The Sword Room

Israel rejected God as their king in place of an earthly ruler. In their foolishness they thought a powerful human warrior king would provide them the visible tangible security they desired, instead of the theocratic system where they must trust the unseen God and rely on a succession of judges raised up by the Lord for their protection and deliverance. As then so now, people want to look to a man instead of God.

So God gave the people what they wanted–Saul. Saul was a handsome man who stood head-and-shoulders above the people; but inside he was a cowardly, spineless, compromising fool who ultimately was forsaken by the Lord and after consulting a medium for guidance before taking his own life on the field of battle entered into an eternity of conscious torment.

After Saul it was David who, although he was a man after God’s own heart, was a loose cannon with a weakness for women. When he died he was succeeded by his son Solomon. Solomon was granted extraordinary wisdom by the Lord but he was so busy building an ornate temple supposedly for the Lord, that he laid a heavy burden of taxation on the people while at the same time allowing their worship of pagan deities to go unchecked. When he died and was succeeded by his son Rehoboam the people were fed up.

I have been reading about these events today in 1 Kings 12. When Rehoboam came to power the northern ten tribes assembled at Shechem to ask for relief from the heavy burden of taxation. Such a request was not unreasonable given the fact that the temple was completed. Rehoboam’s elderly and more seasoned advisors counseled him to grant the request of the people; but he ignored their advice and listened to his younger circle of friends and told the people: My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins….My father chastised you with cords, but I will chastise you with whips (12:10-11).

What happens when people are squashed under the hand of a heartless despot who will not listen to their cries? They rebel and look, not to God, but for another human ruler who will dance to their drum and offer them a meal ticket. The application to our present situation here in America is obvious. Many feel that we have a president who disregards the constitution, does an end-around the legislative branch with executive orders, and puts political pressure on the judicial branch to get them on board with his agenda. Working class people and business owners are complaining about higher taxes squandered on government handout programs. Illegal aliens are receiving better benefits than military veterans. First and Second Amendment rights are hanging in the balance and people are asked to tighten the belt at a time when the president spends millions to go play golf in Florida with Tiger Woods, and the first Lady opens the envelope and announces the Oscar winner. Of course we are not in a covenant relationship with God as was Israel–the church is God’s holy nation, royal priesthood, and special people (1 Peter 2:8-10).

The ten tribes from the north looked to Jeroboam as their deliverer. They broke away from Judah and Levi to the south–seceded from the union, if you will. But Jereboam, who had been a military superstar under Solomon, adopted golden-calf worship during his exile in Egypt after Solomon started viewing him as a rival and put out a hit on his life. Jereboam didn’t want the people to be tied to the temple in Jerusalem and the Levitical system of worship, as prescribed by God in the Mosaic Covenant. So he created a new centralized place of worship–actually two: one in Bethel, the southernmost extremity of his domain, and one in Dan at the northernmost border. He had two golden calves made and created a whole new caste of priests who were not descendants of Levi or Aaron. This was a completely apostate system, but Jeroboam convinced the people that these golden calves were indeed responsible for their exodus from Egyptian bondage years earlier. How? He offered them freedom from oppression and a better meal ticket. That’s all it took then, and that’s all it would take now.

However, as believers we need to step back from the fervor, take a deep breath, and see one thing very clearly with regard to our current situation. For the king did not listen to the people; for the turn of events was from the lord (12:15). What we are seeing in our country has come to pass by the sovereign eternal decree of God–not one speck of it is outside His control. God has given us a godless, wicked, unregenerate, arrogant, autocratic president because we have rejected Him who is the only source of life and have carved out broken cisterns for ourselves that can hold no water. We are getting what we deserve. That smoldering stub, Jeremiah Wright, spoke prophetically after the fashion of Balaam’s ass when he declared that America’s chickens have come home to roost. The evangelical church in America has been slowly rotting from the inside out for decades, having been infected with the spiritual AIDS virus of Arminianism and the puny false god of the Arminian system. There is a famine in the land for the word of God. We have Bibles galore but no one wants to actually teach fearlessly the truths contained in those sacred pages. The remedy for our national ills is revival within the body of Christ. What we do not need is more dispy-Arminianism, psychobabble, and warm fuzzy swooning to narcissistic ditties and pulpit pabulum.

