Predestination Background – The Glory of God
Ok, my dissertation is in and I’m going to take another stab at my predestination series before studying for finals consumes my life. If you haven’t read my previous posts on predestination (or have blocked them from your memory), check them out first here. We have seen the biblical definition of election, and I have made the first background point that we have to consider predestination in light of our utter inability to do any good in our sinful state. Before going on to defend the Bible’s teaching on election I want to first briefly make another background point.
In order to understand what God is doing in election, we have to understand why God does anything that he does. What is it that motivates God to act the way he acts? The unambiguous answer of the Bible is that God works everything for his own glory. While it would be entirely wrong for us to do everything for our own glory, this is not the case for God. For a human being to do so would be wrong for the simple reason that we don’t deserve such honour. An individual who did everything to bring himself glory would be a deluded, self-absorbed, pompous jerk. Yet God is truly deserving of all glory and honour, because everything he does is thoroughly perfect.
There are (at least) two implications of this fact. First, everything God does (and therefore every individual action) is thoroughly good and should cause us to praise him. God’s integrity is above reproach. We cannot question the goodness of his actions, nor can we question the motivation lying behind them. Secondly, the answer to why God does anything is always that he does it for his own glory; we can never get beyond this answer. We may question why certain actions bring God glory, but we cannot answer this question. The reason for this is that it’s not a question for which the Bible itself provides an answer. We are simply told that God does everything for his own glory, and we must rest in the knowledge that the one who is infinitely greater than ourselves knows how to glorify himself.
Now, what does this have to do with predestination? The fact of the matter is that while it is not difficult to affirm in theory that God works everything for his own glory, we often slip into thinking that a substantial portion of his job description involves keeping us happy. In many churches today the implicit teaching is that God is our personal assistant–he exists to put out fires and get us through tough times. And so when we meet the doctrine of predestination in the Bible our instincts tell us it is wrong. How could our nice God be so not nice as to choose some people and not others? The answer, quite obviously, is that God is not motivated by an over-arching desire to be nice; he is working to bring glory to himself. (Again the satire of the Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism is helpful when it says ‘God hath never performed such an omnipotent act, for any such thing would not reflect His primary attribute, which is Niceness’.) All this, of course, does not mean that God wants us to suffer continually and works tirelessly to make our lives difficult. It does, however, mean that he will bring circumstances into our lives that are difficult. He is glorified as we understand what it means to be humble (seeing ourselves for what we are in light of his greatness), and we are not often humbled when everything is going well.
The Bible’s teaching on predestination offends our senses. It doesn’t sound right. But truth is not judged by the standard of our fickle feelings and senses; it is judged by the standard of the Word of God. So when we are offended by the biblical teaching on election, we must remember that God’s act in election brings him glory. As we continue to consider what the Bible says about predestination we must keep this point in mind: God is working to bring himself glory, and those who love him should seek to make his glory more fully known.
I’ll start looking at common erroronious views on predestination in a few days. Until then, feel free to leave questions or comments on anything I’ve written up to this point.