The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Election a hurdle?!?!

AJC

I have a question concerning Romans 9 verses 18-21.
What are your thoughts when you read these verses?

Tom

Probably the same as yours - I just need reminders every once in a while.

Thanks for the scriptures you posted - they were a great help!

Now that you guys have set me straight regarding Election (thanks for helping me test my own beliefs to ensure they are sound, I knew I could count on you guys!) - I still have a few questions:

We know GOd elects and predestines and determines out fate -I agree!!!

But everything still has to play out - right!?!?!

THis is the concern when talking election with the non-Reformed. THey don't get that part. I think L. Bottner does a good job clarifying that.

So if we pray for the conversion of another - our prayers may be heard...but...the fact that those prayers were heard by God and the fact that we prayed for somebody's soul was also part of GOd's decree. Like if somebody is sick with cancer they could either seek treatment with the possiblity they will recover or forget treatment because death is a strong possibility regardless - but this way death will be assurred.

This goes back to election and why it is so difficult to convert non-Reformed in at least a theological sense - becasue they can't get past election and when election is used as one of the starting points it seems to throw them for a loop (they say if it is all determined what is the point??? - they don't undestand that election is the only way any will be saved and that everything still has to play out in this life and that our hope is that we may counted as one of the elect).

I think election is only really undestood by the spiritually mature?!?!?!

I don't think it's a matter of maturity so much. For me at least, it's a matter of how big God really is. If He's truly God and all knowing and all powerful, then election must be a fact. If He is less than that, then Man's sovereignty equals God's.

Any doctrine that makes God out to be less than God - all mighty, all knowing, all sovereign - cannot be the truth. Election is a necessary consequence of God's nature!

It is much more than merely a question of foreknowledge (God looks down the corridor of time and sees who will have the good sense - i.e., MERIT - to accept Christ and thus God "elects" those people). The greatest example of His sovereignty in time and human will, to me at least, is Acts 2:23. which says


Murder is certainly not God's will! Yet it was His predertmined plan before creation. Not only that murder would happen, but that His ownly begotten Son would be murdered! Godless men acting according to their own "free" will defied God's commands and murdered their own Messiah. Yet that horrific crime had to take place - indeed, took polace infallibly according to God's eternal decree.

Does it take an especially mature person to understand that God rules absolutely over all the affairs of His creation, even every act of every creature? Nah. Not maturity. Just awe. Childlike wonder. And gratitude.

-Robin