Dr. Sproul discusses the fall of man (lapse) and the two major views concerning God's decree or decrees made in eternity past with respect to election and the fall. The two major views are infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism. The issue is, does God decree the fall in light of His election or does He decree election in light of the fall?

We are coming to the end of the ninth chapter of Romans. Some of you may be disappointed about that while others are breathing a deep sigh of relief, because Paul introduces the doctrine of predestination in chapter 8 of this epistle and then labors the issues closely connected to it throughout the rest of chapter 8 and through chapter 9. We have spent no small bit of time looking carefully at some of the difficult questions in which this doctrine is enshrouded.

As we come near the end of chapter 9, I am making no promises that we will finish the chapter today, but I want to repeat a bit of what we covered the last time, so we will read Romans 9:19–33. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

As He says also in Hosea:

“I will call them My people, who were not My people,
And her beloved, who was not beloved.”
“And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:

“Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea,
The remnant will be saved.
For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,
Because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.”

And as Isaiah said before:

“Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,
We would have become like Sodom,
And we would have been made like Gomorrah.”

What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. As it is written:

“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

The inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God for His people. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, our Father, we cry unto Thee, “Send help.” For as we struggle with these difficult passages in Your Word, we are indeed lost without the help of the Holy Spirit, and so we ask that you would send Him. Open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to put Your light on this text, illumine it for our understanding, and cause us not only to embrace it but to embrace it with joy and thanksgiving. For we ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.

An Arcane Controversy?

In our last time together, I spent some time looking at the questions of election, reprobation, and double predestination. I labored the distinction between a symmetrical view of election in which on both sides of the issue God was seen to work in a similar manner, working faith in the hearts of the elect and working unbelief in the hearts of the reprobate. We pointed out that such a view of election and reprobation has been in the main rejected by orthodox Christians and orthodox Reformed theologians. But we still faced some of the difficulties of the questions that Paul raised beginning in verse 19:

“Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

We looked at this passage already from one dimension. I want to look at it more closely now in light of another classic controversy within the Reformed tradition, a controversy to which many point in order to exemplify the wasted effort of intellectuals and theologians who want to discern how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, who get caught up in the making of fine distinctions that have no edifying value for the people of God.

The controversy that is assumed to be so useless is between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism. How many of you have ever even heard of the distinction between supra and infra? It has been pointed to as one of those arcane principles of theology that angels do not take seriously. But as difficult and as controversial as that issue has been historically, it is not without significance. I believe it makes a big difference whether we come down on the side of supralapsarianism or on the side of infralapsarianism.

You may be thinking, “Pastor, you have a unique gift to answer questions that none of us are asking.” But I would hope that you would ask this question, because the question is provoked by the text I have just read where Paul speaks about God making vessels of honor and vessels fit for destruction out of the same batch of clay.

God’s Decrees

The debate between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism has to do with the relationship of God’s decrees to election and the fall. It has particular interest with the fall, which is referred to as the lapse of the human race into sin, hence the root of both terms, lapsarianism. So, supra and infra have to do with God’s involvement with the fall and the order of God’s decrees with respect to election and the fall.

There is one common misunderstanding that people have about this debate, one among many, I should add in passing. Some people would put the two views this way: The doctrine of infralapsarianism says that God’s decree of election comes after the fall, where those who hold to supralapsarianism say that God’s decree of election comes before the fall. But that is a false distinction.

Both sides understand that God’s decrees regarding election and reprobation are rooted and grounded in eternity. It is not that God gives a decree to save people as an expression of His plan B after the original purpose of creation has been ruined by Adam and Eve’s sin, such that after the fall of the human race, God has to remedy the mess by coming up with a plan of salvation. No, both sides agree that God’s sovereign plan of salvation was determined from the foundation of the world before the world was made, before there ever was an Adam, before there ever was an Eve, before there ever was a garden, and before there ever was a fall. The question is not when the decrees were executed by God in His eternal plan, but rather the order of the decrees.

The significance of the debate is this: The infralapsarian position, which is the vast majority report of historic Calvinism and of Reformed theology, is that God’s decree of election is made in view of the fall. Why is that important?

Last time, I asked this question: If Paul says that God takes the same batch of clay and makes vessels fit for destruction and others fit for honor, does that mean that in God’s work of creation, He planned from all eternity to make some people bad and other people redeemable? The answer, of course, is no. The idea is that when God exercises His grace in redemption, that grace is applied to a mass of humanity, all of which are dead in sin and trespasses. God in His decree of election decrees to save some people out of a mass of what Augustine called a “mass of perdition,” a mass of fallen humanity. The decree of electing grace is made in light of the fall. In fact, if it were not made in light of the fall, it would not even be a decree of grace.

