After my last few posts, you may be thinking, “Sean, I am more confused than when I first started reading your posts. Thanks for nothing, loser!” Well, I can understand your angst, and so I will give you my last, feeble offering on understanding how this all works. No, you don’t have to close your eyes and listen (especially since this isn’t a podcast), or picture yourself in a field surrounded by flowers (unless that makes you feel in a theological mood).
In the end of this whole discussion, I am left with a simple analogy. Picture time and the flow of history as a river. The river itself is unstoppable and the river is the flow of God’s redemptive plan. Nothing can alter it or divert or stop it. Its source is God Himself before time began. We are on the banks of that river in the course of our lives, walking beside it. Whenever any human choice has an impact upon the river, God’s sovereignty overrides that choice. Picture us walking around the banks, and occasionally to get where we are going, we must cross the river. As soon as our path meets the river, we are swept away in the current and lose control of where we are going. This happened to Pharaoh. He was living his life, making choices for evil and self-gain, and perhaps some for good and love. Yet his path intersected with God’s river, His redemptive plan which involved bringing the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh had a choice. He could yield his will over to God’s plan and let the people go. We know he chose not to, and here is where the river swept him away. God’s plan would not be thwarted by any man. God overrode Pharaoh’s will and hardened his heart. Does God override his will for the rest of his life? No. A few days later, Pharaoh is again wandering along the banks of the river, making his own choices again.
Saul’s path as well hit that river in Acts 9. He didn’t ask to be converted, he didn’t ask to have the Gospel explained to him, yet God’s redemptive plan included Saul becoming Paul. Bam, the river hit, and Saul is blind and soon believes. Does God then override Saul’s will for the rest of his life? No. He chooses what to wear and eat most days. For all these “normal decisions” that we make, they have no impact on the greater Redemptive Plan of God, so He allows our free will to reign in these areas. Whether I choose a Big Mac or Double Cheeseburger won’t change God’s plan normally, so He let’s me choose. However, if God knew that there was poison in the burger, and that I needed to live to fulfill part of His plan, somehow He would intervene to make sure I didn’t eat that burger. (there is actually always “poison” in a Big Mac called cholesterol– this note is from my wife as I quite enjoy clogging my arteries.)
There is a key difference between Paul and Pharaoh at this point. How did they respond to God’s initiation and intrusion into their world? Pharaoh did not receive God’s grace (for indeed there is grace in the incremental nature of the wrath of the plagues), and so after God’s Redemptive Plan was accomplished in the Exodus, Pharaoh continues in his own evil and bitterness. Paul, however, receives God’s grace through faith. He makes a bold decision and instead of wandering away from the river, takes a deep breath, and jumps in! He chooses to yield his free will and be in submission to God’s will (which he calls the battle of the “flesh” and “Spirit” in Rom. 8).
Ultimately, we must give the weight to God’s control and sovereignty. The Bible doesn’t allow us to elevate man’s free will above this. We must also give all glory and credit of salvation to God alone. If God hadn’t have blinded Saul and appeared to him, Saul wouldn’t have received salvation by faith, and would have continued to be a persecutor on his way to hell. God’s interaction in Paul’s life determined what he would do with his free will. Now you can say that statement means Paul’s wasn’t really free, merely the chess piece or lab rat turning in the predetermined maze. I would rather see it from God and Paul’s perspective: the first time Paul was every truly free. The first time he had an option other than going to hell.
Paul’s pounding in Rom. 9 with the clay analogy is not to say that the question of God’s fairness isn’t valid. He knows this is an apparent paradox and anticipates this as a natural following question in the rational minds of men. He simply says we should be more concerned with the question of justice, not sovereignty and free will. The question to Paul is not “why save some and not others?” but “why save any at all?” Again, grace is the reason that Paul can ultimately live with the paradox he can’t explain. No matter how this can be answered by God, even if we could understand it, the result is grace and our going to heaven when we deserve hell. It goes back to the principle factor of God’s nature being good and love, and if we can trust that, we will know when our “logical conclusions” are illogical in reality based upon the character and nature of God. That God would only want to save some and not all, not only contradicts Scripture (God desires all men to be saved 1 Tim., 2 Pet. 3) but also the very character and nature of God. That God would create creatures that weren’t really free, would violate His nature of love and creating creatures capable of love. Truly, in the end, we are saved by grace through faith.
Some final, final thoughts (like when your pastor says “so in conclusion” five times at the end of his sermon):
Motivation for missions: if what I have said in the above is a valid paradigm, then what becomes of our motivation for missions?
1) God has chosen to use the church in bringing about the salvation of men in accordance with His nature of working within the environment of His sovereignty and man’s free will.
2) As God will not override free will to accomplish the individual salvation of men, He must work within the parameters of free will. His sovereignty is not diminished due to this, nor is any credit given to man for simply receiving and having faith.
God may initiate the means of salvation through Jesus, and may even “stack the deck” such as in the case of Paul, yet in the end I firmly believe faith is an exercise of man’s free will. It is not as extreme Calvinists would have us believe, that it is “irresistible grace” or “faith as internal coercion from God”, but a free act of the will. A free act however that would have never existed without the option of forgiveness, a free act that would not be possible without the “stacking of the deck” (who sent the Christian that preached to you? Who determined that you were born into a Christian home or nation?).
Yes, obedience is the reason to have faith, preach, and go to the nations. Whether we feel comfortable with this paradigm, the Bible simply says “Go into the world and preach the good news” (Mark 16) and “pray” (Eph 6) and “have faith” (Heb. 11). We would be better off most of the time if we simply obeyed, rather than saying to God, “I am not going to obey unless I understand this completely!” Jump in the river I say! (and yes, it is ok to wear floaties in the God’s Redemptive River, but please guys, no Speedos!)
The Bible Nerd 