Do the Non-Elect Have a Chance to Repent?

00:00:00.000 | (music)

00:00:04.400 | It's hard to confirm exact numbers, but by educated guess, I would safely assume that

00:00:09.560 | the most asked about chapter in the Bible, in our emails, are questions about Romans 9.

00:00:15.560 | I know without any exaggeration we have hundreds of questions in the inbox on this one chapter alone.

00:00:23.000 | And within that chapter, Romans 9.22 is very likely the most asked about text of all the

00:00:29.560 | other verses in the chapter.

00:00:31.440 | I know of at least 65 emails just asking about this single text, a hard text.

00:00:37.920 | Here's one representative question from a listener named Leslie that captures the heart

00:00:41.760 | of dozens of those emails.

00:00:43.240 | "Pastor John, hello.

00:00:44.760 | I could use your help in my struggle with Romans 9.22.

00:00:48.360 | It seems to me to imply that those who are not elect are not even given a chance to repent

00:00:55.440 | since they were born for destruction.

00:00:57.820 | Is this right?

00:00:59.400 | Many people are created with no chance of ever being saved."

00:01:04.460 | I'm not surprised that Romans 9 is among the texts that people have the most questions

00:01:10.340 | about because my own history bore that out.

00:01:14.580 | Just recently I've been perusing some of my old journal entries from 1977 to 1979.

00:01:24.140 | I was in my early 30s, and almost all of my discretionary time was spent studying and

00:01:32.180 | writing about Romans 9, especially verses 14 to 23.

00:01:38.180 | And it may interest our listeners that this text, which is so problematic for most of

00:01:45.700 | us, the text which highlights the absolute sovereignty of God over salvation as clearly,

00:01:54.420 | as forcefully as any other text in the Bible, this text was the text God used in 1979—I

00:02:04.100 | can't even date it—December 14 to move me from being an academic theologian after

00:02:13.500 | teaching six years in college to becoming a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, where

00:02:19.340 | I served for 33 years, and to become a pastor with a longing that God would use me to save

00:02:28.420 | lost sinners from the cradle to the grave and to grow a strong church that would send

00:02:36.100 | hundreds of people to the unreached peoples of the world in world missions.

00:02:41.620 | I'm saying, I'm bearing witness that the most controversial chapter in the Bible with

00:02:46.900 | regard to the sovereignty of God in saving sinners was the chapter that God used in those

00:02:52.220 | years to move me out of an academic dealing with the Word of God into a frontline effort

00:02:58.980 | to save lost sinners and strengthen the church and reach the nations.

00:03:04.100 | That's important.

00:03:05.180 | And I say it because people think that if you believe in the absolute sovereignty of

00:03:10.500 | God over the salvation of sinners, you would be disinclined to be a soul-winning pastor

00:03:16.460 | and a missions-driven church.

00:03:18.580 | That's not true.

00:03:21.180 | It had the opposite effect on me as it did on William Carey, as it did on John Payton,

00:03:26.340 | as it did on Adoniram Judson, and hundreds of other missionaries and pastors who laid

00:03:31.820 | down their lives to reach lost people with the gospel.

00:03:37.380 | There is such a thing as hyper-Calvinism, which is not historic Calvinism.

00:03:43.580 | It's always been a tiny group who have twisted the Bible by their unbiblical logic to say

00:03:51.940 | that the only people you should invite to Christ are those who give evidence of being

00:03:57.860 | among God's elect.

00:03:59.540 | So you don't share the gospel indiscriminately like I do.

00:04:04.140 | You wait and you look for signs among unbelievers that they might be elect.

00:04:10.500 | That's absolutely wrong.

00:04:12.260 | It is not what Romans 9 teaches or implies.

00:04:16.100 | It's not what any other text in the Bible teaches or implies.

00:04:20.500 | The lover of God's sovereignty who is saturated with a big biblical view of God's power in

00:04:27.900 | saving sinners says to every human being, every human being, without exception, words

00:04:36.540 | like these, "Listen, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.

00:04:43.120 | You who have no money, come buy and eat.

00:04:46.640 | Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and labor for that which does

00:04:50.100 | not satisfy?

