Just in Word, Just in Deed - Part 1

Introduction

We are now in our third week of study in Paul’s explanation of what many theologians call the doctrines of grace, or God’s complete sovereignty in election.

The doctrine of God’s sovereign grace has been a frequent and fiery point of contention throughout church history. My aim for our time today and for this class as a whole is not to teach systematic or historical theology except as it serves the text of Romans. However, I understand that what Paul teaches us here may raise some questions that are beyond the scope of this class. For that reason, I have appended to your handout this morning a bibliography of what I believe are the best works available on this topic. These volumes are of varying levels of depth and difficulty. For example, Freedom of the Will by Edwards and The Justification of God by Piper are academic treatises with a lot of Greek, Hebrew, Latin and German. Does God Desire All to Be Saved, also by Piper, is on the other end of the spectrum, at only four chapters and with remarkable simplicity of language. If I were to only recommend two of these to you as absolutely essential, I would commend first Chosen by God by RC Sproul, for it’s warm and pastoral approach and short chapters that belie the depth of the material that he presents. Secondly, I would commend What About Free Will, by a gentleman very near and dear to my heart, Scott Christensen, also known as my dad, for his ability to build a bridge between the weighty academic works that are on this list and the common vernacular of the everyday person.

With that being said, let’s continue once again into the heights of heavenly glory, led by the Apostle Paul, as we seek the consider with humility the doctrines of grace contained in these verses.

Up to this point we have seen Paul’s lament, we have seen his assertion that God’s word has not failed, his first argument for that assertion, that Isaac was not born by flesh but by faith, and his second argument for that assertion, that before Jacob and Esau were born or had done anything good or bad, God’s purpose in magnifying His own glory would stand by God’s calling and choosing of the younger to rule over the older.

Today Paul continues that train of thought by answering an objection to the sovereign grace of God and using two more Old Testament stories to prove his point.

The Assertion: God is Just

Paul asserts his primary idea here in the form of a double-barreled rhetorical question: What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? Paul is using one of his key phrases in the book of Romans to emphasize his point. Paul does this on 11 separate occasions in the book of Romans, where he utilizes this “may it never be” phrasing to emphasize a point. This is always in connection with an anticipated objection. In other words, when Paul asks a rhetorical question, playing devil’s advocate, he always answers it with “may it never be.” Paul intent is to emphasize with authority the assertion that he is making.

So far in the book we’ve seen this 8 times, as we see Paul defend:

God’s faithfulness - Romans 3:3-4

God’s righteousness - Romans 3:5-6

Universal sinfulness - Romans 3:9

Relevance of the law - Romans 3:31

Importance of holiness - Romans 6:1-2

Importance of holiness again - Romans 6:15

Righteousness of the law - Romans 7:7

The life-giving nature of the law - Romans 7:13

Here then, Paul is asserting that God is completely and perfectly just. In other words, there is no hint or aroma of injustice with him at all.

With this ‘What shall we say/may it never be” construction, Paul is telling us something that may be controversial, that may be routinely maligned, but is nevertheless absolutely vital for understanding who God is, what He does, and how He operates amongst and upon His creation. This is, for Paul, an incontrovertible point, in other words, this is not some secondary matter. It is of primary importance to Paul, and therefore it is of primary importance to God Himself as He inspires Paul to write these words, and therefore must be of primary importance to us as we seek to think Paul’s thoughts after him and come to a clearer and fuller understanding of the character and works of God.

So let me say again: God is absolutely just.

We would do well to explore the logical seedbed of this statement, in other words, where is this coming from? We’ve already stated that Paul is answering a real or anticipated objection to what what he has said up to this point. So what has he said that is so controversial?

Let me put it plainly: He demolished, destroyed, and otherwise laid waste to the idea that humans can save themselves, or even contribute anything to their own salvation, and he has done this by magnifying the sovereign and saving grace of God in fulfilled promise of Isaac and in the calling and choosing of Jacob to rule over Esau. Paul is saying that these Old Testament stories speak paradigmatically about God’s operation in the world, in other words, what God did with Isaac and Jacob is not just a nice story from the Old Testament, but it is a demonstration of how God works throughout all of history and with all people. Salvation is based on God’s choice, God’s calling, and God’s promise, received by Abraham-like faith.

The objection is this, and it’s an age-old one: if I don’t get to determine my own destiny, well, that’s not fair! God’s not fair for only choosing some people, God’s not fair for only saving some people. God’s not being fair to Esau! God’s not being fair to Ishmael! God’s not being fair to me! And of course the irony there is that the people who raise this question are themselves already recipients of the mercy of God.

John Calvin puts it this way:

Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans Chapter 9

The flesh cannot hear of this wisdom of God without being instantly disturbed by numberless questions, and without attempting in a manner to call God to an account.

