Election, Part 1, What We Believe, Part 29

Election and the Nature of God

Elections 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 characters revealed in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Welcome to The Rap 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 Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and The Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member of the over 50 vetted podcasts that are out there.

So go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, check them all out. You'll even hear one called Street Talk Theology, and that is my co-host here, Pastor Dominic. How are you today, sir?

Andrew, doing well. Thank you. It's always a pleasure to be hanging out with you behind the microphone, and I see you got a new haircut today, so it looks really well.

Well, I did it myself, so if it looks good. The guy who actually has a barbershop in church, he looked at it and, you know, I didn't, he's like recognizing I didn't smooth it out as well as he would like.

I was like, yeah, but it didn't cost me anything. Okay, this will be embarrassing. Some of you may know what this is and others you won't, but what I would do, and for years I used to cut my own hair and not pay for it, and I used a device called a Flowbee.

If you know what a Flowbee is, you're laughing because you're going, wait, people actually use it. What this is, is a device you hook up to your vacuum cleaner, and it sucks your hair up and it has these razors that just cut at the same level, so you get kind of a consistent level.

The only thing is that, you know, I don't get that smooth, gradual, you know, cut on the sides that they, that barbers would do, but at least I'm not paying for it and I'm thinking of trying to save my, as my hair has been thinning, I've had to actually go back to a barber because it was hard to do with my Flowbee, but I'm trying to do it again.

And this is exactly what everybody tuned in to The Wrap Report this morning to find out how you cut your hair, right?

That's right. Now we're going to talk about election, the doctrine of election. And this is one that there's, I really am puzzled with the amount of debate and discussion people have with this doctrine.

And so hopefully this episode will clarify things for folks so that there won't be as much of the debating and fighting and whatnot that goes on with this topic. But I know that there's many who agree, disagree with the doctrine of election, some that have different definitions for the doctrine of election.

So I will ask, please give this a full listen. And we probably will do this in two parts because it is, there's a lot here. And I think that there's a lot that people misunderstand and that's why they so hate this doctrine.

And there is, there is hatred for this doctrine. I understand. But what I want to do is kind of walk through this slowly so that we can dig into it. And so as usual, what we're doing right now, we're in a long series.

This is our What We Believe series. So I encourage you to go back in past episodes and listen to all the series. But what this is, is we're walking through the doctrinal statement from striving for eternity.

Why are we doing this? Well, a couple of reasons. One, to show you when you read a good doctrinal statement, all that's really in there and what it says often is clarifying what it doesn't say. In other words, there's a lot we're going to talk about what it doesn't mean because that's what we end up seeing when we look at a good doctrinal statement.

It's going to point out that there's a positive and negative. And so as if you've been following with us in the series, you've seen a lot of that. You've seen where we're saying that if it says this, it means that it's not this.

So there's a lot that's in a good doctrinal statement. If you're looking for a good church, and I was asked recently how to find a good church and going to a church and looking up the doctrinal statement nowadays is almost worthless because so many churches don't give you a great details in their doctrinal statement.

They might have a page or two of just general things. We believe in the Bible. Okay. Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the Bible. You're not helping me. So what you want is some detail. I saw one website that had their doctrinal statement was seven bullet points, one sentence.

That's it. That tells me absolutely nothing about what this church believes because it's so general that it fits every group. I actually looked at their doctrinal statement and said, Roman Catholics could hold to that seven point doctrinal statement.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons even could have, because they would have different definitions for some of these words. And this is the thing that we're trying to do is say, we want to understand how to identify a good doctrinal statement.

But as we're walking through this, we're also helping to discuss different theological points that we have in our doctrinal statement at Striving for Eternity. So if you want to follow along, just go to strivingforeturning .org on the about section and click on where it says what we believe.

Why Election Causes Debate

Andrew, let me ask you a question before we start. Why is there so much, and I know we'll probably get into this, but, or maybe we won't because we want to go through the doctrine, but why is there so much debate or pushback on the doctrine of election?

I mean, it's clear in the Bible. I mean, maybe the nuances of it, but why? You know, maybe you can tell the audience, why is there such a pushback on this in your mind, if I may?