00:04:51.680 | Come to the water of life.

00:04:54.620 | Drink freely.

00:04:56.100 | Everyone, absolutely everyone who received Jesus Christ as the Son of God, crucified

00:05:01.860 | for sinners, risen from the dead, every one of you who puts your trust in him as your

00:05:09.100 | only and precious Savior will receive with him everything that God has done through him,

00:05:16.100 | everything that God is for you in him, you will have it all.

00:05:21.580 | Nothing good withheld from you.

00:05:23.640 | If you will have the Lord Jesus Christ, you have everything that he achieved, climaxing

00:05:30.840 | in everlasting joy in the presence of God.

00:05:33.660 | That's what you say.

00:05:34.660 | That's what you say.

00:05:35.760 | If people will let you talk, you know, a full minute like that, that's what you say to every

00:05:40.560 | single human being.

00:05:43.620 | Now here are the words from Romans 9 that cause people to stumble.

00:05:49.340 | Let me say a word about them.

00:05:51.540 | Romans 18, following.

00:05:53.580 | So God has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills.

00:05:59.460 | You will say then, why does he still find fault?

00:06:03.760 | In other words, we're not asking a question Paul didn't ask, right?

00:06:07.640 | We're not sticking, "Oh, I've got a question, Paul, that you never thought of."

00:06:10.940 | No, you don't.

00:06:12.460 | For who can resist his will?

00:06:15.240 | And now Paul did not say, "Well, everybody can resist his will.

00:06:19.020 | We all have free will.

00:06:20.020 | Everybody can resist his will."

00:06:21.160 | That's not the way he answered the question, "Who can resist his will?"

00:06:25.380 | Verse 20, "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?"

00:06:32.540 | Now he did not mean by that question, "We should never ask God questions."

00:06:39.540 | That's not what he meant.

00:06:40.740 | He meant, "You should never react with disapproval when he answers."

00:06:46.940 | And he goes on, "Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me like

00:06:55.000 | this?

00:06:56.200 | Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable

00:07:01.380 | use and another for dishonorable use?'

00:07:04.320 | What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with

00:07:09.360 | much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the

00:07:15.040 | riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory?"

00:07:21.200 | Now Leslie asks, "It seems to imply that those who are not elect are not given a chance,

00:07:32.840 | even a chance, to repent since they were born for destruction.

00:07:38.560 | Is this right?

00:07:40.400 | Many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?"

00:07:46.880 | That's her question.

00:07:48.640 | My answer, "No, that would not be a faithful, biblical way of stating the situation.

00:07:56.240 | Let me put beside each other two biblical truths that many people consider contradictory

00:08:04.040 | but are not, and then I'll draw out of those two truths an implication for Leslie's statement.

00:08:12.240 | The first truth is, from all eternity, God has chosen from among the entire fallen, sinful

00:08:21.760 | humanity a people for himself but not everyone.

00:08:28.040 | Thus, this selection is owing to no merit at all in those chosen people.

00:08:36.120 | God pursues their salvation not only by effectively achieving the atonement for their sin through

00:08:42.320 | Christ but also by sovereignly overcoming all their rebellion and bringing them to saving

00:08:51.600 | faith.

00:08:52.600 | So that's the first truth.

00:08:54.520 | Here's the second.

00:08:57.520 | Anyone who perishes and is finally lost and cut off from God perishes because of real

00:09:07.160 | blameworthy self-exaltation, sin, and because they are hardened against the revelations

00:09:16.340 | of God's power and glory in nature or in the gospel.

00:09:21.640 | No innocent people perish.

00:09:25.760 | Anybody who humbly wants Christ for a Savior is lost.

00:09:31.760 | No one is judged or condemned for not knowing or believing or obeying reality to which they

00:09:40.360 | had no access.

00:09:42.560 | All lostness and all judgment are owing to sin and rebellion against the revelation that

00:09:53.200 | we have.

00:09:54.200 | That's the second truth.

00:09:56.640 | Now what keeps those two truths from being contradictory is this.

00:10:03.640 | The moral accountability of man is not destroyed by the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation.

