Question and Answer

I was just looking at the questions online. Here’s one that gives me a chance to just make a principle clear that is so crucial. Second Peter 1:10 says, “Make your calling and election sure.” The questioner is quoting that verse and asks, “If it’s irresistible grace, why do I need to make my election sure?” That’s a very good question, and not a hard question to answer if you have categories in your mind like this: God always uses means to bring about the ends that he has. And one of the ends that he has is that his elect ones will persevere to the end and be saved forever. Nobody will be lost. We’ll get to that later, but now the principle is this. The means he uses are many: prayer, reading the Scriptures and meditation, or this effort here in 2 Peter of making your election sure. That doesn’t mean it is uncertain in God’s mind if you’re going to make it. It means he uses your focused effort to preserve you.

God is always telling us to use means toward certain ends, and a lot of people say, “Well, if the end is certain, why do you need to use means?” Because God has set it up that way, that’s why. You might say, “I want to put a nail here and I want that nail to be driven flush with this wood,” which would be a shame, but that’s the way the illustration goes. God has fully and totally predestined that the nail be in the wood and flush. Therefore you say, “Well I don’t need to hit it with a hammer then.” No you do need to hit it with a hammer. That’s the way he intends for the nail to be flush with the wood. Hit it five or six times with the hammer.

It’s the same with evangelism. If you say, “Oh if he’s predestined people to be saved, why do you need to speak about the gospel?” Because that’s the way he’s designed it. Or you could say, “If God’s going to make me live until I’m 60, I don’t need to go to bed at night. I don’t need any sleep. He’s designed for me to be 60 years old so I won’t sleep.” Well that’s just stupid. Go to bed. God has ordained that sleep gets you to 60. And you should eat too. There’s the principle. Means are ordained to bring about ordained ends, and therefore, humble, submissive Christians follow the means as well as pursuing and hoping in the ends.

Moral and Natural Inability

Now, the question we ended with before we look to more questions here, I want to wrap total depravity up with this. If we are unable as dead people to believe, how can we be held responsible for the believe? Because we are held responsible to believe. We will be blameworthy, guilty if we don’t believe and we cannot believe. The distinction between moral inability and natural inability or physical inability is important for grasping all that the Bible has to say about human accountability and God’s sovereignty.

Jonathan Edwards defines the terms for us, so I’m going to define the difference between natural or physical inability and moral or spiritual inability. Because moral ability is the one you don’t have and you do have natural ability, and because you do have this, you are responsible. Not having moral ability does not remove your responsibility, it just removes your ability, but it’s a certain kind of ability that leaves your responsibility intact, so this is important. Listen carefully. This requires some thinking.

We are said to be naturally unable to do a thing when we cannot do it if we will. Now I could just stop right there, because that’s the key sentence. Natural inability is when you want sincerely to do a thing and you would do it and you are being physically kept from doing it. If you put chains around my hands here and chains around my feet and bolt me to the door and I couldn’t move. Then you said, “Jump off the stage,” and I would say, “I would if I could, I’m not responsible to jump off the stage. God’s not going to hold me accountable for jumping off the stage.” So the will at that point is still willing and the accomplishment of the act is being restrained, because what is most commonly called nature does not allow it or because of some impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the will either of the faculty of understanding. That’s why I think babies go to heaven. Or it could be the constitution of the body or external objects, like chains. Now that’s physical inability. Get that? Physical inability is the inability to carry out a volution when the will is really there.

Moral inability consists not in any of these things, but either in the lack of inclination or the strength of a contrary inclination or will, or the lack of sufficient motives in view to induce and excite the act of will. This is why Paul said in Romans 1, “Therefore they are without excuse because they have seen the things in nature that should induce them to worship and acknowledge and submit to God.” But they don’t. They suppress the truth, even though there’s ample motives there. Or it could be the strength of an apparent motive to the contrary. Or both these may be resolved into one and the may be said in one word, that moral inability consists in the opposition of want or inclination.

Here in natural inability you have a true, good, and right inclination and will and are prevented externally or physically from carrying it out. In the other place, you lack the inclination and you lack the desire and the will and therefore you can’t move towards Christ or embrace Christ. If you lack this moral ability, you are still responsible because you just don’t want to. If you want to and are prevented, then you aren’t responsible for doing the thing. That’s the distinction that Edwards makes. I’m just going to pause and let that sink in a minute. We’ll take questions on it in a minute if any show up. Let me see if I can find another way to say it because it’s so important.

We are responsible for not wanting to believe the gospel, even if that wanting of something else is strong we can’t want to because the reason for not wanting to is our own corruption and we’re guilty for that corruption. It’s not that there’s something outside of us that has restrained our ability to follow through. We ourselves are in love with sin. And we’re so in love with sin, we cannot love Jesus.

