Unconditional Election

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Opening the Program and the Doctrines of Grace

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today is technically, formally, institutionally, Tuesday. According to the calendar. Always biblical, always provocative, always Pastor Steve Cooley in the studio on Tuesday.

In the house. Last time I read from Arminian Grace, how strange the sound, only stanza one. Now comes stanza four. When we've been there 10 ,000 years, because of what we've done, we've no less days to sing our praise than when we first begun.

Singing again. I love to hear the story. It is amazing, Steve, that when you talk about grace, and there was a book written a while ago, what's so amazing about grace. If grace is not free, sovereign, distinguishing, unearned, then it's not that amazing, is it?

Not at all. And I think if we study the New Testament, which is a good thing to do, by the way, I heartily recommend it. If we study the New Testament, we never find the apostles congratulating themselves, congratulating others for their excellent decision in choosing to follow Christ.

What we see over and over again is them praising God for his choice, for his work in their lives, for him saving people, not for him making salvation possible.

Amen. So today what we're going to do is part two in our series, the doctrines of grace. That is to say, maybe you don't like the word Calvinism, and we're trying to say that Calvinism is just shorthand, theological shorthand for the doctrines of grace.

That is T, total depravity, U, unconditional election, L, limited atonement, I, irresistible grace, and P, preservation by God. And so it's known under the acronym of TULIP, and these were given in response to some Arminians some time ago.

We'll get into the history of it another day. But today we want to talk about U, unconditional election. And this is a hot topic. I like to say it is picante and spicy. And the main reason it's so hot, Steve, I think is because it goes against man and man's ability, man's capability, and it puts man in his place that is 10 feet under.

It's a violent blow. In fact, you could call it indeed a fatal blow against pride and self-image and self-esteem and all the things that we're, you know, in so many churches taught to value. You know, it's really important that I have a good opinion of myself.

Okay. Steve, you know what I'm suffering through this week? I hate to tell you. I'm suffering from a bad self image, specifically a bad body image. Thanks for sharing, Oprah. Yeah. I have a friend and they said, well, my son struggles with a bad body image.

I thought that. And I said, lose that gut. Yeah, part of it could be that. And part of it is what kind of bad body image do we have when we realize we're made in the image and likeness of God? And certainly we don't want to, you know, bloat our body image or anything like that, but everything's just so upside down.

And when people want to say, we're not really bad, we're not depraved, T, and we really choose ourselves, and then God chooses us because we don't want to be robots, what kind of love is this? Deep down, and I hate to tell people this, but it's true, the people that stand up for conditional election, God chooses us because we first chosen Him.

They have an issue with biblical authority and they have a bigger issue with pride.

You know, while you're saying that, I was just thinking about, now this is going to completely seem random, but I was thinking about drafts, you know, like the NFL draft and the NBA draft and all that.

The teams never, you know, kind of consult all the players. Hey, if it would be okay with you, we would like to draft you in the number 10 spot. It's an unconditional draft. Nobody has a problem with that.

Why do they have a problem with unconditional election?

Well, this will get to the book that I'm trying to shop around for a publisher, but if we understand who a king would be and what a king is, then we understand authority and we understand submission. And when it comes to choosing for salvation to go to God's heaven, who has the authority, who has the ability and who has the grace to do that?

Well, it ought to be God. I mean, it's His kingdom. He ought to get to choose who goes there. And the whole idea that there would be some kind of preconditions that God would, I don't want to say have to, but that He would choose some people based on some kind of goodness in them or some kind of choice that they make first and then He chooses them.

Well, then God winds up being, at best, a cooperative partner rather than a sovereign God. You know what? We could link arms, Steve.

Red Rover, Red Rover, send that sinner right on over and you kind of link arms with God. And then if the runner can run fast enough and hard enough and break the yoke there, then they get in and through and then they're on the team.

Sure, because God couldn't really keep anyone out of heaven if they really wanted in bad enough.

Defining Unconditional Election and the Role of Ephesians 1

Let's start off with a doctrine of election in terms of definition, Pastor Steve, and then we'll maybe have a little quiz or we'll talk about it in general. Today is not meant to be some formal statement that ties up every issue of election.

We're just trying to give an overview so we can have the theme of the doctrines of grace and so you can buy it in a nice little cassette form and give it to your friends and neighbors. Cassette? We don't have any cassettes.

No, we just want to just do a general overview of the doctrines of grace. Last time, T, depravity, total depravity. Today, election, unconditional election. Here's a definition that I have that I'm reading.

