God's Choice and Ours: Ask R.C.

Next on Renewing Your Mind with R.C. Sproul. Good morning, Dr. Sproul. My name is Glenn.

I'm from Auburn, Washington. It's been a 12-year journey for me into the Reformed faith. Can you confirm why the sovereign act of election in God is not fatalistic determinism? Well, that's a good question, and Dr. Sproul will answer it, along with many others, as we look back over decades of question-and-answer sessions which R.C.

led. Our focus today is on God's sovereignty and the doctrine of election. And the first question is this. We read things in the Bible like, choose you this day and if you obey. So if there is no free will, why is the Bible filled with the language of choice? Now, let me just say, first of all, that I don't know too many people who deny the reality of free will. Often people think that the Reformed faith denies free will because of our accent on the sovereignty of God and on divine election. But we're very careful, as Luther was, as Calvin was, as Edward was, as Augustine was, to clarify what we mean by free will. In its simplest definition, free will simply refers to the human being's ability to choose what they want. Free will is the faculty of choosing by which we make decisions according to what seems good to us. And I don't know anybody that denies that people make choices according to what they want. The issue that the church has had to wrestle with from Augustine and his debate with Pelagius down to today is whether or not the desire that motivates our choices is free of moral bondage.

Augustine made this distinction. He said, after the fall, man still has a free will. He still has the power or the ability to choose what he wants. But what he's lost in the fall is his spiritual liberty because his will is now enslaved by sin. One of the biggest problems we have in discussing the question of free will in our day is that I think most Christians in America have an idea of free will that is not biblical at all.

It's a concept that they've got from their secular culture from the day they went to first grade. The secular humanism teaches that human freedom is such that the human will is not in any way paralyzed either to the left or to the right, but remains completely powerful to choose the things of God unaided by regeneration. Whereas the Christian view, the biblical view is that I will never be willing to come to Christ until God first changes the disposition of my heart, which He does by the Holy Spirit in the work of quickening or regeneration so that I have a will before I'm a Christian, but I'm not willing to come to Jesus. I don't want God to even be in my thoughts.

I don't want anything to do with Jesus. My desires are constantly wicked, and unless God turns me around, unless He changes the inclination or the disposition of my heart left to myself, I will never freely choose Christ. Now when the Holy Spirit does get a hold of me and does convict me of sin and does regenerate my soul, then I am indeed made willing, and I come to Christ joyfully, happily, and willingly. And of course, the Bible speaks of this all the time, that what God wants is for people to come to Him, to choose Him, to obey Him, and all of that involves choices. That's why we say that as human beings, even fallen human beings, we are moral agents. And to be a moral agent, you have to have a capacity of willing. Well, the topic of free will is one that requires careful attention, and it's often misunderstood.

R.C. received this follow-up question, and it's this, so the notion of being dragged, kicking, and screaming into heaven is false? Of course it's false.

It's a straw man. Nobody's dragged, kicking, and screaming against their will in the kingdom of God, although the Bible does say nobody can come to me, Jesus, unless the Father, the literal term there is drag Him. And that means unless the Father changes the disposition of His heart. But when He does change the disposition, I'm not brought kicking and screaming against my will.

I've been made willing so that I come to Christ happily. R.C. R.C. Moving from free will to God's sovereign will, here is another question directed to Dr. Sproul. Will you explain secondary and primary causes in relation to God's promise?

R.C. Yes, we make this distinction. It goes back to 17th century Protestant orthodoxy of primary and secondary causality. It's an attempt to look at the way in which our actions as human beings are carried out under the sovereign power of God in His providence. The classic example of this is found in the doctrine of concurrence, which is seen in the event of the betrayal of Joseph by his brothers when they had him sold into slavery. And when they are reunited and at the end of the book of Genesis, the brothers realize that the prime minister in front of them is their long-lost brother, and he is now at the acme of power there and can exercise retribution against them.

They're terrified, and Joseph tries to put them at ease. And he said, now look, don't make me in place of God. I'm not going to exact vengeance here. He said, listen, you meant it for evil. Your acts were evil. Your intentions were evil.

