Does God play favorites with people? Is God unfair? Paul says “No,” of course not, he then quotes the last half of Exodus 33:19, to prove that God isn’t unjust or unfair.
At first it’s unclear exactly how this quotation demonstrates God’s fairness. The passage in context, is when Moses asks to see God’s glory. Here is the entire verse, “And the LORD said, ‘I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim My Name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
The phrase Paul quotes here is connected to God’s name. Notice what this text doesn’t say, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will show cruelty on whom I will show cruelty." The emphasis here is on God’s mercy and compassion, for these character qualities are at the very heart of God’s nature.
God’s mercy is something God freely gives according to His nature, not according to our worthiness or unworthiness. Let me say that again, God’s mercy is something God freely gives according to His nature, not according to our worthiness or unworthiness.
God had actually raised Pharaoh up to fulfill God’s purpose. Even Pharaoh’s rebellion toward God, serves as a witness to God’s greatness and glory. When human beings oppose God’s plans and purposes, they actually think they can prevail, but the truth is, God uses their resistance as an opportunity to accomplish His will and to display His power and nature.
Throughout the bible, we see this paradox of God using adverse circumstances and even the most extreme wickedness of mankind to achieve God’s own good purpose. For example, Joseph (the son of Jacob or Israel), was done great harm by his brothers, but in the end, Joseph says to his brothers (Genesis 50:20), “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
Peter describes (Acts 2:23) the crucifixion of Jesus as the work of “wicked men,’' and yet it was, “by God's set purpose and foreknowledge.” And (Acts 4:28) says, these wicked men “did what [God’s] power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”
God sovereignly worked through sinful and sometimes wicked and cursed men, to bring blessings to others, and to bring honor and glory to God.
Just as Pharaoh hardened his heart against God within God’s plan, the nation of Israel hardened its heart toward Jesus Christ within God’s plan, we may not be able to resolve this in our minds, but we can trust God to be fair because GOD IS MOTIVATED BY MERCY.
Paul says we are responsible for our response to God, even though God is able to use both our obedience and our disobedience to fulfill his purposes.
there is a God and you’re not him: God is shaping the first man out of the dust of the ground and then breathing into him the breath of life. Just as the potter has the freedom to shape and mold his pots, God has the same rights over the human race, to make one for noble [honorable] use, and another for common [dishonorable] use
God is God and that God will do what God will do, and it will be perfect whatever God chooses to do. God is never unjust. God is never unfair. What Paul is saying is that God is perfectly just to choose some for salvation and not to choose others. He does not owe salvation to anyone. “Fair” is to give someone what they deserve. There is not a one of us in this room that want that. We don’t want “fair.” “Fair” would be to go to hell. That is what you deserve. That is what I deserve. Every one of us deserves condemnation. Salvation is actually God giving to you what you do not deserve. That is unfair. “Fair” is hell. In a sense, “unfair” is heaven.
None of us deserve salvation. So, if God gives salvation to any person, He’s not being unjust. And for God to pass over someone, He’s not being unjust. So, we need to have the right perspective, the right framework. And let me say it again. We don’t want fair; we need mercy.
Four times in this one verse: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” God is emphatically saying, “I am the one dealing the deck on this. I by My sovereign will and by My sovereign grace, I will dispense salvation as it pleases Me.
for God to give the gift of salvation, He is free to give it on whomever He so desires and no one can say, “Hey what about me?” If we were to give you what you deserve, it wouldn’t be a gift; it would be wages. “The wages of sin is death.” You would be sentenced immediately to hell. So, we must have the eternal perspective. We must have the divine perspective on this, that God is free to give mercy and compassion to anyone. So, if God only chose one person out of the entire human race in all of human history to give mercy and compassion to, that would be mind-boggling. That would be amazing grace if there was only one person in the history of mankind to ever receive this, but the fact is that God has chosen a vast number, a vast multitude that no one can number.
16, “So then.” And so, the “so then” really is to draw the consequence of what he just said. “So then, it,” referring to salvation, “does not.” Just underscore the word, “not.” “Does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs.” If there was ever a verse that is a deathblow to the pagan myth of free will, this is it. It does not depend on the man who wills. Now, you want to know why? Because the will of every lost man is dead and it is inoperative and it is inactive toward God.
The will can make decisions horizontally like which tie will I wear, but vertically towards God, the human will is in bondage to sin. Now, just think of the total person: mind, affections, and will. The mind of the unconverted person is darkened in sin. It cannot see the truth nor its need for the truth. The heart is defiled and does not desire the truth and does not desire a relationship with God, and the will is therefore dead. The mind is darkened. The heart is defiled. The will is dead.
Now, you need to understand that the will is simply the handmaiden of the mind and the heart. Wherever the mind and the heart goes, the will follows. The will is not driving anything. The will is the caboose on the train. The engine that is driving your life is your mind and your affections, your desires. Your will simply chooses what you desire. You are not choosing contrary to your desire.
So, when he says, “So that it does not depend on the man who wills,” of course, it does not depend upon the man who wills, because no man wills to believe in Jesus Christ, apart from the sovereign intervention of God. We only will to believe when God changes our will, and God must change our will by His sovereign will.
This is what we have, Romans 3 verse 10, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.”
So, the implication of this is it is the goodness of God’s sovereign will that overcomes the resistance of our fallen will, and God gives the gift of faith and He gives the gift of repentance to those who do believe in Jesus Christ. You see, faith does not originate within any one of us. Faith comes down from above. All faith in God is faith that has come from God. God is both the source and the object of saving faith.
