Unconditional Election
Tom Shrader presents the second point of Calvinism—unconditional election—arguing from Ephesians 1, Romans 9, and related passages that God's choice of those He saves was made before creation and rests entirely on His sovereign mercy, not on any foreseen faith or human works. He walks through the account of Jacob and Esau to illustrate that God's electing love is exercised independently of human ancestry, deeds, or desire, and that no injustice is done when God shows mercy to some while allowing others to face the just consequences of sin. Shrader closes by urging believers to respond not with pride but with gratitude, since being chosen is entirely a result of God's grace in spite of human sinfulness.
“The Bible teaches not that man is as bad as he can possibly be, but that man is as bad off as he can possibly be.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Plan for Salvation (2004)
Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 47 min
Themes: election, grace, sovereignty, salvation, gratitude, mercy, chosen, fairness, questioning faith, new believer, struggling with doubt, raised in church, searching for answers, feeling unworthy, young adult, longtime churchgoer
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Thessalonians 1:2-4, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, Ephesians 1:3-4, John 9, 2 Timothy 1:9, Romans 9:11, Romans 9:15-21, Romans 9:16, Acts 13:48, Acts 16, Philippians 1:29, Titus 3:4-5
Theological Themes: unconditional election, Calvinism, doctrines of grace, divine sovereignty, predestination, soteriology, Romans 9, Ephesians 1
Full Transcript
Setting the Ground Rules
We are in our fourth week, and we will probably take seven, maybe eight in total. I want to remind you of the ground rules, and I know it is repetitive, but it is important that you remember this. The Bible is our final authority. We are going to have all sorts of comments and questions, and you are going to have reactions, and you are going to hear things that make you want to talk, which is absolutely great. But see if your objections can flow from Scripture. We are going to proceed logically, and it will be really apparent to you tonight why that is important — slow, painstakingly slow in some cases.
You are going to have all sorts of questions, and legitimate questions deserve legitimate answers. Many of them will get answered as you are patient and we work our way through this series. At the end of this, we will have an opportunity for you to come together in an open forum to ask questions and have a discussion. The doctrines of grace classes are also being offered — almost every session covers this material, but in a more in-depth fashion, so make note of that.
Navigating Your Background
In some instances, this is going to bump against your background a little bit. We are very diverse in our backgrounds, but some of you are going to say, how is it that I have been in church all my life and never heard this? You are going to be frustrated by that. Then you start to listen, and things begin to shift, because now we are dealing with that foundation — things you have been clinging to.
Perhaps it was your mom or your dad, or somebody you love, whom Christ used to bring you to Himself. God opened your eyes through the testimony of someone dear to you, but that person would not believe this, or never taught you this. Then that tension relaxes a little bit, and you may even become ambivalent in the process, before your eyes begin to open. It has already happened for some of you, has it not? Just in these couple of weeks, you are suddenly realizing there is election on every page. You cannot get away from it — it is everywhere.
You had better get a hold of this, because you are going to bump up against it again and again. Then some of you, God opens your eyes and changes your mind and heart, and you begin to embrace this — and now you are back to being angry, because you are saying, how come they never taught me this? You want to load your Bible rifle and go blast people away, and we do not advocate that. Just let God be God. That is the cry for this week.
The Five Points of Calvinism
God's Plan for Salvation is the title of the series, and we have subtitled it The Five Points of Calvinism. We are using the five points of Calvinism as our grid. They were given to us in 1619 by the Synod of Dort, which was responding to the teaching of Jacob Arminius, and we spent some time going through this history.
Remember the agreement from the first week: I will be as clear as I can possibly be in presenting this, and you agree to listen closely. You also agree that if you miss a week, you will go back and listen to it before coming to the next one, because we are building week on week. Many of you are going to want to go back and work through these again and again. When you do go back and find them on the web, I suggest you do the audio rather than the video and simply listen to what is being said — it is very helpful.