Your will was used to carry out an evil deed. But over above your actions, God meant it for good. So that in that case, their actions were really their own, but they are secondary causes. All of our causality is secondary cause. I can't raise my hand alone by my own power except by the sustaining power of God's providence in this world and in my life.

Paul tells us that in Him we live and we move and have our being. My life is not independent. My motion is not independent. My being is not independent. I can't be.

I can't live. I can't move apart from the sovereign power of God who energizes all things. God alone possesses what we call primary causality, that is ultimate sovereign power over all things. All of my actions, all of the things that I make happen, the things that I cause to come into effect is always dependent on the primary power of God. I am only a secondary causal agent.

Yes, how are you doing, Dr. Sproul? God bless you, and God bless your ministry. My question is, if you say that God chooses some and He leaves some behind, how do you know whether you're chosen? Do you have a guy that's maybe divorced or going through a hard time in life? How does he feel when he hears maybe he's not elected, maybe God didn't choose him?

I mean, where's his hope? Thank you. Thank you for your question, Stuart. That's a very important question that you've raised.

In fact, you've raised more than one, but let me try to answer them in the order that you raised them. The first question we're dealing with, of course, is that if God chooses certain individuals to receive His saving grace and passes over others, how can we know for sure whether we are numbered among the elect or on the other side if we're not? So, let me begin by saying that Peter tells us in his epistle that we are called as a matter of Christian duty to make our calling and election sure. That is, it is our duty before God not to allow uncertainty to rob us of the joy of our salvation. And there are ways that we can understand whether we're numbered among the elect. Now, the most important thing that we can do to have the assurance of that is to have a clear understanding of what the Bible requires for salvation. We understand that our justification rests upon our faith in Christ and in Christ alone, and that the ground of our justification is His righteousness, His work, which is imputed to us and to all who put their trust in Him.

So, the first question I have to ask myself is, am I trusting in Christ and in His righteousness alone for my salvation? Let me add at this point, if the answer to that question is yes, and if we understand the doctrine of election, we'll know that it wouldn't be possible for us to have that saving faith in Christ if we were not numbered among the elect, so that if you have a genuine affection in your heart for Jesus, that's the proof that we need that we are indeed part of that body of the elect that we call the invisible church. Now, on the other side of it, Stuart, if a person is not elect, that person cannot know that in this lifetime. I always assume for practical purposes the election of every person that I talk to. Now, I know that not everybody is elect, but for practical purposes I assume they're elect because I certainly can't know that they're not elect, and neither can they. They may not have yet come to faith, but there are many people out there who are numbered among the elect who are at the present time unbelievers. That is, their election has not yet been realized in space and time. But it's not that the elect are without hope. We have the greatest foundation for hope that we could possibly have to know that God from all eternity has determined to save a people for Himself and to apply to them the saving work of Jesus Christ. Thanks so much for the question, Stuart.

Hi, my name is Deanna. I was part of a long conversation last night with a couple of friends, and we were discussing double predestination. And my question is, what is double predestination? There's a lot of misunderstanding about double predestination. There are some communities that believe in what they call single predestination, meaning that God has eternally decreed to save certain people that He's appointed for salvation, and that is the elect.

But as for the rest, He simply passes over and still holds out the opportunity for those people to be saved. Now, often double predestination is expressed in what we call a synergistic fashion, or positive-positive decrees. In this respect, double predestination would mean that God positively decrees and determines in advance those whom He will save, namely the elect.

And in the same method, He decrees the damnation of the sinner, and that just as on the one hand, He creates positively saving faith in the hearts of the elect, He in an equally determinative fashion creates fresh evil in the hearts of the reprobate to make sure they don't come to belief. Now, that is not the Reformed doctrine of double predestination. Reformed theology does teach double predestination insofar as that not everybody will be saved, and so it's double or nothing, really. You can't have single predestination and just ignore the non-elect unless you're a universalist. But the distinction is this. We have what we call a positive-negative decree or an asymmetrical view of election. I have an essay on this whole subject in the best script that was written for John Gerstner several years ago where I wrote extensively on the subject of double predestination. But the positive-negative says that God positively involves Himself in working faith and creating faith in the hearts of the elect while He simply passes over the non-elect without forcing them into unbelief or creating any kind of fresh evil in them. So it's positive in the one hand where He intervenes to create faith, negative in the other hand where He doesn't intervene and create fresh evil. I hope that clarifies it a little bit for you.

