“Whosoever Will”

Romans 9:30-10:21

January 13, 2008

Dr. Jerry Nelson

 

Appendices:

p18 “Compatibalism” by John Frame

p19 “Free Will” by John W. Hendryx

p20 “Feedom of the Will” by R.C. Sproul.

p23 “Are There Two Wills in God?” by John Piper (Divine Election and God's Desire for All to Be Saved.)

 

Last week’s study of Romans 9 raised many interesting questions:

How can God be completely sovereign in his choice of who he will save and, at the same time, we be completely free in whether we will respond or not?

Does God choose us or do we choose God? 

The short answer is “yes,” but let me come to that later.

 

Let’s start where the apostle Paul does in Romans 8.

 

In Romans 8 Paul declared that those God calls to himself he will most assuredly finally and fully save.

8:29-30 “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son… And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

 

Paul wants those who belong to God to have absolute confidence in God’s desire and ability to truly save them and grant them life now and in the presence of God forever!

He assures Christians at the end of that chapter that nothing can separate them from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

As I said last week, there was however a problem that might cause the Romans to doubt that keeping power of God?

The problem was with what happened to the Jews.

 

God made promises to the Jews in the OT and yet when the Messiah Jesus came most Jews didn’t respond to him.

It could appear then that God’s promises to the Jews weren’t kept.

And thus Christians might then doubt that God would keep his promises to them.

 

In Romans, chapters 9-11, Paul sets out to respond to this apparent problem.

And in the process, we are taught much about who is saved and how they are saved.

 

This becomes very practical to us because the issue is not only the Jews of Paul’s day but us as well; who will be saved and how anyone is saved even today.

 

In Romans 9 Paul gives his first explanation of how we can know that God’s word did not fail the Jews and thus why we can trust him not to fail us today.

Theologians call this first explanation, “unconditional election.”

 

Paul said people, especially the Jews, erroneously thought God chose all the Jews to be saved and thus when they weren’t saved, people concluded, God failed.

 

But the point Paul makes is that God didn’t choose all the Jews.

Here’s how Paul says it, 9:6-12 “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children… In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring….in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls.”

Paul makes the point that God has always and continues to choose specifically, person by person, who he will save. 

 

And also Paul points out that God’s choice of who will be saved is not based on anything God sees or even foresees in the one being chosen.

The choice is based somehow in God – his sovereign choice, uninfluenced by us.

 

Some wish to object to that by saying God is unfair, unjust, to choose this way.

But Paul has already demonstrated that everyone, because of our sinfulness and sin, deserves the justice of eternal punishment.

So the point here is not that God is being unjust but that God, instead, is being merciful.

That God would choose anyone is pure mercy and that he would choose me is reason for an eternity of praise. 

But I won’t re-preach Romans 9; you can read it for yourself.

 

As I said earlier, In Romans 9 Paul gives his first explanation of why we can say God’s word did not fail because God never promised that he would save everyone.

But those he sovereignly and unconditionally elects to save based on his mercy, he saves and keeps and nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

So in chapter 9 Paul describes our salvation from God’s perspective,  in terms of unconditional election by Divine sovereignty.

Now in chapter 10 to give us the second reason for knowing God’s word has not failed, Paul will describe salvation in terms of human responsibility.

 

What these two chapters together teach us is that God’s unconditional election of us does not by itself save us.

Yes, God has ordained the beginning of our salvation by sovereignly electing who he would have mercy on and choose to save as we saw in chapter 9.

God has also ordained the end of our salvation by promising that those he elects, those he chooses, will be his forever as we saw in chapter 8.

But God has not only ordained the beginning and the end, he has also ordained the means by which we are saved –  it is by grace through faith. We must believe.

And that is what we will see in chapter 10.

 

As I said earlier, just election, just God’s choice of us, won’t save us.

To be saved, to have a relationship with a righteous, holy God, we must also be righteous.  

 

But back in Romans 3:10 we were taught: “There is no one righteous, not even one.”

But God solved our problem: 3:21-22 “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law (or law-keeping), has been made known, to which the (OT) testifies. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

 

Now here Paul says the reason there aren’t many Jews in the church in Paul’s day is not God’s fault as if he were unjust.

The reason most Jews were not Christians is that they sought to gain their own righteousness, their own right standing with God, by keeping the law rather than accepting the righteousness of God freely made available to them in Christ.

 

And the reason why many Gentiles were in the church was because they did not try to earn their righteousness by their efforts, but they gained their righteousness by faith, that is, they received the free gift of the righteousness of Jesus as their own and were thus counted righteous by God.

This is the greatest transaction in the history of mankind:

Jesus paid for our sins and he gave us his righteousness.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we read, “God made (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in (Jesus) we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

Now listen to Paul write about this beginning at Romans 9:30-10:4:

“What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;  31 but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.

32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone (Jesus).”  33 As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, (but) the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” 1 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3 Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

 

As with many people today, most of the Jews thought they would be okay with God if they had done their best. “Surely God doesn’t expect us to be perfect!”

But that is precisely what a HOLY God does expect.

Habakkuk 1:13 God, “your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.”

 

So God had made it abundantly clear in the OT that while obedience to the law was commanded of God’s people, they would not be able to perfectly obey it and so God established the entire sacrificial system.

Now the people knew that the sacrifices of bulls and goats could not actually clear them of their guilt for sin.

