Life Meets Doctrine

Over the years God has brought me to Romans 8-11 so many times. He has shown me the vast resources within these four chapters – resources that instill hope and fear, peace and worry, relief and work, beautiful surrender and putting-up-my-dukes. At times I approach passages in Romans 8-11 with complete surrender and hope in God. At other times I am left wondering, “Is God really allowed to do this?”

The most succinct summary of the tension is gathered together in Romans 9:18-19: So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” And I am thinking, “Actually, yeah, that is exactly what I was thinking!” It is attractive to me to avoid this tension by saying that God’s sovereign, loving, unconditional pre-election should not be in view when understanding why some come to Jesus and some do not. Others have done this, and I appreciate this response. I can understand that they are doing this with a desire to honor other passages of Scripture. I can see how they could draw this conclusion from Isaiah 55:1: Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. And there is Jesus’ similar invitations, such as John 7:37-38: On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” These invitations can furthermore be combined with Acts 7:51: You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. These passages (and others) seem to point to the fact that God’s unconditional, pre-election should not be in view when it comes to understanding why some people gladly follow Jesus and some people do not. When these invitations are issued there is absolutely no mention of God’s election or God’s predestination. The appeal is wholly to man’s desire and man’s will. Then, when the rebuke is given, there is no mention of God’s hardening. The responsibility lands squarely on the people who resisted the Holy Spirit. Admittedly, if only certain passages of Scripture are in view, I would wholeheartedly agree.

The thing that can drive me crazy is that Paul’s Bible-response to such a dilemma is to hold up two seemingly contradictory truths. For example, in Romans 9, he has taught that (1) God softens and hardens whomever he wills, of his own free choice, and (2) that God still finds fault with those whom he hardens. I feel stripped of my rights. I feel incapable, unable, and debilitated. I feel left without any power, left without any hope, left without any choice. In my natural mind it just doesn’t quite seem fair.

It does seem fair to say that my choice and my will are to blame because God is responding (or has responded in eternity past) to my choice and my will. This might come from an understanding of Romans 8:29-30 or 1 Peter 1:1-2 as God’s election being according to his ability to foresee my future faith. That would seem fair to me.

And it does seem fair to say that my choice and my will are not to blame because God is doing the choosing, the pre-election, the pre-destining. This is a logical conclusion that could be drawn from Romans 9:1-18. That is the precise response Paul anticipated and responded to in Romans 9:19. This, too, seems fair to me.

But what does not seem fair is that my choice and my will are to blame while at the same time God is the one who freely chose, freely pre-elected, freely pre-destined my condition of heart and response. Or, to use the specific wording of Paul, it does not seem fair that God hardens, and, yet, God finds fault with those whom he hardens. It blows my mind. If I had not already read the next few words from Romans 9:20, I would thrust my fist in the air, shake it, and ask God how he could allow such hypocrisy in himself, such confusion among mankind, and such damnation or salvation. But I have had to learn (and I now believe that even this learning was fully by God’s grace) that God has every right in the world to say to me, “Who are you, Doug, to answer back to me? You have been molded, and will you say to Me, your Molder, ‘Why have you made me like this? I have the right over you. I could have made you for honorable use or for dishonorable use.’” No matter how much I like it or do not like it, this is God’s right.

At this point, it would be good to give gratitude to two other men who have helped me respond to these two clashing truths (Psalm 16:3; Romans 12:10). Both Charles Spurgeon and John Piper have been instruments in God’s hands to help me respond with glad submission to this very tension and to the teachings of God’s unlimited sovereignty and rule. God used Charles Spurgeon to woo me in to such an understanding of Scripture through upholding Jesus as the Sovereign King and the Beautiful Savior of the World. And God used John Piper to teach me how to handle these truths pastorally, with patience and gentleness. God has also used John Piper to help me know that there is a bigger picture and a bigger issue at stake here. This is not merely about salvation and how salvation is carried out. There is something much larger at stake – namely, God’s glory. Without God’s grace through these men I would still be (as I once was) an angry high schooler blaming God or a stuck-up, arrogant, know-it-all college student who reads too much. (The truth is, God is still rooting these sins out of me; some trees have deeper roots than others.)

Other passages that highlight this tension (or similar ones) are:
* The conditionality of Romans 8:12-13 paired with the security of Romans 8:29-30: So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. …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.
* The images of Romans 9:19-24 (of God as potter of clay) and Romans 10:21: But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedident and contrary people.”
* The immediately connected words of Philippians 2:12-13: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
* And there are many other passages like this.

The summary of my wrestle is this statement: man is fully responsible, and God gets all of the glory. Other ways to say the same thing: every person who goes to hell has chosen to go to hell, and every person who goes to heaven has been only chosen by God. But Paul put it best: God softens whom he wills; God hardens whom he wills; and God finds fault with those whom he hardens.

How have I come to submit to God’s word in these Scriptures? Maybe Psalm 131 says it best: O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. This is my heart (on my best of days) and this is what I know I need to submit to (on my worst of days). I do not want to push Scripture beyond what Scripture pushes. I do not want to create systems or structures over and above the Bible. I do not want to worship any system of thought. Instead, I want to bow in total humility before King Jesus to the glory of God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. And to borrow from the very tension I have wrestled with: Who am I to answer back to God? Instead, I will worship him, glorify him, and intimately love him. He has all my rights. He has all my hopes.