Dr. Sproul discusses the four concepts of: good-good, bad-bad, good-bad, and bad-good in relationship to "all things work together for good." The difference between those who hear the call and those who respond to the call is considered and why we differentiate between the general call and the effectual call.

Today, we will continue our study of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. Last week, we were able to rush rapidly through Romans 8:28. That leaves us now with the opportunity to continue into verse 29 and following, where the focus will be on that portion of chapter 8 known in church history as the golden chain. I will be reading from Romans 8:29–30. God willing, we will be able to cover both of these verses. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

Dearly beloved, this is the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of our God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

O God, as we continue to study Your Word in the depths, the riches, and the marvel of Your sovereign grace, we pray that indeed our souls may be uplifted and our hearts given assurance that we are safe in Christ because of the great love with which You have loved us and called us according to Your good pleasure. We ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Remonstration

Last week, we looked at Romans 8:28, which is in the broader context of chapter 8. We have seen all along that Paul is dealing with our position of safety in our state of salvation in Jesus Christ wherein, after we are justified, there is no more condemnation confronting us if we are in Christ Jesus. Chapter 8 is filled with encouragement to those who are in Jesus Christ. The pinnacle of that encouragement came in 8:28, where Paul says that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, and those who love the Lord are those who are the called according to His purpose. This concept that God effectually calls certain people according to His good pleasure and according to His purpose introduces the golden chain that follows from it. In terms of the theological significance of the golden chain, let me introduce this text by giving some background.

In seventeenth-century Holland, a group of theologians rose up out of the Dutch Reformed Church to protest against historic Reformation theology. Along with Arminius, they entered into what was called remonstration, a protest against some of the doctrines of sixteenth century Calvinism.

Doctrines that particularly felt the weight of their theological criticism included the doctrine of man’s total moral inability as the result of the fall—that is, the Reformation, Augustinian understanding of original sin; the idea of a predestination rooted and grounded in God’s sovereign decrees from all eternity, where the number of the elect are fixed by that decree; and the atonement of Christ being designed and purposed by the Father strictly as the means by which He would bring His elect to salvation. These theologians also protested against what we call effectual calling, the teaching that when the Holy Ghost calls a person inwardly and effects their regeneration, that work of divine grace is so powerful that no human being’s resistance can overcome it. Finally, they raised questions about the idea of eternal security, that once a person is in a state of grace, they will remain in a state of that posture forever.

These five points of remonstration and protest provoked the judgment of the Synod of Dordrecht upon these professors as being heretics, and they were disciplined for their errors. As a result of that controversy, these five issues became known as the five points of Calvinism that were considered under the rubric of the acrostic TULIP, that flower which is the fairest flower in God’s garden. The T stands for total depravity, as we have seen, the U for unconditional election, L for limited atonement, the I for irresistible grace, and the P for perseverance of the saints.

The Prescient View of Predestination

What we are going to be concerned about today is the U in TULIP, the doctrine of unconditional election. By way of introduction, that phrase unconditional election simply means that from all eternity, God chose or elected a fixed certain number of fallen human beings to be redeemed and conformed to the image of His Son. This election was unconditional in the sense that it was not based upon some foreseen or foreknown conditions met during the creature’s lifetime.

That is the issue before us today for this reason: At the time of the Reformation and the recovery of biblical soteriology, the magisterial Reformers were of one mind regarding the doctrine of election. So often, the Reformed doctrine of predestination is identified with the Swiss theologian John Calvin, which is a distortion historically because there is nothing in Calvin’s doctrine of predestination that was not first in Martin Luther’s doctrine, which Luther defended vigorously against the Diatribe of Erasmus of Rotterdam. There was nothing in Luther’s doctrine of predestination that was not first articulated by the great Saint Augustine. I will take that one step further and say there was nothing in Augustine’s doctrine of predestination that was not first in the mind and teaching of the Apostle Paul. I would go even further than that and say there was nothing in Paul’s doctrine of predestination that was not first articulated by our Lord Himself. There was nothing in Jesus’ doctrine of predestination that was not first articulated by Moses in the Old Testament.