For example, if you walk up to somebody who has zero desire for Jesus, zero desire for the Bible, and zero desire for church, and you say to them, “Well right now start loving him, start delighting in him, start enjoying him, and start seeing him as a treasure,” they can’t. But the can’t is not something external. It’s that their heart just loves the opposite so much that they can’t and that heart has to be taken out and a new heart has to be put in. Therefore, God alone can turn that around.

Deserving of Punishment

A fifth statement on total depravity. Our rebellion is totally deserving, therefore, of eternal punishment.

Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:3).

That’s everybody. So apart from conversion, to be a child of wrath, I think, means to be worthy of wrath by nature. That’s in your DNA, so to speak. I deserve wrath by nature. Second Thessalonians 1:8–9 says:

Inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might . . .

That’s what’s coming. Matthew 25:46 says:

And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Here’s the summary and conclusion of total depravity. In summary, total depravity means that we are all by nature corrupt. Apart from God’s irresistible grace, our hardness and rebellion against God is total. If right now you are feeling less rebellious and less hard towards God, that means God is at work in this room. That doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly become smart by nature. You are smarter when you believe the truth, but God was the giver. Everything we do in this rebellion is tainted, and thus sin.

Illustrating the Truth

I was thinking back there between sessions, again back to my car washing illustration, of how Karsten was doing the technically right thing. I told him to wash the car; he’s washing the car. And he’s doing it in an attitude of anger and rebellion and spite and not loving me at all in doing this. I was imagining myself back here on a secular talk show on TV, and they say, “You’re one of those Calvinists. I’ve heard that you think everything I do is sin because I’m not a believer. I don’t believe in Jesus. I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in anything except the American way and my ability to make progress in it and to let people do their own thing. That’s what I believe in. And you think everything I do is sin. Is that right? Is that what you believe?”

Now, at that moment, I could say, “Yes.” Period. Or I could say, “Yes. Can I give you an illustration that might help you make sense of how I see that?” He’d probably say, “Yeah, go ahead, try. See what you do.” And then I would tell him my story. But that story would only make sense if you saw that the most important reality that decides the virtue of an act to be God. For him, to build a hospital, to find a cure for AIDS, to fight human trafficking, those are all goods, per se, because they make life a little better for people. And they do. And in that sense, at the purely horizontal level, we call them good. And I wouldn’t even go on a crusade to stop using the word good that way.

But I would say you’re leaving out the most important reality in the universe, namely God, who holds you in being every millisecond of every day and will decide your destiny. Everything you do, you do without reference to God, and therefore you snub God, and therefore every activity you’re doing is a snubbing of your maker, and that’s evil. Now, at that point, he’s either going to catch on to why I would talk that way or not. And it will depend on the place that God has in his worldview.

Implications

How does it help us to know the doctrine of total depravity? These are my final “so what” questions. We’ve spent an hour or so or more on total depravity. So what? If you believe the last hour’s worth of texts the way I have tried to present them, what difference would it make? So here’s my effort to draw out some implications. There is no full grasping of God’s saving work — forgiving, justifying, renovating, perfecting — without seeing our true condition. You just don’t know what it means to be saved if you don’t know what it means to be lost.

My dad, who has led more people to Jesus in his lifetime, from darkness to light, from hell to heaven, from blindness to seeing, from unbelief to belief, than I’ll ever blink at, I think. I admired him so much in his evangelistic commitments. And he said to me, “Johnny, it’s so much harder to get people lost than it is to get them saved.” He just meant that until people see how unbelievably corrupt they are, they won’t love and need Jesus the way he gives himself. He offers himself freely to sinners. He said, “I did not come to call the righteous to repentance. I came to call the sinner, the sick.” It’s not the well who needs a physician. It’s the sick who need a physician. And if you don’t think you’re sick, the physician knocks on the door and says, “Anybody need me here?” You say, “No, we’re totally fine. Thank you. You can go down the street. There’s nobody sick in this house.” He says, “Oh, I thought maybe you would know you’re all mortally sick.”

So it’s very hard to persuade classy, slick, cool American human beings that they are mortally wounded and in desperate need of a Savior. So it works the other way, too. Once you see it, the Savior and all his work becomes exquisitely precious. So you just can’t know what it means to be saved until you know what it means to be lost. We can’t embrace Christ as savior without knowing our need for one, thus saving faith depends on knowing our sinfulness. I guess I collapsed those two into one.

Deepened Humility

Third, knowing our depravity and our ongoing and in-dwelling sin as believers deepens our humility, which sweetens and strengthens all our significant relationships: marriage, parenting, and evangelism. I thought a lot about that sentence because this is where the rubber meets the road for me more often than any other place. I live at home a lot. I live at a church some. I live in the neighborhood some. I live in a civil entity called America some. But I live at home a lot. And all my sanctification is tested at home. And you may not have a family. You may be single and live by yourself, but you have an inner ring of people that you hang with most, and that’s what it is for you.