Jacob Arminius began to teach in the early 1600s some doctrine that the church came together and rejected as false teaching. To respond to it, they committed to looking at Scripture and seeing what Scripture says — not what Arminius says, not what Calvin says, not what Luther says, but what does Scripture say? The response to Arminius is what is now known as the five points of Calvinism. Here they are: Total Inability, or Total Depravity; Unconditional Election; Limited Atonement; Irresistible Grace; and the Preservation, or Perseverance, of the Saints. We will talk about each of those.
Reviewing Total Inability
Let me remind you of what we covered when we looked at Total Inability, because it is so important. Here is what we said: as a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead. By that, we mean they are unable to comprehend or believe spiritual truths. Man is blind and deaf to the message of salvation.
We are talking about natural man, fallen man — you, me, every person who has ever lived. We are speaking of our spiritual condition as we come into this world. We are blind and deaf to the message of salvation, and really to all spiritual things. We are spiritually dead, unable to comprehend or believe these spiritual truths.
A Light Moment: The Arminian Archive
Years ago, when I was going through this material for the very first time, Michelle was out at her desk and I heard her calling, "Tom, Tom, come here and look at this. I found a website we can use." This was the actual website she found. I said, can you get this together so we can show it on Sunday? It was called the Arminian Archive.
The text reads something like this: "Biblical evidence supporting an Arminian view." There is a little Bible icon, and it says, "If you so freely will, click the Bible to discover everything in it that supports Arminian theology." Then you click it — and the page comes up blank. Now, you need to relax a little. Some of you get wound a little tight at this point — just relax and be gentle. I understand there are some things in Scripture —
The Inability of Natural Man
Does the Bible not say that God is willing that none should perish, and that God wants all to be saved? We understand that, and we understand that there can be some confusion. There may be some of you who are fighting with this, or who are passively waiting for another four or five weeks until we are out of this and back into the study of the life of Christ. I understand how you feel. I spent three years plowing my way through this — going hard, then setting it aside, then reading through Scripture and finding it again, going back into it all over again. Then there was a day when I finally said: if I listen to all my objections, they are almost all emotional or philosophical, but they are not biblical. So we want to take a hard look at that.
Two questions were raised in the last couple of weeks, and the first is this: can fallen natural man do anything that is spiritually profitable? Absolutely not. That is what 1 Corinthians 2:14 says: "Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him, nor can he know them. Why? Because they are spiritually discerned." In this room we have Christians who have God living inside them in the person of the Holy Spirit. We typically speak of the peace and security that accompanies that — and technically the P in TULIP stands for the perseverance of the saints, though we have made a slight change to that language, because perseverance makes it sound like we are the ones hanging in there. This is not about us hanging in there; it is about our preservation, as God preserves us.
One of the other things the Holy Spirit does in our lives is allow us to understand spiritual truths. That verse from 1 Corinthians teaches explicitly that natural man cannot receive spiritual things and cannot know them — they are foolishness to him, because they are spiritually discerned. The Holy Spirit functions as a kind of spiritual decoder for us. In our natural state we can read this book and never get it. People do read it; some begin to parse verbs, teach the Word, and in some cases even bring it to life — they write theology books — but they never get it, because the Spirit of God is not in them. They are not born again. They are not true believers. Natural man is never going to understand spiritual things, and the gospel is a spiritual thing.
The Inability to Come to Christ
The second question is this: does natural man — fallen man, you and me in our spiritual state as we come into the world — have the ability to come to Christ? No. We do not have the ability to believe, the ability to respond, the ability to repent, or even the desire to repent. Jesus says no one can come to Him unless something happens first. What has to happen is that the Father must draw him. We are talking here not about permission, but about ability.
We can declare that whosoever believes in Jesus Christ will not perish but will have eternal life. We can declare that you may come, that you may respond. But what we are talking about is not permission — we are talking about ability. No one has the ability to come unless the Father who sent Him draws him. That word does not mean a gentle wooing. It means literally to compel in an irresistible fashion. The Holy Spirit comes into a life and compels that person irresistibly to come. It is the same word James uses when describing the rich dragging the poor into court, and the same word Luke uses in Acts to describe the crowds dragging Paul into the marketplace.
