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Sunday School

Lesson 9: Sovereign Election, Questions

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Greg Ho

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Summary

This lesson continues a series on the doctrine of sovereign election, addressing practical questions from the congregation. The central thesis is that God’s sovereign choice in salvation and human responsibility are both simultaneously true, and understanding this should humble us and lead us to worship.

Key Lessons:

  1. Sovereign election is not itself the gospel — the gospel is “repent and believe” — but what you believe instead of election can lead to dangerous theological errors like open theism, works-based salvation, or universalism.
  2. Scripture teaches two kinds of calls: a general call extended to all people (which is resistible) and an effectual call to the elect (which results in salvation), and both are genuine.
  3. Every event in the universe has two causes — a primary human cause and a secondary divine cause — which explains how God’s sovereignty and human responsibility coexist without contradiction.
  4. God’s decree of election is active (He intervenes to save the chosen), while His decree of reprobation is passive (He endures and passes over those not chosen), meaning God does not actively predestine people to damnation.

Application: We are called to respond to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty with humility and worship rather than pride or fatalism. We must continue to evangelize and pray as acts of obedience, trusting that God ordains both the ends and the means. We should teach our children the faith with hopeful expectation that God will save them.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does understanding the doctrine of secondary causes (God’s sovereignty and human responsibility both being true) change the way you view difficult circumstances in your life?
  2. If sovereign election should produce humility rather than pride, what are practical warning signs that theological knowledge is puffing you up instead?
  3. How should the distinction between the general call and the effectual call shape the way we share the gospel with friends, neighbors, and our own children?

Scripture Focus: Romans 9:11-16 (God’s choice not based on works), Romans 9:22-23 (vessels of wrath and mercy), Acts 2:23 (dual causation in Christ’s crucifixion), Philippians 2:12-13 (work out salvation / God who works), Romans 10:14-15 (necessity of preaching), Romans 11:33-36 (doxology of God’s sovereignty), Ephesians 2:3-5 (children of wrath saved by mercy).

Outline

Introduction

Good morning everyone. It is 9 o’clock by my watch and we may need every minute.

I have another 14 pages of single space notes. Well, it’s good to see you and it’s good to be here again to discuss the doctrine of sovereign election once again as we get settled. I’m going to start us out with a word of prayer. Father, as we come before you to study this weighty topic and what you have for us and even just answer the questions that we have from a congregation, we pray that you would give us insight. We pray that your holy spirit would help us to understand.

We would humble ourselves before your scriptures and that you would just show us wonderful and amazing things that we could be in awe of you and could worship you. Thank you Lord for choosing us before the foundation of the world to be vessels of mercy. I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Recap: Who Determines Who Is Saved?

All right. Quick recap and we will get to some questions. What is the nature of the topic? The nature of the topic, what we’re trying to discuss is who ultimately determines who is saved.

Now I should say at the outset that for this topic that we’re discussing today, most of the people on the other side also believe in the same gospel. We’re saved by faith through Jesus Christ. But what we don’t agree on is who ultimately determines who is saved. So there’s two choices.

Either you are saved because of God’s choice or you are saved because of man’s choice, because of your choice.

“Either you are saved because of God’s choice or you are saved because of man’s choice.”

Last time we said that the scriptural answer is actually both of these things.

God’s sovereign choice. You’re saved by God’s sovereign choice, but the choice was so that you would freely make the choice to believe. You are saved by God’s sovereign choice, but the result of that was that you were given the grace to freely choose to believe.

“You are saved by God’s sovereign choice, but the result was that you were given the grace to freely choose to believe.”

This debate is also a lot of times framed as a predestination versus free will debate.

Just to give you a little bit of color here, what do you really believe when you say God’s choice is ultimate? Well, you’re saying God chose me before I chose him, right? You’re also saying that he gave me a new heart that wanted Christ. Your old heart was dead in his transgression and trespasses and sins, and you needed a new heart. That new heart was given to you and that heart wanted Christ. Then you made the decision to believe. And also you’re saying my faith is real but it is the result of grace. It’s not generated from myself.

What about the other side? The other side of the debate is my choice is ultimate. A lot of times what they’ll say is God makes salvation possible for everyone. This is something a term that you’ll hear called prevenient grace, which means God just sort of makes salvation possible, but then he just kind of waits to see who will actually take that decision. He waits to see and that faith is yours and God sort of responds to it. That’s the two sides of the debate.

Last time we had gone through about six or seven Bible verses. The problem with this topic isn’t that there is not enough Bible verses, but that there is just way too many. We’re not trying to hang any doctrine on one or two verses of scripture. We are literally going through all of these scriptures and seeing that they all teach the same thing. This is just the New Testament. There’s also a lot of scriptures in the Old Testament that if you were interested in you would be able to see.

Just to give you a little bit of a refresher, in Ephesians 1 we saw that we begin this thinking about this topic by understanding that this whole topic begins with understanding God is the one who this is all about. This is all about God. This is not about man. This is all about God’s plan to exalt Christ. All of human history is about God’s plan to exalt Christ. That just happens to be good for us. But it’s not that we’re the center of the plan.

