Sola Gratia | Predestination As An Act of Grace
The topic of grace remains relatively simple on the face. People tend to understand, at least giving lip service, that we are saved by grace, the unmerited favor of God to save us and return us to Himself, for the Glory of God Alone (Soli Deo Glory). Yet, our flesh struggles with this concept greatly. We search and search for reason that our salvation comes from our own actions. Our imaginations strive to create reasons why our salvation comes based at least partly on our abilities. When we study the idea of “By Grace Alone” throughout scripture, it rightly postures mankind under the person of the Triune Godhead. For the work of God to be merited, for it to be earned, would make salvation a transaction rather than a grace filled act by a loving God.
No place is this struggle seen more than the rampant debates that stem from the topic of predestination. Yet, to be faithful to the discuss of Sola Gratia and to be faithful to the word of God as our ultimate authority of God’s divine self-revelation, we must be willing to see what God speaks about this topic and how it affects us. One cannot say that predestination is not a biblical topic as we see it throughout scripture. Sola Gratia, by grace alone, means that we receive the gift of salvation by the grace of God alone. We do not bring anything to the spiritual table that would qualify us for anything other than eternal death. Yet, through God’s sovereignty and divine wisdom and knowledge, God chooses to rescue His people for eternal salvation. Predestination means that God chose us first instead of us choosing God. We can only come to God because God has predestined that we should come to Him. Our actions, even submitting ourselves to the Lord, does not merit our salvation but instead, God’s predestined us to come to Him.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Romans 8:26-30, ESV
God Chooses Us By Grace
Philosophy questions the purpose of mankind. We question who made us and what we were created. Yet, in asking this question, we jump straight to action and bypass the first act of grace that mankind experiences. Rather than asking to what purposes did God create mankind to achieve (the ontological question) we must first wrestle with the question of why God created us to begin with (the existential question). Before we can fully understand what we were created to do, we must first wrestle with what we were created to be and why we were created in the first place. Every act of God towards mankind remains an act of grace as an unmerited act towards not only salvation but for life. Predestination states that God, before the very foundation and creation of the world, chose those who would come to Him. Everyone earns death through their own works, but God’s chooses us first to be His adopted heirs and to be conformed to the image of God. Furthermore, those that God predestined, justifies them according to the works of Jesus Christ instead of our own actions failing to justify us. Salvation comes to those whom God predestined beforehand.
The works of the first Adam left us completely dead in our sin, unable to produce any hint of salvation in ourself. The wording is clear, yet we frequently attempt to try to describe our condition as “almost dead” or “nearly dead.” Yet, this is not what scripture tells us. Our sinful condition leaves us fully dead unable to live, in desperate need of a Savior. How could we possibly come to God as the first act in our spiritually dead condition. Voddie Baucham states “Dead people can’t reach for things.” The only reason we can come to God comes from God’s call to us first, having predestined us for redemption by the blood of Christ. A Sovereign King does not react to the actions of the people and our Divine Ruler does not wait for mankind to save Himself, speaking life first into those whom He chooses. We must be predestined to come to God, anything shy of predestination would create a system in which we are saved by our ability to assent to the will of God, by our own actions. Salvation comes from God’s choice of mankind, however mysterious and unknown the reasons or criteria may be, and we cannot boast that we came to God but that God came to us and chose us first.
The Question of Free Will
And yet, I must be willing to equally acknowledge the portions of scripture which speak to mankind’s responsibility in this process. God does not want that anyone should not be in eternity with Him through repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Furthermore, we need to come to Jesus, making an intentional effort to come to God (John 6:37). We are wired to crave God and seek the desires of our heart. Yet, for the whole of our responsibility to submit ourselves to the Lord, we cannot for one moment think that we are the product of our salvation or that God did not predestine us before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 1:4). We are predestine for a specific work that, when we are predestined by God, we will be hard wired to seek the Lord and grow in relationship with Him. Think of firing an arrow. First, an arrow never shoots itself but is shot by someone else. Furthermore, once it is shot, even if it is not there, it’s trajectory and destination are already established but it still must make the journey. God acts first, on our behalf, and because God has predestined us according to His Glory, while we may have free will, our eternity is established long before we arrive there.
Furthermore, this does not imply that God is merely reacting to our decisions through His divine foreknowledge. Knowledge does not imply that God understood our choices and planned accordingly, but rather that God chose to intimately know us as a husband would know His wife. Through God’s divine “fore-intimacy” we have been made to crave the Lord and come to Him. Our choice still remains to submit to God and bow before Him knowing that God chose us to be with Him. By our independent actions, we earned death, unable to save ourselves. But God saves us still. Worried whether or not you are predestined? Run to God and seek His face, knowing that those who come to Him have been called to do so from the beginning of time. Even in our free will, we cannot escape the love of God who chose to send God to be with us, having predestined us before we existed. This is good news. Even before our existence, God chose us as adopted children and rightful heirs of the King. Therefore, we have been predestined to do good works as the result of our salvation. We choose to express our free will by submitting ourselves to the God who enable us to do so first. We do not produce our salvation by coming to God first, we respond to the call of God because He chose us first, having predestined us to Himself.