Now here is what is interesting: that is the opposite of how your testimony feels, is it not? Your experience was that someone shared the gospel with you, or you were reading the Gospel of John, and all of a sudden you simply chose to respond. Or you were at a luncheon or a breakfast, the gospel was presented, and you made a decision for Christ. That is our experience, to be sure. What we are looking at is the background that Scripture gives us — the Bible telling us why that took place — and understanding that the moment of belief is not the beginning of our redemption. It is the result of being born again. That is a very important distinction.
Was I born again, and then I believed? Or did I believe, and then I was born again? The church world we live in generally says: I believed, and the result was I was born again. The problem with that is very simple. A dead man cannot believe. I must be born again. The Holy Spirit does this work in our lives — He draws us, irresistibly compels us — and no one has the ability to come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith unless the Father draws him.
From Total Depravity to Election
That is the T in TULIP — the first of the five points of Calvinism: total inability, total depravity, speaking of the radical lostness of man. We can summarize it this way. The Bible teaches not that man is as bad as he can possibly be, but that man is as bad off as he can possibly be. Not that man commits every sin he possibly can — Hitler did not kill his mother — but that man is as bad off as he can possibly be. Totally unable. Unable to comprehend spiritual truth. Deaf, blind, dead.
Tonight we are going to talk about election.
do any of you remember diagramming sentences? I thought it was the dumbest thing. Why do we have to do this? Just write the sentence. But here's what I learned from diagramming sentences. There is a subject and there is a verb. And everything flows from those. Subject. Verb. God saves. He is the subject. He does the saving. God saves sinners. The object of this sentence is sinners. Not almost sinners. Not sinners who are doing their best. Not sinners who are cleaning themselves up. Sinners. People who are utterly lost, utterly helpless, utterly hopeless.
The Meaning of Election
God chooses to save certain individuals, and that choice was based on nothing within these people but rests solely on God's good pleasure. God does the electing for His own purpose and His own reasons. It is not based on something within these people. It is not that God looked at you and saw something intrinsically good in you, something appealing, or something that you had done or are doing or will do, and said, "There's one for Me." No, it is in spite of you, not because of you, that He elects you for salvation. Unconditional. It is not based on anything in you.
Every Christian believes in election. They believe one of two things: either man chose God, or God chose man. What Scripture teaches is that there is election, and God is the one who does the choosing. The Arminian view would be that man chose God — that there was a moment, perhaps produced by a crisis, or perhaps by prosperity, where someone hears the gospel, it makes sense to them, and they choose Christ. I attended a church for three, four, or five years that taught this, and the pastor would say from the pulpit about once a month: "Satan's voted no. God's voted yes. You decide. You make the call. You choose. You elect." Everybody believes in election. You either believe that you chose God, or that He chose you.
Why This Matters Practically
You all know me. I am no scholar, and I am not even particularly intellectually curious. One of the secrets of my life is that I am pretty shallow and superficial — it is a great way to be. I do not get bogged down in a lot of these discussions. I am sure I miss a thing or two, but I sleep sound.
So why am I spending all this time on this? Why did I spend years studying it? It is not a matter of scholarship or idle intellectual curiosity. It has huge practical ramifications. If you think you chose God — and I did for years — then Jesus did a lot: He came, died, was buried, and rose. But I chose Him. I did not have a lot of faith, but I had the mustard seed, and I was pretty proud of that mustard seed. I was willing to put it on a chain and wear it around my neck if I could find it. As long as I thought I generated that mustard seed of faith, God was way smaller than He really is, and I was way bigger.
But when I understand that I had no faith in and of myself — that I was not even attracted to Him, that I wanted nothing to do with Him — and that in spite of me, not because of me, He chose me, that changes everything. You do not have to sit and work up an attitude of thanksgiving and praise when you understand that. Some people say, "If I thought God really chose me, that would produce pride in my life." No. Make sure you understand what we are saying: He chose you in spite of you, not because of you. You should not be proud of this. He chose you for His own good pleasure, not because of anything in you.