The Tea Party is a joke. Too many believers have mistaken the right wing of the Republican Party for the Kingdom of God. That is a mistake with disastrous consequences. Why? Because if you seek relief from oppression but refuse to repent of your false system of theology and the false god of that system, ultimately you will be swapping one godless leader for another. You will reject Rehoboam and replace him with Jeroboam. If you don’t understand where I’m going I strongly urge you to read my book: Breaking the Box: Rebuilding Faith in the God of the Bible.

I’m sorry, but this is no time to mince words. Time for all of us as God’s elect to get off our ass and on our knees. Time to pull our heads out of our derrieres and get that nose into the Word of God instead of the TV or computer screen. There is no guarantee of a best life now. Things may likely get worse before they get better. You may get cold, tired and hungry waging the good fight–but do not trade your birthright for a bowl of soup, thereby proving that like Esau you are a reprobate hated by God and headed for damnation.

Repent. And realize that God’s eternal purpose can never be confounded. Remember too, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism reminds us, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. There is a joy and peace in serving the true God of Scripture and the real Jesus that transcends all description and comprehension.

Time to wake up and smell the spiritual coffee. Straight up, strong, and steaming hot.

The main reason I am writing fewer entries the past few weeks could be attributed to busy-ness. I have been practicing and recording music. The holidays are upon us. My job keeps me busy. But really these are just excuses.

The real reason is that there is not a lot of motivation these days . With the last presidential election I came to the realization that the United States of America I was raised in is forever gone. As a nation we have rejected the God of the Bible and His Word and substituted them with a plethora of false gods and gospels. I believe we have crossed the tipping point and as a nation we are living on borrowed time. Our children will experience a different reality from what we have known.

Over the past few weeks I have been in a kind of spiritual wasteland of my own making. Even when you believe in the sovereignty of God there is discouragement. If you read scripture you see that when God judged His people for apostasy the prophets, like Jeremiah, wept and lamented their own sins and the sins of the people. I weep too, not only for my own fleshly rebellion, but also for the filth and depravity into which we as a nation have sunk and are still sinking. It is never too late, but in my gut I feel we have crossed the tipping point of no return.

The church of Jesus Christ in this nation, by and large, does not believe in the God of the Bible. If you have not read my book, Breaking the Box: Rebuilding Faith in the God of the Bible, I would encourage you to do so. It chronicles the slow decay of American evangelicalism from the inside out. I am thinking of re-writing it to include how belief in the false God of American churchianity has not only polluted the church, but how this theological rot has spread to the culture at large. I know, theology doesn’t matter–no one really cares about it.

Exactly.

We are to be salt and light to the world–not vice-versa. The best way I think for me to do this is not to lose sight of the trees for the forest. The big picture is bleak, but there are lost spiritually dead people who need the life-giving message of the Lord and Savior. God is still in charge of saving people, and as we bring the message of Jesus to the walking dead of this world, the Lord will save sinners as he pleases. We can still be his instruments in the lives of others.

Maybe it’s time for me to end the pity party and trust in the true and living God. All we see happening around us is orchestrated by Him for His ultimate glory, and His will is the only one that really matters.

AW Tozer, in his classic book, The Knowledge of the Holy claims to believe in the sovereignty of God. He says he is neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian. His supposedly mediating position is explained in the following way:

Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities.On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port. Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man’s freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of God’s sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being. We know that God will fulfill every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that God’s perfections will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of God the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.Toward all this God is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him from His purposes; nothing turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, no accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omnipotent, there can be no want of power to achieve His chosen ends. God is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.

Since I cited this quotation of Tozer in a post nearly three years ago I have heard it used a few times in sermons and casual conversation. Please comment as to whether you think it is a fitting analogy or a distortion of biblical teaching.

We have been discussing how a good and all-powerful God can will evil and suffering, either by decree or by permission (allowing it). Why would He have created such a world where He knew that sin and its effects would ravage the lives of so many in this world and and the next? This so-called problem of evil and suffering is what fuels the arguments of atheists like Christopher Hitchins. Bertrand Russell in his famous book, Why I am not a Christian, argues over and over that the presence of evil and suffering in the world proves that the God of the Bible does not exits.

The atheist reasons thus. If a good God existed He would not want evil and suffering in the world, and if He were all-powerful He would stop it. The existence of evil shows that if a deity does exist–which is highly doubtful–he/she/it is not the all-good all-powerful God of the Bible. How are we to respond to this age-old line of reasoning.