I’m saying that knowing our depravity deepens our humility, and that has these two effects: sweetening and strengthening. I have a meaning for those two words in these relationships: marriage, parenting, and evangelism — meaning people you meet at the office. And you can add the list to there. Any relationship that is significant to you, I’m going to argue, the doctrine of your depravity will sweeten it and strengthen it. This is assuming that we’re going to get to the gospel, the atonement, which is coming very soon.

The way it works is. Wherever my pride is holding sway, it kills most sweet affections. I want affections between Noëll and I and between my children to be sweet, tender, warm, kind, affirming, and loving. I just want there to be such a natural, sweet give and take. I don’t want there to be anger and bitterness and resentment and suspicion, distrust, moodiness, glumness, depression and discouragement. I just don’t want it. I got enough of that elsewhere. I don’t want that at home.

I know that if I could be as humble as my depravity says I should be, it would make everything sweeter because I wouldn’t get my back up so much. I wouldn’t be so demanding. Demandingness is a great killer of affections. I wouldn’t be so quick to judge. I wouldn’t be so quick to be spiteful or correcting or think, “Why aren’t things going better, my way?” It would just be a sense of increased gratitude, like we began with that poem last night. I would see evidence of God’s grace in my life and our life as a family and kindness and goodness everywhere in my life, instead of spotting the shortcomings and the flaws and collecting all of those and then using those to promote my pride. That’s the way it works for John Piper. For me to stay constantly apprised of my deadness and brokenness and corruption and arrogance and pride and rebellion without Jesus is a great sweetener.

What I mean by strengthener is that we’ve been married 44 years. That means that the metal of this relationship has been tested a lot. Pride walks away. It says, “Okay. I’m out of here then. Have it your way.” That’s the way pride talks. She could do that. I could do that. The kids could do that. We could all just walk away because things aren’t going my way, and I’ve just had enough working on this. It’s not what I signed up for.

Humility says, “I’m not going to walk a way. Why should I think I signed up for anything except hell? If I’m not in hell, it’s a good day.” Seriously. If you believe you should be there. If you get up every morning and say, “I’m by nature a child of wrath, and I’m not there. I’m in a warm bed.” You need to do these little exercises. Imagine yourself being blind, and you woke up this morning and you think, “I can see. I can see.” First time in 67 years. Only you’ve had it for 67 years. You’ve been seeing for 67 years. There might be a blind person here, but you know what I’m talking about. But only a sense of our true depravity can work to strengthen and keep us where we ought to be.

Kept from Bad News

And the fourth one is that knowing the depths of corruption of human nature and of God’s sovereignty keeps us from being knocked off balance by bad news and dire predictions. Does anything surprise you in this world? It doesn’t need to. Not if you have a good theology of human depravity. When they hand out condoms on Valentine’s Day to eighth graders, does that surprise you? Well, probably. But you have an explanation for that. And there are a thousand other sorrows and absurdities in our world. I want us to be a stable people, we Christians. Strong. Not saying “Ah look what’s happening!” You’ll never need to be like that because you know this is the way human beings are. And we have lots to say now in the face of it. So I think that’s the end of total depravity.

Question and Answer

Let me go to some questions here, and then we’ll switch into unconditional election.

Regarding total depravity, what does it mean when the Bible says man is created in the image of God? Do non-believers still bear this image?

Non-believers do still bear that image. And that image is the capacity to reflect the glory of God intentionally. That would be my short way to describe it. People ask, “Is the image of God that we can think differently than the animals and feel differently than the animals and relate to others differently and all the things that might separate us more or less from other created beings?” I think the simplest way to talk about the meaning of the image of God is just to say that to be in the image of God means to be one who is designed to image him. To be in his image, is to image him. The reason God made seven billion images of himself is because he wanted himself to be reflected in the world.

If you put seven billion images of yourself in a village, the point would be clear. You want yourself to be exalted. That’s why God put seven billion images of himself on the planet. He means, “The planet is about me. It’s about me.” And total depravity takes that mirror and flips it. Here’s my picture anyway. The mirror is to be at a 45-degree angle. There is a reflective side to the mirror and a black side. And God’s glory is hitting this. It’s coming off at a 90-degree angle, and it’s going out and showing the world God. That’s what it means to be created in his image. We are designed with capacities to do that through loving him, delighting in him, and trusting him. God is most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in him, so we are created to be satisfied with God, and thus reflect his satisfactory beauty out here that he’s an all-satisfying wise, good, powerful friend and Father.

What we did in the fall was flip over. The light of God’s glory hits us and what’s created on the ground here is a shadow in the shape of a human being, and we fell in love with that, and we’ve been killing ourselves ever since, living for our own glory, loving the shadow of God’s glory or ourselves with God’s glory around it forever.

So yes, we’re still in the image of God in that we were made with the capacity to do what no other created beings can do, namely be thankful and trusting and treasuring of God, and thus reflect his glory, and we have now renounced all of that, and the capacity for that remains in our nature, our brain, our heart, and our soul. But we have now squandered it all so that it is totally corrupt.