God Saves Sinners
Here is a simple sentence: God saves sinners. It is a great sentence. In a room full of people who would call themselves Christians, almost all of them would say, "Absolutely, I agree — God saves sinners." But a lot of people who say yes fall out once we put some definition around it and start to define our terms.
When we talk about God, we are talking about the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together. Tonight we are looking at the Father choosing those He would save. Next week we will look at the Son dying for that group of people. The week after that we will talk about the Holy Spirit drawing, compelling, and bringing those people into the family of God. God does everything from first to last to bring man to glory and to deliver him.
God saves sinners — people who are guilty before God, helpless, hopeless, powerless, and unable to do His will.
Diagramming the Sentence
When I was in grade school — I attended Catholic grade school, high school, and college — all of my teachers were nuns, the Sisters of Mercy. There had never been a group more inappropriately named. They had never even seen mercy. Whatever mercy they did have was finite, and I wore it out early on. They made us do things I thought were completely pointless: fractions, math, science — basically everything. But one thing they made us do, I believe it was sixth or seventh grade, was diagram sentences.
I thought diagramming sentences was the dumbest thing. Why do we have to do this? Just write the sentence. But here is what I learned from it: there is a subject and there is a verb, and everything flows from those two things. Subject. Verb. God saves. He is the subject. He does the saving. And the object of that sentence is sinners. Not almost sinners. Not sinners who are doing their best. Not sinners who are cleaning themselves up. Sinners — people who are utterly lost, utterly helpless, utterly hopeless.
God Saves Sinners
Do you diagram sentences in school anymore? When we diagram a sentence, we really get the impact of what we are saying. God is the subject — the noun, the actor. Saves is the predicate — the verb, the action. And sinner is the direct object. If you ever get a chance to be in a sentence, you want to be the direct object. You have no responsibility, no pressure.
Consider the sentence: "I throw the ball." What do you want to be in that sentence? The ball — you are just flying through the air, you do not have to do anything. So when we say "God saves sinners," what does the direct object do? Nothing. They are the recipient of the action. If you are a Christian, put your name in place of "sinners" — God saves you. You did not do anything. The Triune God did everything. That is what we are saying.
We sing a song here: "It's all about You, Jesus, it's not about me." We mean that literally. The Arminian would have a hard time saying that. He would have to say, "It's all about us — Your work, my belief, comes together, now we get a deal." It's all about us, Jesus.
Man's Condition After the Fall
Here is the progression. After the fall — after mankind's death in Adam — man simply could not save himself. He needs to be saved. Jesus says it this way: he must be born again. He needs to find some remedy for his sin, some sacrifice for his sin, but there is nothing he can do. He is dead, deaf, blind.
Something has to happen to him. Some external force has to cause him to be born again, has to cause him to believe, because he cannot do it on his own. If we were to put this on a timeline — understanding the fallacy of placing God in space and time — when Adam sinned, God essentially had three alternatives. God could save nobody. God could save everybody. Or God could save some. He is absolutely justified in any of these responses.
When we sin, the wage of sin is death. We deserve death, we deserve damnation, we deserve separation from God. He is in no way compelled to save any. But in His infinite love, He could also decide to save everyone. Here is what we know just from the people in this room: we know He did not choose the first or the second alternative. We know He did not choose to save no one, because in this room we have people who, based on the Scripture, would say, "I am saved." And we all know people — they may be in this room, or it may be family, friends, or neighbors — of whom we would say, they do not want anything to do with it. So we know He did not save everyone. God has chosen to save some.
Inside of you, as you process that, that generates all sorts of emotions. We start wondering: is that really fair? How does that work? He is saving some — why is He not saving everybody?
God's Sovereignty
You need to remember this: God is sovereign. He is sovereign in all things, but also in salvation. The word sovereign means above or superior to all others — supreme in power and rank, independent of all others, independent of everything. God is not restricted by anything, any person, or any force, and His will will be done. As R.C. Sproul put it, there is no maverick molecule loose in creation that could usurp His plan. God is sovereign — He does what He wants.
