Predestination in Christ (4) Romans 9-11

Do We Know Predestination at all?

Part Four – Romans: Chapters 9 through 11.

Written by Dan McDonald

 

When I was younger in age and in the faith I imagined truth to be something capable of being understood and explained.  Now I think of truth as something having its source in the glory of God so that at some point we see truth as something which melts away in beauty beyond description in the distant horizon.  I see predestination in this way.  I realize through this doctrine that I am called to Christ without anything within myself being the cause for which I am chosen.  This is something too certain in the Scriptures for me to doubt or deny.  Yet as I read of God’s choice of the patriarchs in Genesis and I can see that God chose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and also Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah; I also find that our Lord did not stop caring for and watching over the nations, Hagar, Ishmael, and Esau.  Still I am certain that my view of things is not easily viewed as confirmed by the ninth through the eleventh chapter of Romans.  I am convinced that what I have expressed is not complete.  Perhaps it is not essential that it be complete.  Perhaps I am meant only to speak what is upon my heart and mind and cast it forth into the discussion of God’s people to be criticized where it is wrong, and otherwise to have such thoughts confirmed and built upon where this blind hog has found an acorn of truth.

I almost see my understanding of our predestination “in Christ” fitting if we view the choosing of the patriarchs as the choosing of the Christ to be born from their lines rather than the choosing of this one for salvation and others not being chosen for salvation.  If the patriarchs are chosen specifically as a way for the Holy Spirit to identify where and whom it was who would be born the promised seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob then Romans chapters nine through eleven may well tell the story of how God first narrowed the field associated with the Messiah until there was but one Messiah whose life fulfilled the promise of God made to the patriarchs.

Perhaps Romans 10:4 serves as a verse describing how in the times before Christ’s arrival the work of showing forth the Messiah was done through a winnowing process where God showed there was a choice of one and only one to fulfill the promises of the Gospel.  Romans 10:4 describes that “Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness, to everyone who believes.”  The Apostle Paul’s word regarding how Christ is the end of the law is the Greek word “telos” which can mean “end” in the sense of a destination or a goal.  So if we look at the Law as having a goal that goal in God’s purpose was Christ.  So the Law as a standard looked upon all the rest of us and evaluated us as “sinners” and as those who have “fallen short of the glory of God.”  But when Christ came the Law knelt to the ground and worshipped him as the one who was what the Law had been given to identify as the one to come.  John the Baptist in representing the Law at the Jordan River in the same manner realized that while he baptized here was the one whose baptism John himself needed.  But this one standing before John was the one who was himself to fulfill all righteousness.

Following this verse, St. Paul begins to show how predestination’s field is widened through the proclamation of the Gospel.  It was at first narrowed until only the one chosen stood in the waters of the Jordan, but as he came and fulfilled the promises then men and women began to believe upon the Gospel and found themselves united with Christ in his predestination.  Predestination is the doctrine of God’s choice of one that the many might be blessed.  Thus all Israel will be saved.  Those who believe are to be grafted into the vine.

Before the coming of Christ the Spirit of God worked to reduce the potential promised seed from a whole nation to the one true Messiah.  Thus predestination was a narrowing of the possible promised descendants. But once identified in his life, death, burial and resurrection Christ could be proclaimed in the Gospel and the many who would respond to God’s grace and mercy in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ would draw near to him and none who would come would in any wise be cast out.  Thus with the proclamation of the Gospel the field of the predestined would grow until all Israel would be saved according to God’s purposes of kindness.  This is predestination “in Christ.”  With this my words, perhaps forever, about predestination are complete.  I write not as one who has figured these truths out in perfection, but as one with poor eyesight seeing the truth as if through a fog melting into the mist of a beautiful and not fully explainable horizon.  I believe that even if I cannot see clearly what is beyond the horizon it is enough to know that what is there is “in Christ.”