Election, Part 2, What We Believe, Part 30

The Doctrine of Election and God Taking the Initiative

The Doctrine of Election is a difficult topic for some. However, if you're understanding it as we go through, then we're doing our job of communicating this doctrine for you to be able to understand. And so we have to understand that the key element here with the Doctrine of Election is really rooted in the idea that God takes the initiative.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the President and Executive Director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this is a proud member.

You want to check out all the other podcasts? Go to christianpodcastcommunity .org. You will be able to see all of the many podcasts, vetted podcasts, that are over there. You'll also be able to go to Striving for Eternity if you'd like to get me to come out or one of our speakers to come out to your church.

Maybe do a weekend seminar on how to interpret the Bible, evangelism, apologetics, social justice, whatever the topic. We probably have a seminar on it and can come to your church and provide some training for you.

So just go to strivingforeternity .org and check that out. Today's topic in our continuing study is going to be the doctrine of election. I know, I know, some of you already got triggered. I get it. This is one that triggers so many people.

They get so upset with this doctrine and yet, I don't understand because so many of them that get triggered also get this doctrine wrong. So what are they triggered about? I'm not sure, but we're gonna go through and explain what this doctrine actually means.

I hope you'll stick with us. Don't get triggered and jump to another podcast. Stick it out and see whether you actually agree with the proper definition of the doctrine. What we're doing actually is going through this series.

It's really a series providing some systematic theology, but it's a series of us going through the doctrinal statement at Striving for Eternity. So if you'd like to follow along, you can go to strivingforeternity .org, click on the About section, and under there is a section called What We Believe.

And in the What We Believe section, that is where you're going to get everything that we're discussing here in the whole series. And so that would be something that would be good to follow along with.

Though, if you are driving, I don't encourage you to follow along with us just now. Go and check that out later. Drive safely, please. So that's gonna be the topic that we're gonna do today. I'm joined again by my good friend, Pastor Dominic Grimaldi from Desert Sky Baptist Church in Arizona.

So welcome again to the program. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about unmerited favor. Yeah, I like the sound of that. Those three words, right, was the unmerited favor that God grants, but I'm excited to talk about that.

And we were talking beforehand, right? It's, I'm a really good person. You're a bad person because you went to jail, so you're like what we call bad person. I'm good, right? Isn't that how that works?

No. That's not what the Bible says, huh? No. But isn't that so much of what we deal with when we deal with the doctrine of salvation, when we evangelize people? They always talk about how good they are, and they think, well, bad people, those are murderers.

And, you know, people that do bad things and end up in jail. I'm not one of those, so I'm a good person. I think the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, when somebody does really get, we do regeneration a couple of weeks ago, I think that when somebody truly, by God's grace, gets the Spirit, that's the only way they can realize that they're totally depraved.

I think that you can do good things. I mean, totally depraved doesn't actually mean you're gonna go out and kill people, but I think until you get the Spirit, I think that until then, you probably think you're okay, at least in your own, in your own estimation, anyway.

Well, that's what Scripture says, that people think they're good in their own eyes, and that's really what, when we talk about total depravity, we've, we mentioned that in an earlier part in this episode, and one of the things is, it doesn't mean we're as bad as we possibly could be.

It means that our, not just our will and emotions were affected by sin, but also our volition. When we make choices, we make them for selfish reasons, and it's amazing to me that people that have two-year-olds don't agree with that.

They never had to teach their kids to do wrong, and yet they, they try to figure out, well, why is this kid acting up like that? Well, that's because of a sin nature, and that becomes essential in the doctrine that we're looking at now, when we talk about election, because that's, that is part of this, what's needed here.

You know, when people talk about pride, I tell people all the time, if you look at a group picture, who's the first person you look at in the picture? It's you, and if they, you look bad, the whole picture's bad.

Nobody ever looks at a picture and says, hey, Andrew looks really good in that picture, I like it. The first person you look at in the picture is you, because it's all about you. Well, I don't want to throw your theory off, but I never look good in a picture.

Don't tell me you're going to look at your wife first. Well, that, that I will do. I look at my, my bride first, if she's in the picture, but no, I don't, I actually don't look at myself, because I know I look bad in every picture, so I, there's, there's no hope there.