When it comes to total depravity, we talk about a sinner being dead. How do we understand deadness if the Bible speaks of active rebellion?

I understand deadness as the complete imperviousness to spiritual beauty in Christ or in God. That is, God is like a needle of glory, and here you are. And you’re very actively doing stuff. You look very much alive, and he pricks you with his glory, his beauty. You don’t feel it at all. That’s being dead. Deadness doesn’t mean you can’t get up in the morning. Deadness doesn’t mean you can’t write a poem or a novel. It means that when it comes to spiritual reality, you’re blind to it. The word impervious doesn’t sound quite right. What word am I groping for? You’re insensible to it. You can’t feel it. You’re dead to spiritual reality. It always looked like something that it’s not. It always feels like something that it’s not, and so in that sense, the image of deadness is what works. Don’t overstate deadness so that you can’t move or think or feel. You are moving and thinking and feeling, and you’re all doing it without the Holy Spirit in utter obliviousness to the supreme value of God.

Is it a true statement to say that as a regenerate, justified believer that in my flesh I still sin continuously?

That’s a very, very good question. I want to be very careful. If the question means in the same way I did before I was saved, the answer is clearly no. You have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is bearing fruits of the Holy Spirit. Those fruits of the Holy Spirit are beautiful in the eyes of God, and he delights in your obedience. You can please God. Unbelievers can’t. You can please God. The Bible says try to please God, seek to please God. It speaks of pleasing God often. And I’m talking about something beyond justification with God looking upon us as perfect in Christ, which he always does. I mean that within that sphere of total acceptance because of Jesus, we start living the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them. Nevertheless, it was not I, but the grace of God was with me,” and when God looked at that hard work, he said, “I like that because it depends on my grace.” What turns behavior into something beautiful to God (non-sin) is that it’s done in reliance upon God and for the glory of God and in conformity to God’s direction, and that’s beautiful.

Now, that’s my main answer to encourage you that you don’t have to go to bed every night saying, “I didn’t please God at all today, and I don’t even think it’s possible to please God because there’s remaining sin in me.” Having said that, I’m not sure whether the question might also mean, “Is everything we do is a little bit imperfect?” To that I would say yes it is. And therefore, in a sense, you’re always sinning. That can be really discouraging, and I don’t want to discourage you. I don’t want to take that and run with it because some of you are depressed already, and you’re wired to have a certain personality that’s looking for the worst news possible, and you collect all the bad news and walk out of here and make life worse for you. And others of you are so wired to be positive, you don’t hear anything bad news, and you walk out of here and only feel things positive. I just like to undo all that wiring and see if the Holy Spirit will rewire you.

But I am going to say that I agree with the Puritan who wrote, “I’ve never done a good deed for which I don’t have to repent.” What that does for me is make me love the cross more. It doesn’t make me more depressed. That is why I want to go to heaven. I’d like that to be over. All I mean by that is, I’m so aware of my selfishness and my pride and my twisted desires that if I preach a sermon or teach this course or buy my wife a gift or write her a poem, there’s this little voice in my mind that always says, “You just wanted to get some praise for that. You just wanted to be whatever.” Pick a bad motive. The one that you struggle with. The little voice says that, and you say, “I’m trying not to. As much as I know, I don’t want that to be true. But maybe it’s true. I don’t know.” The human heart is corrupt, and who can know it?

So I come to the end of the day not trying to sort that out. That’ll make you go crazy. You just go crazy if you try to sort that out and try to say, “Here’s my good act and my bad act. Good act, bad act, good act, bad act. And I repent of the bad ones and have forgiveness, God is pleased with the good ones. Hooray.” Life is not like that. They’re all mixed. And some you feel better about, and some you feel less good about, and you come to the end of the day, wife by your side or all by yourself, however you do it, and you say, “God, we love the cross. We love the blood of Jesus. We love your forgiveness. We love the fact that justification is by faith alone apart from works of the law. We love the fact that there’s ongoing, if you confess your sin, he’s faithful and just and will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all righteousness.” Every little piece of contamination in all those good deeds that you had, he’ll cleanse it away, and he will only count what is beautiful and good and put it in a filing cabinet.

I do think God will judge us that way someday. Just see if this helps. So God is writing down all your deeds all day long, or he has a scribe so he doesn’t have to worry about it. Every deed is written in a book, good deeds, bad deeds, and they’re so perceptive, they know exactly how to grade every deed — like 80 percent, 90 percent, 60 percent righteous or corrupt. And they’re all in a file. And you’re going to stand before the judge, and a mile long filing cabinet. It’s going to come out with every idle word written down. It says so. You’ll be judged for every idle word. Pretty spooky. Pretty scary. Because none of us, if those had to be put in a balance, would be saved, right?