Thank you. Well, this next question is one that's been asked of R.C. many times over the years. How is the Protestant notion of sola fide, faith alone, consistent with James 2.24 which says, you see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone? Again in the sixteenth century when this debate had reached its apex and the Council of Trent in the middle of the fifteenth century was the ecumenical council called by the Roman Catholic Church to respond to the Reformation. And in that response, particularly in the sixth session of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church defined dei fide, her doctrine of justification by faith, and set forth canons that anathematized distortions of their view of justification, including the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. So to this day, that doctrine of sola fide still remains under the anathema of Rome as recently as the Catholic catechism. But in that response at the succession of Trent, you saw frequent references and allusions to 2.24 and so on there in James.

And so this has been a long-time discussion. In Romans, Paul makes it clear that by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. And he teaches us that justification is by faith alone. James seems to deny that it's by faith alone, but rather it's by faith and works. And the thing that makes it difficult is that in both Paul's letter and in James' letter, the same word for justification is used in the Greek, and that even the plot gets thicker because in Romans when Paul wants to prove his point, his exhibit A is Abraham. When James wants to prove his point, his exhibit A is Abraham. The problem is that when Paul appeals to Abraham to prove his point, he appeals to Abraham in Genesis 15, where Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. And Paul labors the point in Romans 4 that Abraham was justified before he did any good works. Okay? Now, when James talks about Joseph, he says, was not Abraham justified by works when he offered up Isaac on the altar so that his faith then was fulfilled?

Okay? Now, the question is, are the two biblical writers addressing the same question? And to understand the difference between Paul and James, I want to go to James and ask this, what question was James trying to answer?

And it makes it clear. James says, if a man says he has faith but has no works, will that faith justify him? Because faith without works is dead. And so what James is answering, the question is, is what kind of faith is the faith that one must have in order really to be justified? And his answer really doesn't differ that significantly from Paul because when Paul follows justification in chapter 5 and chapter 6, he's trying to show that the fruit of your justification, the witness of your justification, the manifestation of true faith is obedience. And so James is showing here that Abraham demonstrated his faith in Genesis 22 when he offered up Isaac on the altar. Let me just be a little bit technical here.

The difference is this. Paul is asking the question, how is a person justified before God in the ultimate sense? James is asking the question, how is a person's claim to have faith justified? Now, justified before whom?

Obviously before men because we can't see the heart. God didn't have to wait till Genesis 22 to know that Abraham's faith that he manifested in Genesis 15 was real saving faith. But we don't know it until we see the outworking of that faith in his sacrifice of his son, Isaac.

In my book, Faith Alone, I go into a lot more detail about this debate, but I can't spend the whole time here on it, but that's basically the approach. Good morning, Dr. Sproul. My name is Glenn.

I'm from Auburn, Washington. It's been a 12-year journey for me into the Reformed faith and much has been through teaching of Ligonier and I just, this is a big deal to me. But in that journey and from my former life, the objections I get is always around the concept of free will. And can you confirm why the sovereign act of election the sovereign act of election in God is not fatalistic determinism?

I think I can do that very clearly. We don't believe that God's sovereign government of the universe is reduced to the rule and government of mythical fates. That's what fatalism means, okay? Now, nor is it determinism in the sense of mechanistic determinism, which says that people are reduced to the role of inhuman robots and God simply pulls their strings and so on. Now, on the other hand, if you ask me the question, does God's sovereignty determine the ultimate outcome of any event, I'd say, of course, what else could determine that? Now, you ask about the issue of free will. On the third chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says that God has from all eternity immutably determined whatsoever comes to pass, semicolon, but not in such a way that denies secondary causes or does violation to the will of the creature. So that Reformed theology historically has always argued that human beings, even in their fallen state, still have what was called a free will, a liberium arbitrium, what Augustine defined in that sense, in the sense that every human being has the ability to choose what he wants to do.

