Here's a quick overview of the first six chapters of Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, written around 55 AD.
Chapter 1
God comforts us in all our troubles. Paul endured distress for the Corinthians' salvation. Paul went through times of despair, but this happened so he'd rely on God. Paul reiterates that God makes him and the Corinthians stand firm in Christ, sealing them in His Spirit.
Chapter 2
Paul thanks God for leading them in triumph in Christ. They are the aroma of Christ: death to the unsaved, but life to the saved. Who is equal to such a task? He asks. He emphasises his own sincerity. They did not go to Corinth for profit- quite the opposite.
Chapter 3
Paul derives encouragement for his ministry from the genuine faith of the Corinthians. Paul doesn't claim to be competent; his competence comes from God. Their ministry is the new covenant, of life and the Spirit, not the law and death. This ministry is glorious! And we reflect God's glory, and are being transformed into His likeness every day.
Chapter 4
Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Paul says they don't use deception, or distort God's word. They set forth the truth plainly, fully aware that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot understand the gospel. Paul doesn't preach himself, but Jesus Christ. He's just a clay pot, with the treasure of the gospel shining out of him. They've gone through huge troubles and persecution, but they're not defeated. Jesus is being shown more clearly in them through their suffering. They are confident that they will be raised up with Jesus. Their troubles are temporary, but there's an eternity of glory ahead of them that they keep their sights set on.
Chapter 5
This life is tough, Paul says, because we're longing to be where we really belong: heaven. So we live by faith, not by sight, and make it our goal to please God in everything. One day He'll judge us for what we do. In light of this, we try to persuade men to take Jesus seriously. He died for all, and His love compels us. We don't see people through the world's eyes, because we know that if they come to Christ, they will be made a new creation. God reconciled the world to Himself in Christ when He died on the cross, and so we are Christ's ambassadors, taking this message of forgiveness and friendship to all.
Chapter 6
This means we don't put any stumbling blocks in people's paths. As servants of God we commend ourselves by being pure, patient and kind, even in severe suffering: physical beatings, hard work, sleepless nights and hunger. We stick to the truth and we cling to the power of God with weapons of righteousness in each hand. We don't have anything, yet we possess everything. It's a topsy-turvy world we live in as Christians, but we're called to open our hearts to those we are ministering to.
Wow! I've been looking at this controversial topic for Doctrine 2, and it's great to read what others have written and to take joy in those passages of the Bible that teach about God choosing people for salvation. That's what predestination is: God choosing people, before they were even born, to be part of His kingdom. He doesn't choose people according to any merit in them, but only because of His sovereign and good pleasure. God was pleased to choose people like you and me to be part of His eternal plan of redemption. It really is mind-blowing!
Romans 9
The really central Bible passage that deals with this whole topic is Romans 9. But you can't really take Romans 9 on its own without the context of the rest of Romans. It is a weighty letter of Paul's, and it deals with massive subjects such as the way humanity has rejected God, the way we all stand guilty before Him, and the way we have been redeemed in Christ. In Romans 8, Paul assures us that NOTHING can separate us from the love of Christ. ALL THINGS work together for good for those who love Him. And yet, from the amazing high of this truth, Paul then moves to the agonising question of what has happened to Israel, his own people.
Many of Paul's generation, as of our own, did not accept Jesus as their Saviour. And Paul felt terrible grief for them, knowing that they were not righteous in God's sight because they sought to establish their own righteousness on the law, not on the work of Christ. Paul knew that it was a hopeless pursuit (see Rom 9:30-32)
But in Romans 9, Paul reminds us that God has been a God who chooses from the beginning. In the Old Testament, He chose Abraham (Neh 9:7). He chose the people of Israel (Deut 14:2). But even within the nation of Israel, He chose some to truly know Him and follow Him whilst others disobeyed Him and were destroyed.
God didn't choose some and not others because of moral goodness. He chose Jacob rather than Esau while they were still in the womb and had not done anything good or bad (Rom 9:11). He chooses simply for His own good pleasure. John Piper emphasises that God's electing love is absolutely free. 'It is the gracious overflow of his boundless happiness guided by his infinite wisdom.'
Is God fair?
This obviously raises the question, is God fair? As David Seccombe writes, Paul's answer is that salvation operates in the realm of mercy. As in the parable of the workers in the vineyard, God is master of his own generosity and mercy and will exercise them at his own pleasure. God is free to exercise his mercy as he sees fit.
But it is also important to note the way that Scripture emphasises that God chooses so that He gets the glory. In Luke 10, Jesus rejoices that the Father has revealed the truth of salvation to 'babes'. In 1 Cor 1, Paul emphasises that 'God chose what is foolish... weak... low and despised in the world... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.'
As Piper writes, 'the goal of God in election is the elimination of all human pride, all self-reliance, all boasting in man.' That's why God has pleasure in election: it magnifies His name!
What about those who aren't saved? Does God delight in their condemnation?
Piper argues that there is a complexity in God's emotions that we cannot understand. At one level, God does not delight in the death of the wicked. Yet at another level, he does delight in the justice that ordains the judgement of unbelievers. He has a real and deep compassion for perishing sinners. But he is governed by his wisdom through a plan that no ordinary human deliberation would ever conceive.