The other thing that we saw in Ephesians 1 was that he chose us before the foundation of the world. That’s the actual language. He chose us before the foundation of the world. That’s actually not a time because time was created before the foundation of the world.

That we would be holy and blameless before him. And then it says he loved us. In love he predestined us. There’s that word predestined to adoption as sons. And it says exactly the reason why we’re predestined.

It was because of our future faith? No. Because of the kind intention of his will. It’s all because of just his will to the praise of the glory of his grace.

And we saw in Romans 8 that there is what we call the golden chain, which is that those who God foreknew he also called to become conformed to the image of his son so that he might be the firstborn of many brethren. Those whom he called, he also predestined. He also called. These whom he predestined he also called. The same people who he called he also justified. These same people he also justified he also glorified. Those things are all connected from the call all the way from the beginning to the glorification. These are the same people. Very hard to get around that.

We talked about Romans 9. We’re not going to go through that whole thing but I’ll just refresh your memory. In John 6, all that the father has given me will come to me, right? And then later on he says no one can come to me except if the father draws him. If both those things are true you have to conclude that the people who Jesus saves are the people who the father gave him and the people who Jesus saves are the people who the father draws and those are all the same people. These are sort of like the keystone texts that are very difficult to get around.

But then if you go all the way back to Revelation, this is sort of to me one of the main end of the argument, which is that there is a book of life and that book of life was written before the foundation of the world and there are names in it. If your name is in the book of life written before the foundation of the world, you are part of the chosen.

That was just by way of review. Today we are going to be answering some of the questions that you have given. I’m also going to try to leave some time for you to ask some questions if you have any that come to the top of your mind. We have like 10 questions I want to get through and that leaves maybe five minutes per question. For some of them I’ll open it up and see what you have to say about it. Please keep your comments reasonably brief and we will try to answer all of these questions if we can.

All right.

Question 1: Is Belief in Sovereign Election Necessary for Salvation?

The first question is how important is belief in sovereign election.

Is this a doctrine that a person needs to believe to be saved? And another person also asked, can Armenians be saved? Which is the same question. I’m going to answer this first myself and then maybe I’ll open it up later on, but I don’t want to spend too much time on this question. So can Armenians be saved and is this a salvation issue? Well, I just want to say that in some sense, I feel like we’re all Armenians before we come to Christ. My personal testimony is that in fact, before I tell you that, how many of us were saved as Armenians?

Okay. A good number of us, maybe about half of us, right? I came to Christ in a church that was an Armenian church, a church that did not believe that God was predestining people to be saved. The gospel they were preaching was a sincere gospel.

It was a real gospel. It was only a few years later that I discovered, to my surprise, and this is how I discovered it—I was starting to read John Piper in the bathroom. I had a book, “Desiring God” and “Future Grace,” and it was on the bathroom shelf and I picked it up because my roommate was reading it and started to read it and I was like, “Huh, never heard about this stuff before.”

And that’s how I became reformed myself. But I only found out later that actually it wasn’t that I chose God, but that God chose me, right? So that was amazing and I think that is the truth for many other people as well.

But it is important because it is about who gets the glory for salvation, right? So the reason that it’s important is like this: is your salvation basically because you generated enough faith and then you can actually kind of boast in that or not, right? However, we do not hold the doctrine of election to be the gospel in general because it is not the gospel.

The gospel is not you are part of the chosen, right? That’s not the gospel. The gospel is repent and believe, right? So in general, we do not believe this is an immediate salvation issue. However, I will say this: what do you believe instead?

“The gospel is not ‘you are part of the chosen.’ The gospel is repent and believe.”

The Theological Spectrum and Slippery Slopes

Because it’s not about what you don’t believe, right? That determines whether you’re saved. It’s about what you do believe.

What are some of the other choices? This is the reason I wanted to get through this quickly because there’s a lot of other choices and I want to just show you really quickly what they are. Here are some slippery slopes that you can sort of fall down.

If you don’t believe in sort of reformed theology, then you have to ask yourself: Is God sovereign in any real sense? If he sort of lets go of the reins of his sovereignty in the moment of your faith or your faith in Christ, I mean in what sense is he actually sovereign at all? And if you think about it, maybe other decisions as well, right? What other decisions is he letting go? And then at some point you start realizing maybe God doesn’t really control the world in any real sense.

There is this weird logical inconsistency. Some say that God just has foreknowledge. God just sort of knows things. And it’s really hard not to fall down this slippery slope of saying God is not sovereign. He just sort of foreknows things. And then you don’t really know: Is God just playing sort of defense, right? Is that really the nature of God’s sovereignty?

The other thing is: Are you saved because of God’s grace or your own choice? So you might fall into, in a sense, work-based salvation. You might start saying that it is because of me. The real difference between me and you is that I generated enough faith and I humbled myself enough to believe, right? So there’s a slippery slope you can fall down.

The first one is like open theism. The second one is like, well, maybe your work-based salvation. And the third slippery slope is: In the end, is God’s saving faith extended to everyone or only a selected group? Now the problem is if you answer that question wrong, you start sliding into universalism. And universalism is actually, I think, the logical conclusion of Arminianism, which maybe I’ll talk about a little bit later if we have time. But I want to show you what the slope looks like.