Now, the key is want to. We don't always want to obey God, and we still have the freedom not to obey God. In fact, that's the freedom we exercise all the time to our everlasting peril. But if you mean, do we still have a will that is not bent or inclined to one direction or the other, then obviously the Bible would repudiate that because the Bible says that we are in bondage to sin. We're held captive by our evil inclinations.

The heart is deceitfully wicked among all things. Now, the big issue, I believe, with free will is not so much a philosophical issue as it is an issue, particularly in this country. Virtually every person born in this country has been reared in an educational system that teaches a view of the will that is humanistic and basically pagan. They don't know it because they've been taught that the will has been unaffected by the fall, that man has the equal ability to choose the good and the bad, even in his fallen condition. That, as I said, is a secularistic, humanistic, pagan view of the will and fails to recognize what the Bible clearly teaches, the doctrine of original sin.

Now, this is a very short answer. I've written a whole book on this called Willing to Believe, and I've traced the history of the debate all the way back from Augustine, that his debates with Pelagius and then dealing with Luther and his debates in the sixteenth century, Calvin with Pigius and Edwards with Chubb and so on, going through church history where we see that man is free insofar as he has the power to do what he wants to do, and God is free. The difference is God is more free than I am. I've heard it said many times that God's sovereignty ends with man's freedom. If that's the truth, then man is sovereign and God isn't. I'd say I have freedom. It's real freedom, but it ends where God's freedom begins.

Hi, Dr. Sproul. I've listened for a long time, and I've been curious what books you've read that have been influential in your life. There have been lots of books that have been profoundly influential in my life, but I have to say there's none that has been more influential than Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. When I read Calvin's Institutes, which of course went through many revisions as you know, I'm overwhelmed by the heaviliness of the matter, by the lyrical quality, but most important, the insight of the character of God. I mean, God gives to the church teachers, and people like Luther and Augustine, Aquinas, Edwards, these men have all had a profound influence on me. My favorite theologian in the technical sense is Francis Tarrant, but when I read Calvin, I just read those words, and I take my pen, and I want to underline good stuff, and I found like I'm underlining every sentence.

It's just ridiculous. I said, but it is so marvelously beautiful, and it lifts my soul to a higher sense of reverence and devotion to God. I mean, if there ever was a theologian whose heartbeat was for the glory of God, it was John Calvin, and I don't know of any theologian who's ever been more demeaned unfairly than Calvin. I used to say to my students that they're going to have to read Calvin's Institutes, say, oh, I don't want to read Calvin. I'd make them read his chapter on prayer before they did anything else. You read his chapter on prayer, you get a whole different view of the heartbeat of that man.

So that would be the one. That's quite an endorsement, isn't it, of Calvin's Institutes? Thanks for joining us for Renewing Your Mind today. I'm Lee Webb, and we're midweek in a special series of programs highlighting question and answer sessions with Dr. R.C.

Sproul. You can hear his five decades of experience as he answered questions like these today with clarity and simplicity. We've compiled sort of a best-of series taken from our conferences, radio programs, and social media interaction, and placed them on a USB drive. Our archives of Q&A sessions with R.C. go back more than 20 years, and this drive contains 65 MP3s in all. And just to clarify, that's not just 65 questions.

That's 65 full sessions with an audience and a moderator and many questions per session. We're also including digital copies of more than two dozen Crucial Questions booklets and a PDF of Dr. Sproul's book, Now That's a Good Question. We'll be happy to send you this Ask R.C. resource drive for your donation of any amount today. You can give your gift when you call us at 800-435-4343 or when you go online to renewingyourmind.org. Well, tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and we hear from so many of you who have been blessed by Ligonier Ministries. You express appreciation for this program, for Table Talk Magazine, for our conferences, and for the many resources we produce and publish here. If you have been blessed, would you consider providing a generous year-end financial gift? Your letter will need to be postmarked by tomorrow to qualify as a year-end gift, or you can give online when you go to ligonier.org slash donate. And on behalf of all of my colleagues here at Ligonier Ministries, let me thank you for your generosity. Well, tomorrow we return to our series highlighting the decades of Ask R.C., and we hope you'll join us Thursday for Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.