But as convinced and persuaded as Luther was of this supreme doctrine of God’s electing grace, when he died, his chief lieutenant, Philip Melanchthon—a brilliant theologian in his own right—modified Luther’s view. The modification that came from Melanchthon was the one that was embraced by later Lutheranism. This was a doctrine of predestination that is called the prescient view of predestination.

The word prescience comes from a prefix and a root. The prefix pre means “beforehand,” and the word science means “knowledge,” so prescience is some kind of prior knowledge. We often use the term foreknowledge to describe the same idea.

Melancthon’s view, which has become the majority report in modern evangelical Christianity, is this: Election and predestination mean that God from all eternity knows in advance by His foreknowledge which people will have a positive response to the gospel, who will choose by their own free will to come to Jesus Christ. On the basis of that prior knowledge God has of who will make the right response to the gospel, God then chooses them to be saved.

This is the most popular understanding of predestination. The reason I mention it is because the standard proof text for the prescient view of predestination is the text that I just read a few moments ago that we describe as the golden chain. I think it is important that we understand the parameters of this controversy as we look at the text of Scripture itself. Having said that by way of introduction, let us now look closely at the text.

Foreknowledge and Predestination

Immediately after Paul says that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose,” he begins to introduce the idea of foreknowledge. Verse 29 says: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.”

Notice that the first link in the golden chain mentioned by the Apostle is the link of foreknowledge. He begins there: “Those whom He foreknew” did He also predestinate. It is important to understand that predestination is not a concept or a word invented by Calvin, Luther, or Augustine. It is a biblical word. It is a word that we find here in Romans. It is a word that Paul uses widely in Ephesians. The idea of election is found throughout the whole of Scripture.

The question, if you are going to be biblical, is not whether you going to have a doctrine of predestination or not, since predestination is a biblical doctrine and a biblical concept. If we as Christians are going to be submissive to the Word of God, then we must wrestle with this and have some kind of doctrine of predestination. The question is, What is the correct understanding of this doctrine of predestination?

I think you all know where I stand on this question. I have not kept it hidden in a corner, and I have been vociferously defending the Reformation view of this as long as I can remember. I am convinced that the prescient view of predestination, which relegates predestination simply to an act of God’s omniscient foreknowledge, is not an explanation of the biblical doctrine of predestination but is precisely the denial of the biblical doctrine of predestination. That is what I hope to demonstrate as we look at this text.

Paul starts with foreknowledge. The teachers of the prescient view say: “Foreknowledge is the first link in the chain. Predestination is about foreknowledge. That’s why Paul mentions foreknowledge first. First is foreknowledge, then predestination, and clearly the Apostle is teaching that predestination is based upon foreknowledge.” The first thing we must understand is that Scripture nowhere says that predestination is based upon foreknowledge. This text does not say that; it is an inference read into the text by virtue of the order of the words. Foreknowledge comes first in Paul’s order and then comes predestination, so people jump to the conclusion that the predestination, therefore, is based upon some prior knowledge of a condition that God knows people will meet.

People who come to that conclusion in Romans 8 have not read Romans 9, which dusts off the spot where that position never stood. But that is getting ahead of ourselves. We will allow the Apostle to speak to that point later. But do you see that the mere fact that the word foreknowledge comes before the word predestination does not necessitate that predestination is based upon a foreknowledge of human actions?

If we are debating predestination, we might ask, “What is the basis of God’s ordination or predestination?” If someone says, “The basis of predestination is God’s prior knowledge of our human behavior; that’s the only reason that makes sense for foreknowledge to come first,” we might respond: “God cannot predestine anyone from all eternity that He does not first know from all eternity.” God does not predestine a nameless, faceless group of elect people. If God predestines a people from the foundation of the world, He has to know what people He is predestinating. In that sense, before He acts in this decree of election with respect to certain people, He has to know what He is doing when He does that electing by His grace.