The first thing I do any time someone argues against the existence of God in this way is to compliment them for taking evil seriously. We certainly do live in a world where evil is an objective reality. Everyone knows at some level that stealing and murdering are wrong; and who but the pedophile himself does not cringe at the thought of an adult sexually molesting a child?

But wait. Who is to say these things are evil? And just what is evil anyway? If there is no God, where does moral law come from? Many will deny the existence of God because according to the scientific method (empirical evidence gathered using the physical senses) we cannot either prover or falsify the claim that God exists.  But this same logic could be used to deny the existence of evil. After all, what color is evil? What does is taste, sound, feel, and look like. If we are strictly scientific we must conclude that all we are is a bunch of chemicals with no inherent value, and we live in a world where sh– happens. It is neither good nor evil–it simply is what it is. The whole argument against God’s existence based on the reality of evil is a rational rather than empirical argument. At the end of the day if we deny the existence of God we have no basis for moral law and relativity reigns.

Moral law presupposes a supreme lawgiver who is good and all-powerful. But the question remains: Why did God create a world full of suffering and evil. The Arminian offers an answer that plays into the hands of the atheist. God created humans with a libertarian free will, and He has chosen not to violate that free will. In other words, man is sovereign over his own choices. And why did God give man this freedom of the will? Because, so goes the argument, genuine love cannot exist without the freedom to choose to love or not love God. God wanted–needed–to be loved so badly that he was willing to “risk it” for the love of a few, while multitudes refused to love Him and suffered eternal consequences. This theory of free will must be smuggled into the biblical text from without. It just ain’t there.

Scripture teaches that God needs nothing outside His self-contained triune nature and being. He is in absolute control of everything in creation, right down to the smallest atom. He knows the stars by name, and the number of the hairs on our heads. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from Him. Evil exists because He created a universe in which evil would fulfill His sovereign purpose and bring ultimate glory to Him. We define goodness according to our own needs and terms, but God alone determines not only what is right, but what is good.

At the end of the day we do not know why God decreed evil and suffering. What we do know is that He is all-good and all-powerful, and if He did not exist there would be no such things as evil, goodness, love, freedom, beauty, and meaning, because these all exist as reflections of His glory.

Many years ago when my older children Josh, Josie, and Justin were 10, 8, and 5 years of age I did an experiment to illustrate the compatibilist view of free will. Before I tell the rest of the story permit me to explain that there are two major theories of so-called free will among professing believers.

The first is called libertarian free will. According to those who hold this position (Arminians), a choice is free only if the possibility of multiple or contrary choices is present. It would seem to follow that if a choice is predetermined then it cannot be free in the libertarian sense. If it is predetermined, for example, that I will choose option A and not option B, then I am not free to not choose A–I must choose A. Proponents of libertarian free will re-define the biblical concepts of election and predestination to make them conditional on man’s forseen choices. Openness theologians, realizing that the Arminian concept of foreknowledge implies determinism, reject the idea that God can foreknow with certainty what people will choose. Others sidestep the clear biblical teaching on election and predestination with the erroneous doctrines of corporate election and prevenient grace. Or they water down the biblical doctrine of total depravity (inability).

Those who are mis-labeled “Calvinists” hold to what is called compatibilist free will. According to this view a choice can be predetermined with certainty and free at the same time. The possibility of contrary choice is not necessary as long as the person makes the choice with no sense of outside coercion. In other words, they do what they want to do within the bounds of their nature. I happen to believe this is the view of free will taught in Scripture–and I am not alone. It was the view of Christ, Paul, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Edwards, Warfield, Hodge, and many others. Modern proponents of this view are Piper, Sproul, and Grudem.

Now back to the story. My three kids (we only had three at that time) were playing in the back yard.  The youngest (Justin) was playing off by himself and I called the older two (Josh and Josie)  into the house. I gave them each a cookie, knowing they would head back outside and eat them in front of Justin. I also knew Justin well enough to know exactly what he would do the minute he saw them eating the cookies: he would want one too and come into the house to ask me for one. He had no idea that this was exactly what I wanted him to do or that I had orchestrated events so that he would ask me for a cookie. From his perspective the choice was completely free because even though predetermined it was exactly what he wanted to do.

