Last time we looked at election; today we will cover reprobation.
First, the elements of reprobation:
First, the elements of reprobation:
Notice these four basic elements... on reprobation: (1) The individuals passed by and reject-God’s eternal condemnation. (2) God passes some individuals by and refuses to choose them to eternal life, leaving them in the state of misery and ruin into which, by their own fault, they have plunged themselves. (3) He dooms those whom He passes by to the eternal punishment their sins deserve; and He does so in perfect justice and holy vengeance. (4) In God’s decree to pass by and reject some,
God acts absolutely. (439-440)
Second, the biblical authority for the doctrine:
“One hoof of Divine truth,” says the venerable Erskine, “is not to be kept back, though a whole reprobate world should break their necks on it.” 53. Thornwell, Collected Writings, 2:107. (440-441)
Third, the unity and variety of God's decrees (namely election and reprobation):
First, the ultimate cause of both decrees is the sovereign will of God and the pure sovereignty of His good pleasure. (441)
Second, reprobation has a factor not occurring in election: our election to life is gracious and undeserved; and the condemnation of the reprobate is just and deserved, because of their sins. (441)
Third, in election, people are chosen by God, and saving faith and holiness of life result from His choice of them, Acts 13:48; but in reprobation, God does not create the rebellion in the heart of the wicked, instead, that rebellion is the cause of divine
condemnation (Rom. 11:20). (442)
Fourth, in election, God predestines sinful people to salvation and guarantees the work of saving grace in their lives; but in reprobation God does absolutely nothing to save the non-elect sinner. (442)
There are two components of reprobation:
In an attempt to clarify the revealed truth of reprobation, some theologians have identified two components in this decree: preterition and condemnation. Preterition means letting things stand as they are. To pretermit is to omit, to leave, to let alone (Luke 17:34; 2 Chron. 32:31; Ps. 81:12–13). God’s decision to leave some
sinners in their sin, without bestowing on them the gift of life, was an act of sheer sovereignty. (442)
1. [E]ternal reprobation makes no man a sinner. 2. [T]he foreknowledge of God that the reprobate would perish makes no man a sinner. 3. [G]od’s infallible determining upon the damnation of him that perisheth, makes no man a sinner. 4.
God’s patience and long-suffering, and forebearance until the reprobate fits himself for eternal destruction, makes no man a sinner. 56. John Bunyan, “Reprobation Asserted,” The Works of John Bunyan, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, [1875] 1977) 2:352. (442-443)
Old Testament teachings on reprobation:
God hardened a large number of Canaanites, and refused to show them favor, so they would recklessly wage war with Israel and be destroyed by her military superiority. “[W]hy did not Jehovah command Israel to teach the Canaanites His laws and instruct them concerning sacrifices to the true God? Plainly, because He
had marked them out for destruction, and if so, that from all eternity.”58. Arthur Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1930), 104. (443)
The case of Pharaoh establishes the principle and illustrates the doctrine of Reprobation. If God actually reprobated Pharaoh, we may justly conclude that He reprobates all others whom He did not predestinate to be conformed to the image
of His Son. This inference the apostle Paul manifestly draws from the fate of Pharaoh, for in Romans 9, after referring to God’s purpose in raising up Pharaoh, he continues, “therefore” [or “So then” in the NASB]. The case of Pharaoh is introduced to prove the doctrine of Reprobation as the counterpart of the doctrine of Election. 61. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, 110–111. (445)
Jesus Himself taught on reprobation:
On more than one occasion, Jesus distinguished His disciples, whom He chose to be His own, from the rest of the unbelieving world, which He left in darkness. (445)
Jesus went so far as to say that God had deliberately hidden the truth from some people, so that they cannot be saved from sin. (445)
Other New Testament teachings on reprobation:
Romans 9:21–23 assumes two things: (1) God is dealing with mankind as sinners....(2) Mercy can only be sovereign mercy, i.e., bestowed upon whomever God pleases. (449)
No one can escape this unique Stone and its determinative impact. Reactions to this Stone divide the human race into believers (1 Pet. 2:6–7) and unbelievers (1 Pet. 2:7–8). (451)
Verse 8 gives the reason unbelievers stumble in disobedience and unbelief over Christ, breaking themselves upon Him: they were destined by God to this course of stumbling and to this end, doom. (451)
(Jude 4). Notice three things about the deceitful men mentioned in this verse: (1) They were “ordained to this condemnation.” God ordained their blindness, persistent rebellion and eternal condemnation. (2) They were ordained to condemnation “before of old,” i.e., in eternity, before the beginning of time. This speaks of the absoluteness and unchangeableness of this foreordination to condemnation. (3) These men are “ungodly men.” The cause of their condemnation was not the pleasure of God, but their own sin against God. (452)
The purpose of reprobation:
God chose to save an innumerable throng of sinners to be saved to show forth “the praise of His glorious grace,” and chose to pass by and foreordain the rest of the human race to eternal condemnation for their sins “to the praise of the glory of His justice.” (454)
Dr. Morecraft then directs our attention to certain clarifications on the doctrine of reprobation, as well as answering objections raised.