“If God lets go of sovereignty in the moment of your faith, in what sense is he actually sovereign at all?”

Right? So this is what the slope looks like. This is like sort of my mental model.

From Hypercalvinism to Open Theism

I didn’t get it from anywhere. There’s something called hyperCalvinism, which is basically a fatalistic nihilism that says, “Okay, it’s too small for you to see, but basically God is sovereign, so why bother with anything? Why bother with prayer?

Why bother with evangelism? Why bother with obedience because God is sovereign and we’re just going to let him be sovereign and we’re just going to not do any of these things?” Well, that is an unbiblical view.

We’re supposed to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. For it is God who works, right? So those are two different things that are simultaneously true at the same time. And if you are a hyperCalvinist, you don’t believe that, and you’re not being obedient to that.

Calvinism is what we believe. Election and God’s sovereignty, Calvinism, reformed theology, doctrines of grace—all these things are the same term. When you say election and God’s sovereignty, we believe both of those two things together.

Arminianism, you start talking about God didn’t elect, but there is something called prevenient grace that sort of allows you to respond. So the interesting thing here is Isaiah says, “By his wounds you were healed.” Arminianism kind of says, “By his wounds you were made healable.”

You were kind of made it so you got out of this total depravity and you’re kind of like now you can peek through and say, “Okay, I can actually make this decision.” Another way of saying it is that we save ourselves with Christ’s help, almost in a sense.

So the biggest difference is the faith of the believer between two people. There’s a lot of big differences. There’s a lot of big problems with Arminianism. One of them is that you allow this possibility of things in the universe happening outside of God’s sovereign decree. We already talked about this before. Ephesians 1:11 says, “God works all things after the counsel of his will.” And Isaiah 46:10 really says this: “God is declaring the end from the beginning, from ancient times, things which have not been done.” So he’s decided all the things that are going to happen.

Ephesians 1:11: “God works all things after the council of his will.”

Saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. So Arminianism kind of runs straight into this. I have another problem with Arminianism, and this is why I said before it kind of slides into universalism: Arminianism doesn’t really have a good answer for the question of what to do with people who have never heard the gospel.

So reformed theology, Calvinism, our answer was what we talked about last week: there are vessels of mercy and then there are vessels of wrath. The vessels of mercy are made all the more—God’s glory is shown all the more in God’s vessels of mercy because we see what we really deserve in the vessels of wrath. But the Arminian answer to this goes something like this: God is looking down the corridors of time, and he sees who will be saved and who won’t.

Now the grace is extended to everybody in the world. So the people who don’t hear the gospel, they would not have responded anyways. That’s basically a version of the answer. There are variations on this answer, but that’s not a very satisfying answer.

And eventually you start sliding into maybe God actually will just judge them based on their reaction to what they’ve heard. That’s another version of Arminianism.

So they might not have heard the gospel, but they have some revelation and God judges them based on that revelation. So then you start—that’s basically very close to universalism.

We’re spending too much time on semiPelagianism. You kind of have to know about some of these terms. Semiplagianism is probably the default view of all churches in America. That is, man takes the first step. You don’t really believe that man is totally depraved in any real sense, and man can take the first step towards God, and then God’s grace comes in synergistically to cooperate with your decision.

So it’s said like this: the work of humanity is to repent and believe, and the work of God is to forgive and redeem. Both of those things work together. So you’re not really depraved. You’re able to respond.

Pelagianism is basically full-blown—man can follow God fully on his own. And by the way, you’re also judged on how you follow God.

Open theism is basically God doesn’t even know the future and he just simply is playing defense based on your decisions. So the original question was: can you be an Arminian and be saved, or do you have to be reformed?

Well, if you look at all these choices, these are the other choices. So which of these do you feel like are outright heresies? What do you think?

Pelagianism and open theism are outright heresy. I would say the first one—I would argue whether or not you’re showing any fruit at all. Semiplagianism, interestingly enough, in the 300s was also declared a heresy in one of the councils. So your choices are not that vast. While we believe that you don’t have to really be reformed to be saved, you just have to understand that the spectrum of things you can believe is kind of narrow based on what you have to believe.

Question 2: The Effectual Call vs. the General Call

Question two. I’ll open up in a second. Last time, this is a good question. Whoever asked this one last time used the disciples as an example of an effectual call, but is this really true since we do not see this from many other examples?

They brought up the Samaritan woman, Nicodemus, rich young ruler. Okay, so this is a good question. Basically at the first outset, I should say that I wasn’t really saying that everybody was saved in that particular way.

I was just using the disciples as an example of a call that seems effectual and immediate, right? But not everyone is saved obviously in the same way the disciples are saved. The disciples were an extreme example.

I think we need to understand a little bit more of theology. There are two calls in scripture. There is what we call the general call, which is a call to everyone to repent and believe. An example of this is Matthew 22:14, where Jesus says, “For many are called but few are chosen.”