Where the analogy breaks down is in my fallibility. While on the way into the house Justin might have spotted a snake and forgotten all about the cookie–I would have no control over this unforseen event. But God is all-knowing, and He is in control of all secondary causes. There would be no breakdown in the plan. He is able to predetermine not only the choices of His creatures, but to orchestrate the events leading up to them in such a way that our choices are totally free. We do what we want to do within the bounds of our nature with no sense of coercion from without.

Put a bucket of oats in front of a horse alongside a bucket of KFC. Does the horse have a free choice? Depends on what you mean. Is he free to do what he wants to do? Yes, but because he is a horse he is bound by his nature and will always choose the oats. Likewise lost unregenerate sinners are dead spiritually. All they are able to do is reject Christ unless God quickens their hearts and grants them faith and repentance. When they reject Christ they are doing exactly what they want to do. Once God regenerates the sinner he believes, not because he has to, but because he wants to.

This is the compatibilist understanding of free will. Our choices are predetermined and yet free. Makes perfect sense to me, but those of an Arminian persuasion will persist in kicking against the goads.

Do you like straight Vanilla ice cream, French Vanilla, or that kind that has the little flecks of Vanilla bean mixed in. At the end of the day it’s still Vanilla.

I am tired of people harping about the importance of voting and how we the people have so much ability to effect change through the political process. Recently I heard a friend say that next November we will have a choice between two rich white guys. What? Obama and Romney are both rich, but Obama is black. But wait–why is he “black?” He is half white and half black. On that basis alone one should be able to claim him as white. Add to that the fact that he was raised in Hawaii by white grandparents and attended an all-white prep school. My friend refers to him as a rich white guy who is playing the race card for political reasons–and he maintains that if you think that is a racist statement then you have been drinking too much Kool-Aid. 

Both Romney and Obama claim to be Christians. If we define what a Christian is by strictly biblical criteria, then I have grave doubts about both men. Both appear to be unbelieving pagans to me. No, I do not believe Obama is a Muslim. I know Romney is a Mormon, and I am not sure what Obama is. But his political philosophy and policy decisions do not reflect Christian values in my view.

So you have two rich white guys who say they are Christians. There you go: exercise your free will and vote for your favorite. Make no mistake, I intend to do just that. (Yes, I do believe in free will, rightly defined).

About a week ago there was some heat in here about the whole issue of free will. One person commented that their bottom-line is that: I believe that God created free will by the act of creating love, the second being impossible without the first. I have been meaning to take a deeper look at this statement ever since it was first posted, but haven’t had the time until now.

I have heard several variations of this view over the years. If I understand it correctly it goes something like this: God created love, but in order to create love He also had to create free will because you cannot have love without free will. Of course God by nature is love and he is eternally free, so what I take this to mean is that God created love and free will in humans as part of His divine image. Some have expanded this argument by saying that God wanted creatures who would love Him as He loved them. But for the love to be genuine it must be voluntary, which implies they could choose not to love him. Only if they had the ability of contrary choice (Libertarian Free Will) could the love be real.

In other words if choice A is loving God and choice B is not loving God, my choosing of option A is a free choice only if I can also freely choose option B. And here is where we get to the real meat of the matter. Those who hold to a Libertarian form of free will insist that if our choices are predetermined they cannot be free. If God has determined from eternity that I will choose option A, then I cannot not choose A. In other words I am not free to choose B, so that B is not really an option. I am a robot, and my love for God is programmed, coerced, etc. It can in no way be considered free or even real.

It does no good here to appeal to God’s foreknowledge–you know, the idea that God looked down the corridors of time to see what I would freely choose and then based His decree on that sneak preview. First of all, God’s knowledge is immediate and innate, since he is the fountainhead of all wisdom and knowledge–all truth is God’s truth. God does not learn anything. Secondly, for God to know for certain what I will do from all eternity means my choice has been rendered certain. God is the first cause of all things, and in eternity only He existed, so that He is the only one who could have rendered my choice certain. So the argument from foreknowledge is really just another shade of determinism. The only solution to this “problem” is to opt for an open theism which says God really does not know what our choices will be–we determine them spontaneously at the very instant we choose. Of course even the staunchiest Bible-believing Arminian would reject such a notion.

I said earlier that I believe in a form of free will. Scripture does not teach libertarian free will as I have outlined it above. Nor is the assumption biblical that  freedom of contrary choice is necessary for genuine love to exist. Most Arminians believe God loves everyone because God is love. Does God the Father have freedom of contrary choice to not love God the Son? If not, how can His love be genuine? Mind you, I do not believe Scripture teaches that God loves everyone, but that is a side issue to be bantered about at a future date.