To be sure, He is constrained by His own attributes, His personality, His character. Can God do anything? Well, can God sin? No — there is a restriction there. But He acts consistently within His character, and within that realm, He can do whatever He wants. That, by the way, is what makes Him God. He is not a distant God, like Bette Midler sang about. He is a God intimately involved in every aspect of His creation. Everything that takes place in His creation is either caused by or allowed by Him — He is sovereign.
Here is the summary: God can do as He pleases. He does not need your permission or mine. He is under no obligation to save anyone. Any of those three alternatives is absolutely just and perfectly acceptable. The fact that He chooses some does not mean He is obligated to save all.
We bristle at that. We say, "Wait a minute — He is going to save you, but not you?" And everyone watching starts to scream: "That is not fair!" Why him and not her? Why her and not him? But the question is not whether it feels fair — the question is whether it is just.
Unconditional Election Defined
Here is what we have said: unconditional election is God choosing to save certain individuals, and that choice was based on nothing within these people, but rested solely on God's good pleasure. We are going to let God be God.
Here is what the Bible says about election. The first thing is this: God does the choosing. We see this in 1 Thessalonians chapter one, verse four, and again in 2 Thessalonians chapter two, verse thirteen — both letters written to the same church. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians chapter one, beginning in verse two: "We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers…"
God's Choice Before Creation
Constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the presence of our God and Father. Verse four: "knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God." Another translation says, "knowing, beloved, your choice" — or His choice of you. Second Thessalonians chapter two, verse 13: "We should give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved by God, because God has chosen you." Remember what we said at the beginning: everybody believes in election. We either believe that man chooses God, or God chooses man.
Here is the second thing: God's choice was made before the world's creation. Paul writes in Ephesians chapter one — beginning in verse three — "Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundations of the earth." He chose us. God chose us by Himself, for His own glory, for His own praise, before the creation of the world, independently of human influence. He saved those who were united with Him forever for His own good pleasure, to manifest His love and His power and His grace, so that we would give glory to God.
A Display Case for the Work of God
The very act of us walking around as believers gives glory and power to God and displays His majesty. In John chapter nine, Jesus and the disciples are walking into the city. There is a blind man, and they ask the traditional wisdom of the day: who sinned, this man or his parents? Jesus said, neither. He was blind that he might be a display case for the great works of God.
As you walk around as a person who has been born again through the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you become a display case for the work of God. As you walk onto the Hamilton or Gilbert, the Dobson, Mesquite, or Highlands campus, and people understand that you have been saved by grace through faith, you become a display case for the work of God. As you walk into Intel tomorrow, as you walk into the family reunion or the Thanksgiving dinner or the Christmas gathering, there is something distinctive and unique about you. What we know is that it has nothing to do with you — that He saved you in spite of you, not because of you — and you walk in and become a display case for the work of God. People see God's work in you.
God's Choice Is Not Based on Merit
God's choice is not based on merit. You did not do anything to cause this. There were no works that you could perform. What we are really talking about when we get into that is religion — man trying to appease a holy God. Second Timothy chapter one, verse nine: "God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works." It is not because of something we have done, are doing, or will do, but according to His own grace, according to His own purpose, according to His own good pleasure alone.
Our salvation is by grace through faith, apart from works. Grace is the basis for our salvation. In Romans chapter nine, verse eleven, speaking of Jacob and Esau, where the children had not yet been born and had not done anything good or evil, they were chosen "that the purpose of God, according to His election, might stand — not because of their works." There is no work you can perform, no duty you can fulfill, no task you can do that earns God's pleasure. You are chosen for His own purposes.
God's Choice Is Not Based on Foreseen Faith
I want to add this point: God's choice is not based on man's foreseen faith. We are not saying that God looks down the corridor of time, sees those who would respond to the gospel, and chooses them on that basis. We hear that periodically, and I have even said it before — that God chooses, but then I choose too, and this is how it works: God looks down from before the foundations of the earth, sees billions and billions of people, and because He knows everything, He sees those who would respond to Him and preemptively chooses them.
