Bright Wings

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with Ah! Bright Wings.

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June 07, 2010

A Follow Up to Romans 9 Part II: Is God Schizophrenic?

I (Pastor Paul) am back for round 2 of the follow up blog posts to our series on Romans 9.  One of the things that I want to do through these posts is to hit on questions and issues that emerge as we think about the implications of God’s sovereignty.

The title of this particular blog post is intentionally provocative, as it points to the idea that somehow God must be double-minded as it relates to his sovereign will.  How can God providentially direct the affairs of men including the election of some (but not all) to eternal life, which is clearly the teaching of Ephesians 1, while at the same time desiring that all men be saved (I Tim. 2: 4)?  I have cut and pasted below a lengthy excerpt from John Piper’s article, “Are There Two Wills in God?” which examines this issue of how we reconcile God’s sovereign will with His desire for all men to be saved.  Be forewarned: these sorts of questions cannot be answered in pithy sound bites; indeed, they take quite a bit of time to unpack biblically, so dive in and have your soul enriched!

The Piper article can be found in its entirety HERE, with the excerpts below a helpful primer in orienting us biblically to the pertinent issues.

1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, and Ezekiel 18:23 might be called the Arminian pillar texts concerning the universal saving will of God. In 1 Timothy 2:1-4 Paul says that the reason we should pray for kings and all in high positions is that this may bring about a quiet and peaceable life which “is good, and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills (thelei) all persons to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” In 2 Peter 3:8-9 the apostle says that the delay of the second coming of Christ is owing to the fact that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. “The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not willing (boulomenos) that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” And in Ezekiel 18:23 and 32 the Lord speaks about his heart for the perishing: “Do I indeed delight in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather in his turning from his way that he might live? . . . I do not delight (ehephoz) in the death of the one who dies, says the Lord; so turn and live” (cf. 33:11).

Affirming the will of God to save all, while also affirming the unconditional election of some, implies that there are at least “two wills” in God, or two ways of willing. It implies that God decrees one state of affairs while also willing and teaching that a different state of affairs should come to pass. This distinction in the way God wills has been expressed in various ways throughout the centuries. It is not a new contrivance. For example, theologians have spoken of sovereign will and moral will, efficient will and permissive will, secret will and revealed will, will of decree and will of command, decretive will and preceptive will, voluntas signi (will of sign) and voluntas beneplaciti (will of good pleasure), etc.

Perhaps the most effective way to [illustrate] this is to begin by drawing attention to the way Scripture portrays God willing something in one sense which he disapproves in another sense. Then, after seeing some of the biblical evidence, we can step back and ponder how to understand this in relation to God’s saving purposes.

The most compelling example of God’s willing for sin to come to pass while at the same time disapproving the sin is his willing the death of his perfect, divine Son. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a morally evil act inspired immediately by Satan (Luke 22:3). Yet in Acts 2:23 Luke says, “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan (boule) and foreknowledge of God.” The betrayal was sin, and it involved the instrumentality of Satan; but it was part of God’s ordained plan. That is, there is a sense in which God willed the delivering up of his Son, even though the act was sin.

Moreover Herod’s contempt for Jesus (Luke 23:11) and Pilate’s spineless expediency (Luke 23:24) and the Jews’ “Crucify! Crucify him!” (Luke 23:21) and the Gentile soldiers’ mockery (Luke 23:36) were also sinful attitudes and deeds. Yet in Acts 4:27-28 Luke expresses his understanding of the sovereignty of God in these acts by recording the prayer of the Jerusalem saints:

Truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever thy hand and thy plan (boule) had predestined to take place.  Herod, Pilate, the soldiers and Jewish crowds lifted their hand to rebel against the Most High only to find that their rebellion was unwitting (sinful) service in the inscrutable designs of God.

The appalling death of Christ was the will and work of God the Father. Isaiah wrote, “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God . . . It was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:4,10). God’s will was very much engaged in the events that brought his Son to death on the cross. God considered it “fitting to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). Yet, as Jonathan Edwards points out, Christ’s suffering “could not come to pass but by sin. For contempt and disgrace was one thing he was to suffer.”

It goes almost without saying that God wills obedience to his moral law, and that he wills this in a way that can be rejected by many. This is evident from numerous texts: “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will (thelema) of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50). “The one who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). The “will of God” in these texts is the revealed, moral instruction of the Old and New Testaments, which proscribes sin.

Therefore we know it was not the “will of God” that Judas and Pilate and Herod and the Gentile soldiers and the Jewish crowds disobey the moral law of God by sinning in delivering Jesus up to be crucified. But we also know that it was the will of God that this come to pass. Therefore we know that God in some sense wills what he does not will in another sense.

Behind this complex relationship of two wills in God is the foundational biblical premise that God is indeed sovereign in a way that makes him ruler of all actions.  There are passages that ascribe to God the final control over all calamities and disasters wrought by nature or by man. Amos 3:6, “Does evil befall a city, unless the LORD has done it? Isaiah 45:7, “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all these things.” Lamentations 3:37-38, “Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?” Noteworthy in these texts is that the calamities in view involve human hostilities and cruelties that God would disapprove of even as he wills that they be.

