For those God foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brothers and sisters. [Romans 8:29 NIV]
Some
(quite a few, actually) have been led to believe in John Calvin’s view of
predestination. If you are not familiar
with it, Calvin asserted that our Heavenly Father created some for glory and
all others for destruction.
It
is argued that Romans 8:29, along with the rest of the passage, supports
Calvin’s view. For it is written: And we know
that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been
called according to his purpose. For
those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,
that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called;
those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to these
things? If God is for us, who can be
against us? He who did not spare his own
Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him,
graciously give us all things? Who will
bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one.
Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the
right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face
death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For
I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither
the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:28-39 NIV]
Of
course, it could be also argued that the passage supports the Doctrine of
Universal Reconciliation, which is that all of mankind will be reconciled with
our Creator someday. For if nothing can
separate us from the love of our Heavenly Father, then nothing can keep us
separated from Him.
It
all depends upon just who are us—does
it not? Another passage in Romans makes
it quite clear that it is not everyone.
For it is written: I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience
confirms it through the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish
in my heart. For I could wish that I
myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of
my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs
is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the
receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is
traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. It
is not as though God’s word had failed. For
not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they
all Abraham’s children. On the contrary,
“It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, it is not the children by
physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise
who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.
For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will
return, and Sarah will have a son.” Not
only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father
Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born
or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might
stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve
the younger.” Just as it is written:
“Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” What
then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!
For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I
will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on human
desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For
Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might
display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to
have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God
still blame us? For who is able to
resist his will?” But who are you, a
human being, to talk back to God? “Shall
what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make
out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for
common use? What if God, although
choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience
the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his
glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for
glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the
Gentiles? As he says in Hosea: “I will
call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’
who is not my loved one,” and, “In the
very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will
be called ‘children of the living God.’”
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites
be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. For the Lord will carry out his sentence on
earth with speed and finality.” It is
just as Isaiah said previously: “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue
righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the
people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not
attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as
if it were by works. They stumbled over
the stumbling stone. As it is written:
“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes
them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.” [Romans 9:1-33 NIV]
Hmm,
what was the promise made to Abraham?
Was it not that all nations would be blessed through him? For it is written: So also Abraham “believed God, and it was
credited to him as righteousness.” Understand,
then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the
Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations
will be blessed through you.” So those
who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. [Galatians 3:6-9 NIV]
No,
that cannot be right. For faith in our
Creator (or even His Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ) would be irrelevant if no
one is given a choice of who they want to belong to.
Alas,
the points and counterpoints on this issue could go back and forth until the
time for this world to end comes to pass.
For whom from among us has the wisdom to naturally understand what our
Heavenly Father has wanted to accomplish in this world? Yet, have not many of us been given
opportunities to experience it (to a certain extent) for ourselves?
Be
assured that I have—both the good and the bad of it. For Arlynda and I look forward to celebrating
our twentieth wedding anniversary on the fifteenth of April this year, and the
relationship I have been allowed and enabled to have with her has been so very
good. Ah, but before she was placed in
my life, my heart had been shattered into a thousand pieces far too many times
for my comfort by ladies, who did not want me to have and to hold until death
did us part. Furthermore, I have three
children by two of those ladies, who do not want me as their earthly father.
No,
it should not be thought that I needed to experience all of those bad
relationships before I could fully appreciate the good one I now have. For how could I have been so miserable before
without having much of an idea about what a good relationship should be like?
Yes,
there is a big difference between knowing about something and actually
experiencing it up close and oh so very personally, and it is because of all my
bad experiences that I can more fully understand where the wrath that our
Heavenly Father will pour out upon the wicked, come Judgment Day, is coming
from. For I have been allowed and
enabled to feel the excruciating pain of rejection. In fact, I still am in respect to reaching
out to those I have been given to help with truly having a very close and
personal relationship with our Heavenly Father—only to often have what I have
been given to say to them summarily dismissed before it has been fully
presented.
