Nicky Simasek from Birmingham, Alabama writes in to ask this, "Dear Pastor John, my 13 year old son Drew is a deep thinker. This morning at breakfast we were reading Deuteronomy 10. When I got done reading, Drew looked at me, visibly frustrated and a bit emotional, and said, 'Mom, why does the Bible contradict itself?' In Deuteronomy 10 it says the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality, yet in Romans 9 it says, 'Just as it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." How is that not showing favoritism and partiality?

I tried so hard to answer his question, going back to God's infinite wisdom, sovereignty, goodness, predestination, and his desire to bring himself glory, trusting him when we don't completely understand, but as you read on in chapter 9, it doesn't get any easier to swallow. God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy." I'm not sure I gave him such a great explanation.

I said, "Well son, I believe you just asked me a question that I would like to ask Pastor John." What do you say, Pastor John? The first thing I have to say is may the Lord give this 13 year old a humble and teachable spirit to go along with his sharp mind.

I love sharp minds, and they are a great weapon in the hand of the Lord when they are wielded with a humble and wise arm. He's off to a good start with such a discerning mother, so praise God for that. So yes, it is a really good question. God is impartial, not just in the Old Testament, but the New Testament.

Let me just underline it. Romans 2 11, God shows no partiality. Ephesians 6 9, masters do the same to them and stop your threatening knowing that he who is their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. Colossians 3 25, the wrongdoer will be repaid back for his wrongdoing that he has done.

There is no partiality with God. So in every one of these cases, the Greek word prosopolepsia—a receiving of face, literally, a receiving of face—means that God does not receive or regard a person's appearance. He does not base his approval or blessings on considerations that are irrelevant to the choice he's making, like a person's face.

So we need to be really clear, what does he mean by partiality and impartiality? Let me use an illustration for the 13-year-old, if he might be tuning in. So you and your friends are trying out for the school or the neighborhood baseball team. What would it look like if the coach who has to choose who gets to play was partial, that is, not impartial?

It would look like this. Your coach would show partiality if he chose the white boy and not the black boy, even if the black boy was a better player, or if he chose his own son, even if his own son was a worse player, or if he chose a boy because the boy's father paid him money behind the scenes.

So impartiality doesn't mean you treat everyone alike. Everyone can't play ball, everyone can't get on the team. It means you don't base your favors on irrelevant considerations, like race or wealth or your kinship. Here's another illustration. I think a 13-year-old can get this one as well. If you're a judge in a courtroom and you must decide a murder trial, judges are supposed to be impartial.

In fact, the picture of justice has a woman blindfolded. You say, "What in the world does that mean?" Impartiality does not demand that the guilty defendant gets to go free because everyone else is leaving the courtroom and walking out, and you got to treat everybody the same. So the criminal who's been convicted and found to be guilty, he gets to go free because we can't be impartial here, we got to treat everybody the same, and he gets to go free because everybody else is going free.

Well, nobody thinks impartiality means that. Impartiality demands that the judge not base his verdict on irrelevant considerations like race or wealth or intelligence or reputation in the community. If the judge favors his own race or wealthy people or the intelligent people or the famous people, he would be partial and not impartial, and he would be a lousy judge and unworthy to be judge.

So impartiality does not mean treating everyone the same. It means basing your treatment of others on the right kind of considerations. Did the defendant actually kill the man? If he did, then he goes to jail. Is the kid a really good ballplayer? Then he should be on the team.

Now, the question is God. God's choosing to save people, and he never, never bases his choice whom to save on the basis of irrelevant considerations. He never says, "I will choose Asians to save, not Hispanics." He never says, "I will choose wealthy people to save, not the poor. I'll choose the educated to save, not the uneducated, or even I'll choose the good and not the bad." God simply doesn't base his choices on those kinds of considerations.

If he did, then he would be guilty of being partial, and he's not partial. That's the point of 1 Corinthians 1:26, isn't it? "Not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God." So God's choice is based on his own hidden wisdom. Ephesians 1:11, "God works all things according to the counsel of his will." The counsel of his will.

He does not base his choices on irrelevant considerations. He's free to choose whomever he will, and his reasons are never owing to our goodness. How could they be? We're all sinners deserving of death. Yet he chooses freely to save some. And the very meaning of grace in Romans 11, 5, the very meaning of grace is that the reason he chooses us is not in ourselves.

It's not in our own virtue or our own sinfulness. It is in his counsel, and he's wise in all that he does because he's guided by the highest considerations. And what is that consideration? Well, it was hinted at in that text we read from 1 Corinthians 1. What choices will humble sinful men?

What choices will keep men from boasting in themselves? And what choices will bring people to praise the glory of the grace of God? Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the question, Drew and Nikki. Please send your questions to us via email and askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. So, is it a sin to dislike divine election?

That was the question we addressed in episode number 224. You can find it in the podcast archive, most easily found in the free app for the iPhone and the Android. We will be back tomorrow with a new episode on the topic of intimacy within marriage. It's episode number 400, and it's appropriately epic, but it's not an episode for 13-year-olds.

So, just a heads up for that. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.