What It Means to Know

We also have to look at the word foreknowledge in the Greek language. The word used by the Apostle Paul that is translated by the word “foreknowledge” is the word proegnō. It comes from a form of the noun gnōsis, which is the Greek word for knowledge. When you go to the doctor and say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he offers a diagnosis. Then you say, “Am I going to get better?” He may offer you a prognosis. Both have to do with gnōsis or knowledge.

This word for knowledge that is used in the New Testament Greek is used in two distinctive ways. It is important to understand this distinction in the Greek with respect to the word foreknowledge. On the one hand, we have already seen that the Apostle labors the point in the first chapter of Romans that by God’s self-revelation in and through nature, people know that He exists. The participial form there is that knowing God, we refuse to acknowledge Him as God, neither are we grateful. We do not honor God as God, and so on.

Paul declares in the first chapter of Romans that by general revelation, everyone has some gnōsis, some knowledge of God. Yet when he writes the first epistle to the Corinthians, he talks about the fact that the unregenerate person, the pagan person, does not know God. We could get away from this seeming contradiction by saying, “When Paul speaks about the knowledge of God in Romans 1 he uses one Greek word, and when he speaks about the fact that people don’t know God in 1 Corinthians, he uses a different Greek word.” Alas and alack, that is not the escape hatch we have, because he uses the same word in both letters. Is Paul speaking with a forked tongue, slipping into contradiction? Not at all. But he is talking about two aspects or two different nuances of this idea of knowledge in the Greek.

The first aspect has to do with intellectual cognition or intellectual awareness. That is the fundamental reference point to the Greek word gnōsis or knowledge, a cognitive awareness of some reality. But in addition to that cognition aspect associated with gnōsis, there is also a deeper kind of knowledge, a deeper dimension of knowledge that we might talk about in terms of personal, spiritual, or redemptive knowledge.

For example, in the Old Testament, you will read repeatedly statements like this: “Adam knew his wife and she conceived,” or, “Abraham knew his wife and she conceived.” The word translated as “knew” in the Septuagint is the same word for knowledge that we are talking about here. What does that mean? Adam is introduced to Eve and he says, “Madam, I’m Adam.” She says, “Nice to meet you,” and voila, she is with child! That’s not how it works. Adam knows who she is. He read her dossier. That is cognitive knowledge. It takes more than cognitive knowledge for the baby to be conceived in the mother’s womb. It takes a much more intimate, personal form and type of knowledge. When the Bible speaks about a man knowing his wife in that way, it is not because they are using euphemisms to avoid a description of a sexual relationship. It is using the full measure of the word knowledge or the verb form to know.

If we can clear up the apparent discrepancy between Paul’s teaching in Romans and his teaching in 1 Corinthians, we would say it this way: General revelation gives to all men a cognitive knowledge of God that is inescapable, and though we seek to destroy it and do not want to have it in our minds, we cannot eliminate it all together. Therefore, we are left without excuse. On the judgment day, we can never say with impunity that we did not know God was there, because we do have that gnōsis as a result of revelation. Yet at the same time, the gnōsis that we receive by nature never rises to the level of spiritual apprehension and personal knowledge of God in a redemptive way. Personal, redemptive, spiritual knowledge of God only comes as a result of the work of the Holy Ghost within our hearts and in our minds.

Why labor this when we are talking about this particular text in Romans 8:29? Because it is the root of the term that starts the golden chain: “Those whom He proegnō”—those whom He knew, had the gnōsis of, prior knowledge of. Is it merely God’s cognitive awareness of people from all eternity? Or is there more content to this knowledge that is called “foreknowledge” here in the text?

I think that the full import of this word includes within it not mere cognition in the mind of God. Rather, the knowledge God has of those whom He appoints to be conformed to the image of His Son is a knowledge that is redemptive, spiritual, and affective—not effective but affective. We could equally reasonably translate this text by saying, “Those whom He fore-loved—those whom He knew in this personal, intimate, redemptive sense from all eternity—did He predestinate.” So much for the word foreknowledge. Let us look now at the word predestinate.