I didn't make it up. Okay, let's see if I like it. Oh, sorry. Election is the eternal, sovereign, unconditional. Steve is breaking my table here. I thought he was gonna do some kind of Chuck Norris thing to the table.

It used to be straight, and then now there's a big line right down the middle of the table with Steve's Steven Seagal lawman kind of sheriff antics.

You know, sometimes the table has to go.

The tables have turned. Oh, by the way, the other day I was talking to Luke and I thought it was very interesting, and my son Luke, and he said, Dad, you know, how could Jesus learn anything? Because he's totally God as well.

And so we walk through that whole issue and how he had to learn to be fully human because if you have someone who is human that doesn't learn and grow, they're not really alive or human. So we work through the whole issue and his deity and his manhood and everything else.

And Luke said to me, but I know one thing for sure, Dad, because I told him, let's go with what we know. On big problems like this, let's go with what we know. And he said, I know one thing for sure, Dad.

I said, what? He said, Jesus never had to learn anything the hard way.

There's a message that he's learned from someone, son. You're going to learn things one way or the other, the easy way or the hard way.

That is so true. Now back to election before the table's broken again. Election is the eternal, sovereign, unconditional, and immutable decree of God, whereby according to the wise counsel of his own will and for his own glory, he has selected for himself some individual sinners from among the nations among all mankind and of every nation to be redeemed and everlastingly saved by Christ.

Do you like that definition? I like that definition. That's a pretty good definition. I stole it from the internet, but hey, it well represents the confessions and creeds, which like Westminster Confession and London Baptist 1689 represent what the Bible says.

If you had to go to one verse, Steve, to try to show someone from the Bible one verse, what passage would you go to to talk to them about unconditional election? One verse.

Well, I guess one verse is hard. I always like to start in Ephesians one. There you go, that's what I was thinking about.

I was giving you the ray, the telepathic, telecommunicating ray that you would have easily understood if you wouldn't have had broken the table and messed up my aura. Sorry. As you're turning there, one of the things I'd like to think about when I think of election is selecting.

So take the S off of select and you get elect. And both are very similar to select one out of the many. And we have to remember that if T is true, total depravity, and men are depraved and men are unable to do anything spiritually, then unconditional election must be true because since man cannot take any step forward to God, God must do all the work.

And if men are sinful in time, God wouldn't choose in time based on someone's sin. He'd have to choose before time based on his own good pleasure.

Wait a minute, why can't they take one step toward God?

Well, because they have their legs and their mind and their wills all depraved and unable to do what God says. They've fallen and they can't get up.

Because the Bible says in Ephesians two, chapter one, or verse one, that they are dead in their sins and trespasses before God saves them. I mean, it's interesting, and I've mentioned this before, but Ephesians one, which we're about to get into, talks about the God's sovereign election, his choice of his people, Christ's work in redeeming them, Holy Spirit's work in sealing them.

And he just, Paul just explodes in praise at the thought of all the work of the triune God on his behalf and on the behalf of all believers. And then in chapter two, he kind of tells us why it had to be that way.

And it's because before we got saved, we were dead in our sins and trespasses, unable to take that one step, unable to cooperate with the grace of God, unable, unable, unable, just laying there dead.

Yes, but then that Arminian grace song, through many ardent gospel pleas, I sat with heart of stone. That's right. But then some hidden good in me propelled me toward my home. So Steve, give us Ephesians chapter one, verse four.

If you're out there and you say, I cannot believe that God would choose by his own sovereign free will, I believe that that couldn't be true. I'd like to ask you to read Ephesians chapter one. And as James Boyce would say to his old Bible study fellowship ladies, now put your finger under this verse and then read it along with Pastor Steve.

Ephesians chapter four, verse, sorry. Ephesians chapter one, verse four. And let me just read this here. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love.

And then it continues on from there.

Well, there's so much to be said from that verse and we're not gonna preach through it, but a few things that I noticed right off the top of my head. He did not choose us because we were holy and blameless.

What's the difference, Steve, between choosing us because we were holy.

And choosing us to be holy? Yeah, he chose us for the purpose of holiness. In other words, that he would make us holy, not that we were holy and therefore there was something good about us to choose. It's quite the contrary.

And it even says that here, just as he chose us in him in Christ before the foundation of the world. So he couldn't have foreseen any good in us. Well, you could argue he looked down the corridors of time and he saw that we would be good.