Perhaps the greatest illustration of this is in the death of Christ. It involved great sin, putting an innocent man to death, and Judas was influenced by Satan to betray Jesus. And yet, God planned it. As Marshall writes: 'We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen.'
Piper uses the illustration of God's narrow and wider lens. When he looks at tragedy and sin through the narrow lens, he is angered and grieved. But in the wider lens, when he sees it in connection with everything before and after it, he delights in the mosaic of eternity.
Does this make us puppets?
Well, the Bible presents the entire outworking of our salvation as something brought about by a personal God in relationship with personal creatures. God's act of election was permeated with personal love for those whom he chose (Eph 1:5; Grudem).
We need to challenge the idea that a choice is not genuine if it is not absolutely free. We might ask where Scripture ever says that our choices have to be free from God's influence or control in order to be real or genuine choices. It does not seem that Scripture ever speaks in this way. (Grudem again)
Why does it matter?
Many Christians see predestination as an optional extra. But Piper puts forward strong arguments why it is important that all Christians embrace the sovereign right of God to choose those who are saved:
It's biblical
It humbles sinners and glorifies God
It preserves the church from slipping towards false philosophies of life
It is good news of salvation that is not just offered but effected
It enables us to own up to the demands for holiness in the Scripture and yet have assurance of salvation
It gives us the overwhelming experience of being loved personally with the unbreakable electing love of God
It gives hope for effective evangelism and guarantees the triumph of Christ's mission in the end
Rather than making us apathetic when it comes to preaching the gospel, predestination gives us a reason to do it!!! Look at the example of Paul in Corinth (Acts 18)- he was told by God that He had many people in this city. Paul stayed there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. God's election did not exclude Paul teaching and preaching the gospel; rather, that was His chosen means of saving the elect!
God chooses to use us, in all our weakness, to spread the message of life in Christ all over the world, so that His church grows. That is something to rejoice in!
I find the British media coverage of Tiger Woods' public confession of his unfaithfulness, and his apology to the world, really interesting. In 'The Guardian', Owen Gibson's straightforward account of events was relegated to p3, whereas Zoe Williams' 'sketch' version was on the front page. It seems that many Brits just can't understand why Woods did this. Firstly, it insults our notions of being reserved and private about such matters. Secondly, we have so divorced sexual morality from the public sphere that many people are thinking: 'Why did he need to apologise?'
Gibson quotes Woods:
"I knew my actions were wrong but I convinced myself normal rules didn't apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead I thought only about myself. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me... I was wrong. I was foolish. I don't get to play by different rules."
In many ways, I'm sure we can all relate to what he said. There are times when we know something is wrong, but we go ahead and do it anyway. Our motives are purely selfish. But sometime or other, there are consequences for our actions. For Tiger Woods, those consequences erupted unpleasantly when he crashed his car. Soon evidence for a string of affairs was uncovered by the media. But there are other times when our wrong actions go undiscovered.
The Bible tells us plainly that all of us will have to stand before God and give an account of our lives (Matthew 12:36). God sees everything we do, say and even all that we think as well (Gen 6:5, 1 Chron 28:9, Psalm 139:2, Mt 12:25). It's not our place to make the rules about what's right and wrong. That was Adam and Eve's mistake in Eden: God declared that taking the fruit was wrong, and they decided otherwise. But the result of this was that sin and death came into the world. The existence of death, suffering and pain points us towards the fact that we stand under God's judgement. Why? Because we've pushed God out of His rightful place. We've snatched His crown and tried to put it on our own heads. We've rejected His right to rule in our lives.
But even if we go through life rejecting God's rules, they will still apply to us in the end. We don't get to play by different rules. There will be a Judgement Day, and if we've rejected God, then we face an eternity of being rejected by Him (Matthew 7:23).
There is punishment for those who reject God. But when Jesus died on the cross, He made a way for us to be set free. We have two choices:
Take God's punishment on ourselves
Let Jesus take God's punishment for us
If we truly believe and trust that Jesus has died for our wrong attitude towards God, then we can be reconciled to God through Him. Although we have rejected God in the past, we can become friends with God... even more than that, we can become children of God. (Eph1, 1 John 5)
The main criticism of Woods made by Williams' sketch was that many doubt the sincerity of his apology: 'He sounded as though he had zoned out a bit, as if he was reading out the rules of a sport.' And God doesn't want a sham-apology from us. God wants real faith and real repentance, and He Himself gives us His Spirit so that, supernaturally, we are given the ability to believe and to please God by living radically different lives. This is why living as a Christian is not like life in black-and-white. It's not a boring, textbook life. It's full blown technicolour! It's life when you finally see things as they truly are. You not only see the truth, but you live it as well. You are given power to live it through God's Spirit, working in you. (2 Peter 1:3)
Living life by your own rules isn't real life. You're playing a game, and a dangerous one at that.
Living life with God at the centre is where you find true joy and fulfilment (John 10:10).