They knew, that somehow those sacrifices pointed to a way that God would eventually remove the guilt;

They weren’t to trust the sacrifices; they were to trust God to grant them righteousness.

 

But many of the Jews disregarded the issue of trust in God for righteousness and resorted to thinking they could earn sufficient righteousness by keeping the law. 

 

By Paul’s day, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, it should have been clear to everyone, Jews included, that Jesus was the end or fulfillment of the law as verse 4 says it

The God-man Jesus had kept the law perfectly for them and us.

And because of the OT prophecies, they should have known that Jesus was also the fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system – those OT sacrifices were pointing forward to Jesus’ death atoning for the sin of his people.

And therefore his righteousness is offered freely to all who will believe. 

 

Paul then goes on in chapter 10:

10:5-13 “Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: “The man who does these things will live by them.”  6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’’” (that is, to bring Christ down)  7 “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).  8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming:  9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.  11 As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”  12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

 

Paul says, don’t make gaining the righteousness you need so difficult as to be impossible.

The righteousness of God in Christ is not a matter of going up to heaven or down to the deep, or doing anything difficult to gain it. 

That righteousness, that you so desperately need to have a relationship with a holy God, is very near.

 

It does not require effort; it only requires faith, a trust in Jesus as the one who has provided it for us.

 

Now, please understand, there is no magic in saying the words “Jesus is Lord” or in merely mentally agreeing that Jesus rose from the dead.

The emphasis here is clearly on a heart change and a choice to trust in Jesus and be loyal to him. 

And when we do embrace Jesus as saving-Lord of our lives, he grants to us his own righteousness making us completely and eternally acceptable to the Father God.

As we saw in Romans 3:22 “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

Or as Paul put it in verse 13, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

 

Remember that earlier I said that God’s election of us, by itself wouldn’t save us? 

Here God says we have a responsibility; we must believe.

If we don’t believe we won’t be saved.

 

Now listen to him in the latter verses of the chapter as Paul continues to lay the blame, for the Jews’ condemned condition, and anyone’s condemned condition, squarely at their own feet.

Paul says, “don’t blame God!”

 

Romans 10:14-21 “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” 16 But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message?”  17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: “(God’s word) has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”  19 Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, “I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.” 20 And Isaiah boldly says, “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.”  21 But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”

 

Here in chapter 10 Paul gives the second explanation why we cannot say “God’s word failed.”   God’s word or promises, did not fail.

Israel is lost because Israel refused the message; or as in verse 21, they are a disobedient and obstinate people. 

Or to say it of us, the reason why anyone is condemned is not God’s fault, it is their own fault – they refuse the truth about God that God has made known to them.

 

No, God’s word did not fail the Jews and his word will not fail you.

If God has saved you, if you are trusting in Jesus Christ as your saving-Lord, God will continue to keep you through the hardest times of life and he will definitely take you to be with him when you die!

 

Now next week, in chapter 11, we will come back to the subject of Israel, the Jews.

 

But for the rest of our time today I want to speak to the compatibility of chapters 9 and 10, the compatibility of divine sovereignty in unconditional election with human responsibility.

 

Earlier I asked, “How can God be completely sovereign in his choice of who he will save and, at the same time, we be completely free in whether we will respond or not?”

“Does God choose us or do we choose God?”

 

We struggle with these concepts because we want it all to fit together perfectly in our minds.

 

On the one hand if we emphasize divine sovereignty, we are tempted to say that if God does the choosing, if God elects who will be saved, as we saw in Romans 9, then how can God hold anyone responsible?

But clearly in Romans 10, he does hold us responsible.

 

But we go on in our thinking, that if it is all up to God, and God is sovereign in who will be saved, why pray or why evangelize, for that matter why do anything?

 

Conversely, if we emphasize human responsibility, especially as popularly conceived as “free will,” how can any Christian live with him or herself. 

People are dying everyday without being Christians. They are going into an eternity of punishment for their sins.

If God has done all he’s going to do, then the fate of the world is now in our hands.

 

If it is now only up to us to tell the good news and to unbelievers, of their own “free will,” to choose Jesus, why does not every Christian quit his job and spend 24/7 convincing people to trust Jesus? 

Unless you have no compassion at all, how can you sit here?

 

But, from the Bible, we know that the apparently logical extremes of both positions are incomplete. 

 

Let’s take the idea of divine sovereignty first.

As I said we are tempted to suggest that God’s sovereign unconditional election of who will be saved, means it is all up to God and so why do anything; why pray, evangelize or even live a holy life. 

 

What we fail to take into account when we think like that is what we have already seen in Romans 9 and 10. 

God not only determines who he will choose and who he will eventually taken to heaven, but he also determines that the means by which he would do that is our faith and obedience. 

Yes, God chooses, but he also said that the way he would accomplish his purposes in those he chooses is by grace through their faith. 

God planned it so that we would be involved in the process of his saving us; we would not be passive robots. 

 

In Ephesians and elsewhere, we learn that God chose us before the foundation of the world.

But that doesn’t mean that God chose and then withdrew.

·        Back in Romans 8:29-30 we saw already that God is active in every part of his plan for us: “those God foreknew he also predestined… And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

·        And in Romans 10:14-15 we see that God has ordained sending, preaching, hearing, believing and calling on the name of Jesus as the means by which he will accomplish his purposes in us. “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  15 And how can they preach unless they are sent?”

 

Should we tell people about Jesus even though God has already chosen those to whom he will show his mercy?