Predestined to Christ

The word predestinate used here in the Greek text is another word with a prefix, pro. It is proorizō, which means, according to the Greek lexicons, “a sovereign determination in which a fixed or definite limit is sovereignly decreed.”

When the text speaks of predestination, as the English word suggests, there is a destiny for certain people that God has established from the foundation of the world. He has fixed it. He has determined it according to His sovereign good pleasure, according to the good pleasure of His will. Nowhere in Scripture is a foreseen conditional response by human beings ever given as the reason or the rationale for this eternal decree by which God fixes for all eternity those whom He ordains, chooses, and determines to be redeemed.

Notice that the language the Apostle Paul uses with respect to the goal of predestination is not the language immediately of redemption itself or salvation. Paul does not say, “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined unto salvation.” The concept is certainly there, but that is not the language he uses here. I want you to see carefully the language that he uses. Let us look at it.

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined.” Predestined to what? Here is the predestined to, first of all. What are people predestined to? They are predestined “to be conformed to the image of His Son.” The purpose of predestination is that the elect may be brought by God’s grace into conformity, into a form of relationship, with the Son of God.

Keep in mind that when Paul speaks about predestination, when the New Testament speaks about predestination, the focus of predestination is always and everywhere related to Christ. Predestination is never discussed in the abstract. Rather, predestination is related to our relationship with Christ. Those whom God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. That is what predestination is to.

Predestined for Christ

Now we have to ask the question not of the direction of predestination but of the why of predestination. Why does God predestinate certain people from all eternity to be in conformity to Jesus? Let us look at what Paul says here, beginning with a subjunctive clause that indicates purpose, setting forth very clearly the purpose of predestination: “That He”—that is, Christ—“might be the firstborn among many brethren.” It is for Christ’s sake that there is predestination. It is that Christ may see the travail of His soul and be satisfied.

A pernicious view that is pervasive in evangelicalism in the world today sets forth the idea that God sends his Son into the world and offers His Son as a Savior to as many as will receive Him, and then God stays out of the way. He makes the offer, and He allows in the final analysis for the destiny of the individual to be determined by the individual, who makes the choice to either come to Christ or not come to Christ. That results in a theoretical possibility that Jesus might die in vain, giving a potential atonement and offering a potential redemption for a potential number of people.

That is not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture is a God who from all eternity has a sovereign purpose of salvation in mind, and He sovereignly sends His Son into the world to effect the atonement for His people, that they may be adopted into the family of God. We have been reading in Romans 8 about that adoption in Christ. We are heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus, because God has sovereignly decreed that people would come to Christ. The only reason I can find in Scripture as to why anybody is saved is for Christ’s sake.

In Jesus’ prayer in the upper room in John, He thanks the Father for giving people out of the world to Him. He says, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me” (John 6:37). What Arminianism does is reverse that: “All who come to Me, the Father will give to Me.” No, it is all the Father gives to the Son who come to the Son. We who have come to Christ come because we are the gifts of love that the Father gives to His own Son. That is why of predestination, which Paul gives us here in Romans 8:29.

The Good Pleasure of His Will

Elsewhere the Apostle says that God chooses people “according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5). That “according to” tells us the basis God uses or considers in determining the elect. As we will see in Romans 9, it is not on him who runs, it is not on him who chooses, and it is not on him who wills, but of God who shows mercy. He uses the example of Jacob and Esau, pointing out that before they were ever born, before they had done anything good or bad, God decreed that the elder would serve the younger: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:13). There is predestination with a vengeance, if you will. We will say more on that when we get to Romans 9. But in Ephesians and elsewhere, Paul speaks about God’s choosing or predestinating according to the good pleasure of His will. Let me comment on that briefly.

