faith for faith

When the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (v. 8:28), does he literally mean all things, or is the “all” limited in some way? To clarify his meaning, the apostles writes a few verses later, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or sword? … No, in all these we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (vv. 8:35, 37). In this, the apostle intimates that all things, no matter how terrible they seem to us in this age, work together for the good of God’s saints.

What is interesting about the apostle’s clarification is that he does not say, “What shall separate us from the love of Christ,” but he says, “Who shall separate us,” indicating that the tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, and sword are not things that Christians will endure, but persons. And the language that the apostle uses is not arbitrary, but he is referencing what he had written elsewhere. Earlier in the epistle, the apostle writes, “For those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury; there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek” (vv. 2:8,9). Taking this tribulation and distress defined by Paul earlier in the letter and applying it to those whom Christians must endure, is then the apostle saying that these who incur tribulation and distress from God, namely the unrighteous, are not only unable to separate us from the love of Christ but are also in some way working to the good of the saints? In other words, is Paul saying that the damned in their damnation are working to the good of those who love God?

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As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all (Rm. 11:28-32).

[Warning: Post is at present unedited] This passage of Scripture is perhaps one of the most difficult passages in Romans, perhaps in all of Scripture, to grasp. It is so because of the language that is used in it– language that is complicated by our natural tendency to assign strict definitions to words that do not in themselves demand strict definitions. In this particular passage, the word of which I am speaking is the word that is translated “election” in v. 11:28, which I shall deal with in short order.

First, as always, we must understand the context in which this passage is spoken. As has been so throughout Romans 11, Paul is speaking of two groups of people–the Jews and the Gentiles. And because of God’s good wisdom and pleasure, he has decreed that salvation would only come to Gentiles if the Jews on the whole (less the remnant) would reject the Messiah. This purpose of the Lord is summed up in the apostle’s final statement in Romans 11 concerning the matter, viz. “For God has consigned all [both Jews and Gentiles] to disobedience so that he may have mercy on all.” This is a reiteration of what the apostle has declared earlier in the epistle, viz. “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Rm. 3:9). For what reason? “So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (v. 3:19). Therefore, just as the law has stopped the mouths of the whole world (for they have no justification in themselves), so too this section is designed to stop our self-righteous mouths and declare what the apostle declares at the conclusion of this treatise: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! etc.” (vv. 11:33-36).

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This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tim. 2:3, 4).

As promised, I am continuing my survey of texts that supposedly contradict the doctrines taught in Romans 8-11, et al. Several weeks ago, we dealt with the texts of John 3:16 and 2 Peter 3:9 and how those classic texts supposedly portray God as a God who is, respectively, desperately in love with the world and is wringing his hands at the thought that any person on this planet should have to perish. We demonstrated through these texts’ context and through biblical theology that this is not the God that is portrayed in these verses, but instead we find a God who is quite the opposite.

Despite this clarity in context, we must realize that we live in a reader response society and among Christians who use the Bible as a reference book rather than the meat upon which they feast daily. Thus we find not Christians who read the Scriptures through and thoroughly in its own context, but we find Christians who google, “Why Calvinism is evil,” and find a website of some other person who also only uses his Bible as reference book and then compiled a list of verses and spouted the infamous lie that Calvinists do not believe in evangelism and missions, despite the fact that the greatest preachers and evangelists (e.g. George Whitefield, C. H. Spurgeon, etc.), the leaders of great revivals (e.g. Jonathan Edwards), and the one who is called the father of modern missions–William Carey–were all Calvinists.

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Today, I and Haley celebrate our second anniversary—what seemed like three years ago an absolute impossibility.

Ten years ago, Haley and I began dating in high school. At that time, neither of us sought the Lord (evidenced by the way we consistently lived our lives), though you could find us in a church almost every week. We were both foolish, typical teenagers and believed that our lives were defined by high school, being cool, and each other. We, being the petty American adolescents that we were, dated off and on during those years, to suit whatever particular moods we were in or whatever fancies we had, and never truly established what one might called a meaningful and intimate relationship.

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The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, now wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2Pet. 3:9).

Please allow me to skip my typical rambling and jump straight in (though if you would like an introduction, feel free to read the introduction to yesterday’s post and then come here).