What are we to say of the fact that God wills something that in fact does not happen. There are two possibilities as far as I can see. One is that there is a power in the universe greater than God’s which is frustrating him by overruling what he wills. Neither Calvinist nor Arminian affirms this.  The other possibility is that God wills not to save all, even though he is willing to save all, because there is something else that he wills more, which would be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all. This is the solution that I as a Calvinist affirm along with Arminians. In other words both Calvinists and Arminians affirm two wills in God when they ponder deeply over 1 Timothy 2:4. Both can say that God wills for all to be saved. But then when queried why all are not saved both Calvinist and Arminian answer that God is committed to something even more valuable than saving all.

The difference between Calvinists and Arminians lies not in whether there are two wills in God, but in what they say this higher commitment is. What does God will more than saving all? The answer given by Arminians is that human self-determination and the possible resulting love relationship with God are more valuable than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious grace. The answer given by Calvinists is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and mercy (Romans 9:22-23) and the humbling of man so that he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Corinthians 1:29).

This is utterly crucial to see, for what it implies is that 1 Timothy 2:4 does not settle the momentous issue of God’s higher commitment which restrains him from saving all. There is no mention here of free will. Nor is there mention of sovereign, prevenient, efficacious grace. If all we had was this text we could only guess what restrains God from saving all. When free will is found in this verse it is a philosophical, metaphysical assumption not an exegetical conclusion. The assumption is that if God wills in one sense for all to be saved, then he cannot in another sense will that only some be saved. That assumption is not in the text, nor is it demanded by logic, nor is it taught in the rest of Scripture. Therefore 1 Timothy 2:4 does not settle the issue; it creates it. Both Arminians and Calvinists must look elsewhere to answer whether the gift of human self-determination or the glory of divine sovereignty is the reality that restrains God’s will to save all people.

When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. “I do not delight in the death of anyone, says the Lord God” (Ezekiel 18:32). But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in (Psalm 115:3).

Therefore we should not stumble over the fact that God does and does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked. When Moses warns Israel that the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon them and destroying them if they do not repent (Deuteronomy 28:63), he means that those who have rebelled against the Lord and moved beyond repentance will not be able to gloat that they have made the Almighty miserable. God is not defeated in the triumphs of his righteous judgment. Quite the contrary. Moses says that when they are judged they will unwittingly provide an occasion for God to rejoice in the demonstration of his justice and his power and the infinite worth of his glory (Romans 9:22-23).

In other words, God has a real and deep compassion for perishing sinners. Jeremiah points to this reality in God’s heart. In Lamentations 3:32-33 he speaks of the judgment that God has brought upon Jerusalem: “Though he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.” The word “willingly” translates a composite Hebrew word (milibo) which means literally “from his heart” (cf. 1 Kings 12:33). It appears that this is Jeremiah’s way of saying that God does will the affliction that he caused, but he does not will it in the same way he wills compassion. The affliction did not come “from his heart.” Jeremiah was trying, as we are, to come to terms with the way a sovereign God wills two different things, affliction and compassion.

God’s expression of pity and his entreaties have heart in them. There is a genuine inclination in God’s heart to spare those who have committed treason against his kingdom. But his motivation is complex, and not every true element in it rises to the level of effective choice. In his great and mysterious heart there are kinds of longings and desires that are real— they tell us something true about his character. Yet not all of these longings govern God’s actions. He is governed by the depth of his wisdom expressed through a plan that no ordinary human deliberation would ever conceive (Romans 11:33-36; 1 Corinthians 2:9). There are holy and just reasons for why the affections of God’s heart have the nature and intensity and proportion that they do.

Therefore I affirm with John 3:16 and 1 Timothy 2:4 that God loves the world with a deep compassion that desires the salvation of all men. Yet I also affirm that God has chosen from before the foundation of the world whom he will save from sin. Since not all people are saved we must choose whether we believe (with the Arminians) that God’s will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to human self-determination or whether we believe (with the Calvinists) that God’s will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to the glorification of his sovereign grace (Ephesians 1:6,12,14; Romans 9:22-23).  This decision should not be made on the basis of metaphysical assumptions about what we think human accountability requires. It should be made on the basis of what the scriptures teach. I do not find in the Bible that human beings have the ultimate power of self-determination. As far as I can tell it is a philosophical inference based on metaphysical presuppositions.

That is, my answer to the above question about what restrains God’s will to save all people is his supreme commitment to uphold and display the full range of his glory through the sovereign demonstration of his wrath and mercy for the enjoyment of his elect and believing people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

 

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posted by Joshua Hughes

June 01, 2010

A Follow Up to Romans 9 Part I: Resources and Helps

I, Pastor Paul, have righteously co-opted Pastor Erik’s blog for the next two months until he is back from his sabbatical at the beginning of August. I am going to be posting a series of follow up comments to our Romans 9 series, particularly focusing upon issues, questions, and bible texts that we were not able to delve into in depth as a part of this series.  I know that many of you will have ongoing questions about how Paul’s teaching in Romans 9 on God’s sovereignty over sin and salvation jives with other texts and truths we find in Scripture, and I hope to tackle some of these in the coming days.