But what God does is he takes all the — just a guess now — folders and pulls out all the grades that are, say, B-minus and higher. And for the thief on the cross, that was a pretty small file. His file was a mile long, and 99.9 percent of it was bad deeds. And there were maybe two good deeds at the end. Remember, he said to the guy next to him, “What are you criticizing Jesus for? We deserve to be here, and he doesn’t.” They wrote that one down. Evidence of new birth right there. But that’s all he’s got. He’s got two pieces of evidence. And the other one, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom, please.” Write that one down. Now you’ve got two and 10 million. So that’s why the balances don’t work. If you’re going to be saved by your works, he’s gone. But Jesus said, “Today, you’ll be with me in paradise.”

So works don’t save that guy, but he’s got two good works, and let’s take him as the paradigm. At the judgment day, he’s standing there before Jesus at the judgment day to be judged for his works. Judgment is according to works. And the Lord opens his file, and the Lord has long arms, and he takes all the F files — and all of his are F except for the last half hour of his life — and he throws them in the garbage and puts a match to them. I covered those. Let’s burn those up. And then he takes these two, and he says, “These are of such a nature as to give evidence that you trusted my Son and are therefore in my Son and therefore saved and forgiven and loved forever. And I will reward you now for these two works as evidence of your faith in my Son by whom you are saved.” That’s the way I think it works.

I’m sure those two deeds weren’t perfect. I mean, the man’s been a thief all his life long. He doesn’t suddenly become a saint on the cross in the perfection sense but in another sense. That’s my long for that question of, “Do we sin continuously?” No, if you mean all we do is sin. Yes, if you mean there remains corruption in any of our good deeds, and that does not make them worthless.

Jesus was fully man, fully God. Did he have the ability to sin?

What I would do if this were a course and I were teaching for credit, I would put on the final exam that question. Discuss that question. And I would expect you to do what? I would expect you to go back to natural ability and inability, and describe in your blue book there are two ways to talk about the ability and the inability of Jesus. He was spiritually unable to sin because he was so good he could not help but see the good as desirable.

But he had the natural capacity to sin. His brain was able to make sinful decisions. Naturally, he could have thought through a way to steal. He could have thought through a way to have sex, which he never did, by the way. That should be really encouraging to single people, to be chaste. You can be the fullest and greatest human being that ever lived and never have sexual intercourse. He could have done all that. So he can sin and he can’t sin. He can’t morally and can naturally. And the reason he didn’t sin is because he was so good. It’s not because God was going to hold him back, saying, “You’re not going to sin.” And Jesus goes, “I want to sin, I want to sin. Let me go.” That’s just totally not the way to think about his inability to sin. His inability to sin is that his heart was flawless and he saw every act of obedience as the most attractive way to live. And thus, he’s the freest of all men and the best of all men, doing exactly what he chooses to do.

Could you model a prayer on how to pray for friends and family who are still slaves of sin?

Oh my, that’s a good question, and yes I can. I have six of them in my notes. So that’s coming. How do you pray now if you believe in irresistible grace and total depravity? How do you pray for totally depraved sinners in view of his irresistible grace? I’ll give you the answer in 30 seconds before we get there, because we’ll spend maybe five minutes on it when we get there. We of all people — that is we lovers of sovereign grace — should be the most prayerful of all people because we believe in a God who can actually penetrate through the hardest heart and change it. I don’t know how Arminians pray. I don’t know. Everybody I hear pray, prays like a Calvinist. That is, they ask God to change people.

A typical prayer would be, “Oh, God, Jim is so dead set against you. Would you be pleased sovereignly to reach down, by your word, through the Bible, or through some testimony, and take out his heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh and open his blind eyes and raise him from the dead and cause him to see Jesus as irresistibly attractive, in Jesus’s great name, to the God for whom nothing is impossible, I pray. Amen.” That’s the way I pray.

Unconditional Election

Let’s move on to unconditional election. This is the meaning of unconditional election from the Bethlehem Elder Affirmation of Faith (section 3.1):

We believe that God from all eternity, in order to display the full extent of his glory for the eternal and ever-increasing enjoyment of all who love him, did by the most wise and holy counsel of his will freely and unchangeably ordained and foreknow whatever comes to pass. We believe that God upholds and governs all things, from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of nature to the movements of nations, from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary persons, all in accord with his eternal, all-wise purposes to glorify himself. Yet, in such a way that he never sins, nor ever condemns a person unjustly, but that his ordaining and governing all things is compatible with the moral accountability of all persons created in his image.

We believe that God’s election is an unconditional act of free grace, which was given through his Son, Christ Jesus, before the world began. By this act, God chose before the foundation of the world those who would be delivered from bondage to sin and brought to repentance and saving faith in his Son, Christ Jesus.

