God has decided to give grace to men and women to come to Him through Christ. He has decided that all who come to Him, He will receive. It is all of grace—none deserve it—and it is all to His glory—for no man can attain it of himself. God is sovereign. He rules and overrules all. Yet, it is not our business to determine the elect. We are commissioned to go into the entire world and preach the Gospel, giving opportunity to all who believe in the Gospel message to receive salvation. Our decision may indeed rest on God’s decision, but apart from our decision we remain in our sins. Today, as the prophet Joel stated, there are multitudes in the valley of decision. With Joshua and with Elijah we call people to choose.
How do the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man fit together? I will acknowledge that fully grasping it would be like a flea understanding calculus. I should seek greater understanding, for there is no glory in ignorance. Yet, even one with such spiritual insight as the Apostle Paul said,
9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture.
10 But when full understanding comes,these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.
12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
(1 Corinthians 13:9-12 NLT)
I am often tempted to tell things I don’t know—to engage in speculation beyond Scripture—after all, to my congregation, I am the “Bible Answer Man” with apologies to another fellow who likes that title, but doesn’t have all the answers right, either.
One of my heroes, Charles Haddon Spurgeon framed it like this:
“The system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not simply one straight line but two, and no man will ever get the right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at two lines at once. These two facts [Divine sovereignty and human freedom] are parallel lines….
That God predestines, and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the human mind which pursues them farthest will never discover that they converge, but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.”
The study of the sovereignty of God in the salvation of man brings great humility and requires great grace. Extolling the virtue of the latter (sovereign grace) should lead to the former (humility), or else we miss the point! It has been rightly said, “Try to explain election and you may lose your mind. But try to explain it away and you may lose your soul!”
John Phillips’ illustration isn’t perfect, but it is helpful to my “flea-brain.”
“Imagine two men playing a game of chess; the one player is a master at the game, the other is very much an amateur. The master knows hundreds of moves for opening, pursuing, and closing the game, whereas the amateur okays blindly from one move to the next with little skill and only limited forethought. Both players have free will to make whatever moves they wish. But the master of the game, without in any way violating his opponent’s free will, uses every move the amateur makes to drive him into a corner and take his king.”
I am so thankful that one day God said to me, “Checkmate!”
I believe in sovereign grace and I believe humans are accountable for the decision to receive or reject Christ—with eternal implications. I can’t find Scripture teaching anything else. I declare with Paul as he sums up this doctrinal discussion,
33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?”35 “Or who has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?”
36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36 NKJV)
Amen?
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