Should we expect people to hear and believe the gospel and trust in Jesus to be saved even though God has already chosen who will be saved? 

Yes and yes because God has prescribed the means as well as the end.

 

Do I pray for the lost?

Yes, first of all because I am commanded to pray.

And because prayer is one of the means by which God carries out his plan.

Listen to Paul in Romans 10:1 “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.”

 

Do I tell the good news of Jesus?

Yes, because I have been commanded to and, as we see in Romans 10:14-15, it is the means by which God carries out his plan.

 

Human responses to God’s election are not contradictions of divine sovereignty but are a part of it.

 

I pray for the lost, and our missionaries pray for the lost, because we do believe in God’s sovereign election of who will be saved. 

Why would we pray if we believed it was now only up to the individual to decide?

But we do pray, because we want God to act, we want God to open their blind eyes; we want God to do something in them that only he can do. 

We don’t leave it to “free will,” we want God to move them.

 

And we share the gospel with unbelievers, and our missionaries are doing so throughout the world, because we believe in God’s sovereign election of who will be saved. 

We know that evangelism would be pointless if God didn’t act. 

But God has said that he will effectively call those whom he has chosen.

We don’t have to wonder if God will save those whom he has chosen, we know he will and wonder of wonder he has called us to be part of that process.

 

One theologian wrote, “When God effects (brings to pass) his work of faith in us, he does not do so without us but by us. Certainly he does not simply give it to us to accomplish, as the Jews thought. That would be to demand the impossible. But in giving it to us to accomplish, he gives us at the same time the wherewithal to accomplish it…” (A. Vanhoye In D.A. Carson Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibiity, p192)

But don’t miss the point of Romans 10 – we must believe.

 

What I find very interesting and instructive is that Paul sees no contradiction between teaching both the divine sovereignty of God in his unconditional election of those he will save in chapter 9 and the full responsibility of human beings for their own lost condition in chapter 10.

He teaches them both boldly and strongly and without any embarrassment over any apparent contradiction.

With a significantly lesser mind than the apostle Paul, I too must accept these two truths. 

 

But there is something that still bothers us about this idea of God’s  sovereignty in unconditionally choosing who he will show mercy to..

We think it violates our free will.

 

I have already acknowledged we cannot give a fully satisfying answer to what appears to us to be something of a contradiction between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

I must simply accept that both are true because God says they are. 

 

But I think I can demonstrate that Paul’s teaching of the two truths in Romans 9 and 10, even with the unanswered questions, is far more satisfying than the popular idea of “free will.”

 

Even many Christians camp on this idea of “free will.”

 

John Piper wrote, “When I entered seminary I believed in the freedom of my will, in the sense that it was ultimately self-determining. I had not learned this from the Bible; I absorbed it from the independent, self-sufficient, self-esteeming, self-exalting air that you and I breathe every day of our lives in America. The sovereignty of God meant (to me then) that (God) can do anything with me that I give him permission to do. With this frame of mind I entered (seminary)…

“In the class on salvation, we dealt head on with the doctrines of unconditional election and irresistible grace… Emotions run high when you feel your man-centered world crumbling around you. I met (the professor) in the hall one day. After a few minutes of heated argument about the freedom of my will, I held a pen in front of his face and dropped it to the floor. Then I said, with not as much respect as a student ought to have, "I [!] dropped it." Somehow that was supposed to prove that my choice to drop the pen was not governed by anything but my sovereign self.

But thanks be to God’s mercy and patience, at the end of the semester I wrote in my blue book for the final exam, "Romans 9 is like a tiger going about devouring free-willers like me." That was the end of my love affair with human autonomy and the ultimate self-determination of my will. My worldview simply could not stand against the scriptures, especially Romans 9.”(from a sermon delivered on Nov 3, 2002 available at DesiringGod.org)

 

The answer to the question of whether we have “free will” or not requires that we define the term.

And when we do, it will reveal that the concept is a kind of fiction.

 

For your will to be “free” it must mean that your ability to choose one thing over another is not caused, coerced or even influenced by anything.

To be completely free would mean that it is not influenced in any way by any thing outside of you or, for that matter, influenced even by anything in you. 

 

Now think about that for a minute.

A famous illustration of this is of the free-willed mule.

The mule’s owner put a pail of wheat on the left of the mule and a pail of oats on the right.

If the mule were not influenced in any way by hunger, by appearance, by memory, or by anything else, it would starve.  (Sproul, Chosen by God, 53)

There would be no motivation, no desire to choose one over the other.

 

You see, without some influence there can be no desire, and with no desire there can be no ability to make a choice. 

 

And if your will is influenced then by definition it is not completely “free.”

That influence might be someone holding a gun to your head or it might be something as unseen as the impact your parents had on you when you were a child. 

But if anything is influencing you, predisposing you, then you are not actually free.

And as we will see in a minute, it is impossible not to be influenced.

That is why I call “free will” a kind of fiction.

 

So instead of “free will” maybe we should call it what it is, the ability to choose.

Jonathan Edwards called it “the mind choosing.”

And we do make choices every day.

But don’t suggest those choices aren’t influenced.

 

Now of course there are choices we make that have no significance.

It would be like John Piper choosing to drop the pen or not just to prove he has something he then called “free will.”

I think it takes a fair amount of premeditation to choose for no reason, because most of our choices are driven by something within us our outside of us that influences our decision.