Well, as he says in Ephesians 2, if he looked down the corridors of time, he would have seen us dead in our sins and trespasses. That's what he would have seen. That's right.

When you think of foreknowledge, I also want you to remember to think about it biblically. And most of the times in the Bible, when you read about foreknowledge, he foreknows people. That's when he uses foreknowledge, the foreknowing of people, foreloving people.

It's not used to forelove people's actions, to foreknow people's actions. He foreknows people. And so getting back here to this issue of election, Steve, would you think it'd be fair of God to not choose anyone?

Absolutely. God is not... Because our idea of fair is not God's idea of fair. So look at it this way. Was God obligated to save anyone? Well, after Adam fell into sin, was he obligated to save Adam and Eve?

You know what I would do, Steve, if I was writing the text and if I were God, just as he chose us to be damned forever in hell. That's what I would say based on your merit, based on your work, based on what you've done.

I was thinking about it earlier today. Some of the things I've thought in my mind about God and other people and issues of life, some of the things I've done with my hands and my body and my feet, I deserve hell.

But for me to go to heaven, how could that happen? Because I, that foul, vile person, decided I should go and I was better than someone else because I decided to go or God had to initiate that great work and he initiated that in eternity past.

Well, because you were smarter, better looking, something like that. No, I mean, the whole idea...

Smarter, no, better looking, maybe.

This is radio after all. I mean, the idea of election, unconditional election just goes hand in hand with God's work in salvation, him causing us to be born again. Listen to 1 Peter 1. Peter says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Has caused us. Well, where is the free will in that? Where is the condition that God chose us? It was, has caused us, has made us. Again, in Ephesians 2, 4, when it talks about, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. It's always about God and his action caused us or made us alive together with him.

It's always about the actions of God upon us, not our actions toward God that kind of lure him in, that draw him to us.

Sovereign Mercy, Foreknowledge, and the Rejection of Free Will

That is it. And you've hit the nail on the head, Steve. The issue in this so-called debate when it comes to election is the thought about who is sovereign, is God and the triune God sovereign or is the will of man sovereign?

And as I said the other day, the will is bound to its nature. And when the nature is fallen, everyone's nature is fallen in Adam, that will can only do what a fallen nature will allow it to do. Pick wrongly and not pick God and not pick good.

And so for those of you that talk about, well, what about free will? Friends, free will is an idol. Free will is something that you like to keep close to yourself at night like a little heating pad because it feels good, but it is not true because your will is fallen.

You are free to do what your will will allow and your will is fallen. Your nature will not allow it rather. And so you have to be very, very careful. I said to Kim again the other day, Steve, that this island of righteousness that people call the will, it's not tainted by the fall.

I'm gonna start calling that Gilligan's Island of Righteousness. And it's only good for Skipper and Little Buddy in some kind of CBS series.

Gilligan's Island because it's lost, man. It is really gone.

Even Jim Backus' money is not gonna get you. What was his name? Thurston Howell III. Thurston Howell III. Not even his money can change your will. Listen, the doctrine of election says that God did not have to choose anyone.

He shouldn't have chosen anyone, but he is merciful and loving and good and kind. And he decided he could have picked no one, he could have picked everyone, or he could have picked some. And so the real question when it comes to the doctrine of election, read Romans 9 and you'll say to yourself, I can't believe God has chosen anyone.

Grace by nature does not owe a sinner anything.

Well, and that is correct. I mean, grace, this whole idea of grace being somehow given to those who want it. Well, what is that? That's not grace. In other words, if grace is, all of a sudden I decide on my own, my own free will that I need grace and then God gives it to me, well, that's not unmerited favor or demerited favor.

You know, that is merited. I've somehow earned it. God is somehow obligated to answer my plea as if I would plea on my own. Let me just say this, go to www .nocompromiseradio .com and you click on the thing, you send us an email and you show us all the scriptures that show that we have a free will to do as we please and God doesn't have a free will because one of those two things is true.

Either we have a free will to choose God or God has a free will to choose us. They cannot both be true.

Good, and when we think about election, don't you realize, listener, that elections everywhere you go, for instance, it's in the Bible where some angels were picked, some were not. Out of all the pagans running around Ur worshiping some kind of pagan artifacts, God chose Abraham.

