraham when he has ordained their rebellion in order to accomplish salvation in Christ. (Got all that?) Earlier in the letter (2.17–3.8) it was established that it was through Israel’s sinful rebellion that salvation–God’s saving righteousness–was revealed in Jesus Christ. That is, Israel’s sin in rejecting her Messiah and crucifying him brought salvation to the world. God used Israel’s rebellion to display his righteousness.

That provoked some questions with which Paul had to deal immediately: “If our unrighteousness brings about the righteousness of God, should we continue to sin so that the whole world will be saved?!” Those questions were dealt with, but some other questions were left dangling; namely, “What about God’s promises to the physical descendants of Abraham?” Paul is answering that question throughout Romans 9–11. This goes to the greater concern, “Has the word of God failed?” (cf. Rom 9.6)

Though much of the way God worked can now be understood as we look back through what he has done in Christ Jesus, the wisdom of God’s plan remains inscrutable. He chooses to harden some in rebellion so that he might show mercy to others. He hardens Pharaoh to show mercy to Israel. He hardens Israel to show mercy to the Gentiles. But then he will use the mercy shown to the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous so that they will come join in on the promises that were given to them in the first place.

This is God’s plan. It is the way things are. Though we are called to connect as many dots as we can in studying the works of God, there are some things we will never figure out. If we are following Paul, our inability to comprehend everything doesn’t lead to frustration but rather doxology. “ Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Rom 11.33-36)

There are graces given to you by God that you will never figure out. How is it that someone with your family history can experience the salvation that you have experienced? How is it that with all the bad things that people have done to you, you have a healthy relationship with God? How is it that a sinner like you can know God like you do? There is no other explanation but the grace of God. He chose to harden some so that he could show mercy to you. In the story of redemption he did this with Israel. In our personal stories within this story, it is possible that he has hardened others in order to show mercy to you.

Why? I don’t know. That’s just his plan. He hasn’t called you to figure out why. Ours is to respond in grateful allegiance and praise, enjoying the mercy we’ve been shown.

Read more

Predestination. The word itself provokes all sorts of images in people’s minds. Some will see this austere God who is sorting people out as impersonally as a CPA working with numbers on a page. These go over here in the “going to heaven” group. Those go over there in the “going to hell” group. Those groups are set from before the foundation of the world. Consequently, there is nothing you can do to get out of one group and into another. Your decisions mean nothing. Even if you were to love God with all of your heart, if you are in the “going to hell” group, your destiny is fixed by the big Bureaucrat in the sky.

The reaction to this image of God is, understandably, negative. Understanding God in this way is anything but comforting, and it certainly doesn’t take into account the personal relationship that involves love and choices revealed in Scripture. As a result, there are Christians who will throw the predestination baby out with the sovereign bath-water.

This is not the Scriptural picture of predestination. But we must be careful not to discard the whole idea of predestination. The Scriptures do teach that God predestines events, the course of the world, and the lives of people.

Predestination is just what the word denotes: it is determining destinies beforehand. The Scripture is quite clear that God is sovereign and does, indeed, set the destinies for all things, including people. Paul says clearly that God works all things after the counsel of his own will (Eph 1.11). It is quite clear in Romans 9 that God chooses people for his own purposes before they are born (Rom 9.10ff.). Predestination can’t be rejected without doing violence to an important Scriptural truth: God’s absolute sovereignty. Trying to protect man’s sovereignty at the expense of God’s sovereignty leaves us with a God who is subject to the whims of man. Nothing is certain.

However, the Scriptures don’t present predestination in impersonal terms. We serve a personal God who, in his mysterious sovereignty, deals with us personally. Predestination is (primarily) presented in Scripture as the expression of God’s love for his people. His absolute sovereignty over all men and our destinies is a comfort for those of us who love God.