But I have to admit that it is possible that we could decide to make a choice based on nothing at all – we have the freedom to drop the pen or not drop the pen. 

But such choices are irrelevant and have no moral significance.

 

So back to the important things of life, we must keep in mind that we make our choices based on what we most desire

In fact any choice we make is determined by the strongest desire at the moment.

 

One man illustrates it this way: We desire to lose weight because of how we have been influenced about appearance or health and so we choose to diet.

We do well until hunger becomes a stronger influence than the issue of appearance or health and thus the desire to eat becomes a stronger desire than the desire to lose weight.

We choose based on the strongest desire. (iSproul, Grace Unknown, 131))  

 

In fact if you think about it, it is impossible for you to choose what you don’t desire.

 

Yes, we make choices but our choices are based on our strongest desires.

So your choices are free because you make them (no one coerced you) AND your choices are determined because they are driven by your desires. (Sproul, Chosen by God, 54)

 

Now let’s talk about spiritual ability.

When it comes to spiritual ability, the ability to have a positive relationship with God, the problem is with my desires.  (Sproul, Chosen by God, 61)

 

We will hear it said of a non-Christian that he or she is basically good, he wants to do the right thing, she wants to do good, or they are seeking God.

But what does God say?

Romans 3:11 “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  

 

Now we know that unsaved people do what we would call “good” things - People can be kind, even generous, and amazingly so.

But God considers not only the action but also the motives of the heart.

And even the best thing done while a person is alienated from God, is not deemed “good” by God. 

Isaiah 64:6 “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”

 

God says we are sinners and nothing we do is spiritually good, in the sight of our God.

Genesis 6:5 “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”

We still choose what we desire but our desires are for ourselves.  We don’t desire God.

 

In The Fall we lost all desire for God and all ability to be pleasing to God.

The Bible says In Ephesians 2:1-3 that we were “dead in our transgressions and sins…Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”

“By nature” means that it was our very nature to sin and we were dead, morally incapable, of desiring or doing anything acceptable to God.

 

Yes, the non-Christian has the freedom to choose 

He is capable of choosing many things, but the Bible says that he is incapable of choosing to do anything righteous by God’s standard. 

He has freedom to act but only within the bounds of his moral nature.

The non-Christian is not free to follow God, nor does he want to. 

 

Now here is the gospel – God will supernatural intervene by his Spirit through regeneration and effectual calling to give the non-Christian the desire and the ability to believe and follow Christ.

 

God gives us a new desire – God changes the influences. 

And when God puts that desire there, a man must, by definition, follow his strongest desire, and he will then choose God.  But choose him, we must.

 

When we pray for a non-Christian, what are we expecting God to do?

We want God to tip the scales in the person’s mind so that their desire for God will be greater than their desire for self and they will choose God.

 

We don’t want God to leave the person to what we in error call their “free” will.

We want God to change their desire giving them a new choice.

 

Yes, Romans 9, God chooses us, and yes, Romans 10, we must choose God – and God gives us the desire and ability to do so.

 

So what do we have in Romans 9 and 10?

 

We have the clear teaching that for nothing seen or foreseen in us, neither our efforts nor even our faith, God sovereignly chooses to whom he will show his mercy and he elects them to eternal life – it is by grace we are saved!

And the appropriate response:  Praise God for his mercy and grace.  Do you?

 

And secondly, we have the clear teaching that everyone who spends eternity in what Jesus called “the lake of fire,” will do so because he or she is a willful sinner, refusing the truth about God that God has made plain to them.  

And the appropriate response: “if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved… Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”   Will you?

 

Additional notes on the passages that speak of God’s will that no one perish and that everyone be saved:

 

Another objection that people often raise to the idea of unconditional election is that some verses in Scripture appear at first glance to contradict it. But they do not. 

 

1 Timothy 2:3-4, “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance  

 

The words “wants” or “wanting” in these verses speak of the will of God – what God wants.

 

Now again we have to define our terms and use them consistently.

 

There are three different ways to think of God’s will:

 

1. Do the Apostles Paul and Peter mean the sovereign will of God, the decreed will of God?

Is this God’s will, as when he said let there be light and there was light?  The light had no choice in the matter.

 

If that is the meaning here then this verse says more than most people want it to say – it would mean that God has decreed that no one will in fact perish and that all will be saved.

But we know from the rest of Scripture that cannot be true.

 

2. The second way to think of the will of God is to think of his preceptive will – the commands of God.  God said you shall not steal. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t steal but that we shouldn’t steal.

 

But if we apply that definition, we come up with nonsense statements. For then we would be saying that God commands no one to perish.  

 

3. The third way to speak of God’s will, is to speak of his desire - of what pleases him.

In Ezekiel 18:23 God says, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?  NO!

God is not sadistic or malevolent. 

 

These verses don’t contradict “unconditional election” they in fact corroborate it saying what God says in Micah 7:18 He “delights to show mercy.”

           

These verses are speaking of God’s heart, his heart of compassion.