It’s an act of free grace through Jesus before the world began, choosing people who would be delivered from bondage to sin. That’s very important. I’m taking a position there. We are taking a position there that when God chooses, he is choosing to rescue from rebellion, from sin. In other words, in his mind’s eye, we’re sinners as he does that, which means nobody deserves that act. He could let us all go, and he would be perfectly just not to save anybody. Therefore, every single act of election is undeserved grace. Because he’s picturing us as what we really are, sinners.

Here’s the classic Arminian position. There is election and it’s based on God’s foreknowledge of our self-wrought faith. This is a quote from Arminius himself:

God purposes to save particular persons and to damn others, which decree rests upon the foreknowledge of God by which he has known from eternity which persons should believe.

So God elects, but as he looks, he’s basing his election on whether that person will believe and that person will believe and that person. That’s why he’s choosing them, because he sees that they will believe. Implicit is the assumption that they have come to faith decisively on their own. He has given them prevenient grace to make that possible. But they have made the choice, and He sees they’re going to make that choice. Whereas the Calvinist says, “Well, of course, all of the elect are believers, but it’s because of the election that they will become believers, not because of the faith that they become elect.” There’s the difference. Be careful that you don’t say what Arminians don’t believe, namely that there’s no election. There is. It’s just not unconditional. It’s conditioned upon foreknown faith.

He also foreknows from eternity who should believe and who should persevere because Arminians believe that you can start in faith, be saved, and lose it. And those people are not elect. You don’t go in and out of election in the Arminian scheme. In the Arminian way of thinking, you’re elect, and you’re elect on the basis of God foreseeing your first act of faith and all your subsequent acts of faith. And the people that will persevere in faith are chosen to be elect. So that’s the difference between the two views.

Contemporary Arminianism

Here’s a contemporary Arminian emphasis. So today, if you ask what are the best defenses today? R.T. Forster and Marston say the point is that the election of the church is a corporate, rather than an individual thing. That’s the most common argument today. If you’re getting into a theological argument with people who’ve studied and been persuaded by an Arminian position, they would say election is basically a corporate thing. God elects a church, and you decide if you’ll be a member of the church. So he’s not looking individually out there and saying, “You get to be mine, you get to be mine, you get to be mine.” He’s saying, “I’m choosing a body of people, my bride, and I elect my bride. And I define my bride as a believer in my Son. Now, if you want to be a part of that, you can. And you will be the decisive cause of whether you’re in that. And if you decide to follow Jesus, you’re in it, and thus spoken of us elect.”

It is not that individuals are in the church because they are elect. It is rather that they are elect because they are in the church, which is the body of the elect one. That’s a quote from Forster and Marston from 40 years ago now. Election is a corporate category and not oriented on the choice of individuals. This is Clark Pinnock, who just passed away a couple years ago. He says, “Election speaks of a class of people, rather than specific individuals.” So those are two representative Arminians and the way they think today about election. Namely, it’s a corporate thing, not an individual thing. So you don’t ever have to give an account for why God would choose one person over another person. He doesn’t. He chooses a church, a corporate entity, and then those people decide whether they’ll be in it or not.

Here’s the main text used to support corporate election. Ephesians 1:3–4 says:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

They would say what that means is, Christ is the elect one, and if you choose to be in Christ, you’re part of the elect one. He’s the chosen one. He’s referred to that way in 1 Peter 1 as well. And you then, by your free will and act of faith, unite to Christ, and thus are part of the elect one, and thus are elect corporately in him.

Biblical Basis for Unconditional Election

Now, I have about eight pages of text to show that doesn’t work. That way of thinking just won’t work. You cannot sustain that as you read the New Testament. So up at the top, I have these texts used to support corporate election, and it should start reading “individual” from here on. This is Ephesians 2. You have chapter one, which says we are chosen before the foundation of the world in him. Does in him mean not individually, but corporately as we individually put ourselves in him? Is that what it means? I just don’t think that’s what it means at all. I think “chosen in him means” chosen in relation to him so that nobody is chosen apart from God’s foreseeing our relationship with him. But it doesn’t have anything to say about whether they are chosen individually or not to be put in relationship to him. That’s just not even addressed in Ephesians 1. But it is addressed in Ephesians 2, which we’ve seen already”

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:4–9).

Now, that unit of Scripture coming after the election in chapter one sheds a lot of light back on how to understand election before the foundation of the world. Because if we are elect in Christ and through his redeeming work, as Ephesians 2:7 says, then that redeeming work includes the purchase of my conversion, and my conversion here is described as raising me from the dead by a great love. EPhesians 1:4–5 says:

In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will . . .

Here is an expression of that great love, and that great love is a raising of us from the dead. Now, that is totally individual. My deadness is my deadness, not your deadness. If God comes to me and says, “If I leave you the way you are, you will perish. If I raise from the dead, you’ll be mine. So in my great love, I now overcome your deadness, overcome your spiritual indifference and your blindness, and I raise you from the dead and give you life so that now you see Jesus as beautiful, embrace him as Savior, and thus prove to be my elect.”