The only thing I try to do, okay, this is maybe too much. What I've tried to do in the past was, I will try to, like, make it look like I photobombed, just so that it doesn't, like, you don't look at me, because I end up looking bad in every picture.

So, oh, well. So let's dig into the doctrine of election. Now, we're, in this, this is at strivingfraternity .org, the about section and what we believe, and if you open up the section on soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation, we're now in the second section of there called election, and there, if you go down, we're in the, going to look at this week, continuing from last week, we are going to look at paragraphs three and four, and Pastor Dom, if you wouldn't mind reading that for us.

Unmerited Favor, Total Depravity, and Human Will

Yeah, my pleasure, Andrew. The unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners is neither related to any initiative of their own part nor to God's anticipation of what they might do by their own will, but is solely of his sovereign grace and mercy.

Election should not be looked upon as based merely on abstract sovereignty. God is truly sovereign, but he exercises this sovereignty in harmony with his other attributes, especially his omniscience, justice, holiness, wisdom, grace, and love.

This sovereignty will always exalt the will of God in a manner totally consistent with his character as revealed in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, so as we dig in now, granted, this is part two from last week, right?

We started looking at election, and so we're going to count on the fact that you as a listening audience already listened to last week's episode, because we can't repeat all of it. And so much of what we're going to say this week is based on what was said last week.

And so as we dig into this, though, just as a quick review, election is something that God does. This is an act of God, and he says he does it with no human element involved, and the strongest way he could say that is to say that he chose us before the foundation of time.

That's how he has tried to explain it. Now, that is a way of explaining that there is not a time element the way we think of it with God, but it's the strongest sense in which he could say that we had nothing to do with this.

This was a sovereign act of God. So we start in this by saying that part of the doctrine of election is understanding that, as I say here, the unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners.

Now, I want to stop with that. We already gave a definition, but I want to zoom in on it. Total depravity. When people hear total depravity, what they often think is, I am saying that someone is as wicked as they possibly could be.

That's not true. Even Hitler had restraints. I mean, think of the most wicked person you could think of. They had restraint. They were not as wicked as they could have been. So that's not the proper definition.

It doesn't mean we're going to be as bad as we could be. And it's not a comparison between someone like Pastor Dom who went to prison and got saved or someone like me who never went to prison and got saved.

It's not that comparison either. What it is referencing is that when Adam chose to violate God's law in the garden, he was affected with the sin nature. And when we say he's affected his whole being, his intellect, his emotions, and his will.

And this is a reason I don't say we have a free will. I say we have a will. What's the difference? Well, we have a will that is enslaved to sin prior to salvation. It's not free. It's enslaved to sin.

But when we get saved, then we have a free will because the Spirit indwells us and influences us so that we can do good things. We can freely choose because now we don't have that enslavement to sin. That's the difference.

I'm not saying that you don't make choices. Of course you make choices. I make choices. We all make choices. About 20 ,000 decisions we make every day. We make those decisions. So this is not saying that somehow God determines everything we're going to do through election and we have no choice.

No, total depravity does not deny that we have a will. It says that the will was affected by sin in the garden. That's what it means. It means that our thinking, our emotions, and our will were affected by sin.

Grace, Mercy, and the Hope of Regeneration

Yeah, and those are great points. I think about Adam. That's where I start. I think about Adam who was created by God sinless. And you would assume since he was sinless, he would have a free will. And if he couldn't get it right, how the heck are we going to get it right?

I mean, he was created sinless in Eve, and they couldn't get it right. So when people say, well, my question, my answer to them is why didn't you go in the garden? You would have saved us a whole bunch of trouble.

You know, I remember when I first got saved, I thought about that. I dwelled on some of these things and thought, you know, what if I was in the garden instead of Adam? And I ended up realizing, you know, with the hindsight, I would know, okay, I avoid the fruit because I have the hindsight of what Adam did, right?

I have 6 ,000 years of human history to realize that, look what was created by this. And then I remember thinking that and then going, but you know what? I wouldn't make the same choice, you know? And so we shouldn't be too hard on Adam, but the idea of tovertile pravity means that we recognize that our will was affected by sin.