If the reason God chooses me is not in some foreseen thing that I have done or will do, if His election is unconditional such that it is not based on something found in me or in my will whatsoever, then on what basis does God make His choice? It would seem that it is, at first glance, completely arbitrary and capricious, as if He just closes his eyes and says, “I’ll just take some of those and some of those,” such that it is according to a cosmic lottery or blind chance.

Beloved, God does not do anything by chance. The fact that the reason for our election is not in us does not mean that there is not a reason for it. The reason it is given is according to the good pleasure of His will.

Notice that Paul describes the pleasure of God’s will by calling it the good pleasure of His will. If ever the Apostle wrote redundancies, it was here, because God has no pleasure in His will that is not good pleasure. God has never expressed bad pleasure. Whatever He pleases to do and whatever He wills to do is always flowing out of His character, which is altogether righteous. Paul will deal with that in Romans 9.

When people hear this doctrine of election they think, “God must be unfair.” People love God and like everything the Bible says about God until they get to the doctrine of election. Then they say: “I can’t love a God who does that. There must be something wrong with God if from all eternity He chooses a fixed number of people to be conformed to the image of Christ.” Paul deals with that very objection in Romans 9, and we will have to patiently wait for it. But for now, let us continue with the golden chain.

Known, Predestined, Called

The Apostle says, “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” It is called the golden chain because several links are linked together: The first is foreknowledge, then predestination, then calling, then justification, then glorification.

In theology we talk about what is called the ordo salutis, which is Latin for the order of salvation. There are several aspects set forth in that order, and Paul does not mention all of them here. For example, he does not mention sanctification. We have justification, which is followed by sanctification, which is followed by glorification. Those all occur in a certain logical order in the way or in the plan of salvation. The order that Paul gives us here in Romans 8 begins with foreknowledge, then moves to predestination.

He says, “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called.” Those who are called are also justified, and those who are justified—these same ones, the Apostle is saying—are glorified. What is tacit here in the text—and I do not know of any sober commentator who would deny this—is the concept of all. All whom God foreknows in the way Paul speaks of here are predestined, and all of those who are in the category of the predestined are also in the category of the called.

Let us stop right there and look at this from a prescient perspective, from an Arminian or Melanchthonian viewpoint, where they would say: “All who God foreknew in advance would respond. All of those who He knows are going to say yes to the gospel are numbered. They’re included in the predestinated because the predestinated are those who God foreknew in advance would respond to the gospel. To respond to the gospel, you have to hear the gospel. So, those whom He predestinates He also calls, because the basis of His predestination is found in His knowledge of their answer to the call. Those who give the right answer to the call are saved and predestinated; those who give the wrong answer to the call are lost.”

Are you with me so far? Am I going too fast? When Vince Lombardi brought his team back to fundamentals, he said, “We’ve got to get back to the basics.” He held up a football, and he said: “This is a football. Am I going too fast?” He had their attention. I want to make sure you get this, because here is where this text, which is so often a favorite text for Arminians and semi-Pelagians of all sorts and stripes, stands that distortion on its ear. Why do I say that? Because in the golden chain, all whom God knows, He predestines—that is, all the elect whom He knows, He predestines. All whom He predestines, He calls. He does not just call some of the ones who are predestined; He calls all of the ones who are predestined.

Called, Justified, Glorified

We asked last week when we looked at Romans 8:28, Who are the called according to His purpose? Is the calling that Paul describes in verse 28 an external call, a general call, or is it the internal call of the Holy Ghost, the effectual call of God by which, when God sovereignly calls someone to Himself, they do what He calls them to do? Just as when God calls the world into existence, He does not invite it; He commands it, and it comes. Just as when Jesus calls Paul to be an Apostle, He does not ask Paul to send in an application. When Christ calls Paul to be an Apostle, Paul is an Apostle. When Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, it is not just an external call that He hopes Lazarus will respond to. It is a sovereign call, an effectual call that brings to pass what God designs in the call.

