Is Election Divine Favoritism?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Nicky Simasek from Birmingham, Alabama writes in to ask this, "Dear Pastor John,
00:00:09.680 | my 13 year old son Drew is a deep thinker. This morning at breakfast we were
00:00:13.520 | reading Deuteronomy 10. When I got done reading, Drew looked at me, visibly
00:00:16.680 | frustrated and a bit emotional, and said, 'Mom, why does the Bible contradict
00:00:20.760 | itself?' In Deuteronomy 10 it says the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows
00:00:25.280 | no partiality, yet in Romans 9 it says, 'Just as it is written, "Jacob I have
00:00:30.500 | loved, but Esau I have hated." How is that not showing favoritism and partiality? I
00:00:35.760 | tried so hard to answer his question, going back to God's infinite wisdom,
00:00:39.120 | sovereignty, goodness, predestination, and his desire to bring himself glory,
00:00:43.280 | trusting him when we don't completely understand, but as you read on in chapter
00:00:47.320 | 9, it doesn't get any easier to swallow. God has mercy on whom he wants to have
00:00:51.560 | mercy." I'm not sure I gave him such a great explanation. I said, "Well son, I
00:00:55.800 | believe you just asked me a question that I would like to ask Pastor John." What do
00:00:59.960 | you say, Pastor John? The first thing I have to say is may the Lord give this
00:01:03.740 | 13 year old a humble and teachable spirit to go along with his sharp mind. I
00:01:10.280 | love sharp minds, and they are a great weapon in the hand of the Lord when they
00:01:15.820 | are wielded with a humble and wise arm. He's off to a good start with such a
00:01:21.840 | discerning mother, so praise God for that. So yes, it is a really good question. God
00:01:28.920 | is impartial, not just in the Old Testament, but the New Testament. Let me
00:01:33.720 | just underline it. Romans 2 11, God shows no partiality. Ephesians 6 9, masters do
00:01:41.680 | the same to them and stop your threatening knowing that he who is
00:01:46.120 | their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him.
00:01:51.960 | Colossians 3 25, the wrongdoer will be repaid back for his wrongdoing that he
00:01:58.240 | has done. There is no partiality with God. So in every one of these cases, the Greek
00:02:06.560 | word prosopolepsia—a receiving of face, literally, a receiving of face—means
00:02:15.360 | that God does not receive or regard a person's appearance. He does not base his
00:02:24.360 | approval or blessings on considerations that are irrelevant to the choice he's
00:02:32.400 | making, like a person's face. So we need to be really clear, what does he mean by
00:02:37.720 | partiality and impartiality? Let me use an illustration for the 13-year-old, if he
00:02:43.080 | might be tuning in. So you and your friends are trying out for the school or
00:02:47.920 | the neighborhood baseball team. What would it look like if the coach who has
00:02:54.960 | to choose who gets to play was partial, that is, not impartial? It would look like
00:03:01.120 | this. Your coach would show partiality if he chose the white boy and not the black
00:03:08.400 | boy, even if the black boy was a better player, or if he chose his own son,
00:03:16.080 | even if his own son was a worse player, or if he chose a boy because the boy's
00:03:22.200 | father paid him money behind the scenes. So impartiality doesn't mean you treat
00:03:30.800 | everyone alike. Everyone can't play ball, everyone can't get on the team. It
00:03:36.040 | means you don't base your favors on irrelevant considerations, like race or
00:03:44.960 | wealth or your kinship. Here's another illustration. I think a 13-year-old can
00:03:51.920 | get this one as well. If you're a judge in a courtroom and you must decide a
00:03:58.200 | murder trial, judges are supposed to be impartial. In fact, the picture of justice
00:04:05.040 | has a woman blindfolded. You say, "What in the world does that mean?"
00:04:09.520 | Impartiality does not demand that the guilty defendant gets to go free because
00:04:17.200 | everyone else is leaving the courtroom and walking out, and you got to treat
00:04:20.280 | everybody the same. So the criminal who's been convicted and found to be
00:04:24.120 | guilty, he gets to go free because we can't be impartial here, we got to treat
00:04:27.320 | everybody the same, and he gets to go free because everybody else is going
00:04:30.400 | free. Well, nobody thinks impartiality means that. Impartiality demands that the
00:04:36.880 | judge not base his verdict on irrelevant considerations like race or wealth or
00:04:45.040 | intelligence or reputation in the community. If the judge favors his own
00:04:50.120 | race or wealthy people or the intelligent people or the famous
00:04:56.000 | people, he would be partial and not impartial, and he would be a lousy judge
00:05:03.240 | and unworthy to be judge. So impartiality does not mean treating everyone the same.
00:05:12.400 | It means basing your treatment of others on the right kind of
00:05:19.040 | considerations. Did the defendant actually kill the man? If he did, then he
00:05:24.360 | goes to jail. Is the kid a really good ballplayer? Then he should be on
00:05:30.600 | the team. Now, the question is God. God's choosing to save people, and he never,
00:05:40.360 | never bases his choice whom to save on the basis of irrelevant considerations.
00:05:49.200 | He never says, "I will choose Asians to save, not Hispanics." He never says, "I will
00:05:56.160 | choose wealthy people to save, not the poor. I'll choose the educated to save,
00:06:02.000 | not the uneducated, or even I'll choose the good and not the bad." God simply
00:06:08.040 | doesn't base his choices on those kinds of considerations. If he did, then he
00:06:13.800 | would be guilty of being partial, and he's not partial. That's the point of
00:06:19.560 | 1 Corinthians 1:26, isn't it? "Not many of you were wise according to the worldly
00:06:23.960 | standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. God chose what
00:06:29.480 | is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God chose what is weak in the
00:06:33.600 | world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even
00:06:37.440 | things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being
00:06:43.000 | might boast in the presence of God." So God's choice is based on his own hidden
00:06:50.600 | wisdom. Ephesians 1:11, "God works all things according to the counsel of his
00:06:57.440 | will." The counsel of his will. He does not base his choices on irrelevant
00:07:04.480 | considerations. He's free to choose whomever he will, and his reasons are
00:07:09.560 | never owing to our goodness. How could they be? We're all sinners deserving of
00:07:15.520 | death. Yet he chooses freely to save some. And the very meaning of grace in Romans
00:07:24.600 | 11, 5, the very meaning of grace is that the reason he chooses us is not in
00:07:31.840 | ourselves. It's not in our own virtue or our own sinfulness. It is in his
00:07:38.680 | counsel, and he's wise in all that he does because he's guided by the highest
00:07:45.480 | considerations. And what is that consideration? Well, it was hinted
00:07:50.320 | at in that text we read from 1 Corinthians 1. What choices will humble
00:07:56.080 | sinful men? What choices will keep men from boasting in themselves? And what
00:08:03.120 | choices will bring people to praise the glory of the grace of God?
00:08:09.920 | Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the question, Drew and
00:08:13.200 | Nikki. Please send your questions to us via email and askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:17.360 | So, is it a sin to dislike divine election? That was the question
00:08:23.360 | we addressed in episode number 224. You can find it in the podcast archive, most
00:08:27.280 | easily found in the free app for the iPhone and the Android. We will be back
00:08:31.520 | tomorrow with a new episode on the topic of intimacy within marriage. It's episode
00:08:35.920 | number 400, and it's appropriately epic, but it's not an episode for 13-year-olds.
00:08:41.840 | So, just a heads up for that. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to
00:08:45.720 | the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:08:48.920 | [BLANK_AUDIO]