00:10:12.240 | Or to say it another way, God's final and decisive governance of all things, including

00:10:19.120 | who comes to faith, is compatible.

00:10:24.040 | It fits with all humans being morally accountable to God for whether they believe or not.

00:10:32.920 | Now we live in a world that by and large refuses to embrace God's purposeful sovereignty

00:10:40.040 | in all things.

00:10:41.960 | That is Ephesians 1.11.

00:10:43.880 | He works all things according to the counsel of his will.

00:10:49.000 | People reject this largely because the only solution their minds can embrace for maintaining

00:10:56.460 | human accountability is the presumption of ultimate human self-determination, otherwise

00:11:05.000 | known as free will.

00:11:07.640 | But ultimate human self-determination is not found anywhere in the Bible, nowhere.

00:11:14.700 | But God's sovereignty is, and man's accountability is, and nowhere are these considered contradictory.

00:11:25.040 | Therefore my response to Leslie's statement, "Many people are created with no chance

00:11:32.360 | of ever being saved," is to say everyone is being wooed and invited by God every day,

00:11:42.440 | either through natural revelation—the sun rising on the good and the evil, or the rain

00:11:48.740 | falling on the good and the bad—or through conscience, or they are being wooed and invited

00:11:55.800 | by gospel truth.

00:11:57.660 | These revelations of God are their chance to be saved.

00:12:04.720 | It is a real invitation.

00:12:09.460 | It is real precisely because if they humbled themselves and received God's grace, they

00:12:18.020 | would be saved.

00:12:20.180 | Those who do that, those who humble themselves and receive God's grace, they know that it

00:12:25.300 | was only the sovereign grace of God that enabled them to believe.

00:12:29.000 | And those who don't do it know that it is because of their own sin, that they loved

00:12:35.380 | something else more than God, is why they didn't believe.

00:12:41.360 | There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in

00:12:50.140 | heaven.

00:12:51.140 | Very good.

00:12:52.140 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for tackling one of the many questions about this

00:12:56.740 | chapter.

00:12:57.740 | Engaging from our inbox, I know a ton of you have questions about Romans 9.

00:13:00.860 | And hundreds of questions have come in over the years on that single chapter alone.

00:13:05.820 | And I want to end this episode by talking about a key book, Pastor John, you wrote.

00:13:10.900 | You mentioned those early years of 1977 and 1979, years of research and writing, that

00:13:16.300 | became a full book on Romans 9 by the title, The Justification of God.

00:13:21.740 | The Justification of God, one of the key John Piper titles early in his ministry.

00:13:27.420 | As a professor, as I understand it, Pastor John had taught a Romans 9 to 11 exegesis

00:13:32.980 | course in 1976, and that inspired him to write articles on Romans 9 with his sabbatical time.

00:13:39.260 | In the fall of 1979, he worked those articles into a book and finished up the first draft

00:13:44.720 | over his Easter break in 1980.

00:13:47.580 | It's interesting that it was work on this book that really helped persuade him to leave

00:13:51.460 | the academy for the pastorate.

00:13:53.700 | That's a story for another day.

00:13:55.340 | But nevertheless, this book, The Justification of God, was picked up and published by Baker

00:13:59.140 | in 1983.

00:14:01.340 | It was the second book, the first being Love Your Enemies, his doctoral dissertation published

00:14:05.220 | in 1979.

00:14:06.220 | But if you want a deep dive into Romans 9, this is the book to get, The Justification

00:14:12.020 | of God.

00:14:13.260 | For the full benefit, you're going to need to know some Greek and Hebrew, but nevertheless,

00:14:16.380 | if you don't have it, you can benefit from it.

00:14:19.240 | Check it out.

00:14:20.240 | Years of John Piper's exegesis and thought into that book, The Justification of God.

00:14:25.740 | Well, we are so close to Christmas now.

00:14:29.060 | Next time we look at one of the many awesome consequences of Christ's incarnation.

00:14:32.780 | I'm your host Tony Rehnke, and I'll see you on Wednesday.

00:14:35.100 | Thanks for listening.

00:14:35.740 | [music]

00:14:42.740 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Do the Non-Elect Have a Chance to Repent?

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