What kind of calling is Paul speaking about here? Is he speaking of the general call, the outward call to which some say yes and some say no? Let us see. Those who are called, these He justifies. All these. Paul is saying that all who are called, in whatever way he is talking about calling here, are justified. Not all who are called outwardly are justified, because many who are called outwardly say no to the call. But all who are called inwardly, all who are called effectually, come to faith by the power of the Holy Spirit and are justified.

We see in the golden chain a doctrine of predestination that is as far away as possible from the Arminian view. Paul says that those whom He foreknows, these same people He predestines, and all whom He predestines, He calls, and all whom He calls, He justifies, and all who are in the category of the justified, these also He glorifies.

Remember the context. Are we safe when we are saved? Once we are justified, can we lose our salvation? Not if the golden chain is true, because all the justified will be glorified. If you are saved now, you are saved forever and ever. That is the golden chain. Indeed, it is not a rusty chain. It is a chain made of the precious truth of the gospel.

God for Us

Let me conclude by going to the next verse, which I will spend more time on, God willing, next week. After declaring the golden chain in all of its links, Paul asks a question of his readers in verse 31: “What then shall we say to these things?” What should our response be? What is your response? What is your response to the biblical doctrine of predestination?

I read in a book the other day by Dave Hunt in which he talked about a woman whose husband became convinced of the doctrines of grace and the Reformed faith. It just about broke up their marriage because she was weeping and saying: “I don’t believe in a God who elects some people to salvation and passes over the rest, and they would perish forever. I don’t believe in a God like that.” That woman’s answer to the Apostle Paul’s question, “What should we say then about these things?” was: “I don’t want anything to do with a God who elects people in that manner. I don’t want anything to do with predestination. I don’t want anything to do with this restrictive doctrine.”

That is not what Paul’s answer to his own question is. He says: “What shall we say? What should we say to these things?” What is the conclusion the Apostle comes to? Let me read it for you: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” One of the great wonderful Latin phrases in all of church history is the phrase Deus pro nobis, God for us.

Karl Barth said the most important word in the Greek language as far as he was concerned was the Greek word hyper, which means “on behalf of.” What should our response be to the golden chain? What should the response be to the fact that we have been rooted and grounded in the eternal purposes of God? The response is this: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Let me answer that question for the Apostle Paul. I will tell you who can be against us. Everyone in the world can be against us. There are plenty of people who are against us. Paul is not suggesting that if God is for us, nobody in this world will ever stand in opposition to us. The import of this declaration is simple. Paul is saying that all the opposition that rises up against us by human beings is meaningless in the final analysis, because all the opposition in the world cannot overthrow the glory that God has laid up for His saints from the foundation of the world. When God is with us from all eternity, if God is for us in His decree of election, if God is for us in calling us effectually, if God is for us by justifying us by His grace, if God is for us by glorifying every one of His people, whose opposition can mean anything in light of that?

It’s an amazing thing that people protest against the doctrines of sovereign grace and election. They are some of the most comforting doctrines that one can learn from sacred Scripture. As Paul says in verses 31 and 32: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” These doctrines come back to the person and work of Christ. We will expound and expand on that dimension of the consequences of our election next week. Let us pray.

Father, we thank You that before the foundation of the world, You knew us. Before we were even formed in our mother’s wombs, You knew us. Without any conditions that You saw in advance in us, by the sheer sovereign good pleasure of Your will, You have chosen us to be conformed to the image of Your Son, that He may not be Your only Son, but will be Your firstborn Son of many brethren. We thank Thee, O God, that the love You have for Your Son You have poured out to us who are miserable sinners, who have no righteousness, no merit of our own in which we can boast, but by Your grace and Your grace alone we have been eternally chosen for glory. In this world, O Father, we will never plumb the depths of that. We cannot give any reason why You should choose us other than the sheer grace of Your sovereignty. But we thank You for it and the assurance it gives to our hearts and souls of our eternal destiny. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.