So when we're saying, we're talking about election as the unmerited favor that God grants to people who are totally sinners—their complete being is a sinner—this is what we call, when we think about grace and mercy, okay?

When we think about those two terms, grace is that unmerited favor. We're getting something that is not—we didn't earn, it's a favor to us, it's something that we don't deserve, and yet God gives this to us.

Well, mercy is kind of an opposite, in a sense, where it's not getting what we do deserve. What do we deserve? Well, we deserve hell and damnation for all of eternity. We don't get that. That's mercy.

What grace is, is—because we earned eternal fire. That's what we really earned. When you think about our sin, with the idea of all the sin that we've done, we have earned, we have merited hell and damnation.

But when we're saved, instead of getting what we earned, we get what we haven't earned in grace, and that's the unmerited favor of eternal life. I know that—and, you know, this kind of connects with regeneration and election and stuff.

And I tell—I try to explain to people that—just think of—we have people in our lives, in our families, Andrew, especially my family, and obviously from our conversations in many of your podcasts and family, that we would never think that they would ever come to faith.

I mean, really. And people say, well, you know, there's nothing you can do to convince them. So thank God, God is the one who regenerates, because we never know, by the preaching of the gospel, if they are God's elect, they will come into the kingdom.

But we have people in our lives that, unless it's an act of God—and I think we understand that ourselves, in our own experience, that when people get regenerated, they have to believe in their own hearts that they're totally depraved.

And for me, that's a hope for the person that maybe in your life, Andrew, that's maybe close to you, maybe a family member, maybe a friend in my life, maybe a brother or a sister-in-law, whatever—by God's grace, because of regeneration and election, and if they are one of God's people, they're coming in.

And they're not coming in kicking and screaming, they're coming in because the Spirit will regenerate them. I think that's the hope of the gospel. I don't know why people reject that, because there's nothing me or you are going to say to convince anybody to salvation.

No, and that's the thing people don't often realize, is that salvation is not something that we can convince people of. That's a mistake that a lot of people make in thinking that, well, if I just say the right things, I can convince someone.

And that's where this doctrine that we're looking at here is helpful, because this helps us to realize, this is something God did. We did not deserve this. That's why we start off this paragraph, right?

The unmerited favor. We're getting something we don't deserve. Who is it that grants it? It's God who grants it. And so we go on, we say, the unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners is neither related to any initiative of their own part, nor God's anticipation of what they might do by their own will, but solely by the grace, by his sovereign grace and mercy.

So now this is repetitive with what we've been saying throughout the series as we've gone through this. Why is it repetitive? Because part of what we're trying to do in the doctrinal statement here is make a point very clear that is often debated.

And so that's what a good doctrinal statement does, is it divides, well, really truth from error. Okay, now granted, there's going to be other doctrinal statements that are going to say opposite things to what this one does, and they're going to say what this one is error.

We're saying what they're saying is error. That's fine, right? But this is what we at Striving Fraternity believe, and so we're saying that this unmerited favor that we receive from God as sinners who are undeserving of it, it is from God's initiative.

This is the major point that people have with election as they discuss it. The issue is, is that what they tried to do with election is to say somehow God looked down the tunnels of time to see who would be saved and save those people.

We dealt with that in detail in the last episode. If you did not hear that yet, I encourage you to go there to hear that detail. But what we're saying here is God didn't do that. Now, God can't do that, in fact.

He can't make a decision or take initiative based on an anticipation of what you and I would do because He's omniscient. He knows everything. So He can't also do it with anticipation because He's eternal and not bound by time, and therefore anticipation requires the time element.

So what we're saying here is the initiative—and that's the key point of this paragraph—the initiative is taken solely by God on His part and nothing to do with us. It has nothing to do with the decision that we're going to make in history.

It's by His will and not our will. That's the important part of this paragraph. Yeah, just quickly, and this is reiterating, again, like you said, we want our listeners to go back and listen last week.

But basically, God doesn't need foreknowledge for knowledge. He just knows. You know, He doesn't have to, like you said, it's repetitive, but I think it's worth repeating. God just knows. He doesn't need to look down the corridors of time to see something.