Yeah. And we're going to get into it really, I think, in the second paragraph. But where I think the reason there's so much pushback, it goes back to the difference we have theologically versus experientially.

And I'll recommend again, the episode I did a few episodes back, it was a bonus episode to the doctrine of regeneration, and it's called Superintending the Solution to the Calvinism-Arminianism Debate.

And the reason I think that's so important is because it really helps us to understand experientially, we chose God, theologically, God chose us, and resolving that tension that so many seem to have between those two is where there's problems.

Now, in the first paragraph, we're going to deal with the passage from Ephesians, which says that God elected before the foundation of the world. And that's hard for some people to wrap their head around because they're stuck in the experiential I chose God.

And if I chose God, which you did, I did, but if it was based solely on me choosing God, then how could he have done that before the foundation of the world? And so people get into that struggle. And so we will deal with that throughout this episode.

Yeah, that's a text you have to deal with.

That's well said. Are you familiar with Peter Sammons? He just wrote a book on reprobation and God's sovereignty, recovering a biblical doctrine.

You had him on your podcast. I think you did a two-parter with him. I did.

It was good. I think the fold was by John McArthur, but I just, it's a tough read.

That's a tough read. Well, let's, speaking of reading, why don't you read for us this chapter. We have on the doctrinal statement under the section of election.

Okay, thank you. Election is the act of God by which, before the foundation of the world, he chose in Christ those whom he graciously regenerates, saves, and sanctifies. Sovereign election does not contradict or negate the responsibility of man to repent and trust Christ as Savior and Lord.

Nevertheless, since sovereign grace includes the means of receiving the gift of salvation as well as the gift itself, sovereign election will result in what God determines. All whom the Father calls to himself will come in faith, and all who come in faith the Father will receive.

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, which especially is omniscience, justice, holiness, wisdom, grace, and love.

This sovereignty will always exalt the will of God in a manner totally consistent with his characters revealed in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so, really, some of the question—we're going to really dig into the question you asked earlier, Pastor Dom—will be next episode, I'm sure, where we talk about the fact that the reason some people do struggle with it is that part where it says it's solely of his grace, his sovereign grace and mercy.

That's where people struggle because they go, but I chose! And so, it's first going to have to be something we, as we dig into this, even though we'll dig into that far more next episode, we have to understand that the doctrine of election is something that God does.

So, when we look at these doctrines, there are areas that are for humans. There's areas where it's the work of God. And so, election is a work of God. Regeneration is a work of God. When we choose, this becomes the issue where so many struggle is who chose.

And so, we start off by saying here, election—the word election means to select. It's a biblical word, so we can't say—you know, it's interesting, I had a—this is a side note, but I remember a guy who was a sinless perfectionist who hated Calvinism, saw anyone that was Calvinistic wasn't even saved, and he told me he would—I was working on a message on sinless perfectionism and wanted to talk to him.

And he said he wouldn't talk to me because I wouldn't consider him a brother in Christ. I said, well, I haven't really discussed how you got saved to make that call. But by the end of the email exchange, he told me I wasn't a brother in Christ because I'm a Calvinist.

I said, well, I never said I was a Calvinist. He said, well, I looked through your doctrinal statement, and it's this section he looked up. And I said, what in this tells you I'm a Calvinist? And he quoted for me Ephesians 1, and he quoted where it says that God elected before the foundation of the world.

And I was like, well, wait a minute, that's Ephesians. That's the Bible. Are you saying that God is a Calvinist? He cut off communication. So this is the way the New American Standard has it. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him.

And I like that reading of it because it has the idea of choosing, because that's what election means. When we go to elect a president or senator or governor, what are we doing? We're selecting, we're choosing who we would want.

And so election is an act of God. So this is not a human act. This is an act that God does by which before the foundation of the world, as we just read, he chose in Christ those whom he graciously regenerates, saves, and sanctifies.