 

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Appendices

 

John M. Frame on “Compatibalism”

(God’s determining and Man’s free will are compatible):

Compatibilism maintains that people are free to do what they desire to do. “Adam before the Fall acted according to his desires, which then were godly. After the fall, sinners still act according to their desires, but those desires are sinful. The redeemed are enabled by God's grace, and progressively, to desire things which are excellent; and they are free to act according to those desires. The glorified saints in heaven will have only pure desires, and they will act in accordance with those…  “If we have difficulty here, it may be because we fail to understand the nature of the sinner's bondage. It is a moral and spiritual bondage, not a metaphysical, physical or psychological bondage. If, as in my robot-machine illustration, someone is physically forced to do something he doesn't want to do, then of course his bondage removes his responsibility for the act. Confronted with his "deed," the person would have a valid excuse: "I couldn't help it; I was physically forced to do it." But imagine someone coming before a human judge and saying, to excuse himself of a crime, "I couldn't help it, your honor; I was forced to do it by my nature. Since birth I've just been a rotten guy!" Surely there is something ironic about appealing to depravity to excuse depraved acts! If our defendant really is a "rotten guy," then, far from being an excuse, that is all the more reason to lock him up! My point, then, is that although physical (and some other kinds of) bondage can furnish valid excuses for otherwise bad actions, moral bondage is not such an excuse. I can't imagine anyone disputing that proposition once they understand it.” John M. Frame http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/1993FreeWill.htm

 

 

One of the best statements on compatibilism                                    is from John Calvin:

"...we allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because through man's innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the bondage is voluntary or coerced. We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined. (John Calvin from Bondage and Liberation of the Will, pg. 69-70)

 

John W. Hendryx on “Free Will”

http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Free-Will/Essays/

“Many persons naturally assume that man has a free will. But what do they mean by this? You may want to ask them to define terms by asking,"Free from what?" "Free from sin?", "Free from God's decree?" No, neither. So what do people actually mean when they claim man has a free will? Perhaps many persons mean to say that man is free from external coersion. In this we all can agree, but just because someone is free from coersion does not mean his will is free. There are other ways in which man's will is not free. If the natural man make choices BY NECESSITY then he also lacks a kind of freedom. We might want to consider whether the Bible uses the expression 'freedom' to describe any fallen man. And the answer is no, not UNTIL Christ sets us free (Rom 6). Jesus says that prior to grace, persons are 'slaves to sin'. And, last time I looked, a slave is not free. If man is in bondage to a corruption of nature, as the Scripture attests, then he is not, in any sense, free as the Bible defines it. That is, until the grace of God in Christ sets him free. It would be correct to say man HAS A WILL and that his choices are VOLUNTARY (not coerced) but this does not make the choices free. Fallen man chooses sin of NECESSITY due to a corruption of nature, and this is just as much a form of bondage of the will from which we need to be set free by Christ, and a more properly biblical way of expression. Just because we make these choices, of necessity, does not alleviate our responsibility. If we borrow $5 million and squander it in a week of wild living in Las Vegas [like our condition of debt after the fall], our inability to repay the debt does not alleviate us of any responsibility to do so (see Rom 3:20). So I contend that whenever speaking about the concept of "free will," because of the confusion surrounding it, we should only define freedom as the Bible does: that man's will is not free, but rather is in bondage to sin. Clearly the Bible affirms that apart from a supernatural and merciful work of the Holy Spirit to change our naturally hostile disposition to God, no person would ever receive Christ (John 6:65). And Just as water does not rise above its source, so unspiritual men do not think or act spiritually (1 Cor 2:14).

 

 

 

 

Freedom of the Will by R.C. Sproul

“Does God's foreknowledge eliminate human freedom? Does the immutability of God and the omniscience of God mean the end of all human freedom?

If free human actions were not known in advance by God, then when He learned of them, He would undergo a change in His knowledge; He would learn something new. Here both immutability and omniscience would be compromised.

If human actions are known by God in advance, is it not certain that they will come to pass exactly as God has foreknown them? If God knows today what I will do tomorrow, then there is no doubt that when tomorrow comes, I will do what God already knows I will do. With respect to the mind of God my future behavior is absolutely certain. But, does that mean that my future actions are absolutely determined or coerced by God?

God can know the future in more than one way. He can know the future because He has determined the future, or He can know it as a spectator. Consider the following analogy. Suppose you are standing at the corner of the roof atop a fivestory building. As you look down to the street directly below, you see two runners on the sidewalk. One of them is approaching the edge of the building below you from south to north. The other runner is approaching the edge from west to east. They cannot see each other because their view is obscured by the building. From where you are standing you can see that the two runners are going to collide. You want to shout for them to stop, but you know it is too late. They are a split second away from crashing into each other. All you can do is stand helplessly waiting for the collision.

The analogy suggests a human way of knowing the future without causing or forcing the future to happen. (Of course, like any analogy, it is far from perfect. It is possible that one of the runners will step into a manhole just before he reaches the corner, or one might be vaporized by a laser gun at the last second. Our knowledge of the future in this case is not really certain.) The point of the analogy though, is simply to illustrate that we can have knowledge of future events without causing those future events.

Some have approached the subject of God's foreknowledge from a different perspective. Their argument is based on God's relationship to space and time. The idea is this: God is eternal; He is above space and time. God sees all things from the vantage point of the present. There is no past or future with God. He sees all things as present. If God sees all things as present, then how He does it is completely beyond our comprehension. What God's ultimate relationship to time is remains a highly speculative matter. If what is future to me is present to God, then we know His knowledge of our future is perfect and that future is absolutely. certain. God can make no errors in His observations.