He doesn't need foreknowledge for knowledge. He just knows. And, you know, I know we probably mentioned that. The repetition is good for us that are human beings because we keep forgetting things. Look, well, we have a new audience here too, I'm sure.

I'm sure we have some new listeners who this is the first episode, and if you are, then you're hearing this for the first time. But we'll still encourage you to go back to, actually, in this series, I encourage you to go back to the first in this series because we've kind of built upon things to get to where we're at.

And so if you think we're wrong on things, I encourage you to go back to the original, to the beginning of this series, to the first episode, and work your way through it and see if you still disagree.

But the repetition is also good because, well, we forget things. And so maybe we here are saying things in a different way than others have said it, and we want that to sink in and have it be heard, so we're going to keep repeating it, hopefully, so that it sinks in and you go, yes, I can repeat that.

That's the goal of a teacher, right? Pastor Dom and I, we're teachers. That's what we do. We instruct, but the instruction is not good if you don't get it. And that's why we try to bring things down. The one thing that we get the feedback on this podcast that we bring things down so that everybody can understand.

And that's what makes this good, but we don't avoid difficult topics. The doctrine of election is a difficult topic for some. However, if you're understanding it as we go through, then we're doing our job of communicating this doctrine for you to be able to understand.

And so we have to understand that the key element here with the doctrine of election is really rooted in the idea that God takes the initiative. And the strongest way God could say that he takes the initiative is in Ephesians chapter 1, where he says that he selected or elected before the foundation of the world.

Why is that the strongest way he could say it? Well, because that proves that it had nothing to do with us. He made his decision based upon his own will, solely upon his sovereign grace and mercy. That's what we're saying.

Nothing to do with you and I. He made that decision. But when we say that, you and I, listener, you and I have struggles, don't we? We can't think what it's like to be omniscient. We cannot conceive of being all knowing.

We can't conceive of being outside of time and everything being the same now as it would be for God. So we can't comprehend that. And yet that's where the struggle with the doctrine of election is, because it's describing God, who just knows everything.

He doesn't observe what we do. And so we've said it a couple times throughout the doctrinal statement here, because this is the area so many fight over. And what we have to do when we discuss the doctrine of election is remind ourselves that this is God's side of the discussion, not our side.

It's the act that God does, not what we do. And I think for me, at least, that helps clarify this, that do we repent? Yes. And we talked about that. We have human responsibility, but this is not a doctrine addressing human responsibility.

This is a doctrine of election discussing God's selection or election. And so before we get to the next section, now would be a good time to give a word for our sponsor, and that would be MyPillow. If you want to get yourself a great night's sleep, maybe for New Year's, you made resolutions, and your New Year's resolution was you were going to get in shape.

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God's Sovereignty in Harmony with His Attributes

And we look at this, the next paragraph here, the last paragraph dealing with election. And we say, election should not be looked upon as merely on abstract sovereignty. So what we're trying to say here is that this is something, when we look at the doctrine of election, we don't look at this and just go, oh, this is part of God's sovereignty.

The reason I'm saying this is when we think about the doctrine of election, I know there's a lot of people who don't like it because they think, wrongly, if you've been tracking with us, they think that God is forcing people to be saved.

Like God just determines everything and we have no choice in the matter. That's not what we've said here. So this is, election should not be looked upon as based merely on abstract sovereignty, as God is just picking and choosing willy-nilly.

See, when you understand the doctrine of election, I think it gives me great assurance. When I evangelize and someone rejects the gospel, I can feel assured that God knows what he's doing better than I know what I'm doing.

And if God hasn't elected that person, he knows better than me. It's not just some abstraction that we think like, well, God doesn't, you know, God's just, and this is the way some will say it, God picks some and damns others.

No, actually, we're all damned. It's just that he picks some for election. He elects some to be saved. And so we're saying God is truly sovereign, but here's the key part now, but he exercises his sovereignty in harmony with his other attributes.

So when we talk about election, it's not that we can pull election apart from God's nature. No, election of human beings is part of God's sovereignty. His sovereignty is part of his nature. So you can't remove his sovereignty from other attributes.