On the other side of the coin, the supralapsarian position teaches that God decrees the fall in light of His doctrine of election. His first decree is to elect certain people to salvation and others unto reprobation. In order to accomplish that eternal purpose, He decrees the fall of humanity. The purpose of the fall is to provide the necessary clay in order for Him to choose some to salvation and others to reprobation.

Are you following this so far? Some of you are looking at me with: “Following you? I don’t see a bouncing ball up there.” Let me say it again: Infralapsarianism teaches that God’s decree of election is in light of His knowledge of the fall, and knowing that the race is fallen, He chooses to save some out of that fallen humanity to be recipients of His redeeming grace. The supralapsarian position says that God plans to save some and to condemn others, and in order to make that possible, He decrees that the whole world would fall into ruin. The purpose of the fall is to give us a condition that is necessary for God to show His grace and His wrath.

The problem with the supralapsarian position is that you have the violation of the biblical a priori that God is not the author or creator of sin. It is not that God chooses to create people in a fallen condition so that He can then condemn them for eternal damnation. It is not God’s purpose to make people, force them to sin, then punish them for that sin.

God’s Ordination of the Fall

Now the plot thickens. You might say, “I’m so glad to know you don’t believe that God creates people wicked and then punishes them for their wickedness.” I do not believe that. I do not think that is what Paul is teaching here. Yet at the same time, you have heard me say, if you have been here often, that quoting Augustine, we have to say in some sense—a careful sense—that God ordained the fall.

Did I just make a supralapsarian statement? No. In some sense, the purpose of His ordaining the fall was not so that He could have wicked people that He could punish forever. That is not His purpose. But in some sense, He ordained the fall. Why do I say that? I say it because of two reasons, as I have mentioned before.

First, God is sovereign. He is sovereign over nature. He is sovereign over human history. He rules all things by His power and by His authority. He is sovereign over the disposition of His grace. We understand that. Nothing can happen in this world apart from God’s sovereign action.

If I were going to steal your car tonight and my plan was to go into the parking lot after church and steal your car, I would not let you know the evil intent of my heart. My evil intentions may be a secret to you, but they are not hidden from God, who knows what I am going to do before I do it, who knows what I am going to say before I say it, who, before a word is even formed on my lips, knows it altogether. God in heaven would know that my intent this evening is to steal your car. You would not know it unless I were to tell you.

Here is the question. It is a simple one. You do not have to have an advanced degree in theology to answer this question: Does God have power to stop me from stealing that car? God certainly has the power. Here is the more difficult question: Does He have the authority to stop me if He desires? We would say that God has the authority and the power to prevent anything from happening that does in fact happen. God can exercise His authority, power, and sovereignty by stopping it from happening, or He can choose not to stop it. Are those not His options always, in every way?

After 9/11, the question on everyone’s lips was, “Where was God on 9/11?” My answer was that He was the same place He was on 9/10 and on 9/12. We saw banners and bumper stickers all over the country with this plaintive cry: “God Bless America.” But as soon as anyone suggested that it was possible that the destruction visited upon our nation was somehow in the plan of God, people shrunk back in horror, saying: “That can’t be. God is too loving and too kind as to ordain such a thing as that.” Beloved, if we believe that God has the power and the authority to bless a nation, we must also believe that God has the authority and the power to withhold that blessing from the nation. There were not too many bumper stickers that I saw that said, “God damn America,” but that is always the unspoken option to the prayer that He might bless America.

I have said all of that to say this: in a certain sense, if the fall happened, we know that God knew it was going to happen and we know He could have prevented it, but He chose not to prevent it, and not so that He could have a wicked batch of clay to exercise His sovereign decrees and reprobation. So, why did He let the fall happen?

I once talked to a man who said that you can exhaust anyone’s knowledge with seven questions. Ask the first question, and when the person answers it, the second question is, “Why?” When the person answers that, you go to the third question, and that question is, “Why?” No one, not even Einstein, can go to the eighth level on any question. After the seventh time, people have to throw up their hands and finally say, “I don’t know.”

You do not even have to ask me seven times why God let the fall happen before I say to you, “I don’t know.” I do not believe that it was to make His plan and decree of election and reprobation possible. We do know Scripture tells us that somehow the lapse into sin that produced a batch of fallen humanity and fragile and corrupt clay was for His glory.