But there is a problem with that. If God looks down the corridors of time and sees billions of natural, fallen men, how many will He see choosing Him? None. He looks down the corridors of time and they are saying, "I don't want anything to do with you. I don't understand it. I don't get it. I'm not attracted to it. I'm repulsed by it." If He looks down the corridors of time, He does not see any who would ever respond or ever choose Him. They are dead. They are deaf. They are blind. Something has to happen to them.
Who Believes? God's Sovereign Mercy
So who believes? Romans chapter nine, verse sixteen: "So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God's mercy." Acts chapter thirteen, verse forty-eight — of which John MacArthur writes, "This is one of Scripture's clearest statements on the sovereignty of God and salvation. God chooses man for salvation, not the opposite" — "as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed." Not the other way around. It is not that I believe and then am appointed to eternal life.
We look at Lydia: the Lord opened her eyes, as recorded in Acts chapter sixteen. Philippians chapter one, verse twenty-nine tells us that it has been granted to us to believe and to understand.
This brings us to the final point: God's choice is based on His sovereign mercy. Turning to Romans chapter nine, where we will spend a few minutes — God's choice is not based on any works; it is based on His mercy. Titus chapter three, verse four: "But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by the works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit."
Election Is Not Based on Works
That just drives a stake in the heart of religion. Religion is all about our works. Religion is about a sinful man reaching up to a holy God, doing this, doing this, doing this. It may be nothing more than simply being good — that's works. Or it may be some form of faith that says Jesus died, but you have to do something too. God chooses us not based on that — nothing. Here, for a fourth or fifth time tonight: not based on anything we have done, are doing, or will do, but based on His sovereign mercy.
In the book of Romans, God is, through Paul, writing a blanket indictment of the history of mankind — Romans 1, 2, and 3. We've all sinned. We fall short of the glory of God. Here is God's provision for this: justification by faith. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We are dead to sin and now in Christ.
There is this unbreakable chain we will talk about in two weeks. All who are foreknown are predestined. All who are predestined are called. All who are called are justified. All who are justified are glorified. What can separate us from the love of Christ — not our love for Him, but His love for us? The answer is obviously nothing.
The Illustration of Jacob and Esau
Now Paul begins to illustrate it — and this is a magnificent illustration of how God chooses. Romans 9, verse 10: "Not only this, but there was Rebecca also. When she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac, for though the twins had not yet been born, they had not done anything good or bad, but in order that God's purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls."
Here is one woman, Rebecca. She has twins, and Paul goes out of his way to say by one man — one father, one mother. This is important because some were saying God chooses on the basis of heritage or lineage or ancestry. So here are these twins: same ancestry, same lineage, same heritage. They are in the womb. They had not done anything yet.
Paul makes an interesting distinction here. They had not done anything good that might merit salvation, and they had not done anything bad that would in some way disqualify them. They are in the womb. And God chooses. In fact, here is what it says in verse 12: "God says to her, the older will serve the younger." Contrary to the tradition of families at that time, the younger is going to dominate the older.
Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated." Let that sit. Let it simmer for a second. There are these two twins in the womb — same mother, same father, nothing good and nothing bad done yet — and God says, "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated." What has to well up in us at that is the feeling that it isn't fair, that it doesn't seem right.
What "Loved" and "Hated" Mean
When it comes to the language of love and hate here, it is important to get our arms around what Paul is actually saying. What he is saying is that God is going to divinely bless one and simply leave the other to be judged. That is what God does here: He chooses those who will be saved.
Every once in a while someone will ask, what about all those people who want to come to Christ but are not chosen? What about those who desire to believe the gospel but are not chosen? The answer is that they do not exist. The natural man does not want to come to Christ. The only way someone would want to respond to the gospel is if God had infiltrated their heart and opened their eyes.