The typical interpretation of this passage from the second letter of Peter is that God is not willing that anyone in the world who has ever lived should perish apart from Christ but that every person in the world should come to repentance. If this is true, this text is nestled quite precariously in a hostile context.

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Some people do not have a problem with saying that the Scriptures contain contradictions. Some others believe in the traditional doctrines that they have been taught so much that they simply ignore or radically alter the meanings of texts that do not fit their particular beliefs. I, however, do not have the benefit of such convictions or their lack. I believe that every word, letter, and accent that was originally penned by the prophets and apostles are the very words of God and, being that God does not change and there are no contradictions in him, that which he inspires must possess his same attributes. Therefore, when I encounter a teacher who believes that contradictions exist in Scripture or one who values his traditions over the clear testimonies of Scripture, I react a little like Jesus did toward the Pharisees and Sadducees who did the very same things.

And being that it has been brought up (as it inevitably does) that the doctrines of Romans 9 “contradict” other doctrines in Scripture or that we who “interpret” Romans 9 interpret the text incorrectly (though the Apostle leaves little room for any interpretation in the chapter), I thought that it would be profitable to take a look at some of the texts that supposedly contradict the teachings of Romans 9.

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As we have discussed earlier, there are many who do not care for the content of these passages and therefore stamp “Israel Only” across its pages and skip ahead to the more palatable Romans 12, excepting some verses that they enjoy in Romans 10. We have already seen the folly of this in our study on God’s dealings with the Pharaoh, a Gentile, and have concluded that, despite the ridiculous objections of some, this passage is a declaration of God’s dealings with men universally (cf. Rom. 9:16).

But if Paul’s illustration utilizing the Pharaoh was not enough to convince us of the universality of this text, the apostle makes this point crystal clear at the end of his most difficult passage concerning the sovereignty of God, viz. vv. 9:19-23, writing, “What if God [did these things] … to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” (vv. 9:22-24). Paul demonstrates in these verses that not only are the Gentiles included in his election, but that God had deemed it that some Gentiles, just like some Jews, would be vessels of mercy and some would be vessels of wrath beforehand, i.e. before the foundation of the world (cf. Eph. 1:4).

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Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory? (Romans 9:21-23).

Before we begin, we must realize that it is only once we have laid ourselves out before the Creator in proper humility that we can begin to grasp the weight and purpose of this text. Yet, some who would understand this text come to it arrogantly and, instead of making themselves students, place themselves in the seat of the Judge and walk away declaring, “It cannot be; I will not accept it.” Others (with whom I must admit my former association), come to this text and leave it arrogantly, having comprehended the truths therein that others have refused and use it as a propagation for their own “superior” understanding. Then there are the holy ones, who by the power of the Holy Spirit understand the truths of this text and cry out, “Lord, thou art the Potter; I am but an earthen vessel manipulated by thine hand.” It is only by these that the truths of this text have been properly understood.

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You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? (Romans 9:19-21)

You have heard it said, “There is no such thing as a stupid question,” and that may well be true insofar as our human relationships go, but when we as humans come to God the Creator with our questions, we must have a different approach and do so by understanding who we are and who God is.

Our chief problem as a race is our original problem—we desire to ascend and place ourselves where God is, and we desire to make God as ourselves. Eve saw that the fruit was good to eat, but it was not till the serpent hissed, “You will be like God,” that she took she took the fruit and ate it. We have not deviated from this course since our first parents charted it, and as Voltaire rightly said, “God made man in his image, and man has ever since returned him the favor.”

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I have told our Bible study a number of times in the past couple of weeks that my preferred method of going through Romans 9 would have been to cover the entire chapter in one session. However, since our group does not typically have eight good hours left in them on a Friday night, we have had to break the chapter down into its natural paragraphs. This method, in retrospect, has proven quite helpful, because studying each individual section has helped to highlight the progression of the apostle’s argument.

In our first study on vv. 9:6-13, the apostle focused on God’s sovereign choice of and through whom the Promise would be fulfilled. This paragraph by its nature focused on Abraham and his immediate descendents and how God defied all human laws of primogeniture and chose Isaac and Jacob in order that his purpose of election might be demonstrated (v. 9:11). The section also included the quotation from Malachi 1, which read, “Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated.” We saw that this hate in its original context was not merely temporal, but it was eternal, for the prophet writes, “[Edom] may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the wicked territory, and the people toward whom the Lord is indignant forever.”

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