God’s Righteous Wrath

We read in verse 22 these words: “What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,” comma. Paul is asking us a question, and he is addressing this to the Roman Christians, but by extension he is addressing it to you and me. I would ask you the same question: What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make His power known—let me just stop right there. What about that? Would you have a problem if for any reason God wanted to show His wrath? Do you have a problem with God desiring to demonstrate His power? Would there be anything wrong with a just and holy God displaying His wrath?

You may struggle with that because you live in a culture that in a wholesale manner has rejected all concepts of wrath belonging to God. We have the idea that somehow it is beneath the dignity of God to be capable of wrath.

I hope we answered that idea in the very first chapter of Romans when Paul began with the statement, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. 1:18). I will ask you again, nine chapters later: What if God were pleased to manifest His wrath against evil? Do you have a problem with that?

You may remember Genesis 18, where God was going to visit His wrath on Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham came to Him and said essentially, “Will You punish the righteous with the wicked, the innocent with the guilty?” Here is Abraham, the father of the faithful, who falls into abysmal heresy by even suggesting the possibility that God would punish innocent people. Finally, Abraham comes to his senses and says to God, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right? Far be it for you, O God, to punish the innocent with the wicked, to punish the righteous with the guilty.” Abraham had no idea how far it is from God to do such a thing. The distance between God’s likelihood of punishing the innocent with the guilty, the righteous with the wicked, is infinite. It is absolutely unthinkable.

When you come to this text and read Paul talking about God showing His power, showing His wrath for vessels fit for destruction, vessels fit for dishonor, do not for a minute allow your mind to think that God is doing something by which He punishes innocent people, that He finds fault with those who are faultless. “Shall not the Judge of all of the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25). It is right for the judge of all the earth to show His wrath.

We may not like God’s wrath. We may choke on the very idea of His wrath. But if we stop for a moment, it should not take long to think about the justness of a holy God displaying anger against sin. Did Jesus sin when He made a rope out of cords, went into the temple in Jerusalem, kicked over the tables, and drove the moneychangers out of the temple in a fit of anger? Was it justifiable anger? We know that it was.

What if God were pleased to show His wrath toward me? Do you ever think about that? Remember that every image the New Testament speaks regarding the last judgment speaks about all of us standing before the judgment seat of God with our mouths shut. The whole world is found guilty before Him.

God’s Sovereign Power

I have told you before about the repartee I used to have with my dear departed friend Jim Boice when we would fly to different places together. I was a white-knuckle flyer, and he loved the bumps and the feeling of exhilaration of flying through the air. I would be nervous and looking out the window, and he would say: “What’s the matter, R.C.? Don’t you believe in the sovereignty of God?” I would say: “Jim, that’s my problem. I do believe in the sovereignty of God. I know that He would be perfectly just to crash me into the ocean right now. That’s why I’m nervous.”

Even though I delight in my adoption into the family of God, I still fear God—not just the fear of adoration, awe, and reverence, but sometimes the stone-cold fear of provoking Him. I know that my justification is not on the line. I know that I will never experience condemnation at His hands, but I will—and do—experience His chastisement, His corrective wrath. When I receive it, it never occurs to me that it was unjust.

Paul reminds us: What if God wanted to show His wrath? Do you have a problem with that? The only problem we have is that we would not enjoy it, but we cannot fault God for demonstrating His wrath. What if God wants to make His power known?

This reminds me of the second Psalm, where the psalmist paints a picture of a summit meeting of the most powerful rulers of the world who come together and join in conspiracy to plot against the Lord and His anointed, declaring their independence and autonomy from God. They say:

Let us cast break Their bonds in pieces.
A cast away Their cords from us. (Ps. 2:3)

What is God’s response? God looks down and essentially sees intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads all aimed at His throne in heaven. He looks at them, and He laughs. The psalmist says that the Lord holds them in derision. What if we took every arsenal of power, amassing all the power on the planet, and aimed it at heaven? All God has to do is speak, and it is over. Who can withstand His power?

In the folly of our sin, in the hardness of our heart, in the stiffness of our neck, when we sin day in and day out and get away with it, we assume that God is powerless to do anything about it. That is a foolish assumption for any creature to make, because again and again in history, God has interrupted His forbearing, ceased for a moment His longsuffering, suspended temporarily His patience, and reminded us who is sovereign.