God is not, by the way, leaping into Esau's life and forcing him to sin and sin and sin. God is simply blessing one and allowing Esau to be Esau — allowing the other to be who he really is. Jacob, He loved. Esau, He hated. Inside us wells up the feeling that says that is not fair. Paul anticipates that response.
No Injustice with God
So he writes, "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?" Do not start with the "that's not fair" argument. "May it never be." Here is what is happening: one person receives mercy, another person receives justice. No one is treated unfairly. The mercy shown to one does not obligate God to extend mercy to the other. God, in His sovereignty, has chosen to put favor on Jacob and to let Esau be Esau. That is a powerful illustration of all of this.
That is why God said to Moses, in verse 15, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and compassion on whom I will have compassion." He is God — He can do whatever He wants. He acts independently of us. He does not have to answer to you or to me. God extends His mercy on whoever He wants, compassion on whoever He wants, and allows judgment to fall on the others. "So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on the God who has mercy."
The Hardening of Pharaoh
Here is a further illustration. "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, 'For this purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, that My name might be proclaimed throughout the earth.'" So then, "He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires." We need to understand that hardening a little more carefully.
One author writes this: "This does not mean that God actively created unbelief or some other evil in Pharaoh's heart, but rather He withdrew all the divine influences that ordinarily acted as a restraint to sin, and allowed Pharaoh's wicked heart to pursue its sin unrestricted." God did not go in and make Pharaoh do something he did not want to do. God simply — and here is the phrase of the day — let Pharaoh be Pharaoh.
Grace Given, Not Earned
There are those who look at great tragedies, like the Holocaust, and ask why God does not intervene more. My answer is that I do not understand why we do not have more of them. We often use the phrase, when we see somebody in an adverse situation, "there but for the grace of God go I." Let us elevate that beyond mere circumstantial hardship. When you look at somebody immersed in awful sin, somebody who commits heinous crimes, the truth is: there but for the grace of God go you.
If you are a Christian, if you took communion today, if you are truly saved, He had mercy on you. He spared you. He did not give you what you deserve. He is absolutely entitled to give you justice — punishment, eternal separation from Him forever, hell, dark and hopeless abandonment — and yet instead He gives you grace and mercy.
Answering the Objection
Because we are trying to sort this out, Paul anticipates the next question. In verse 19 he writes that we will say, "Why does He still find fault? How can He hold me responsible? If He has not chosen me, how can He hold me responsible?" The implied argument is that we have sinned and chosen our sin, and yet Paul chastises us at this point.
He essentially says, "Who do you think you are?" — "On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it?" The potter has the right over the clay to do whatever he wants with it, "to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use."
God is God. Let God be God. He is going to choose whom He wants and have mercy where He wants. That extension of mercy does not obligate Him in any way, shape, or form to have mercy on anyone else.
Humility, Not Arrogance
Let me be clear before we close: none of this should produce an attitude of arrogance or pride in you. Hopefully we have stripped away all of that over the course of this series. His choosing of you, His showing mercy on you, is not the result of something you have done, are doing, or will do.
It is the result of His desiring to use you to demonstrate His purpose to the world, His pleasure to the world, His grace and majesty to the world. That truth ought to bubble up in you an extraordinary sense of thanksgiving and praise.
Looking Ahead
As you consider these five points, you will talk to many people who want to designate themselves as a two-point or three-point Calvinist. Very often you will hear someone say they are a four-point Calvinist, and the point they will struggle with is the L — limited atonement, or particular redemption. We will tackle that next week.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth. Thank you so much for saving us in spite of us — not because of who we are, but in spite of that. Not as a result of works, that we might boast, not as a result of anything that we have done, or are doing, or will do. God, thank you for saving us for Your own purpose and Your own pleasure.
Thank you for reminding us that salvation is not something we initiate by our choice, or an act of our will, or a work that we perform. Salvation is entirely a gift from You, and that humbles us. God, we are grateful to You for the provision that You give us in Jesus Christ. We pray to You in His name. Amen.