And we list some of the attributes, especially his omniscience, his justice, his holiness, his wisdom, and his love. Now, we've dealt with this several times and we dealt with it in detail in the previous episode, but when you think about who God is, and I'm going to say this again, I've said this many times throughout the series, if you take the course that we offer at Striving for Eternity in our academy, you'll see there that we've said this countless times throughout that free course, but the more you end up studying your theology, the more it should be rooted in the nature of God.

If you have a theology that has to have a God that's not omniscient, you have a wrong theology and a wrong God. Same with his justice and his holiness and, oh, that one no one ever wants to talk about, his wrath.

Yes, that's part of his nature that's tied to his justice and his holiness. And see, all of these perfections or attributes of God, they can't be separated. You can't separate that he's love apart from wrath.

You can't separate that he's sovereign apart from his justice. They all work together because this is his nature. Yeah, I think, and I, you know, I'm just listening, and I think sometimes when you talk about these things, what I think what happens is we talk about the default position in somebody's life.

And I think if people realize that default position in your life is hell and God grants mercy to that sinner and gives them eternal life, I think that's where we appreciate. But if people believe that they're in their own mind, that they are heaven bound, that's the default position is heaven, then they don't understand this doctrine rightly.

But I think once you become regenerated, you realize that that's, you know, you deserve nothing but hell. And I think this is something that only can be realized because like you said earlier, when we started the show, everybody thinks that, you know, everybody kind of believes that they're okay, they're good.

And the problem is we're not good. And I think if we can understand that, I think that this gets easier for us to understand election. It's a tough doctrine. But I don't know why, because I think anybody with the Holy Spirit would embrace this doctrine, knowing that they deserve hell only, they realize that only when they get the Spirit.

So it baffles me how Christians can really reject this doctrine, because when they come to faith, they know it wasn't because they did anything unless they really are thinking that they're, you know, they meet God halfway or something.

And I don't know how they can see that and truly being regenerate. Any thoughts on that, Andrew? That's the very reason why we tie it to the depravity of human beings, right? This is the reason when we teach theology, before we teach salvation, we teach the doctrine of man.

Because if you don't understand man's sinfulness, you're going to struggle with a lot of these things. And this is the thing, you know, I know that right now there is lots of debates on the simplicity of God, and people are debating on whether you can separate certain attributes from God's nature and not others, and you can't.

It's just that simple. You cannot say God is love and ignore His justice and holiness and His wrath. They're balanced. You see, the reason He has wrath is because He's holy and just. The reason He's sovereign is because He's omniscient and eternal.

All of these attributes are tied together because they're rooted in the nature of who God is. Anytime we have any theological system that is not rooted in His nature or has a different view of His nature, where you have to ignore certain attributes of God, then your theological system is wrong.

I don't care what it is. Because theology, the study of God, well, if you're studying God, it's going to be based on who He is. And so what we're saying in this next part is we cannot separate His sovereignty.

And that's what people try to do is they, that when it comes to this doctrine of election, they want to just say, well, this is just some abstraction of God's sovereignty. It's not really who He is. No, it is.

He's sovereign, and it's part of who He is, and you can't separate that. And we're saying that the sovereignty specifically is in harmony with attributes like omniscience. Well, we've said, we've shown that throughout, how the fact that He's all-knowing, and therefore He has to sovereignly choose, because that's the only way, because He knows everything.

It's not based on learning something, but based on knowing everything. Well, it's also based on His justice. Why His justice? Well, His justice because He actually is the source of justice. You and I think, what's just?

Where do we get the definition of what is just? The nature of God. God is the source of justice because He's the very definition of what is just. Anything that is in line with His character is just, and anything that is outside of His character is not just.

Well, His holiness. Well, His holiness means that He is completely, utterly unlike you and I. You and I cannot conceive what sinlessness is. I know, I know. There's the Mormons and the sinless perfectionists who believe that they're sinlessly perfect.

I like what my friend Matt Slick always says. Five minutes with him, and he'll get them to realize that they have anger issues. But the reality is, none of us understand sinless perfection. God does. He's the only one that understands that perfectly.