It is one thing to say that God causes or coerces all things. It is quite another to say that God foreordains all things. If God forces or coerces all things, then He would have had to coerce the fall of man. If this were so, then God would be the cause, indeed the guilty perpetrator of sin. Not only would God be guilty of sin but His coercive actions would destroy the freedom of man.

To aid understanding we need to consider two models, two images of God, which lead to serious distortions of the divine character. First is the image of God as a puppeteer. Here God manipulates the strings of marionettes. The feet and the arms of the puppets jerk and dance as God pulls the strings. Puppets have no will. They have no heart or soul. Their bodies are filled with sawdust. If God were like this, not even the Wizard of Oz could make us truly free.

The second image of God is of the spectator. Here God sits on the sidelines of world history. He observes the game closely. He makes careful notes about the action and will turn in a scouting report. He is the ultimate armchair quarterback. He second-guesses the plays that are called. He roots for His favorite team. However, He is powerless to affect the outcome of the game in any way. The action is on the field, and He's not playing. This model of God destroys His sovereignty. The spectator God is a God who reigns but never rules. He is a God without authority. He observes history but is not Lord over history.

Neither of these images does justice to the biblical view of God. They serve merely to alert us to the pitfalls that lurk in the shadows. They represent borders over which we must not go.

We must be careful not to so zealously maintain the sovereignty of God that we end up denying human freedom and responsibility. At the same time we must be careful not to so zealously preserve human freedom that we reduce God to an impotent spectator of world affairs.

The correct approach is to insist that God foreordains all things and that all future events are under His sovereignty. The future is absolutely certain to God. He knows what will take place, and He foreordains what will take place.

Foreordain does not mean coerce. It simply means that God wills that something take place. He may will future events through the free choices of creatures. This is the great mystery of providence - that God can will the means as well as the ends of future events. God can even will good through the wicked choices of men.

The greatest event of human history was at the same time the most diabolical. No greater shame can be tacked to the human race than that a human being delivered up Jesus to be crucified. Judas betrayed Christ because Judas wanted to betray Christ. The Pharisees pressed for His death because the Pharisees wanted Jesus killed. Pilate succumbed to the howling crowd, not because God coerced him, but because Pilate was too weak to withstand the demands of the mob.

Yet the Bible declares that the Cross was no accident. The outcome of God's eternal plan of redemption did not hinge finally on the decision of Pontius Pilate. What if Pilate had released Jesus and crucified Barabbas instead? Such a thought is almost unthinkable. It would suggest that God was only a spectator in the plan of redemption, that He hoped for the best but had no control over the events.

God did more than hope for the Cross. He willed the Cross. He sent His Son for that very purpose. Before Jesus was brought before Pilate, He pleaded with the Father for a different verdict. He begged that the cup might pass. Before Pilate ever raised his Roman scepter, the gavel had fallen in Gethsemane. The verdict was in. Jesus was delivered by the determinate forecounsel of God.

Augustine said that "In a certain sense God wills everything that comes to pass." He ordains things with a view to human freedom. He does no violence to our wills by His sovereign ordination. He is not a spectator and we are not puppets. His knowledge is certain, and our actions are free.

How the providence of God works out these matters of concurrence is mysterious but not contradictory. There is nothing that is rationally incompatible about God's sovereignty and human freedom. Scripture clearly teaches that God is sovereign and that man is responsible. Neither teaching is false. I am not proposing that freedom and sovereignty are not contradictions simply because the Bible teaches both. I am saying that the two concepts are not contradictory because they are not mutually exclusive concepts. Divine sovereignty and human autonomy would be mutually exclusive. If God is sovereign man could not be autonomous. If man is autonomous God could not be sovereign.

God is sovereign. Man is free. Man's freedom is limited, however, by God's sovereignty. God's sovereignty is not limited by man's freedom. This is simply to say that man is not God. God is free and man is free. But God is more free than a man. Man's freedom is always and everywhere subordinate to God's freedom. If we reverse these we pass from theism to atheism, from Christianity to humanism, from Christ to Anti-christ.”  (Sproul from One Holy Passion)

 

 

 

Are There Two Wills in God?

Divine Election and God's Desire for All to Be Saved

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By John Piper January 1, 1995

 http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1995/1580_Are_There_Two_Wills_in_God/

My aim here is to show from Scripture that the simultaneous existence of God's will for "all persons to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4) and his will to elect unconditionally those who will actually be saved is not a sign of divine schizophrenia or exegetical confusion. A corresponding aim is to show that unconditional election therefore does not contradict biblical expressions of God's compassion for all people, and does not nullify sincere offers of salvation to everyone who is lost among all the peoples of the world.

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).

It is possible that careful exegesis of 1 Timothy 2:4 would lead us to believe that "God's willing all persons to be saved" does not refer to every individual person in the world, but rather to all sorts of persons, since the "all persons" in verse 1 may well mean groups like "kings and all in high positions" (v. 2). It is also possible that the "you" in 2 Peter 3:9 ("the Lord is longsuffering toward you, not wishing any to perish") refers not to every person in the world but to "you" professing Christians among whom, as Adolf Schlatter says, "are people who only through repentance can attain to the grace of God and to the promised inheritance."

Nevertheless the case for this limitation on God's universal saving will has never been convincing to Arminians and likely will not become convincing, especially since Ezekiel 18:23, 32 and 33:11 are even less tolerant of restriction. Therefore as a hearty believer in unconditional, individual election I rejoice to affirm that God does not delight in the perishing of the impenitent, and that he has compassion on all people. My aim is to show that this is not double talk.