This is the idea where as we look at this, we see that this is something that God does. Now why does he say he did it before the foundation of the world? Let me try to make this easy to understand because you will hear some people when they come to the doctrine of predestination, which we see in scripture as well in Romans that God predestined us, what people say, and they come to this passage that he elected or chose before the foundation of the world, what some people do is say that God looked down the tunnels of time, he saw who was going to be saved, and he chose those people that would be saved.

Now let me first say what the problems with that, and what this doctrinal statement is clearly saying is that that's not true, that his election was an act of God before the foundation of the world. It's not something that he did based on what we do.

Why? I've said this multiple times throughout the series, but whenever we study theology, we must make sure that the theology we believe is rooted in the nature of God. If we have a theology that has something with the nature of God that's different than the nature we see in the Bible, we have a problem.

Let me give a for instance. The Bible is very clear that God is omniscient. That means all-knowing. It means that God knows everything. There's nothing that he learned. There's nothing that he saw in history and said, I didn't see that coming.

No, he knows everything. Another thing that the Bible teaches is that God is eternal, means there's no time for him. He's outside of time. He created the space-time mass continuum in Genesis chapter 1.

When he said, let there be light, he was creating that energy, and also with that would be time. That's a hard thing for us to wrap our heads about. We can't even think a being that is outside of time.

You mentioned something, and that's a great point. I was backing up on that and then listening to that and trying to get my thoughts together. God doesn't need foreknowledge for knowledge. He just knows.

He doesn't have to look down, and that's the thing. He doesn't have to look down the corridors of time. He just knows. I think when people use that, I don't even know what to call it, a convoluted statement.

When people use that, it actually takes away from who God is. It's like I'm going to use an old New York thing. It's crazy. I mean, if me and you, which is just an example, if me and you were going to, say, play the lottery, which we don't do, and if somebody tells us the number to play, we have an inside connection and we play it, we have foreknowledge.

But it's different if we just knew the number that was coming out, and God just knows. He doesn't need foreknowledge for knowledge. That's a great point, because that's a huge argument to choose.

Well, let's use your example. If I had the inside track and I give you the lottery number, you learned the lottery number. God didn't learn the lottery number. He knows the lottery number, and that's the difference.

So if he's outside of time, everything's an eternal now for him. Now why do I spend the time to do that? Because for people who say, God looked down the tunnels of time to see how men would choose, well, one, it puts him as a being that's confined by time.

He's no longer eternal because he had to look down through time. He somehow has an ability to look through time, but it's not all an eternal now to him. But it means he had to learn what we would do. So his selection of us is based on our action.

And this is why I say so much of this is based on who chose who. This is why we spent the time going through regeneration. And I did that special episode on superintending, because the doctrine of superintending is important in understanding this, so that you realize that this is something that God has, this is part of his nature and how he works through us.

And so the other thing that this is saying is that election is something where God has chosen those who are in Christ. Now, this is important because what some do because of this issue of election, they don't want to believe God chose us.

They want to believe we chose God. I'm saying both are true. But what you end up having here is that they will redefine what election is to say that what God elected was not individual people, but he elected the nation of Israel, the church.

In other words, he elected a group, an organization that he would work through. And that avoids the personal election, and therefore we could still choose God, and election could be true because we redefine it.

We look in Ephesians, he's saying he chose us. He didn't say he chose the church. He chose us, which is the same thing you're going to see in Romans when Paul is making the case that between Jacob and Esau, he's saying that Jacob, he loved, Esau, he hated.

Those are individuals. Those are not, as some people try to say, nations. They try to say, oh, see, those are nations. And Jacob was the selected nation. That's not what he's saying, because Ephesians 1, it's making it clear, he chose us individually.

Yeah, I think I remember reading some, I think maybe N .T. Wright is one of those expositives, like corporate type of election where God corporately elects. But I think individual election is really clear in the Bible.

And I know that there's a group of those type of expositors that talk more of a corporate election over against an individual election. I don't know why they would have a problem with an individual election, because if you look at it inside a corporate election, our individuals, I mean, I don't know.

Well, the reason they're trying to is they're trying to find a way to say that we chose God, really apart from God doing a work in ourselves, we chose God, and yet God elected before the foundation of the world.