You actually did choose to commit your life to Christ, but it was only because God was previous and God was already at work in your heart.” And it was God who was convicting you of your sin and bringing pressure to bear upon your soul that you need to be made right with God. And it was God who drew you out of your sin to Christ, and it was God who gave you the gift of repentance and faith. It was God who opened your eyes to see Christ and the beauty of who Christ is. It was God who opened your ears to hear Him calling to you. It was God who opened your heart like He did Lydia’s in Philippi that you would receive the gospel message, and it was God who gave you a new heart with which to believe in the gospel. It was all of God.
Nothing is random in His selections. He is not flipping a coin in heaven and nothing is capricious. God has divine design for everything in the entire universe, even those who are passed over and God allows to remain in their sin. And let me give you a cross reference at this point, Proverbs 16 verse 4, “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil,”
Now, let us be clear. God is not the author of evil. God is not the author of sin, but God is the author of a master plan that includes evil and includes sin. And God has created everything, even the wicked for the day of evil, yet God is not charged with being the author of evil but let us be absolutely clear He is the author of the plan that includes evil. The mystery of all mysteries that no one can answer is the origin of evil. Every theologian has a mystery point, and we must be careful where we put that mystery point. And for us who are careful students of the Scripture, the mystery point is the origin of evil, but God is not the author.
Double predestination is, not only has God chosen some to be saved, but God has passed over others to suffer the torment of their own devices and their own choices.
If some are elect, others are non-elect. It has to be that way. If there is a Jacob whom I love, there is an Esau whom I hated. If there is a Moses upon whom God has shown mercy, there is a Pharaoh whom God has raised up actively to be put under His wrath. So, this is double predestination, and I want to clarify that the non-elect are already sinful and are already filled with all sorts of evil. God is hardening those who are already sinful. God is not creating sin and putting it into the heart of Pharaoh. God is not creating evil and depositing that into the soul of Pharaoh. No, there is evil and there is sin already in Pharaoh because he was conceived in sin. He came forth from his mother’s womb speaking lies. The sin of Adam has already been charged to his account. The sin nature of Adam has been passed down through each successive generation to Pharaoh. Pharaoh entered into this world with his mind already darkened, his heart already defiled, and his will already dead. God is now hardening the one who is already sinful and already evil, and God is hardening Pharaoh in his own willful sin. It is the doctrine of reprobation. So, everyone in heaven is there by God’s sovereign will. Everyone in hell is there by their own will and by their own choice. So, it is a careful distinction.
Psalm 115 verse 3. It says, “God does whatever He pleases.” God does whatever He pleases. God does all that He pleases. God does when He pleases, with whom He pleases, how He pleases, where He pleases.
Psalm 103 verse 19, here is the text he gave me to preach. “The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all.”
We need to correct our thinking about God and humble our hearts before God, but this should strengthen our faith in God, that it is this God who is it work within us both to will and to work for His good pleasure, being “confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you shall perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” This sovereign God who chose you in eternity past now within time will never abandon you. He will never walk away from you. He will always be at work in you, and He will accomplish good things through your life. This sovereign God who has laid hold of you will never let go of you, and He will accomplish all of His good pleasure in your life. He has foreordained good works for you to walk in, and this God who has called you to Himself now walks with you to enable you. He goes before you to open whatever doors need to be opened, to remove whatever obstacles need to be removed. He comes behind you to protect you from any ambush. He is under you to uphold you. He is over you to sustain you. He will provide everything that is necessary in your Christian life for you to advance and to be used by Him.
So, this truth of the sovereignty of God in your salvation should bolster your faith and your confidence in Him. Further, it should give you great assurance of your salvation because you wouldn’t even be here today, you wouldn’t even have love in your heart for God, you wouldn’t even have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ if God had not chosen you from eternity past and worked within your soul within time. Because it is all of God should give you greater confidence in your salvation.
If it was dependent upon me, I would be second-guessing myself. I would be wondering, “Am I in? Am I out? Have I done enough?” If it was eighty percent God and twenty percent me, then I would still be in Nowheresville about any assurance. There would still be gaps in my confidence. But the fact that “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things,” I now have confidence in my salvation that it is God who has begun this work, and it is God who is at work within me, and it is God who will bring this work to completion.
So, this truth gives us great confidence that God will see us all the way through to heaven. What He started in eternity past, He will bring to completion in eternity future, and there will be no dropouts along the way. No one will slip through the cracks. God is God, and God will see this through.
God being the potter and we being the clay, we can absolutely trust God to be fair, because HE IS not only OUR MAKER, OUR SAVIOR, AND OUR SUSTAINER, HE IS TOTALLY JUST.
“A woman once said to Mr. Spurgeon, ‘I cannot understand why God should say that He hated Esau.’ ‘That,’ Spurgeon replied, ‘is not my difficulty, madam. My trouble is to understand how God could love Jacob.’” (Newell)
Our greatest error in considering the choices of God is to think that God chooses for arbitrary reasons, as if He chooses in an “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” way. We may not be able to fathom God’s reasons for choosing, and they are reasons He alone knows and answers to, but God’s choices are not capricious. He has a plan and a reason.
If God says He chooses, and if God also says that we are responsible before Him, who are we to question Him? if God declares that we have an eternal responsibility before Him, then it is so. if God desires to be more than fair with others, showing them His mercy, who can oppose Him?
This is probably the one truth about God that we mortal beings dislike above all others. God is absolutely sovereign; He can do whatever He pleases, He answers to no one for what He does, and He has no obligation to explain to anyone the reasons for His actions. We just don't like that. We want to know why? And we don't appreciate being likened to clay that is pushed around by the potter any way He pleases--making one pot for a noble use and another for a menial use. We are people, with opinions, and feelings. We have rights.
We may not like it, but the fact remains: He is the potter and we are the clay. He has a right to do with us as He pleases, and in His wisdom, He will always do what is best. So it would be impudent of us to reply against him, talk back to Him, contradict Him, question His actions, accuse Him of injustice.
