Predestination and reprobation
How to answer people who get angry at the biblical doctrine of predestination and reprobation? Tell them a tree is known by its fruit. Which is what Jesus Himself tells us.
That means you produce what you inherently are. I.e. it's not a matter of self-will.
Still they'll say: "But that bad tree can decide to become a good tree."
Can a thorn tree decide to produce plums? No, only God can make it a plum tree. God is sovereign in creation, providence, and grace. That thorn tree needs to become a new creation, by God's grace.
Trees produce the fruit they inherently are.
What does this mean practically? Accept the hard truth of the Bible, and it will re-orientate you internally from being man-centered to being God-centered (and you'll stop lecturing God about how things 'should' be). It also means that evangelism is meaningful. How could we have known if we hadn't heard? Give people the Word, explain, teach, but don't beg. Plant the seed diligently, water, leave it to God to grow.
6 Comments:
That’s a good answer. Also point them directly to the word. Presumably they have read Romans 8 but you never know, and it’s a good place to get a more in-depth conversation started.
Romans 8:30-31 KJV
[30] Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. [31] What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
And there's always this strange logos-related element that when someone is even complaining about such doctrine they are in the realm of salvation. They're talking about it, thinking about it. They know of it. Their fallen nature's not buying it, but that's just their fallen nature.
The biblical answer to this is that you need to be born-again and regenerate to hear and accept Gods sovereignty. “We know them by their fruits...”
Christians can accept predestination without having an intellectual grasp of it. Arminians write and sing hymns that are doctrinally Calvinist without realizing it. So this gets at the fact that one doesn't have to have a full intellectual understanding of biblical doctrine to be saved. Predestination in particular sounds like determinism to those who don't understand, so findng ways to illustrate it is worth the effort.
Until sometime over the last year or so I hadn’t realized that the scriptures, evangelism etc are entirely destined for God’s elect, the non-elect have no ability to hear and respond to the message. Through common grace non-christians can certainly recognize a certain good in scripture, but it doesn’t go anywhere, it remains at the level of life and the world.
Thats how the two seemingly unreconcilable come together:
The doctrine of election, and passages like the following:
John 3:15-16 NKJV
[15] that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. [16] For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Some pastors and theologians believe them to be parallel truths, two distinctly different statements that are at odds with one another, that can both be true. (MacArthur)
I think Sproul was on the mark with it and mockingly jostled MacArthur about his ‘parallel truths’ understanding.
BTW most of the ‘anonymous’ replies here are mine, I just wasn’t logged in.
I remember someone wrote a comment on a forum or blog on this subject that struck me as interesting. He said predestination is true, but do we need to harp on it? Meaning, we evangelize to everybody because we can't know who is and who isn't elect. Calvin didn't make it a major part of his Institutes (in terms of space). It's valuable doctrine to know once effectually called and regenerated because pondering it tempers us like steel to be God centered. But it can be a stumbling block to the uninitiated.
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