Paul’s response to the people who would try to “call God into account”: It’s not possible for God to be unfair. It’s not possible for God to be unjust. In fact, he speaks with such vigor and such energy that we can safely say that Paul is repulsed by this idea. It is abhorrent to Him. John Murray says:

The Epistle to the Romans XV. Vindication of God’s Faithfulness and Righteousness (9:6–33)

The thought of injustice with God is so intolerable that it must be dismissed with abrupt and decisive denial.

Paul is clear: God always acts in complete accordance with what is right, fair, and just.

And Paul, as we have come to see him do so often, speaks in the vein of Moses, in whose song in Deuteronomy 32 we find this statement:

Deuteronomy 32:4 NASB95

“The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.

Now it’s important to note some definitions here. People will often try to claim that God sacrifices His justice in order to extend mercy. What these people are doing is pitting God’s mercy and God’s justice against one another as if they are incompatible. This is foolish for three reasons:

God is God and we are not. If God declares Himself to be both absolutely just and absolutely merciful, and give us no explanation, no rationale, no logical progression behind those two statements, and we can’t understand that, that’s not God’s problem. That’s our problem. We’ll dig deeper into the implications of this later on, but for right now suffice to say, just because we don’t understand God doesn’t mean that God is wrong, unjust, unrighteous, or unfair. It means that our finite minds cannot fully comprehend him. God’s incomprehensibility thus comes to bear on the coexistence of perfect and holy justice and perfect and holy mercy.

Justice and mercy can coexist logically without injustice. RC Sproul says this: “If there are ten people who are guilty, and God sovereignly decides to pardon one of them and sentence the other nine, who has received an injustice? The nine who are sentenced receive what they deserved—the just punishment for their sins. The nine received justice, the one received mercy. But none received injustice.” So just because God withholds justice and extends mercy does not mean that there is any injustice or unfairness.

Justice and mercy coexist in perfect glory at the cross of Christ. The most startling picture of the coexistence of justice and mercy occurs when the perfect Son of God is lifted up on a cross, bearing in His body the fullness of the justice of God, and thereby in that same moment vindicating God’s mercy. God can now show mercy to sinners while still maintaining perfect justice because that perfect justice was satisfied by the death of Christ. Now mercy can abound to all whom the Father promised to give the Son in the pactum salutis or covenant of redemption.

So there is no injustice with God, as justice and mercy exist together in perfection in God’s incomprehensibility, in His sovereignty, and ultimately in the work of Christ on the cross.

But Paul is going to move on, and appeal to two Old Testament passages to further cement and explain his assertion, as he demonstrates God’s justice through His word to Moses and through His works with Pharaoh.

The First Proof: God’s Word to Moses

How does Paul prove His statement? How does Paul demonstrate that God is absolutely just, and injustice is an impossibility for Him?

He appeals to Moses, as he quotes Exodus 33:19

Exodus 33:19 NASB95

And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”

Now once again, in order to fully understand Paul, we have to fully understand Moses. So let’s turn to Exodus 33 and figure out what’s going on here.

If you recall, the immediate context of chapter 33 is chapter 32, when Moses descends the mountain and discovers the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. He destroys the calf, chastises Aaron, and commissions the Levites to execute God’s judgement on the wicked Israelites. The following day Moses declares to the people that he will go back up to the mountain to appeal to God’s mercy to spare the people from the punishment they deserved.

So Moses goes up and pleads God’s promises with him. And on a side note, Moses demonstrates here how the person who is righteous in Christ can come before the Lord with boldness and pray to him according to His promises.

So what does Moses do?

He appeals to the prior personal promises of God. He does this by summarizing Yahweh’s call upon his own life, recorded back in Exodus 3 and 4, where Yahweh communicates His choice of Moses, reveals himself, and confirms to Moses that He will be with him as he leads the people out of Egypt. Moses then makes the logical inference that if God has shown him favor (which, by the way is probably better translated “grace,” and that is the way Paul would have understood this text) and if God has revealed himself in the past, God will again reveal himself to Moses now. God therefore responds to Moses in keeping with His character and promises, and recapitulates the same promise that He made to Moses back in 3 -4: I will be with you and I will give you rest.

He appeals to the prior corporate promises of God. Having pleaded with God for favor upon himself, Moses now pleads with God for favor upon the people by asking for the presence of God to not only go with him but also with the nation. Just as Moses appealed to the word of God to him in chapters 3-4, he now appeals to the word of God to the nation in Exodus 19:5-6 “‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”” So Moses is appealing to God’s promise to distinguish Israel from all other nations, and to demonstrate that distinction by His presence with them, rather than abandoning them. And the Lord answers him in the affirmative there as well, re-affirming His personal and favorable relationship with Moses.

So we can summarize effectively by saying that Moses appeals to God’s faithfulness, immutability, grace, and holiness.

It is in this context that Moses makes his final request of God: Show me Your glory.

Moses’ assumption is this: the culmination of the gracious favor of God and the guiding presence of God, is a vision of the glory of God. God’s faithfulness, immutability, grace and holiness lead and build to His glory. Therefore, if God has shown Moses his gracious favor and poured out His guiding presence, He will shows Moses His glory. This is the concept of the beatific vision, or the blessed sight of God, what Paul means when he says that our faith will one day be made sight, and that we see now in a mirror darkly, but then face to face.