This is how Paul presents predestination in Romans 8.29-30. In a world that looks like it is coming apart at the seams, a world in which the creation and we in it are groaning because of the effects of sin, God’s predetermined purposes to bring everything and everyone to a certain end means that all of this makes sense in the plan of God … even when it all looks completely random to us. As we suffer with Christ, we need certainty that it is not all in vain. We have that certainty. God set his love upon us before the foundation of the world, establishing a relationship with us. He foreknew us; he foreloved us.

Foreknowing us he predestined us that we should be conformed to the image of his Son. For those of us who love God, he has determined that we will be conformed to the image of his Son. This means that we will share his character. We will be holy as he is holy. We will love what he loves.

This also means that we will share his vocation. The Son is God’s appointed ruler of the world. We as sons of God in the Son of God are predestined to rule with Jesus. We will inherit glory with Christ Jesus.

While we cannot pry into the secret counsels of God concerning every aspect of predestination, we can be sure of our predestination unto glory by how we relate to Jesus now. Do you live in allegiance to Jesus as your Lord? Do you love what he loves? Do you fight sin and cultivate righteousness in your life? These are evidences of the Spirit’s working in your life.

As you are fighting the good fight, the Scriptural teaching of God’s predestination undergirds your faith, helping you not to lose hope. God will not fail you in keeping his promises. All of those who are loyal to Christ will certainly inherit the promised glory. It has already been determined.

Read more

Sometimes it seems that the more we pray the worse things become. Even if they’re not becoming worse, they don’t seem to be improving. Sickness and death still plague us. Our Western civilization is losing its collective mind. Hurricanes still strike our coasts and bring unbelievable destruction to property and life. Now with the availability of information 24/7/365 we are notified about every bad situation from our own neighborhoods to Timbuktu. We are constantly bombarded with everything that is going wrong in the world. Our minds are overwhelmed with this information noise that can be discouraging and disorienting.

If we are praying and nothing is perceptibly changing, why do we keep doing it? If we are weak and don’t know what to pray for as we ought, why do we keep praying with wordless groanings, not knowing just how our prayers are being answered (Rom 8.26)?

We persevere in prayer and through all of the suffering and groaning because “we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom 8.28). This is our assurance in prayer. This is our assurance in every situation in life; the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is our foundation for sanity in an insane world.

Our God has a plan. That plan will not be thwarted by the sin of man. Indeed, God, in his wisdom, is using even the sin of man to work for the good of his people and, through them, the entirety of the cosmos. One need only look at the cross to see this truth. While sin is not good in itself and will be punished, God is working through sin to accomplish his purpose. All of the insanity that is going on all around us right now in Western civilization is all a part of the plan.

Lest we begin to believe that God’s plan is dependent upon our strength as the church, we need to remember that we are weak and don’t know what to pray for as we ought. God’s purpose will not be accomplished because we are mighty prayer warriors who know just what to pray. We are assured that the Spirit is working with us in prayer and that our weakness will in no way hinder what God will do for us. God works through our weakness in prayer to accomplish his purpose.

Our encouragement in prayer is not that we come to the place that we have figured everything out and that we know how to fix it. Our encouragement is not even seeing God do what we want him to do for us and those around is in the short term. Our encouragement is that we love, serve, and pray to a sovereign heavenly Father who loves us, is sovereign for us, and promises that he is working all things together for good whether we see it or not.

Yes, we come groaning in prayer with the weight of the effects of sin being felt. But we come groaning to a heavenly Father who loves us and enters into that pain with us in Christ and by the Spirit. He is not a God who is far off but a God who is near. And this God who loves us and is near to us is the one who declares the end from the beginning; he works all things after the counsel of his own will (Eph 1.11).

On this side of our resurrection there will always be reason to groan in suffering prayer. But as we pray, we can pray with the rock-solid faith that our heavenly Father loves us more than we can imagine and has a good purpose for us. We can trust him that the suffering we endure, no matter what form it takes, is under his control and is working for our good.

