The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Double predestination

from R.C. Sproul's Chosen By God

20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. Rom 9:20-24 (NASB)

This is a heavy answer to the question. I must confess that I struggle with it. My struggle, however is not over whether the passage teaches double predestination. It clearly does that. My struggle is with the fact that this text supplies ammunition for the advocates of equal ultimacy. It sounds like God is actively making people sinners. But that is not required by the text. He does make vessles of wrath and vessels of honor from the same lump of clay. But if we look closely at the text we will see that the clay with which the potter works is "fallen clay. One batch of clay receives mercy in order to become vessels of honor. That mercy presupposes a clay that is already guily. Likewise God must "endure" the vessels of wrath.

Again the accent in this passage is on God's sovereign purpose and not upon man's free and good choices.