The picture here is just totally different from the Arminian picture of God electing an unspecified number, and now he will give prevenient grace to the world, and then he will let everybody decide who’s in and who’s out. That’s just not what’s going in chapter two. He’s deciding who to raise from the dead because they have been chosen before the foundation of the world.

Consider Your Calling

Here’s another one:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And Because of him you are in Christ Jesus . . . (1 Corinthians 1:26–30).

So the picture is. God is looking down at Corinth, the city of Corinth, and there’s foolish people and weak people and low-class people, and God is saying, “I choose you, and I choose you, and I choose you.” This is not corporate election going on here. Nothing could be clearer than that this text is addressing why you are in Christ, or why you aren’t. From him are you in Christ Jesus. You didn’t put yourself in Christ Jesus, ultimately. God grafted you into Christ Jesus by awakening your faith and raising you from the dead and attaching you to his Son.

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31).

I think that whole paragraph is designed precisely to show that every one of us should consider our calling and realize there was nothing in me to commend me to God, and he chose me freely so that I wouldn’t boast in myself or people, and I would boast in him and his grace. It’s not corporate, but individual.

Seven-Thousand Kept

Romans 11:2–7 says:

Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened . . . (Romans 11:2–7).

You thought you were the only one left? I’ve got 7,000. How do I have them? I kept them for myself? I didn’t let them apostatize like the others. If you are in the remnant, you were chosen to be in the remnant. Is that what it says? Am I being faithful here?

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened . . . (Romans 11:7).

They didn’t attain what they sought. But those who were chosen, they did. It’s just the opposite from what the Arminian says. The Arminian says, “If you choose to be in, you’re elect.” And Paul says, “If you’re elect, that’s how you got in.” The elect obtained it.

Similarly, Acts 13:48 says:

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

It’s just the opposite from the Arminian scheme. If you were appointed by election to eternal life, you believed. It’s not like God watched you produce your belief and then said, “Oh, you must be one of the ones who were in.”

Chosen by the Father

Do we belong to God because we’ve come to Jesus, or do we come to Jesus because we belong to God? John 17:6–9 says:

I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

Isn’t Jesus amazing to talk like this? I am praying for my own people. How did they get to be my people? They were yours. I think that’s his way of saying You chose them. They’re yours. And then You gave them to me. Jesus says, “Nobody comes to me unless it is granted to him by the Father” (John 6:65). And he says, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him” (John 6:44). The Father has a people. He has chosen them and he gives them now to the Son. He says, “You did not choose me. I chose you” (John 15:16). He said that to the Twelve. So the reason we come to Jesus and are given to Jesus is because we were God’s. We belonged to him, which is the opposite of what corporate election says.

Here’s another one. John 6:37 says:

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

Why do you come? Because the Father has you and is giving you to the Son. And then, the one who comes to Jesus, he will certainly not cast out.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day (John 6:39).

The Father and the Son made a covenant with each other: “I will send you into the world, Son. I want you to go and redeem my elect. I have them. When you get there and start obeying and doing what I tell you to do, I’ll give them to you. I’m going to give you a bride.” And he gives them to the Son.

Jesus’s Sheep

Are we Jesus’s sheep because we believe, or do we believe because we are his sheep? I’ll just say before I read this, this is a text that I remember years ago simply stopped my mouth. It just stopped my mouth. It came down to this: Either I’m going to believe the Bible and embrace this kind of sovereignty or it’s all over. I’m just throwing it away. Because look:

Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me (John 10:25–27).

Now, just let that sink in. It does not say, “You are not of my sheep because you do not believe.” It does not say, “You are not a sheep because you don’t believe.” It says the reverse. You don’t believe because you’re not a sheep. In the Gospel of John, as you read the whole thing, that simply means you’re not elect. You’re not one of my own, and that’s why you don’t believe. That’s why Judas didn’t believe. The Father didn’t draw him. That’s what he says in John 6:65. The elect sheep believe, and that’s how you know they are elect. Powerful.

A Plausible Argument for Arminianism

Is election based on foreknown faith, or is faith the effect of election? Now, I want to be as honest with the Arminian argument here as I can be. And it’s hard when you’ve been believing something for 40 years to try to be fair to the view you’ve rejected for 40 years, but you should make every effort. So if any of you thinks I’m being unfair, Tweet me or do something here or grab me between sessions. It just doesn’t do any good to shoot down straw men because you’re just going to walk out of here, get a good book on Arminianism and say, “Piper, he just totally missed the point. He was just killing straw men every time, and you don’t need to believe anything he says.” I don’t want to waste my time doing that. If there’s straw men, I’m just not interested in knocking them down.

So there’s a really plausible argument here. So here it is. I’m trying to give a plausible argument for Arminius’s view.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:28–29).

