PREDESTINATION: ELECTED FOR LIFE
Romans 8: 28-39
When our church youth group was considering what slogan to
put on their new shirts a couple of years ago, the youth leaders came to me and
asked me for suggestions. Together we brainstormed and came up with about 10
choices, and among them was the favorite that is on the front of their shirts
to this day: “Westminster Youth: Predestined for Life.” It is true, isn’t it, that Presbyterians are
identified most assuredly with this doctrine?
If we make a good choice one day, we may be kidded by someone who says: “You were predestined to do that.” Or when
someone does something thoughtless or malicious, people might say: “You must
not be in God’s elect.” As with most
thoughtful doctrines, they cannot be well defined in the space of a bumper
sticker, and cartoons never do justice to their meaning. In fact, Presbyterians will continue to claim
this doctrine gladly, and you probably will too, because, when properly
understood, the Apostle Paul and our denominational founder, John Calvin,
believed that it was a comforting doctrine in Scripture for the church in their
day and in ours, that is, for the True Church, where believers gather to hear
the Word rightly preached, the Sacraments rightly administered, where vice is
corrected and virtue is commended. To
those who belong to the
The most famous reference to this idea is in Romans chapter
8, not the only place, but the place we will focus today. Paul is doing early Christian Apologetics to
the early Church leaders in Rome as he writes this treatise, (that some called
his rough draft, much as Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, though timeless, was
said to be written on the back of an envelope on the way to give his speech).
Apologetics are not apologies, but defenses, and in this case, they were part
of the formation of the Christian faith.
We owe Paul and the Gospel writers a debt of gratitude for helping us to
understand Christ and the ways of our Sovereign, Omnipotent, Omnipresent
God. Let’s talk about that for a
moment. Those of you who follow Science
Fiction know that a long time premise of fervent, and sometimes spiritual
minds, has been time travel. The idea of
a human being going back in time is fascinatingly depicted in film, short
story, and novel. The idea, however, of
traveling into the future has been largely untouched, except in horror stories.
How would it affect life as we know it if we learned how and when our loved
ones were to die, or that our nation will enter a Third World War, or what if
someone other than you could learn next week’s lottery numbers this week? Do
you see the chaos that would ensue with human beings, having too much
life-changing information? We try that idea in limited ways. For example, when
you read a novel, do some of you read the last chapter first? The suspense of
John Grisham, Dan Brown, or Earl Stanley Gardner goes away when we know the end
of the story. I am guilty of it with watching sports on TV: I would rather
watch a game a day late and know my team is going to win, then watch it live
and have my insides twisted. But I am a little weird and Mary Ann says I take
those games way to seriously! So can you
imagine that God actually knows about our futures; that the God who forms us in
the womb knows us well and, as I said last week, cheers for us to make the
right decisions in life? You may recall that
the name of the Lord God, (respectfully, “Yahweh”) is, according to Exodus
chapter 3, “I AM WHO I AM” OR “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.” That’s God’s job
description: God can save who God wants to save, God can be where God wants to
be; God can see what God chooses to see. We join Reformers like Calvin and
Martin Luther as we have turned to the book of Romans to find out how we are saved.
There they found words in Romans that lit up like neon to them: “By grace you
are saved through faith.” Or to be exact: “All have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God, therefore we are justified (made right in God’s eyes) by
grace (unmerited favor) as a gift, through the price paid by Jesus Christ.”
(Romans 3:23) In the last book of the Bible, Jesus is called “the Lamb” because
of the high price of his sacrifice for our salvation. So we are saved
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But how are we judged? Judgment is still left to God and Scripture
makes that Jesus’ role. Mainline Christians are not Universalists
who believe that everyone ends up in Heaven and there is no other place. Can
you imagine? Why, those who maim or
murder or rape or steal or abuse, if they had enough power to do it in their
lifetime, would have no eternal consequence in the afterlife and Heaven to be
filled with unrepentant criminals! No, we still must be judged in the same way
our school systems decide if we are ready to graduate. If we get Fs in school,
it is a failing grade and one cannot graduate. That is the judgment of the
system. But sometimes everyone does so poorly on final exams that the normal 70
out of 100 that would constitute a failing grade would mean the entire class
has failed. That’s how the world would be without grace. So a curve is put in
place, a grading curve if you will, that changes what it takes to fail. By such gracious actions some graduate, while
others are left behind.
Most of the time we define Predestination as the act of God
appointing some people to Heaven and appointing some people to Darkness. But if
God is not locked by time as we are, and there is a Book of Life, or at least
that’s the way Jesus explained it so we could understand it; he revealed it to
John in Revelation 1:11, 20:12, and 21: 27. Listen especially to that last
verse: “Nothing unclean shall enter the New Jerusalem or anyone who practices
abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of
Life.” God, who is eternal and without
beginning or end, (picture a circle and not a line), is not locked by time as
we are. Does it follow in your mind that God could have the chance to look in
the pages of our Book of Life the way some habitually read the last chapter of
a book first? Could it be that our Lord
does not control us like puppets on strings, nor abandons us when we make poor
choices, but is able to see the choices
we will make in life, and then, with great gladness, says to those who are
saved by grace and whose measure of gratitude has been recorded in the Book of
Life as acts of kindness and good choices: “I have seen your destination ahead
of time; you will be with me in Paradise.” And God, in finding those who honor
Christ with their choices, will also find those whose choices do not honor Christ, and even those who
aggressively fight him or have regularly fought against his loving ways. Who among those should be in
Jesus never breaks down the door of a human
heart. As our north side stained glass window reminds preachers when they enter
this pulpit that some here today do not know him, there are many of them who
would be receptive to the conviction that Jesus is Lord. Like a farmer,
preachers plant seeds of Good News and hope they will take root in the fervent
soil of humans hearts, watered liberally by the Holy Spirit. And the same Spirit draws those whom he has
chosen into deeper conformity to Christ.
No, Predestination does not take away
your free will; it does not cast your fate into God’s will alone; it says that the God who is
omnipotent longs for us to choose life, as recorded in Deuteronomy, and to
choose Heaven. But most importantly, God wants us to be so comforted by the
knowledge that we are saved, that we can spend out lives writing chapters in
the Book of Life with our Christ-like actions, our thoughts, and our times that
we have worked for justice and peace. AND
SO, DEAR FRIENDS: GOD IS FOR US! THERE IS NO ONE AGAINST US ON THE EARTH OR
UNDER THE EARTH THAT CAN REMOVE GOD’S LONGING TO WRAP US IN A HOLY MANTLE OF
LOVE. GOD HAS CHOSEN US, ADOPTED US, ELECTED US, BE COMFORTED ANY OR ALL OF
THESE SCRIPTURAL PROMISES. REST ASSURED,
BROTHERS AND SISTER, THAT JESUS LOVES YOU, THIS I KNOW! FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME
SO! THANKS BE TO GOD! AMEN!
Jeffrey A. Sumner