And when we think of His holiness, it means He's not even tempted with sin. Even the angels can't say that. There a temptation they had. There are temptations you and I have. With God, it's outside of His nature.

Now, when God became man, He could be tempted in that sense, but He couldn't sin because of His divine nature. And so you have His holiness. Next that we have in the list is His wisdom. Now, this is something we have to realize.

When we teach through the course in the systematic theology that we have at Striving for Eternity, we talk about wisdom in light of intelligence and knowledge. And so when we talk about knowledge, that's the idea of knowing things, just knowing facts.

And we can know things. We have intelligence, which gives us the ability not just to know things, but to understand how they relate to other facts, where wisdom is not just the intelligence, but it's beyond that to say, now you know how facts evolve with other facts, but it's the application of them, when to apply certain things and not to.

So when you think about His wisdom, God's perfect infinite wisdom, He knows when to sovereignly save someone or elect someone and not. And then we get to the next one that we listed here, His grace. His grace, where we get right back to that unmerited favor that we saw in the previous paragraph.

Because God is a God of grace, He offers that unmerited favor, but it's God who offers that in His sovereignty. You can't separate those. And that goes right along with His love. Yes, God is a God of love.

God is the source. We can understand what love is, but we can't separate His love from sovereignty. And so He loves in selecting some people to be saved. So the point is, this is not some abstract thinking.

This is everything. This is who God is. You can't separate these attributes and say, well, He's one, not the other. They're all tied to His sovereignty, which is how He elects. Yeah, you know, the connection there is really important.

You know, Paul says, no one does good, no, not one. And, you know, you think about that. And then you think about all that the Father gives me, I will no wise cast out. So you think about, I always kind of interact with people on a really calm level, because, and I say, if Paul says no one is righteous, no, not one, and God is going to sovereignly give up His Son to, it's God that put His Son on the cross, right?

I mean, that's the, I mean, I know that there's, it was predestined that He would go on the cross and then sinful men, we know that about responsibility and sovereignty. But I think about this, is that if God, if the Father did not give a people to His Son, then no one would come.

Because Paul says, no one is righteous, no, not one. So there's got to be a people that God has elected the Father to give to the Son, or nobody would come. It'd be a fruitless crucifixion and resurrection.

I don't know how people see that, because it would contradict what Paul's saying, if people believe that they can, you know, that they have some type of righteousness in them. Yeah, you keep bringing it right back to the point, right?

We don't have a righteousness in us. That's the whole thing here. That's why that's such a necessary starting point with this, right? We have to start with who God is and who man is. And when we understand those two, there's no other way to understand our salvation without God doing the work.

When we understand how perfect God is and understand how sinful man is, there's no other way to explain this other than God. I want to be careful here, but I think a lot of this too, and you've been around longer than I have, but a lot of this too is brought upon by these calls of making a decision and coming up and signing a paper and walking down an aisle.

And I'm not saying these things may not have a place, but I think that a lot of times the people in these leadership positions are instructing their people that all they have to do is repeat after me or say this and say that.

So I think the crux of not understanding this is because nobody, I mean, it's because I think the people in positions to explain this are not really explaining it from a God perspective, are really explaining it from their own mindset, which I think is really dangerous.

And I think so we may want to, and again, I want to be careful here, I'm not saying fault or whatever, but it may be the stuff that's coming from some of the churches or the leadership of the churches that are hindering people from really seeing this.

And then a lot of them, people that are doing that type of evangelism or whatever it is are saying, well, stay away from this when you hear this word like election and don't pay attention to that. And does that make any sense, Andrew?

Because I see that a lot. No, you're right. And I mean, you're really leading right into this last sentence we have, right? Because what you have is a lot of people who get hung up on the theological labels and theological discussion and don't go in and dig into what the scriptures are actually saying about some of these things and what is our theology.

If you have the doctrine of man wrong or the doctrine of God wrong, you're going to have everything else wrong. You're not going to have, you may get a right understanding of salvation, may, but not because of your doctrine of man or God, if you have one of those messed up.

These all lead from one to the other. And there's so many who are so fixated on their experience and that they chose God experientially that they can't get over that, and they ignore what scripture actually says.