The
work that I have been called to help with would certainly be so much easier if
it could be taken not so personally, but how is this possible? For when you offer your heart to another,
there is a risk of it being torn asunder.
Not
so when it comes to our Heavenly Father’s heart. That is, if it is indeed true that He created
some for glory and all of the rest for destruction, of course.
So,
what justifies the wrath that He will pour out upon the wicked, come Judgment
Day? After all, if it is indeed true
that they were created for destruction, what reason would our Heavenly Father
have to be so angry with them?
To
those who will want to humble themselves enough to accept it, the absolute
truth of the matter is actually very simple.
For our Heavenly Father created all of mankind to give Himself
opportunities to receive a very special kind of love from us.
It
is the same kind of love that I have been allowed and enabled to receive from
my longsuffering wife, Arlynda. For she
has never seen me physically healthy, which has kept me from earning a good
living while we have been married. In
fact, she has earned much more money than I have the past twenty years, and
yet, she delights in being married to me!
This
is what our Heavenly Father wants from us, despite it appearing much more
likely that most (if not all) of us were created to be the objects of His
scorn—certainly not His affections. For
even what we would naturally consider to be the best of lives in this world is
nothing in comparison to the glory of the worst of lives in His Kingdom of
Heaven, and He could have placed all of us in His Kingdom of Heaven to begin
with.
Is
that not what He did with the angels?
Were they not created without need of clothes, shelter and food? Were their bodies not created to be
incorruptible by disease and decay?
Therefore, how much more valuable to Him must be the kind of love that
He can receive from us after He has made us live in this world as we naturally
are.
Of
course, in order for the kind of love that He can receive from us to be of the
most value, it must be accepted that our Heavenly Father has actually did all
that He has done. For there would be
nothing to give Him the full benefit of our considerable doubts about if He had
nothing to do with our plight in this world.
It
is in respect to our Heavenly Father truly being in full control of all that
happens that there is some truth to predestination, which is what Romans
8:28-39 is actually addressing. For who
becomes financially rich or poor is entirely in His hands, which also applies
to who lives a physically healthy life and who does not [Job 12:13-25], with it
all depending upon what He wants to accomplish in and through each individual
[Isaiah 46:8-13].
Be
assured that what our Creator most wants to accomplish in this world is for
each and every one of us, on an individual basis and without exception, to want
to accept Him as truly being their own Heavenly Father and to want to truly be
one of children by faith. For it would
not accomplish His purposes to force anyone to spend all of eternity with Him
in His Kingdom of Heaven as an heir to all that is His in glory against their
will, and if they had no choice in the matter, the kind of love that He could
receive from them would be of far less value than if they were given the
freedom to reject the love that He has always had for them.
Yes,
it is naturally inconceivable to most that the Creator of all that exists
(apart from Himself, of course) would purposely subject Himself to all of the
anguish that He truly has. I know that I
would not naturally want to love someone when I knew that they would break my
heart, but unless it is conceded that our Heavenly Father must not care, it
must be accepted that this is exactly what He has done. For if it is indeed true that He is
all-knowing, it has to be true that He has known since before He created Adam
and Eve just who would and would not want to accept Him as truly being their
own Heavenly Father and want to truly be one of His children by faith.
Quite
sadly, far too many in the Christian community have been led to believe that
our Creator only loves those who love Him.
Does this not require some more thought?
For if Heavenly Father can actually be that cold-hearted, just how
wonderful could spending all of eternity with Him really be? Besides, it is written: We love because he first loved us. [1 John 4:19 NIV]
No,
it is not a matter of injustice. For our
Heavenly Father has the right to do with what He has created for His own good
pleasure as He sees fit—even by the corrupt legal standards of this world, but
what does it tell us about His heart if He is indeed capable of creating so
many for destruction, without any opportunity to be saved from having to face
what we all deserve to receive in the end, which is eternal spiritual death
[Romans 6:23]? Moreover, what does it
say about your own heart if this is okay with you?
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