The assignment in this chapter is not to defend the doctrine that God chooses unconditionally whom he will save. I have tried to do that elsewhere and others do it in this book. Nevertheless I will try to make a credible case that while the Arminian pillar texts may indeed be pillars for universal love, nevertheless they are not weapons against unconditional election. If I succeed then there will be an indirect confirmation for the thesis of this book. In fact I think Arminians have erred in trying to take pillars of universal love and make them into weapons against electing grace.

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.

Clark Pinnock refers disapprovingly to "the exceedingly paradoxical notion of two divine wills regarding salvation." In Pinnock's more recent volume (A Case for Arminianism) Randall Basinger argues that, "if God has decreed all events, then it must be that things cannot and should not be any different from what they are." In other words he rejects the notion that God could decree that a thing be one way and yet teach that we should act to make it another way. He says that it is too hard "to coherently conceive of a God in which this distinction really exists"

In the same volume Fritz Guy argues that the revelation of God in Christ has brought about a "paradigm shift" in the way we should think about the love of God—namely as "more fundamental than, and prior to, justice and power." This shift, he says, makes it possible to think about the "will of God" as "delighting more than deciding." God's will is not his sovereign purpose which he infallibly establishes, but rather "the desire of the lover for the beloved." The will of God is his general intention and longing, not his effective purpose. Dr. Guy goes so far as to say, "Apart from a predestinarian presupposition, it becomes apparent that God's 'will' is always (sic) to be understood in terms of intention and desire [as opposed to efficacious, sovereign purpose]."

These criticisms are not new. Jonathan Edwards wrote 250 years ago, "The Arminians ridicule the distinction between the secret and revealed will of God, or, more properly expressed, the distinction between the decree and the law of God; because we say he may decree one thing, and command another. And so, they argue, we hold a contrariety in God, as if one will of his contradicted another."

But in spite of these criticisms the distinction stands, not because of a logical or theological deduction, but because it is inescapable in the Scriptures. The most careful exegete writing in Pinnock's Case for Arminianism concedes the existence of two wills in God. I. Howard Marshall applies his exegetical gift to the Pastoral Epistles. Concerning 1 Timothy 2:4 he says, “To avoid all misconceptions it should be made clear at the outset that the fact that God wishes or wills that all people should be saved does not necessarily imply that all will respond to the gospel and be saved. We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen, and both of these things can be spoken of as God's will. The question at issue is not whether all will be saved but whether God has made provision in Christ for the salvation of all, provided that they believe, and without limiting the potential scope of the death of Christ merely to those whom God knows will believe.

In this chapter I would now like to undergird Marshall's point that "we must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen, and [that] both of these things can be spoken of as God's will." Perhaps the most effective way to do 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.

 

Illustrations of Two Wills in God:

The Death of Christ

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. I. Howard Marshall's statement is confirmed by the death of Jesus: "We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen."

The War Against the Lamb

There are two reasons that we turn next to Revelation 17:16-17. One is that the war against the Son of God, which reached its sinful climax at the cross comes to final consummation in a way that confirms what we have seen about the will of God. The other reason is that this text reveals John's understanding of God's active involvement in fulfilling prophecies whose fulfillment involves sinning. John sees a vision of some final events of history:

And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the harlot; they will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled (Revelation 17:16-17).

Without going into all the details of this passage, the relevant matter is clear. The beast "comes out of the abyss" (Revelation 17:8). He is the personification of evil and rebellion against God. The ten horns are ten kings (v. 12) and they "wage war against the Lamb" (v. 14).

Waging war against the Lamb is sin and sin is contrary to the will of God. Nevertheless the angel says (literally), "God gave into their [the ten kings'] hearts to do his will, and to perform one will, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (v. 17). Therefore God willed (in one sense) to influence the hearts of the ten kings so that they would do what is against his will (in another sense).

Moreover God did this in fulfillment of prophetic words. The ten kings will collaborate with the beast "until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (v. 17). This implies something crucial about John's understanding of the fulfillment of "the prophesies leading up to the overthrow of Antichrist." It implies that (at least in John's view) God's prophecies are not mere predictions which God knows will happen, but rather are divine intentions which he makes sure will happen. We know this because verse 17 says that God is acting to see to it that the ten kings make league with the beast "until the words of God shall be fulfilled." John is exulting not in the marvelous foreknowledge of God to predict a bad event. Rather he is exulting in the marvelous sovereignty of God to make sure that the bad event comes about. Fulfilled prophecy, in John's mind, is not only prediction, but also promised performance.

This is important because John tells us in his Gospel that there are Old Testament prophecies of events surrounding the death of Christ that involve sin. This means that God intends to bring about events that involve things he forbids. These events include Judas' betrayal of Jesus (John 13:18; Psalm 41:9), the hatred Jesus received from his enemies (John 15:25; Psalm 69:4; 35:19), the casting of lots for Jesus' clothing (John 19:24; Psalm 22:18), and the piercing of Jesus' side (John 19:36-37; Exodus 12:46; Psalm 34:20; Zechariah 12:10). John expresses his theology of God's sovereignty with the words, "These things happened in order that the scripture be fulfilled." In other words the events were not a coincidence that God merely foresaw, but a plan which God purposed to bring about. Thus again we find the words of I. Howard Marshall confirmed: "We must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what he actually does will to happen."