Read more

Once upon a time, there was this little boy who was growing up in a horrid home situation. His parents were abusive to one another and to him. They were cooking Meth, shooting up heroin, engaged in sexual perversions, and living in squalor. They neglected him and left him for days at a time to fend for himself. The outlook for his life was bleak at best. As he grew up, this was the only life he knew. He thought that this was the way that life was to be lived. Consequently, he adopted this way of life for himself, following the pattern of his parents who had, by the culture they developed in the home, developed this way of thinking and living in him. He knew nothing else.

One day a man and his wife learned of the situation and decided to try to help the boy. The biological parents objected strongly (as parents in these situations are sometimes prone to do even though they don’t care at all for the child). However, the child saw something in this man and his wife that was attractive. He wanted to be a part of their family.

Arrangements were made, and, at great expense, the young boy was adopted by the man and his wife. His new life was beautiful. He was treated with great love. Life wasn’t always easy because his parents required discipline from him, but it was incomparably better than it was before. His new parents provided for him richly, not only with food, clothing, and shelter but with the affection he had never known. Living as their son he would not only be provided for now but in the future. He was an heir to everything his new parents owned.

He had been rescued from a horrible situation. He was grateful. However, the ways he had learned in the years he spent in his original home were not forsaken easily. He constantly fought attitudes and desires that pulled him back to that old culture. He hated those ways of his biological parents, but they were also comfortable in a sick sort of way. Now, on the one hand, he felt this obligation, this debt, as it were, to his biological parents. On the other hand, he felt a debt to his adoptive parents because of the kindness and love showed to him in rescuing him. This new life was beautiful and held great promise for the future. But was this what he really wanted?

If he goes back to his old way of living, he is forsaking his inheritance and it is certain misery and death. If he stays where he is, his future is secure and beautiful. What will he do?

I don’t know. You tell me. You are that child, Christian.

Because of our heritage in Adam, we still have a pull toward the thinking and ways of the flesh; thinking and living that questions the goodness of God’s purposes and commandments and wants to go in the opposite direction. There are times we might even think that we just can’t help ourselves because we are in these bodies of death (or mortal bodies; cf. Rom 6.12). However, we are not debtors to the flesh to live after the flesh (Rom 8.12). That old flesh was crucified with Christ in baptism (Rom 6.1-11). All the debts have been paid. There is no reason to be under the sway of sin. If we adopt the old fleshly ways of living, no matter the profession of our lips, we will die (Rom 8.13). That is the fruit of allegiance to the flesh.

We are no longer debtors to the flesh, but we are debtors: debtors to God the Father, his Christ, and his Spirit. The Triune God has bound us to himself in a covenant that requires that we pay the debt of loving him with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. This love expresses itself in willingness to engage in warfare against the flesh, putting to death the deeds of the body through the power of the Spirit. This is the way of life (Rom 8.13).

Those who engage in this battle with the sinful deeds of the body manifest that the Spirit of God is truly working in them. God’s Spirit bears witness with their spirits in this way. They are desiring the same thing. They are walking in the same direction. They love the Father and the Son as the Spirit loves the Father and the Son and want nothing more than to please them with the way that they are living. They want to hear, “Well done!” Those who live this way, those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

Being led by the Spirit doesn’t mean that the battle with the deeds of the body will be easy or without pain. In fact, it means just the opposite. The children of Israel were led by the Spirit of God into the inheritance of the Promised Land, but that leading meant doing battle with giants in the land. Jesus was led (actually driven!) by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. The Spirit leads us into and through battle, not around it. The Spirit has always led God’s sons into battle. The Spirit of adoption or sonship is the Spirit of warfare.

Furthermore, there is no silver bullet that will end the battle. God has called us into a fight that ends either in the death of the deeds of the body or our own eternal death. He gives us everything that we need through the power of his Spirit, but you will have to fight day in and day out.

One day the fight will end. It may not be this day, but that day is coming. Those who have suffered with Christ in these battles will inherit glory with Christ (Rom 8.17). Our promised rest is coming. Our future is beautiful and secure in Christ Jesus. Don’t turn back to the ways of the flesh. Keep fighting!

Read more