How Does It Glorify God to Predestine People to Hell?
00:00:00.000 | James from Auckland, New Zealand asks, "Pastor John, how does God's predestining
00:00:11.720 | people to eternal hell bring himself glory?" Well, before we embrace the term
00:00:20.520 | "predestining to hell," we need to make some qualifications, because the very
00:00:25.920 | statement is one that is very rare, if present, in the Bible in those terms. I
00:00:34.560 | could think of one or two texts that could almost be paraphrased that way, so
00:00:40.280 | I don't want to be too hard on the question, but here are the
00:00:43.120 | qualifications I want to put on the phrase before I give the answer that I
00:00:47.480 | see. There will be no one in hell who does not deserve to be there. No one will
00:00:59.400 | be there who can give a good reason, a warranted reason, why they
00:01:07.160 | shouldn't be there. And all of the world will know this and will vindicate God in
00:01:13.280 | it. There will be no doubting of the justice of God at the last day. That's
00:01:20.080 | the first thing that has to be said biblically, is that no one will be in
00:01:24.520 | hell who doesn't deserve to be there. Second, no one will be in hell who's not
00:01:30.640 | in a state of rebellion against God. If we have any sense, people are being
00:01:37.280 | thrown there who are not in rebellion against God, but they're lovers of God,
00:01:43.440 | or they're repenting toward God, or they're embracing God, or they're
00:01:48.240 | somehow not in rebellion against God, that's just a foreign concept to the
00:01:52.640 | Bible. The only people who will suffer are people who've been opposing God and
00:01:58.200 | are at the present moment in hell opposing God, rejecting God. And the third
00:02:06.360 | thing that needs to be said to qualify that phrase "predestined to hell" is, in
00:02:11.400 | election and predestination, I think the Bible portrays God as choosing graciously
00:02:20.400 | to save some sinners, not choosing to make some really good people bad. It
00:02:30.480 | always pictures Him as rescuing sinners before the foundation of the world.
00:02:35.960 | Christ is slain for sinners before the foundation of the world in the mind of
00:02:39.960 | God. So with those three qualifications, the question is still a good one. That is,
00:02:45.800 | how is God made more glorious by ruling a world or creating the world in which
00:02:53.560 | people, by His permission or design, however you want to describe it, will
00:03:00.960 | wind up in hell justly? And the closest thing that I know to an answer in the
00:03:09.360 | Bible is found in the end of Romans 9, verses 22 and 23, and Paul says there
00:03:17.440 | that God aims to display His wrath and His power. His goal is that the full
00:03:28.680 | range of His perfections be known. I think this is the ultimate goal of the
00:03:34.240 | universe. God created the universe so that the full range of His perfections,
00:03:40.640 | including wrath and power and judgment and justice, would be displayed. And to do
00:03:49.800 | that, there is, as it were, a dark backdrop of the history of redemption
00:03:56.680 | called the Fall and Sin, and the acts of grace and the acts of mercy and the
00:04:02.560 | experience of salvation shine the more brightly against the backdrop of the
00:04:08.960 | Fall and of Sin, so that two effects happen that glorify God. One is His
00:04:16.680 | grace, which I think is the apex of His glory, shines more brightly because it's
00:04:22.000 | against the backdrop of judgment and of sin, and we, the undeserving beneficiaries
00:04:31.880 | of this election and this redemption, are moved to a more exquisite joy and
00:04:40.560 | gratitude for our salvation because we see all the lostness of people who are
00:04:47.400 | no worse than we were, and we know better than them. We should be in hell as well,
00:04:54.800 | and our gratitude will be intensified. So at least those two senses, I would say,
00:05:01.280 | are the answer to his question, "How does God get glory?" He gets glory because His
00:05:06.800 | grace and mercy shine more brightly against the darker backdrop of sin and
00:05:15.480 | judgment and wrath, and our worship and our experience of that grace intensifies
00:05:23.800 | and deepens because we see we don't deserve to be where we are.
00:05:29.480 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email
00:05:33.080 | your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org
00:05:38.000 | you will find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host
00:05:41.360 | Tony Reinke, thanks for listening. Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
00:05:44.200 | you
00:05:46.260 | [BLANK_AUDIO]