When it comes to Isaac and Ishmael, who did God choose? Isaac, yes, over Ishmael. Who did God choose? Jacob over Esau. And so just like God chooses Israel out of every other nation, not because they were great, but it pleased him, Deuteronomy chapter seven, so too God can choose his bride.

We have everything wrong, Steve, in America. We pick our own brides and all that. I'm not saying it's wrong in and of itself, but we're thinking wrongly because back in the days of arranged marriages in the Bible, it was fine for the father to pick the bride for the son and so too God the father chooses the bride for the son, Christ Jesus.

But I guess he's not able to do that until the bride says, by the way, I hate you and like to kill you, but I choose you anyway.

And getting back to your illustration of Abraham, what exactly good in Abraham was there for God to choose him? And the answer is nothing because as you mentioned, he was as idolatrous as the rest. There was no good in him and going even into the New Testament, if we look at Saul who became Paul, what would we say was good about him that God would choose him while he was persecuting the church, even participating in the murder of Christians and throwing others in jail and really trying to stamp out what we know as Christianity, what they called the way back then, was a violent opponent.

And the Lord Jesus appeared to him as he was going to persecute the church again and said, why are you persecuting me? And did Jesus say, you know what, Saul, I'm gonna give you a chance of your own free will.

I would like you to consider the following and you are free to choose me. I'm too much of a gentleman to override your free will. That's not the way I read the book of Acts.

Romans 9, Mercy, and Potter-and-Clay Sovereignty

Well, Steve, I respond with all this choosing. What should we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be. For those of you that somehow think Romans 9 only talks about nations and choosing nations, I would submit to you that if God chooses nations of millions of people, you're arguing against yourself because I'm saying that God chooses the ones and the twos.

I agree that he chooses nations. But if you're saying, no, he chooses nations. Remember, nations are not neutral. They're not some kind of little board game risk deal. These things are full of people.

And so Romans 9, verse 14, what should we say then? For those of you who say, well, if God chooses, then I'm not responsible. And if God sends me to hell, then I can't do anything about it. No, we're after the John the Baptist kind of theology here at No Compromise Radio, where God increases and you decrease.

That's what we're after. And so when it comes to injustice with God, there's no injustice with God. You can't put God's fairness on trial. You come from things sinfully, you come from things unjustly, but whatever God does, he does rightly and righteously.

There is no injustice with God when he chooses Jacob over Esau, Abraham over Muhammad, whoever you want to have him choose, because he says to Moses, verse 15, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Doesn't that sound like unconditional election to you, Steve?

But it really just doesn't sound fair.

Well, if you want fair, then you all get hell, right? And you say, well, for God to put some favor on some and not on others, it kind of like he's got favorites. Well, the answer can be found in his eternal decree, but he does put favor on some and not on others.

And by the way, if you were God, we wouldn't be having this conversation because we'd all be wiped out. I'm thinking to myself that you cannot can somehow control God and say, he must do this if we do this, especially when we realize we are depraved.

So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

But Pastor Mike, don't you understand that God, for him to be properly loved as he would like to be loved, he has to give us our freedom of choice. Otherwise we wouldn't choose to love him.

Well, if you're saying some kind of robot deal, I don't know where you come up with those kinds of illustrations. I don't mean Pastor Steve, because he wouldn't do such a thing. But this forced love and everything else, I think the illustration is back to Romans chapter nine.

It doesn't talk about robots. It talks about potter and the clay. So the biblical illustration needs to be not robots. It needs to be back to the text. So Steve, if someone says to you, well, you know, that makes me a robot, I'd like to know just where the verses, there's as many I-robot verses as there are free will verses.

That's right. And anyone who loves Christ, who has been called according to his purpose, who has had a transformation of their heart, when they think about the Lord Jesus Christ, they don't sit there and think, oh, I can't believe he dragged me kicking and screaming against my will.

I don't know anybody who's been saved who doesn't think, I can't believe that Christ would love me. I can't believe that God would choose me. I can't believe the spirit would work in my life. Allow me to read his word and understand it.

And for me to preach it and understand who he is and have the hope of heaven that God would choose me to be part of his bride. That's the amazing thing. It should keep you up at night. Some people out there want to speak in tongues for the second blessing.

We want you to realize unconditional election. It will give you a second blessing, won't it? Preach it. Preach it. This is Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley. It's No Compromise Radio. We're going through the series of TULIP, total depravity, and we're up to you, unconditional election.

And I don't know, maybe we'll have to do part two of you. That would be you too.

Yeah, we're gonna do you too next time.

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.