How do you resolve those? Well, I have a different way of resolving that, because I ask the question, why would God use the language that he chose us before the foundation of the world? Have you ever thought about that?

Well, let me back up now and ask you a question. You have a child, two years old, is going to go stick a fork into an outlet, an electrical outlet. Do you stop the child and say, let me explain how electricity works?

You see, the fork is metal and it conducts electricity. And when you stick that in the outlet, the electricity is going to run through the fork into your hand and electrify you. Is that what you say? No, no.

To the two-year-old, you just say, no, stop, bad. And the two-year-old, in their understanding, understands what bad means, what stop means, because that's the level they understand. You and I cannot comprehend in any way what it is to have omniscience, to know everything and to be eternal.

So you're outside of time. So everything's an eternal now to you. We cannot comprehend that. So if God wants to communicate that this salvation had nothing to do with us and everything to do with God, the best way he could communicate it is like baby talk to you and I.

And yes, I'm calling us babies. And if you don't like it, just realize God's knowledge is infinite and ours is not. Everything he communicates is baby talk to us. But if we think about it that way, he's communicating in a way for you and I to understand.

What he's trying to say in there is that we had nothing to do with it. His choice was done not based on what we do, but solely upon his choice. And that's what he's trying to communicate with that, that we have nothing to do with it.

First, Peter, he puts it this way. He talks about his readers. He says to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who were chosen. How were they chosen?

According to the foreknowledge of God, the father, by the sanctifying work of the spirit to obey Jesus and be sprinkled with his blood, may grace and peace be yours in the fullest. So God is choosing us by his foreknowledge.

Now, does that mean it's the foreknowledge in the way that Pastor Dom was just talking about that with the lotto ticket? No, it's not that he saw what people would do and respond. No, his foreknowledge is a complete knowledge because he's omniscient.

Here's a question or something out there. I use this and I ask people kindly and respectfully, think about Adam created sinless, could not get it right. Let's just use that. I'm just not trying to be facetious, but him and Eve were created by God's grace, sinless, were given a choice.

And think about it. They could not make the right choice as sinless created beings, not born, but created. How the heck are we going to make the right choice? We're born in sin.

But this is why the doctrine of superintending is so important so people can see that both are right. God didn't choose us apart from working within us to choose him, but we can't choose him without him doing that work.

And so if you believe God's omniscient, then you understand that he knows every person who's going to be saved, not learns it, knows it. This is why actually some people who get so against Calvinism and so against God's sovereignty in selecting humans to be saved, what ends up happening is they see this connection.

And this is what has led to a system of theology known as open theism, where they end up teaching is that God doesn't actually know who's going to be saved. He's just a really good guesser. God doesn't know the future.

He's not omniscient. He's good at watching how humans behave, knowing what they'll do. And from there, he just guesses. That's how he gets prophecies right. He's good at guessing. That's not the God of the Bible.

And anytime you have a theology, whether you're looking down the tunnels of time to see who's going to be saved or whether you say that God is not omniscient, either way, you don't have a biblical theology because you've now messed with the nature of God.

Sovereignty, Responsibility, and Superintending

I know this is a little down. I mean, it's only the second line. I know. But I just wanted to ask you a question. You know, Spurgeon said something interesting. He said that sovereignty and responsibilities like an antinomy in the way.

I know it's a scientific word where they kind of run parallel, but they actually happen together. But it's hard to put them together. And I know maybe I'm a little ahead of the game, but there is. I mean, obviously, there is responsibility.

I know you mentioned that. And there is sovereignty. And those things are hard to put together. I think they're both there. I think the Bible teaches both, but they're not easy to kind of put together, you know?

Well, that's why the doctrine of superintending is so important. And people don't view it this way. And I think if more people were to look into this one doctrine, there wouldn't be as much debate. But this is the thing.

Part of what it takes is giving up some of the presuppositions we have about the other side, whether you're Calvinist or Arminian. Either way, we all bring to it presuppositions we have of what we think is the right theology.