Many are called—general call—but few are chosen. The word call is being used in a general sense. Acts 17:30, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, right? It’s not just the chosen should repent, right?

That’s not what it says. It says all people everywhere should repent. So that is a general call. “Come all who are weary and heavy laden,” right? What this means is that there is a general call that comes to all of creation.

But that is resistible. That general call can be resisted. And when you resist it, the gospel is the aroma of death to those who are dying.

However, there is something also called an effectual call. This is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the effectual call in Romans 8:30. Those who are called are justified, right? Those who are justified are glorified.

So that golden chain—the people who were called there are the same people who were glorified at the end. John 6:37, “All that the father will give me gives me will come to me,” right? So that is basically another example.

“No one can come to me except the father draws him.” And then another scripture that we didn’t look at last time that’s really good for this is 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14, which says, “God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit in faith and truth.” So here he says God has chosen you, okay, from the beginning.

“There is a general call that can be resisted, and an effectual call where those who are called are justified and glorified.”

What did he choose you for? For salvation through sanctification. So both salvation and sanctification are included in that choosing. And then verse 14 says, “It was for this he called you through the gospel.” Okay. So the same people he called are the same people who he chose from the beginning.

So there’s an effectual call and a general call. You have to understand that to understand some of these verses—some of them are effectual, some of them are general.

Question 3: Can People Respond If Everything Is Predetermined?

Okay. Question three.

This was a follow-on question and I thought it was a really good question.

When this one is talking about Joshua 24:15, Joshua invites the people to serve God. This is talking about the Israelites. A response is expected, but how can people respond if everything is predetermined? I really mangled this question. Would it be an open invitation? Is it a genuine invitation or not? Can people really repent and believe if they’re not elected?

All right. I’ll open it up for a minute or so. What do you guys think? What would you say?

“Is it a genuine invitation? Can people really repent and believe if they’re not elected?”

Well, it goes back to Matthew. Many are called, few are chosen. The meaning of that is Matthew 20:45 when it talks about many are called but few are chosen. The literal meaning there is all are invited but few are selected. I think there’s a lot to unfold here, but it is a genuine invitation. It is a real invitation. But the reality behind chosen is those who will respond to the invitation. I will say this: I think we shouldn’t feel the need to be on the hook to explain all this. This is in the mind of God. We can just affirm it, but we don’t have to fully explain it.

And this is where you and I talked about this earlier—Wesley and Whitfield.

Wesley felt the need to explain it, right?

And Whitfield didn’t.

Yeah, you’re spoiling my next question.

That’s okay.

Joshua 24 — A Genuine but Impossible Offer

Okay. This is a really interesting verse because Joshua 24:15. What’s happening here is that if you actually turn there—you don’t have to, but if you actually turn there—you would see what the context of this is. The people Joshua is telling the people: look, you have to sort of repent and you have to forsake all of these other gods. So the choice is this.

Choose for yourself today whom you will serve. Whether the gods which your father served which are beyond the river. As for my house we will serve the Lord. Okay. So we have this plaque on our door that says “As for me in my house we will serve the Lord.” Very famous verse.

But verse 19 and following, Joshua actually seems extremely skeptical that they could do this. And in fact, in verse 19, this is what he says: “You will not be able to serve the Lord.”

That’s not on our plaque.

We should probably put that on our plaque. “You actually will not be able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God and he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.” Later on, even afterwards, he seems pretty skeptical.

And in fact, the whole air and flavor of that verse is: okay, we’re going to make a covenant that’s going to be a witness against you when you fail this covenant. So it almost seems kind of like rigged from the beginning, right? Even that call seems like it was a genuine offer.

And I think in the end of the day you have to say it was a genuine offer, just as Mark said. However, they could not respond to it in the right way.

Now, why could the Israelites not respond to it? All throughout their history, they could not respond to it. And you have to say that the answer is because the ability to respond to the invitation comes from grace. And at that point, God had not given them the grace to respond.

“The invitation is real, but the ability to respond to it comes from grace.”

Two Simultaneous Realities: Sovereignty and Responsibility

And this is exactly the same as how salvation works. The invitation is real, but the ability to respond for it comes from grace. One thing you have to understand is two realities are true at the same time. God is both sovereign and man is responsible for his actions.

This tension is sort of behind this question. I’m not saying the person who asked had this spirit, but I’m just saying this is sort of the reason why we are confused by these things. We have to simultaneously believe that God is sovereign and that man is responsible. A lot of times we’ll say if God’s sovereign, then why is man responsible? Why are we responsible to respond to a call?

I want to clarify this misunderstanding a little bit as best as I can. The invitation for salvation is genuine, but the ability and willingness to respond is grace. Here’s my mental model. At the level of reality, that’s how things really work. That is God sort of peeling back the curtain of the universe and showing you the insides, like kind of like the engine of the car. This is how the universe actually works. Why does he want us to know this? Well, he wants us to give him the glory and also because we need to understand that God is completely sovereign.

Number two, we also know that man is responsible for his actions and this is how we experience this earthly existence, right? We experience cause and effect. If I do X, then Y will happen in response. Both of these things are true simultaneously.