So God responds again to Moses in keeping with His character: I will make all my goodness pass before you and proclaim the name of the Lord before you. So God’s response thus teaches us what it means to see the glory of God: it is to see him in all His goodness and to see him as he truly is.

By way of sidenote here, this is the exact passage that the apostle John has in mind in John 1:14

John 1:14 NASB95

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Moses’ request was fully and finally granted in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

But now comes the kicker for Moses and the kicker for Paul: God’s gracious favor and guiding presence, culminating in a blessed vision of His glory, is granted not according to the works of Moses or the works of Israel or the works of you or the works of me. Notice how when Moses pleads with God, not once does he mention anything about who he is or what he has done. Moses doesn’t say “God I chose you!” because he knows he didn’t. Moses doesn’t say “God I’ve done these great things for you!” because he knows every single wonder he performed in Egypt was according to God’s power, not his own. Therefore, every plea he makes is in reference to God’s character, works, and promises.

What is gracious favor and guiding presence granted according to then? God Himself says in 19b: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, or alternatively I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. John Murray suggests that it ought to be translated “whosoever,” rather than “whom,” and I tend to favor that translation. The grace and guidance of God, culminating in a vision of His glory, are given as a gift of mercy and compassion, and granted to whosoever God wills. Moses did not deserve to see God’s glory. Israel did not deserve to see God’s glory. The disciples who witness God’s glory in the person of Christ did not deserve to see God’s glory. You and I, who have witnessed God’s glory in the outpouring of the Spirit into the temples of our bodies, do not deserve to see this glory. When we reach that blessed shore, and our faith is made sight, and we finally see with fullness what Moses asked for, what we see now only in a mirror darkly, we will not deserve it then either. At every point, God’s decision to give to some to see His glory is only and always a gift of his mercy, of his compassion, and of his grace.

Thus, Paul invokes Moses to demonstrate that the grace, guidance, and glory of the gospel, foreshadowed at Sinai and fulfilled in Christ, are granted in singular accordance with the sovereign grace and mercy and compassion of God.

Therefore, with Moses, Paul can now demonstrate the first consequence of this theological reality, the first inference, the first implication, which I have called divine salvific dependence, only because it alliterates with my other point.

The First Consequence: Divine Salvific Dependence

Paul makes a simple, punchy, straightforward statement out of his Mosaic proof:

Romans 9:16 NASB95

So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

The salvation of men does not rely on their willing or on their running, but on the mercy of God. I like the NIV’s wording here: it does not depend on human desire or effort, and that word translated wills or desires there is the same word that Paul uses down in verse 18 which we will look at in a moment.

Here’s the reality: your salvation is all of God. Why? Left to your own devices you would not ever desire God. You would make no effort to be reconciled to him. You’re not born neutral, with the ability to choose good or evil. That’s Pelagianism and was condemned in the 4th century. You only choose that which is in accordance with your nature, and your nature is only evil continually. You’re born dead in your trespasses and sins and God must pour out his gracious favor and guiding presence on your dead soul and make you alive. Then and only then, as the Heidelberg Catechism says, are you wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Your will, your choice, and your effort will do nothing except condemn you to hell. God’s will, God’s choice, God’s effort will draw you willingly to glory. Notice there that I did not say kicking and screaming. You receive Christ willingly. You receive Christ because you wanted Him, because you saw him as so astoundingly beautiful, as so singularly able and willing to save your soul, that you believed and received him with gladness. That is the Biblical way to understand your salvation. As Joel Beeke says: “The Biblical Christian, when asked ‘Why did you trust in Christ?’ answers: ‘God overcame my resistance and sweetly inclined my heart to believe God’s Word, so that I willingly came to Christ.’”

So Paul invokes the story of Sarah and Isaac, the story of Rebekah and Jacob, and now the story of Moses to prove this point: We are born in total depravity, in utter sinfulness, dead in our trespasses and sins. God, in His grace, chooses and calls us unconditionally to be set apart for him. As a result, the atoning blood sacrifice of Christ is applied specifically to us, so that God’s wrath might be satisfied and we might have life in Christ’s name. And this calling is so powerful, so strong, so overflowing with love and grace and favor, that we cannot help but respond in humble gratitude and worship. And therefore, because of all these things, we can rest assured that we will reach that glory. We can walk with confidence, persevering through life’s trials, knowing that in Christ, we look forward to that same blessed vision of God that Moses longed for. This is the gospel. This is the story of God’s sovereign grace poured out in our lives. Wouldn’t you agree that this is a glorious and encouraging truth?

This is divine salvific dependence. Our salvation depends only on God, is accomplished only through Christ, offered only by grace, received only through faith, as revealed only in the Scriptures, to bring glory to God and God only, so that no man may boast.