Every one of us thinks our theology is right, by the way. We're all wrong. We just don't know where, because if we did, we'd hopefully change. But we are. Every one of us is wrong somewhere. And so what I'm saying is we need to take a step back and say, okay, I need to evaluate this in light of scripture and say, maybe I don't fight so hard on the fact that I think God chose or that man chose, whichever side you're on.

I think the doctrine of superintending resolves this. And so I do want to encourage people to go back to that episode. It's a very important episode. And you can see more in my book, What Do We Believe?, which, by the way, if you want, we are still running the sale.

It's about ready to end, so if you haven't gotten your copies, if you're still looking for that last-minute Christmas gift, well, we're probably not going to get it to you in time. But if you want that gift after Christmas, we are running a sale at Striving Fraternity.

Just go to strivingfraternity .org, go in the store, and you can pick up What Do We Believe? for 50 off. And we're doing that for as many copies as you want. We just shipped out an entire case. And so if you want to buy a case of them, hey, we'd be happy to ship it to you.

But we are doing that at 50 off. Just use the promo code CHRISTMAS, and that goes until the end of the year. So the other book that we're doing a sale on is Sharing the Good News with Mormons. You can get 35 off on that book using the promo code LDS for Latter-day Saints.

And now would be a good time to let you know that this show is sponsored by MyPillow. If you want to get yourself a great pillow, products that are made here in the USA, great, comfortable products, you can get yourself a MyPillow and use the promo code SFE.

That tells them that you heard about them through us, and they keep supporting us. So we appreciate that. Just go to MyPillow .com, and the promo code is SFE. Okay, let's get into the second paragraph here.

We're saying here, sovereign election. Now you stop there, and we're making it clear what we had just said, right? That election is sovereign. It's a work God does. And as we said in the last paragraph, He does it through regenerating us, saving us, and sanctifying us.

Even our sanctification is part of this election process. And so this is what God does sovereignly, because He's God. He's the sovereign. Sovereign election does not contradict nor negate the responsibility of man to repent and trust in the Lord and Savior.

So we see these both, Romans 9, Romans 10. In Romans 9, we have this responsibility to repent, believe on Jesus. Sorry, that's Romans 10. Romans 9, God is sovereign. He's choosing us. We have this responsibility to confess and believe.

Romans 10, 9, and 10. And so this is the rub, and this is where Pastor Dom's question comes in that he asked earlier, right? Why is it people have such an aversion? Because to many, what it seems like, what the doctrine of election sounds like, it sounds like we're saying that humans have no responsibility in regeneration, in their salvation.

No, that's not what we're saying. That's the whole point here. A biblical view, both are true. God is sovereign. Man has a human responsibility. There's not one or other. It's not an either or. And a lot of people put this in what is called an either or fallacy.

Or sometimes referred to as the excluded middle fallacy. And what that is, is where people give you two choices, and those two choices are not the only options. In other words, if I was to say, let me give you what a true dichotomy is and a false dichotomy.

A true dichotomy would be where there's only two options. In other words, I can say that right now, as we're recording, Pastor Dom either is or is not wearing a red shirt. Now, there's no other options there.

That's a true dichotomy. He either is wearing a red shirt or he is not wearing a red shirt. Unless there's a third option. And in a false dichotomy, people would word it that Pastor Dom either is wearing a red shirt or is not wearing a red shirt.

When in fact, he's not wearing a shirt at all. Well, actually he is, folks, and it is red. But you see, if he wasn't wearing a shirt, that's a third option. Because now his shirt's not red and it's not not red because there's no shirt at all.

And so what people do in this is they give a fallacy of the excluded middle. There's a third option. So is it human responsibility or God's sovereignty? The answer to that is not either or. The answer is yes, both.

It's a both and. And so there's a third option. And that third option is found in the doctrine of superintending. That's why I keep referring back to that, because that's where you see God working through the humans such that the very choices that they selected are exactly as God intended them to be.

We see that when we talk about the inspiration of the Bible, how we got the Bible. God worked through human authors that the words that they chose were exactly as God intended them to be, such that God gets all the credit.