If you go strictly by Scripture you will hold to what is called Compatibalist Free Will. Our choices are predetermined by God and yet free. According to Scripture the ability of contrary choice is not what makes our choices free, but rather the ability to do what we want to do within the confines of our nature with no sense of coercion. Let’s start with God. Choice A is that the Father loves the Son, and there is no choice B. It is impossible for the Father not to love the Son because it is not within his nature to want to do anything else but love Him. No one makes Him love the Son–it’s what he wants to do.

What would happen if you took a pig from wallowing in the mud, scrubbed him pink, doused him with perfume, put a ribbon on his tail and a gold ring in his nose, and set before him two choices. First, a beautiful table setting with fine linens and china, and a smattering of delicacies from around the world. Second you offer him a mud hole and the slop he is used to eating. Does the pig have a free will? It depends on what you mean. If you mean does he have the ability to choose the fine spread over the slop hole? then the answer is no. But if you mean does he have the ability to do exactly what his nature as a pig wants to do and craves? then the answer is yes.

The bottom line is that the Bible does not teach libertarian free will. My belief is that most Arminians start with this unbiblical assumption and approach the Bible with it, and thus it governs how they understand and interpret God’s Word. If you simply read the whole Bible and let it speak for itself you cannot help but hold to a compatibalist view of free will.

So come November do what you want. Vote for either one or none of the two rich allegedly Christian white guys running for president. Pick your favorite flavor of Vanilla! Just remember that Jesus Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Obama and Romney are no different than Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, or Pilate. They have no power but what God allows them to have. And He can take them down as quickly as He raises them up.

God’s election carries infinitely more weight than ours!

Here is a passage in the New Testament that is used to support the idea that God wants to save everyone exhaustively:

Therefore I exhort that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:1-4).

The word all is used four times in these verses, and its meaning is the crux of proper interpretation. You might wonder how many different meanings the word all can have, so let’s take a closer look at the text. First, Paul tells Timothy to pray for all men. All men? How in the world could anyone pray for the billions of men alive in the world at any given time? Never mind that he is commanding that only men be prayed for; for if he is speaking generically then he is telling Timothy to pray for every living human being exhaustively regardless of gender. Such a prayer would sound like the ones we’ve heard a hundred times in Wednesday night Bible studies: Dear Lord, please bless all the missionaries…

Interestingly, right after the command to pray for all men Paul specifies that kings and those in authority be the objects of prayer. I am therefore inclined to think what Paul is saying is that he wants Timothy to pray for all kinds of men, rather than all men (people) exhaustively. Civil authorities are often the last people we would pray for even in our relatively persecution-free culture. Think of how hard it would be to not only pray tor the salvation of a godless despot, but to believe God would want to save him.

If such an understanding of the word all is correct then it must also apply when it says in v. 4 that God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. God does not save only from one ethnic or economic group–is it His desire to save all kinds of men.

Now I imagine some of you see this as semantic casuistry or sleight of hand. ALL MEANS ALL! you protest. What about in Mark 1:5, where we are told that all the land of Judea and Jerusalem went out to be baptized by John in the Jordan river? Was all the land mass actually transported supernaturally? Did every last living breathing person make the trip? Looks to me like what it is saying is that a whole lot of people went out to the Jordan, and nothing more. How many times in modern usage have you heard a young person defend the latest cool trend by reasoning that everyone is doing it. Everyone does not always mean everyone exhaustively; likewise all does not always mean all exhaustively.

For these reasons I do not think 1 Timothy 2:1-4 supports the Arminian claim that God desires to save every last human being. What say you?

A few months back I wrote a post where I described myself as an inconsistent Calvinist. Here is what I said in a nutshell. Calvinists and Arminians alike have a penchant for airtight systems with no inconsistencies. The Arminian maintains that God loves everyone and desires all to be saved and therefore could not have unconditionally chosen some for salvation and either passed over the rest or predestined them for hell. On the other end the Calvinist insists that because God indeed has elected only some for salvation He therefore could not desire that all be saved. For years I held to the standard Calvinist view, but then a few months ago opted for an inconsistent Calvinism that tries to have it both ways; that is, God predestined only a limited number of elect for salvation, and yet He desires all to be saved–even those He either passed over or decreed for damnation. I must admit that my opting for this position was born of intellectual laziness.