The Hardening Work of God

Another evidence to demonstrate God's willing a state of affairs in one sense that he disapproves in another sense is the testimony of Scripture that God wills to harden some men's hearts so that they become obstinate in sinful behavior which God disapproves.

The most well known example is the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. In Exodus 8:1 the Lord says to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."'" In other words God's command, that is, his will, is that Pharaoh let the Israelites go. Nevertheless from the start he also willed that Pharaoh not let the Israelites go. In Exodus 4:21 God says to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in your hand; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go." At one point Pharaoh himself acknowledges that his unwillingness to let the people go is sin: "Now therefore forgive, I pray, my sin" (Exodus 10:17). Thus what we see is that God commands that Pharaoh do a thing which God himself wills not to allow. The good thing that God commands he prevents. And the thing he brings about involves sin.

Some have tried to avoid this implication by pointing out that during the first five plagues the text does not say explicitly that God hardened Pharaoh's heart but that it "was hardened" (Exodus 7:22; 8:19; 9:7) or that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Exodus 8:15,32), and that only in the sixth plague does it say explicitly "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" (9:12; 10:20,27; 11:10; 14:4). For example R.T. Forster and V.P. Marston say that only from the sixth plague on God gave Pharaoh "supernatural strength to continue with his evil path of rebellion"

But this observation does not succeed in avoiding the evidence of two wills in God. Even if Forster and Marston were right that God was not willing for Pharaoh's heart to be hardened during the first five plagues, they concede that for the last five plagues God does will this, at least in the sense of strengthening Pharaoh to continue in the path of rebellion. Thus there is a sense in which God does will that Pharaoh go on refusing to let the people go, and there is a sense in which he does will that Pharaoh release the people. For he commands, "Let my people go." This illustrates why theologians talk about the "will of command" ("Let my people go!") and the "will of decree" ("God hardened Pharaoh's heart").

The Exodus is not a unique instance of God's acting in this way. When the people of Israel reached the land of Sihon king of Heshbon, Moses sent messengers "with words of peace saying, Let me pass through your land; I will travel only on the highway" (Deuteronomy 2:26-27). Even though this request should have lead Sihon to treat the people of God with respect, as God willed for his people to be blessed rather than attacked, nevertheless "Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him; for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as at this day" (Deuteronomy 2:30). In other words it was God's will (in one sense) that Sihon act in a way that was contrary to God's will (in another sense) that Israel be blessed and not cursed.

Similarly the conquest of the cities of Canaan is owing to God's willing that the kings of the land resist Joshua rather than make peace with him. "Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings. There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle. For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses" (Joshua 11:19-20). In view of this it is difficult to imagine what Fritz Guy means when he says that the "will of God" is always to be thought of in terms of loving desire and intention rather than in terms of God's effective purpose of judgment. What seems more plain is that when the time has come for judgment God wills that the guilty do things that are against his revealed will, like cursing Israel rather than blessing her.

The hardening work of God was not limited to non-Israelites. In fact it plays a central role in the life of Israel in this period of history. In Romans 11:7-9 Paul speaks of Israel's failure to obtain the righteousness and salvation it desired: "Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear, down to this very day." Even though it is the command of God that his people see and hear and respond in faith (Isaiah 42:18), nevertheless God also has his reasons for sending a spirit of stupor at times so that some will not obey his command.

Jesus expressed this same truth when he explained that one of the purposes of speaking in parables to the Jews of his day was to bring about this judicial blinding or stupor. In Mark 4:11-12 he said to his disciples, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven." Here again God wills that a condition prevail which he regards as blameworthy. His will is that they turn and be forgiven (Mark 1:15), but he acts in a way to restrict the fulfillment of that will.

Paul pictures this divine hardening as part of an overarching plan that will involve salvation for Jew and Gentile. In Romans 11:25-26 he says to his Gentile readers, "Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved." The fact that the hardening has an appointed end—"until the full number of the Gentiles comes in"—shows that it is part of God's plan rather than a merely contingent event outside God's purpose. Nevertheless Paul expresses not only his but also God's heart when he says in Romans 10:1, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for them [Israel] is their salvation." God holds out his hands to a rebellious people (Romans 10:21), but ordains a hardening that consigns them for a time to disobedience.

This is the point of Romans 11:31-32. Paul speaks to his Gentile readers again about the disobedience of Israel in rejecting their Messiah: "So they [Israel] have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you [Gentiles] they also may receive mercy." When Paul says that Israel was disobedient "in order that" Gentiles might get the benefits of the gospel, whose purpose does he have in mind? It can only be God's. For Israel did not conceive of their own disobedience as a way of blessing the Gentiles or winning mercy for themselves in such a round about fashion. The point of Romans 11:31 therefore is that God's hardening of Israel is not an end in itself, but is part of a saving purpose that will embrace all the nations. But in the short run we have to say that he wills a condition (hardness of heart) which he commands people to strive against ("Do not harden your heart" (Hebrews 3:8, 15; 4:7).

God's Right to Restrain Evil and His Will Not To

Another line of Biblical evidence that God sometimes wills to bring about what he disapproves is his choosing to use or not to use his right to restrain evil in the human heart.

Proverbs 21:1 says, "The king's heart is like channels of water in the hands of the Lord; he turns it wherever he wishes." An illustration of this divine right over the king's heart is given in Genesis 20. Abraham is sojourning in Gerar and says to king Abimelech that