“God is both sovereign and man is responsible for his actions. Both realities are true at the same time.”

One way to say this is we interpret the world through God’s absolute sovereignty. That is, we sort of interpret the world around us. We say God is sovereign over all these things. Like you woke up and you chose a red shirt as opposed to a blue shirt. Well, God was sovereign over that. But we live responsibly through the means God has ordained. So whatever God tells us to do, we live through those means.

This is really something that I had to think about for a long time to get to. I think this is really the crux of the issue, right? This is how we think about God’s sovereignty. A lot of times we come to this idea of God’s sovereignty and we’re really bothered by it. And this is how I think about it.

Two Unbiblical Responses to God’s Sovereignty

There are also two common unbiblical ways to respond to God’s sovereignty. I just want to put that before you real fast before we move on to the next question. These are really common, and these are the two pitfalls that we see very frequently.

Accusing God of Injustice (Romans 9:19)

So, one is to accuse God of injustice, right? We saw exactly this accusation in Romans 9:19. This is where the person says, “Well, if God is sovereign, if you love Jacob and you hated Esau, why does God still find fault, right? What’s the point? Why would he even say?” And remember, if you were here from last time, God—Paul actually gave two answers to this question. So, like why does God still find faults?

“One common unbiblical response is to accuse God of injustice.”

Very good question. Two answers, right?

The first answer was what? Yeah. What? You have no right to ask that question actually. And the fact that you would even ask that question means that you are looking at this whole thing from a man-centered perspective and not a God-centered perspective. That’s actually what Paul is saying.

He’s saying you’re looking at the salvation completely wrong. It’s not about you. It’s about the potter. You’re the pot. Okay? Pots don’t ask questions. It’s the potter, right? The potter who has the right to make pots depending on what he wants.

But the second answer was sort of maybe the more real answer, which is that God is doing all this for the glory of his own name. He’s making vessels of wrath and he’s making vessels of mercy, and the vessels of wrath show all the more the mercy that he puts on the vessels of mercy. So that’s the answer to this accusation. You start accusing God of injustice. Go read Romans 9:19 again.

“God is doing all this for the glory of his own name. Vessels of wrath show all the more the mercy upon vessels of mercy.”

All right. But that’s an amazing answer.

The other pitfall is what we called before. Is it up or down? Up. Right.

Fatalism and Hypercalvinism

Down. Okay. There we go. All right. It’s basically what we call fatalism, and we talked about this already: hypercalvinism.

The best answer I can give to hypercalvinism is that Romans 10 comes after Romans 9. Paul is not a hyperalvinist. How do I know? Because he tells you about God’s sovereignty in Romans 9. He defends it very rigorously.

And then in Romans 10, he says this: “How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent?” So he’s telling you to evangelize like fourteen verses after he tells you that God is sovereign. So how do we reconcile those two things? Well, I think we go back to Philippians 2. The command of God is to work out your salvation in fear and trembling. So that’s work. That’s you doing the work.

“Romans 10 comes after Romans 9. Paul tells you to evangelize fourteen verses after telling you God is sovereign.”

For it is God who works in you for his good pleasure. Okay? God works in you for his good pleasure. Those two things are happening at the same time. And God’s sovereignty in no way is absolving us of responsibility. All right. I’m going to give you a shot at the next question.

Ready?

The Biblical Response: Awe and Assurance

Okay. Here, God’s sovereignty fills us with awe and assurance. That’s okay.

Those are the two unbiblical ones. I think the biblical reaction to God’s sovereignty is that it fills us with awe and also assurance that neither height nor depth or life or death can separate us from the love of God. All right.

“The biblical reaction to God’s sovereignty is awe and assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

Question 4: Squaring Sovereignty with Human Responsibility

Somebody asked me to square God’s sovereignty with human responsibility.

Is there a safe way to fit these doctrines together? Anybody have a short answer to this question?

Arthur connects back to your previous man responsible for his. I wanted to answer that question. This gives me an opportunity to do it and I’ll make it short.

Thanks.

When we talk about sovereignty, this is how I feel. We have to understand that there are certain words that define what sovereignty is.

I would add that man is responsible. Man is held responsible for his actions. That defines sovereignty for God. God chooses whom will be his children or who will not be his children. I think the problem is, and I mentioned this with you, is the use of the word free will.

God allows man to choose between two options.

So if you use those types of phrases, you’re always identifying God’s sovereignty. When you take God out of the picture and you use a word like free will, it gives the impression that man can actually create his own universe apart from God.

There are things man can do apart from God. There’s nothing we can do apart from God, even in our choices.

“There’s nothing we can do apart from God, even in our choices.”

That’s a great answer actually. Really the end of Colossians 1 says, talking about Christ, he sustained all things and all things in him, all things hold together. So actually nothing happens in the universe without God’s immediate control. Dwayne, and then I’ll tell you what I have.

You said short. Yeah, how do we square them? The Bible clearly teaches both of them and you have to. You can’t argue with that.

God teaches both of them.

This is what Mark said.

Thanks Mark. Sorry.

My answer was not really.