We see that in our sanctification, where that process of us being made more right with God, what we end up seeing is that that process, we choose to do good works, and yet God does those works through us so that God gets all the credit.

Same in regeneration.

Yeah. And the other thing, too, I know you'll hear pushback, because I've heard it and you've heard it, about then why should we preach? The problem is we don't know who God's people are. You know what you're saying, I know right away the pushback, because there's nothing that you're saying that people can't agree.

So what they're going to say is, then why preach? Well, again, I don't want to quote Spurgeon overly, but Spurgeon said when he preaches the gospel, God doesn't put an E on somebody's chest that he sees, because we don't know who God's people are.

The thing is that that makes our preaching all the more ordained by God, because we don't have to dot every I. I mean, we want to dot every I across every T when we're teaching and preaching. But it's not us.

It's not how great our sermons are and stuff like that. It's God's sovereign choice to use the foolishness of preaching to preach to a people that we don't know. And that's the great thing, Andrew. We might have people in our family right now who we think would never be a Christian, but only by God's superintending through the spirit of grace that he can save these people through the foolishness of the preaching of the gospel.

So I think this is a blessing.

It would make evangelism so much easier if they're, you know, I just look and see, oh, there's a big E on someone's forehead. I'll evangelize to them because they're the elect. I had someone that once said, he goes, you know, you share the gospel, you preach the gospel like an Arminian, but you pray like a Calvinist.

He says, I can't figure you out. And I said, because when I preach the gospel, I'm preaching to all people. And I don't know who is going to be saved because I have a finite mind. But when I pray to God, I'm asking him to do work in someone's heart because that's his job.

And by the way, most of that don't like Calvinism. They pray like Calvinists, right? We all do. Why? Because God, we all know God does the saving. And that's the thing here. That's what we're digging into with this is that God is the one who saves people.

It's not you and I that can say, I wish that I could save people. I wish that I could just choose and my kids be saved or my unsaved family members. I mean, Paul makes that argument. He wishes that he could die, that all of Israel would be saved.

I actually prayed that before reading that passage, wishing my family would be saved. I was thinking, I would rather go to hell for eternity, knowing that all of my family would go to heaven. But it doesn't work that way.

We don't get to select for others.

Calvinism, Arminianism, and the Meaning of Election

I know that you mentioned the term Calvinism a lot. And maybe people don't understand that the five points of Calvinism was only a rebuttal against the five points of almost Arminianism. I have trouble saying that word.

But it was a rebuttal against the complete opposite of what the doctrine of Calvinism is. So it wasn't that it came out of the blue. It was actually a rebuttal. It's even funnier than that. And R .C.

Sproul has a book. I think it's his book, Willing to Believe. But he does a masterful job there with pointing this out. Most people don't know that Jacob Arminius agreed with John Calvin. So what happened was John Calvin taught some things and his followers took it to a conclusion that went further than Calvin was willing to say.

And James Arminius came in and was trying to bring them back into what Calvin said. But his followers went further than he was saying. And so both of them had followers that went further than they were willing to go.

So Arminius and Calvin actually agreed quite a bit. It's their followers who had problems. And you're right. The points of Calvin was a response to the points of Arminian's followers. So I usually don't use the labels because I don't want them to get in the way.

Because a lot of what we're talking about... But so many people identify election with Calvinism. So in this episode, I am using some of those labels. But I'm doing it because that is the understanding so many have.

You go through this doctrinal statement. There's nothing in here that mentions Calvinism. Doesn't mention tulip. It's not listed. Because what we're trying to teach is what the Bible says on these areas.

And we're not using these ideas that we have from men to be able to label something so that we can reference it. Now, a label is only as good as both sides understand the meaning. In other words, there's a reason people will say, are you a Calvinist?

And my answer always is, what do you mean by that? Because depending on what they mean, I may be or I may not be. This is the dilemma is so many people have different definitions for these things. As we said with election, people have different definitions for election.

And because of that, you get wildly different views. Well, we want to define what we believe it to be here. So that then if you agree with our definition, now we can talk on the same playing field with what election is.