Today, as I was pondering the Greek text of 2 Peter 3:9 I began to reconsider my inconsistent Calvinist position. This verse is a standard spoof-text for the Arminian position. Here is how it reads: God is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward you, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

Looks pretty straightforward, except for one small word: You. Just before this point the writer had been describing last-day scoffers in the third person plural (they). But here he addresses his readers in the Greek second person plural, which in English would be best expressed with the southern slang expression, y’all. There are a few manuscripts which render it us instead of you, but it makes little difference either way. The question is, who are the you Peter is addressing? In the opening salutation of the epistle he identifies them as those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ (1:1).

Common sense ought to tell you that what Peter is driving home to his readers is not that God desires to save everyone, but that He is unwilling that any (of you=believers) should perish but come to repentance? Repentance from what? And what kind of perishing was Peter referring to? The context would seem to imply that some of the believers had been possibly influenced by the skepticism of the scoffers. Of course God would want them to repent of their sin and not perish along with the pagans. God is patient and gives His erring children ample opportunity to return to Him. This rendering makes the most sense contextually and exegetically.

Sorry, you Arminians, but this verse does not support the notion that God wants to save everyone. If it did I guess I could happily remain an inconsistent Calvinist. Then again, there are other texts that are used to support the notion that salvation from God’s perspective is universal at least in intention of not actual outcome. As you can see this entry is part one of at least two posts I plan to do on this topic over the next few days.

I started reading and meditating on the Greek text of 1 Peter this past week, and the salutation of the epistle says a lot. Peter identifies his recipients as elect sojourners scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bythinia. The whole idea of being sojourners scattered across the Roman Empire indicates that this world was not their home, they were just passing through. But they are not just wandering nomads without direction or purpose–they are elect sojourners. There is a method and a plan behind the apparent haphazardness of their existence, for the God of the universe is in absolute control of their lives and destinies. What a comfort!

In 1:2 Peter modifies the Greek adjective elect used in v. 1 with three prepositional phrases, each one describing the role of a member of the Triune Godhead in election. First, Peter’s readers were elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. The biblical concept of divine foreknowledge has been greatly misunderstood. At the popular level many understand foreknowledge to mean that God looked down the corridors of time from eternity past to see who would of their free will choose to trust Christ, and He elected them on that basis. But this is not strictly accurate, for the object of divine foreknowledge is always the person known, not facts about the person. For example in Romans 8:29 we read that whom He foreknew He predestined… This sounds a lot like what God told Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5) when He told him that before he was born He knew him; or what the psalmist said (Ps. 1:) when he declared that the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish; or when it tells us in Genesis that Adam knew his wife; or yet again, when Jesus shall declare to the impostors on judgment day (Matt. 7:23) I never knew you. It is all  too obvious from the context that Jesus knows much about the impostors, but the point is that He never knew them. This can only mean that He did not choose them or know them intimately because they were never of His sheep. The were not foreknown or foreordained as was Christ and His true elect (c.f., 1 Peter 1:120, where the same Greek word for foreknowledge is used as in 1:2). The biblical concept of foreknowledge will seem odious to the more slobbering variety of Arminians, but facts are facts.

The text also says that believers are elect by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. The sanctification here is positional and punctiliar rather than practical and progressive–although the Holy Spirit is the active agent in both cases. In other words, God’s Holy Spirit sanctified or set the elect believer apart for special use once and for all in eternity; and in time the same Spirit conforms the regenerate believer to the image of Christ through the ongoing process of sanctification. When Romans Nine talks about some vessels being set apart for honorable use and some for destruction, the reference is to the sovereign sanctifying work of the Spirit in eternity.

Finally the believers are elect for obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. No one would flinch at the idea of God choosing the elect to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. But this verse infers that only the elect are actually sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. To be sprinkled with His blood is to be cleansed, and the reason all are not sprinkled is because they are not chosen to be sprinkled. Notice too that election is unto obedience to the Lordship of Christ. If God chooses you for heaven He also chooses you for obedience as well. You are created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand for you to walk in. So much for the decisional salvation that would have you base your assurance on having parroted some words many years ago. But rest assured that if you are one of God’s elect you will as a general pattern live a life of obedience to Jesus because you love Him and want to serve Him.

And so my fellow sojourners scattered and chosen, take great comfort in the sovereign work of the Triune Godhead in your election and salvation.

WOW!! HE’S FIGHTING MAD!!!