The Doctrine of Secondary Causes

Okay, but I’ll give my best shot. And this is not something I came up with, but there is something called the doctrine of secondary causes. And if you think long enough about this, I feel like you get a better understanding of how this works.

So, what is the doctrine of secondary causes? The doctrine of secondary causes basically says that there are—okay, let me back up. The assumption that we make as humans is that there is one cause for every event that occurs, right? So one thing happens: either I caused it or God caused it, but it can’t be both. Actually, the biblical answer turns out that every action has two causes. Okay, so that’s actually the biblical answer, and once you start looking for it, it’s everywhere. So one is in Genesis 50:20, very, very, very famous.

Joseph says after his brothers sold him or threw him in the pit, became a slave, went to Egypt, all of this stuff happened, right? And then years later the brothers came and apologized, and he said, “Well, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.” There are two parties in that; they are both meaning things, right? So the action has a first, a primary cause, which is the brothers. The brothers had a primary cause of throwing him in the pit. That is the primary cause. The secondary cause we would say is God and his sovereignty. Both those things are true, but the motives are different.

“Every action has two causes. What you meant for evil, God meant for good.”

Okay? So that’s not the only time you see it, right? Acts 2:23: “This man delivered over by the predetermined, listen to this, plan and foreknowledge of God.” It’s very hard to get away from this stuff. “You nailed to a cross by the hand of godless men and put him to death.” How many parties are there?

Well, there are obviously the Jews and the Romans who nailed him to the cross. Now, what was their motive? Their motive was murder, right? They wanted to kill Jesus. But this man was delivered over by the predetermined plan. Okay? So God’s plan was also to nail Jesus to the cross. There was one action, two causes. And this is true not only for these particular instances, but actually the Bible says this is true for everything that happens in the world, in the universe. Proverbs 16:9 says, “The mind of man plans his way.” But the Lord what?

Proverbs 16:9: “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

Directs his steps. Okay. How many parties are there? Well, the man who plans his way and the Lord who’s directing his steps—both of those things are simultaneously true in every event in the universe. And this doctrine of secondary causes is the reason why we can kind of squint at this a little bit and maybe get a little bit more understanding, right? That’s my best answer for this question.

Yes?

When you use the word responsibility, what do you mean? And the reason I ask is not to go down a rabbit hole, but I’ve heard a lot of people say responsibility implies ability. And so I tend to shy away from it because people associate those things, and I think from what you’re saying, human ability is negated here.

Yeah. I think these words are difficult to define down in a very precise term, but clearly God is holding sinful humanity responsible for their sin. Accountable for their sin, yeah. Are they, in a sovereign sense, in the big picture sense? Are they actually able to respond in the way that God requires them to? And I think we have to say the answer is no, right? But this is sort of going back to: is there injustice with God?

Well, there’s a potter and there’s a pot, and you’re the pot.

Question 5: Did God Choose Jacob Based on Foreseen Faith?

Next question in Romans 9:13: “Jacob, I loved Esau. I hated.” Can we say that God hated Esau because God knew he would sell his birthright as a firstborn? This whole question basically is: did God just look down the corridors of time and look at Jacob’s future response, that he would respect God’s birthright, and Esau’s future response, that he would not?

This idea is the classical Arminian view and it’s also expressed as “foreseen faith.” If you’ve ever heard this term, “prescient” or “simple foreknowledge”—these are all terms that theologians use to describe this view. What do you guys think?

Did God look down the corridors of time in Romans 9:13? Anybody have an answer? No. Okay, good. Do you have a justification?

Okay, it’s 9:43. I think we have to go. All right. Fine. All right.

I think it just doesn’t fit the context. If you look a little bit more, stare a little bit more at the passage, you see 9:11: “The twins were not yet born and had not yet done anything good or bad.” So you might say, well, maybe they had not yet done anything good or bad. Maybe that’s what God is looking at, so that God’s purpose according to his choice would stand. It’s actually according to his choice.

And here’s the nail in the coffin: “Not because of works but because of him who calls.” So it’s not because of works at all. If it’s not because of works, it’s also not because of future works.

“It’s not because of works but because of him who calls. If not because of works, it’s also not because of future works.”

9:16 says, “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs. It’s not that I desired the birthright or not, right? But on God who has mercy.” Yep.

Really quick, I just want to say that if you think that question is constructed, then you are suggesting that time controls God’s decisions. God’s decisions, how he acts in the world, is not controlled by time because he created time. He’s the author of time.

Amen. Yep. Amen. All right. Moving on. Got 15 minutes for five more questions. All right.

Question 6: Does Divine Election Kill Evangelism?

Won’t divine election kill our drive to evangelize or pray for the lost since God promises he’s going to save them no matter what?

Okay. How would you answer?

No.

Okay.

Yeah. Exactly right. I’ll tell you, this is actually probably why the whole idea of Calvinism gets a bad rap. It’s like a really bad reputation because people have this perception that this is how we feel.

I don’t know if Eric remembers this, but a few weeks ago this woman came up to the stairs of the church and I think she was lost. I walked up to the stairs—I was trying to go get somewhere. I had some things I was taking somewhere and she catches me and she’s like, “Oh, this person looks like they know what they’re doing.”