So there you have it, right? That’s a good Arminian text, seemingly. So he knows ahead of time something, and then on the basis of that knowing, he predestined. Not the other way around. Predestined and then faith. Paul continues:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say 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 with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies (Romans 8:29–33).

So now the question is, what does foreknow mean in Romans 8:29 mean? What does “foreknew” mean there? Does it mean what the Arminians say? He foresaw their faith, which they decisively brought about, and thus on the basis of foreseeing, their free will act of believing ordained that they be included in the predestined elect? Or does it mean something else? If you get into an argument with an Arminian over election, that’s where they’re going to take you almost certainly, to argue that it’s not unconditional. You Calvinists keep using the word “unconditional.” It’s just not unconditional. It’s conditional upon foreseeing faith or foreknown faith. It says right there in Romans 8:29.

It is possible that it means what the Arminians take it to mean — namely, God bases his predestination on the self-determined act of faith, which He knows they will perform. Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined. Or there’s another alternative. “Foreknew” could mean, in the Old Testament sense, take note of, acknowledge, single out for attention, or choose.

Known and Chosen

This may sound unusual to our ears, but consider these uses of the word “know.”

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain (Genesis 4:1).

So the word “know” is chosen as a kind of circumlocution of this intimate act of sexual intercourse, and thus knowing is more than just knowing about. It’s an intimate connection with.

Genesis 18:17–18 says:

The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord . . . (Genesis 18:17–19).

Almost all the English versions translate known as chosen, elected, chosen for this task. But known is the literal word. I know him. I’ve tried to ransack the English language thinking is there any corresponding way we use the word “know” for choose? And the closest I can think of is the cognate word “acknowledge.” The Senator from Minnesota will be acknowledged. Well, what does that mean? It means I choose you to speak now. That’s the closest I can come to the way the Hebrew tends to use the word “know” for choosing. But you can see it. It’s not as though it’s weird.

Amos 3:2 says:

You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.

What do you mean you only have I known? God knows all the nations. No, he doesn’t. Not this way. So this must mean, “I have set My knowledge on you. I have acknowledged. I have taken note of you.” Something like that in English.

Psalm 1:3–6 says:

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Now, what in the world? He knows the way of the righteous. Like, what? You don’t know what the wicked are doing? No, clearly it doesn’t mean that. What does it mean? It’s another one of these uses of the word “know” to mean count as acceptable and precious and focused on, as giving blessing to. He is saying, “I know the way of the righteous. I’m aware of it, and I follow it. I fixed my eyes on it. I take it as mine.” It’s something like that.

Answering the Objection

So, which meaning does foreknew have in Romans 8:29? Those whom he foreknew he predestined to be confirmed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be firstborn. Does it mean he simply knows ahead of time the fact that they’re going to believe with their free will, and therefore, on the basis of that foreknowledge, he now elects them? So it’s not unconditional, it’s conditional. Or does it mean “I choose ahead of time,” or, “I take not of ahead of time,” or, “I acknowledge and make mine and bless ahead of time so that they will believe”? Now, that’s what I think it means.

But I don’t think it means, “I’d rather believe that, and maybe it’s possible it means that, so I choose that.” You can’t do that. That’s not fair. There needs to be some evidence for that meaning in the text. And I think there’s really compelling evidence right in the text. So let’s look at it.

Ponder the implications of “those whom he called, he justified.” That right here is what I’m focusing on. What are the implications of saying, “Those whom he called, he justified”? Just think about that. All the called are justified, which is what it says. Nobody drops out. There are no called who are not justified, right? That’s what he means. All the predestined are called, all the called are justified, all the justified are glorified, no dropouts. Otherwise, the logic of the whole passage falls apart.

So if the called are justified, and if justification is only by faith (Romans 3:28), then how is it all the called and only the called have saving faith? I wonder if you see where this is going. How is that? Because if you say all the called are justified, you must mean all the called come to faith because justification is always by faith. How does that happen? How did that come about?

I think the only answer that works is that the call of God provides the decisive cause of faith. And this you gotta take home and think about. If that is true, then “foreknew” in Romans 8:29 cannot mean God foreknew which people would provide the decisive cause of their faith. Nobody does. The call of God does. The context itself pictures people being justified who are called who were predestined. They were predestined, they were called, and they were justified, which means their faith was secure. Their faith became certain. Their faith was brought about somehow, and we know from other texts that the call of God does in fact produce faith. We saw that in 1 Corinthians 1:23–25.

So my answer to the Arminian objection to unconditional election on the basis of Romans 8:29 is that “those whom he foreknew, he predestined” means those whom he chose ahead of time, he predestined to be conformed to his Son. And I say it not because I like that interpretation better and it’s possible, but I say it because it’s possible linguistically and Romans 8:30 seems to me to make it necessary because all the called who are all the predestined are justified. And there can only be a correlation between all the called and all the justified if the call affects the necessary prerequisite of justification, namely faith.