The Riches of His Glory

Paul asks that sober and sobering question: What if God wants to show his wrath? What if God wants to display His power? Do you have a problem with that? What if He, “to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction . . . that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory”? What if God did all these things “that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy”?

You want to deal with the doctrine of predestination? You want to argue about the concept in the abstract? You do not like the idea of God’s sovereignty? You do not like the doctrine of election even though it is on every page in the Bible, and you choke on it day in and day out? Try this on: What if He wants to make known the riches of His glory? Do you have any problem with that? There is a thēsauros here, a treasure, an immeasurable treasure—the treasure of His glory, which is likened to riches untold that can never be counted. That is what the doctrine of election is about.

We must never study the doctrine of predestination in the abstract. In the final analysis, though it certainly involves God’s sovereignty, His omnipotence, and His omniscience, the bottom line is that this doctrine is about the riches of God’s glory. Paul cannot think about these things for more than a minute without breaking into doxology, without crying out, “Oh, the depths of the riches of the glory of God.”

I have told you about my own pilgrimage, about how I fought this doctrine for five years and finally was persuaded of it by Romans 9 with an assist from Jonathan Edwards and Martin Luther. Ultimately, I could not complain any more about it, and finally I surrendered. I acquiesced and said, still with an obstreperous heart, “I’ll believe this doctrine because the Bible teaches it, but I don’t have to like it.” But in a very short time contemplating the riches of the glory of God, I began to see the sweetness of this doctrine, because what it screams is not so much sovereignty but grace, mercy that is unfathomable. This doctrine more than any other reveals to us that grace really is amazing.

We sing the song “Amazing Grace” and seem to be unconscious of the words: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound”—that saved the righteous, upstanding man like me? No, “that saved a wretch like me.” It continues, “I once was lost, but now am found”—not because I was searching to find it, not because I pursued the truth, but because the hound of heaven found me with the sweetness of His mercy and His grace.

That is why in Reformed nomenclature, in the history of Reformed theology when we talk about these doctrines like justification by faith alone and election, we call them the doctrines of grace, because that is the idea. That is the central portion of the text that we are considering.

Paul says that God did all these things “that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy.” God took from a corrupt mass of clay, selected from what Augustine called a “mass of perdition,” and chose to make from that mass vessels of glory. If you are in Christ Jesus, that is what He has done for you in His mercy and grace. He has made you a vessel of mercy that He prepared beforehand—before the foundation of the world—for glory.

We are bound for glory. That is the destiny of predestination, to be bound from God’s eternal plan for eternal glory in His family, whom “He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called”—we have already explored the meaning of that word “called”—“not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?”

We Are Now His People

To underscore the riches of God’s mercy and the central accent on grace, Paul goes back to the prophet Hosea. Do you remember those prophets Hosea and Amos? Amos is known as the prophet of justice:

Let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream. (Amos 5:24)

Hosea is known as the prophet of mercy and grace.

The message and lesson of mercy and grace that God taught Israel through the prophet Hosea came at great personal expense to Hosea. In order to show the riches of His glory and the sweetness of His mercy, God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute who was flagrant in her promiscuity and infidelity to the prophet. The children who came from that union received the judgment of God.

We read in the first chapter of Hosea these words:

Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said:

“Call his name Lo-Ammi,
For you are not My people,
And I will not be your God.” (Hos. 1:8–9)

The object lesson, dear friends, is one of divine rejection. God says these things to the nation of Israel, whom He called to be His own. He promised Abraham that His descendants would be as the grains of sand on the shore and as the stars in the sky, but because of their sinfulness, God finally stopped and said to them: “You who are My people are now Lo-Ammi. You’re not My people, and I will not be your God.”

Paul now introduces a motif that he will develop through the rest of the end of chapter 9 and into chapters 10 and 11 regarding how God, who will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, in order to show forth the riches of His grace, called a people who were no people His own people. He is talking about us. We who were no people by grace are now His people. We are the wild olive branch grafted into the root of the tree.

We bring nothing to the table, nothing inherent that would make God be moved to include us in His kingdom. Our only hope is the riches of His glory and His mercy to those who were no people and, by grace, are called to be His people. That is what election is all about. We will, God willing, explore that motif more fully next week. Let us pray.

Father, in our daily lives, the things that concern us and keep us awake at night are not worries about Your glory. We worry about our glory. We do not worry ourselves about the riches of Your glory, but of our own riches. Father, let us have a glimpse of the sweetness of Your grace, that we will stop complaining and carping against the sovereignty of Your mercy, which is our only hope both in this world and in the world to come. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.