And I tried to help her, but she said, what was that comment she said? She’s like, “Oh, you’re a Calvinist. Be nice.” So somehow she figured out our church was reformed or something and that was like, “You’re probably not nice, right?”

Anyways, we have a bad reputation. Not we, but this is a really big sort of thought outside of reformed circles. And if you ever go on social media or something, people will be attacking Calvinism because of this.

Okay, so what would I say about this? Up or down?

Down. Yeah, it’s okay. I’m really bad at this. Okay, here we go. First of all, we have to understand that these things are a matter of obedience, right? So we don’t evangelize because we think we’re saving anybody. That’s the biggest thing. Like Arminians may evangelize because they think if they don’t share the gospel with these people, in an ultimate sense they might be responsible. But we share the gospel because it’s a matter of obedience.

We work out our salvation in fear and trembling and it’s God who works. The other thing is we have to understand that God ordains not only what will happen but also the means of how that will happen. So evangelism and prayer—you pray for somebody and they become saved.

Well, what was the primary cause and the secondary cause of that event, right? The primary cause was God. I mean, you understand what I’m saying. I’m not saying it’s because of your prayer, but the prayer is in the universe that we inhabit an effectual thing.

And evangelism is the same thing. If you didn’t share the gospel with that person from your perspective, from our human perspective, they would not have heard the gospel.

“We don’t evangelize because we think we’re saving anybody. We share the gospel as a matter of obedience.”

However, it is God who works in that.

Warnings Against Disobedience

And he was sovereign over that whole thing anyways, right? He was sovereign over that whole thing. I want to just give you two quick warnings. If you are tempted to think in this way, which I think sometimes we all are to be honest, I ran across Esther 4:14. If all places, Esther Mordecai says this. He says, “If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place.” Okay, so this is how we think about this in Calvinist terms. It’s like, well, if we don’t do it, God will figure out how to do it anyways, right?

So relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place. Mordecai says God’s still going to be sovereign. He’ll figure out a way, but you and your father’s house will perish. So you could disobey at your own peril, right? Ezekiel 3:18. This is also really chilling.

He says, “When I say to the wicked, you will surely die, and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.”

Esther 4:14: “Relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish.”

Question 7: How Do We Evangelize Truthfully?

There’s some context to this, but in general, we have to remember that God does require us to obey. Jonah is another example who thought I’m just not going to obey and that turned out to be very painful for him.

Okay, question seven. How do we do evangelism in a truthful way?

We can’t say Jesus loves you. Maybe he doesn’t. We can’t say Jesus is calling because we are not sure he is. Mainly we can’t say Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins if we don’t know if he is the one whom we are speaking to, don’t know if the one whom we are speaking to is one of the elect.

This is a really great question. For me, I would say when people say God has a wonderful plan for your life or God loves you and has a wonderful life for your life, I don’t know if it’s that wonderful of a plan. But what would you say?

You don’t have to hyperpersonalize it if you don’t have to, but yeah. Tell them about the nature of God and his plan. Good answer.

Compare Jesus and the apostles. They don’t use phrases like this. Jesus loves you, wonderful things like that. We’ll get into this more in the next few lessons. It’s really starkly different than how a lot of people express it. Very good. We won’t spoil that because that’s next week, right?

We had to move on. I’ll get you next time. We got ten minutes and three more questions.

Okay. You guys all gave better answers than I had, but basically it’s actually not wrong, I don’t think, to say Jesus is calling. There is a general call. Jesus loves you. Jesus kind of does love everyone in a general sense and is good to all, the righteous as well as the unrighteous, and he desires that no one should perish. I think the last one I would tweak a little bit. Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins. Maybe I would tweak that a little bit to say Jesus died on the cross for sinners, for all who believe.

“There is a general call. Jesus is good to all, the righteous as well as the unrighteous.”

Evangelizing Our Children

Okay. Next one is a really great question. The best, probably the best question I’ve gotten about this topic. How can we evangelize our children in light of the above? Can we tell them Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins? And you can extrapolate this to say, can we teach them songs like “Jesus Loves Me” or “I Can Run to Jesus, Jesus Died for Me”? What do you guys think?

Not many answers on this one, huh? All right.

So this is where trusting God’s—so that the woman’s friend said it’s no longer believe Jesus’ words to our—yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Arthur, and then I’ll—again, this question ties into the last one.

I think this is one of the areas that people really misunderstand when Jesus says, “Judge not, judge not lest you be judged.” We all know what sin is, especially when we’re saved. We understand what sin is. We know how damaging it is. But to go beyond that and make the mental decision of going to call this person or call this person—that’s a form of judgment.

Yeah.

Because God, he already knows who he’s going to call. So he doesn’t give us that right to determine who is going to be called. I tie that into judgment.

If you’re looking at even your own children, look at, “No way God’s gonna save this kid.” He doesn’t know. We wouldn’t think that way as a parent.

Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting. Huh.

Yeah. I think the spirit of the question is more like, we don’t know necessarily. Are we lying to them when we say God will save you? You had something?