For this week, knowing that only a righteous remnant was with us on Memorial Day weekend for the last sermon in the Romans 9 series, I will review some of the resources and helps that I mentioned and recommended on Sunday that should aid you as you engage God’s Word in this area.  Also, I am including at the end the exhortation that I gave to the 4 Oaks church family regarding how we should approach these things.  Here goes….

1. Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, by Michael Horton, which continues to go like hotcakes off the Four Oaks Bookshelf, is a great starter resource to orient you to many of the pertinent issues regarding election, God’s sovereignty, and predestination.  You can order the book directly here. 

2. The Pastors Summer Theology Series begins on Sunday, June 20, during the first service, where we will be teaching on Horton’s book and having a more interactive format for you to be a part of for you to engage, dialogue, and ask questions.  You can sign up on the church website here.

3. The Romans 9 sermon series itself can be found on-line on the 4 Oaks church website, so please listen to the 4 week series in its entirety before you send in any threatening emails on behalf of Jacob Arminius or John Wesley (insider theologian’s joke, there).  And, we hope to make these four sermons available in a booklet form soon to put on the Four Oaks Bookshelf as a ready-made resource.

4. I commend to you John Piper’s book, The Justification of God, as the best biblical, expositional treatment of Romans 9 that I have ever read.  This is not a devotional or inspirational book, but is a heady, deep, exegetical, biblical study of this passage.  You may also want to peruse J.I. Packer’s excellent little book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, which is a great resource for better understanding how evangelism and God’s sovereignty “fit” together.

As you wrestle through these things, and wrestling with God’s Word is a good thing, I really want to challenge you with something: if you find yourself struggling, resisting, pushing back, or even, I dare say, becoming agitated or angry at this series or teaching, ask yourself this:  are your struggles born out of a firm conviction with a clear conscience of what the Scriptures teach? In other words, are you arriving at a different theological conclusion than what you have been taught in this Romans 9 series because you are firmly convinced in your mind through a command of the Scriptures that God’s Word teaches something different?  If so, I entrust you to the Lord; each man answers in his own conscience to these things before God.

However, if your struggles are more of a result of preconceived notions, cultural assumptions, biblical ignorance, personal background, or philosophical presuppositions, I really charge you to become a student God’s Word during this season. Look to the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone to be the ultimate authority in these matters. Our culture has much to say about this issue of free will and God’s sovereignty,  whether it be the $4,000,000 study being done by the Templeton Foundation, Neo and Morpheus’ endless dialogue in the Matrix, or the expose on free will and fate in LOST.  Make sure that you are not breathing in the cultural air regarding human autonomy and independence as you approach God’s Word and truths.

Next week: How does God’s sovereignty jive with I Timothy 2: 4 and God’s desire for all men to be saved? Stay tuned!

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posted by Joshua Hughes

May 10, 2010

Some Summer Sabbatical Reading

Well, we took the first week of sabbatical to just unwind and rest. It has been a great time. We also had a really sweet morning of worship on our first Lord’s Day away from Four Oaks with MetroLife Church here in Orlando (part of Sovereign Grace Ministries). Pastor Danny Jones’ sermon on Philippians 2:1-4 really hit the spot: good exegesis, faithful exposition, right on doctrine, heart hitting application. And this is the way it should be. So…needless to say, this is where the Braun family will be worshiping these next two months here in O-Town.

I hear tell from reliable sources that this same faithfulness happened at Four Oaks through Dr.Paul Gilbert. Praise God. Four Oaks is of course where our heart always is, no matter where we happen to be bodily.

One of my goals through this sabbatical is to read. If you care to keep up, here’s my sabbatical reading list. I’ll probably blog a bit through some of these titles as I move along.

General Interest and Edification:

John Piper, Future Grace; Finally Alive
Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters (and other essays)
Spurgeon’s Sermons, vol. 1
Edwards, Sermons (previously unpublished), vol. 1

Ministry and Preaching Oriented:

Marshall and Payne, The Trellis and the Vine
Mike Braun, The Forgotten Bible  (working title)
Larry Osborne,  Sticky Church
Jack Hughes, Expository Preaching with Word Pictures
Roger Wagner, Tongues Aflame-Learning to Preach from the Apostles
Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry

Specific Theology - Eschatology:

Robert Culver, Systematic Theology; The Earthly Reign of Christ
Horner, Future Israel
Four Views on Rapture; Millennial Maze

Tori and Family:

Jani Ortlund, The Loving Law our Lasting Legacy
J.A. Alexander, Thoughts on Family Worship
E. Dodds, Marriage to a Difficult Man
R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Narnia Chronicles

There you have it! Most of these titles are SPF 30 or over, so feel free to take them to the beach.

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”  Philippians 1:9-11

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posted by Erik Braun

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