It’s always—oh, yeah, these are great answers. Here’s what I said. Oh, sorry. Okay.

So I do think that kids are in—at least kids of believing parents or kids in the church—are a little bit of a different category than adults in how we deal with them. And we often teach them songs to sing and believe what we want. We teach them to believe what we want them to believe.

They don’t really have a belief system built in at birth, and we kind of want to install one, right? It’s not like, let’s install the right one. And also, we must make it clear that when they get a little older, they can understand this is actually really only true if you believe, and we have to make that clear.

But the reality is in the church, we often catechize children that have a limited understanding with simple faith, and we do this sort of ahead of their hearts. We tell them to think, we teach them to think as believers, and we do this with the hopeful expectation that God will save them. And in fact, this is a larger question we don’t have time to get into really, but I do believe that children of believers are in a better place and more likely in a cosmic sense.

“We teach children to think as believers with the hopeful expectation that God will save them.”

You don’t understand. I’m not saying likely, but that they’re extended more grace, I guess, than children of unbelievers or even unbelievers in general. And 1 Corinthians 7:14 it says, “Otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy,” talking about if you have an unbelieving spouse staying with a believing spouse.

And the implication of that verse is actually that the children, even if you have just one parent who’s believing, there’s some sense in which the children are set apart in a sense that other non-believing children are not. And I guess in a human sense, are more likely to believe. Okay.

Should Sovereign Election Be a Secret?

Okay. Two more questions. Two more minutes. We’re going to do it. Should solvent election be a family secret that we only talk about with believers since unbelievers will misunderstand. I’m just going to answer this because we we don’t have much.

We’re running out of time. Again, I would say sovereign election is not the gospel.

So, it’s not necessary to bring it up if you don’t have to because it’s a big conversation and we had two classes of this and we really barely scratched the surface. And the apostles as as Mark was saying before, the apostles did not preach going preach. Are you called?

Are you called? No, they didn’t preach that way. They said everywhere every everybody everywhere should repent. Also, if they ask though, if they say, “Hey, I hear you’re this whole Calvinist thing and you you believe in sovereign election.

What what is the deal with all that?” You don’t have to you don’t have to proaricate. You don’t have to lie about it. You don’t have to avoid the question. And we can have the freedom to do that because because we are reformed.

We believe that God is sovereign. So if we tell them the truth and they don’t believe that’s not because we told them the truth. That’s because God didn’t regenerate them. So this is where our belief in God’s sovereignty is very freeing. Okay last question.

“Our belief in God’s sovereignty is very freeing. If they don’t believe, it’s because God didn’t regenerate them.”

Question 10: Does God Elect Some for Damnation?

Does God elect some for salvation and some for damnation?

This is also known as double predestination.

Do we believe in double predestination, or another term that you might have heard about this is equal ultimacy?

All right, I’m just going to answer it because this will take a long time. The answer is actually no.

We don’t believe that as a church, and I don’t believe it’s biblical. Here is the reason. This is the order that God sort of does this thing. First of all, everyone is sinful and God decrees judgment on all sinful humanity. But then, having decreed judgment on all sinful humanity, God actively intervenes to save those he chooses but passively passes over those who he doesn’t, who is not written in the book of life. He passes over those others for mercy.

Now, where do I get this? Ephesians 2: you were by nature children of wrath. God is not actively making you children of wrath. You were by nature children of wrath, but God—now here’s the active part—being rich in mercy, right? Because of his great love which he loved us, he saved us.

Another way to see this is Romans 9:22-23.

This is really a key verse to understand this. It says, “What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand.” All right? If you look at that verse long enough, you see how he dealt with vessels of wrath. He what? Endured.

“The decree of election is active, but the decree of reprobation is passive — letting happen what would happen without mercy.”

It’s a passive enduring. However, what about vessels of mercy? Well, he prepared it beforehand. So we believe that the decree—we’ll call it a theological way, we’ll say it this way—the decree of election is an active decree, but the decree of reprobation is a passive decree. He’s basically just letting happen what would happen if you didn’t have mercy in the first place. Okay, I need to end.

Closing: Sovereignty Should Humble Us

Basically the why the way I want to close this sort of series is to say and to really make sure that we understand that the the the doctrine of the sovereignty god of god is really meant to humble you and not puff you up. And this is why Calvinism gets a bad reputation. It’s because there are many people who are very theologically minded.

We’re very Calvinistic but are very puffed up. Right? And Calvinism once you understand it, once you understand God’s sovereignty, it should humble you. Should be have the opposite effect. And if you’re puffed up, that means you didn’t understand it. All right. And I’ll close again with Romans 11:33-36.

Oh, the depths of riches of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How uncarchable are his judgments and how unfathomable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who became his counselor or who has first given to him that it might be repaid to him.

Romans 11:33: “Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways.”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Let’s close in prayer.

Father, thank you for this doctrine. I pray that whatever I said that was wrong or not not maybe the best answer would you would sort of like make people forget that. But the stuff that is right. We pray that you would just have that burrow in our burrow in our hearts and really change our view about you to give you the glory for our salvation and to be able to talk about these things intelligently and graciously with those who disagree.

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