First, the revealed truth of the decree of reprobation does not mean that God planned to take innocent creatures, make them wicked, and then damn them. ... “God has not created sinful creatures in order to destroy them, for God is not to be charged with the sin of His creatures. The responsibility and criminality is man’s.”
76. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, 123. (457)
Second, the revealed truth of reprobation does not mean that God refuses to save those who sincerely seek salvation in Christ. (457)
Third, the decree of reprobation does not in anyway contradict the goodness of God. Although the non-elect are not objects of His saving goodness and His special grace, they are objects of His general goodness and His common grace bestowed by God upon all people without exception in this life. (458)
Fourth, the rule of holiness demands that we not only avoid sin, we also are to work to prevent all the sin in others we can. This same rule applies to God, the critics of reprobation say. ..."They say we represent Him as like a man who, witnessing the
perpetration of a crime, and having both the right and power to prevent it, stands idly by: and they refer us to such Scriptures as Proverbs xxiv.11, 12. And when we remind them, that God permissively ordains those sins, not for the sake of their evil, but for the sake of the excellent and holy ends He will bring about, they retort, that we represent Him as “doing evil that good may come.” These objections derive all their plausibility from forgetting that we are creatures and bondsmen of God, while He is supreme judge." 78. Dabney, Lectures in Systematic Theology, 243. (458)
Fifth, the question still remains: Why did not God elect everybody to salvation? The answer is this: It pleased God to display the glory of His grace in the salvation of the elect sinners and to display the glory of His justice in the damnation of the
reprobate, (non-elect), sinners. ...The more obvious question is: Why did God elect anybody to salvation? (459)
Sixth, if God has chosen only His elect for salvation, and rejected the rest of the race, why are we told that God “commands all men everywhere to repent”? (Acts 17:30). By commanding all people everywhere, God is enforcing His sovereign rights and righteous claims as the moral Governor of the world. (459)
Application of the doctrines of election and reprobation:
First, what are the benefits of believing and teaching this Biblical truth of reprobation? (1) It will increase our admiration and adoration of God for His love and His hatred. ...(2) This glorious truth “strips them [men] of all pretensions to merit, shows them their deep and loathsome unworthiness, and prostrates their souls in the very dust of self-abasement.” 80 Nothing is more humbling to the pride of man than the knowledge that the only reason he is not in the ranks of the non-elect is because God graciously decreed otherwise (Acts 13:48). ...To know that every one of the non-elect is absolutely under the control of God should greatly promote our trust and confidence in God. To view the world situation and to see the wickedness that abounds on every hand, and yet to know that it is all included in God’s decree, is comfort indeed. 80. James H. Thornwell, Election and Reprobation (Jackson, MI: Presbyterian Reformation Society, 1961), 82. (460)
Second, while we as Christians must constantly recognize our responsibility to be witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ to everybody (Acts 1:8), we must also resign ourselves to the fact that God alone decides the consequences. (460)
Third, "those who misrepresent God’s counsel in general, and the decree of reprobation in particular, as if it were merely the divine purpose respecting a person’s eternal destiny, are guilty of a serious error. No one has a right to interpret the decree of reprobation as an iron decree, determining only the final destiny of the lost, who are then viewed as inexorably shut up to this eternal state of perdition, no matter what penitent efforts they may put forth. ...Accordingly, we should not thus conceive of the purpose of reprobation, as if it were a decree all by itself, sustaining no relation to the other decrees in general, nor to the decree of election, in particular. In reality there is not such a dualism between sin and grace,
punishment and blessing, justice and mercy, as if the reprobate were visited only with sin and punishment, and the elect only with grace and blessing." 82. Bavinck,
The Doctrine of God, 400. (461-462)
Finally then, how does God execute His decrees?
All of God’s plans happen in time infallibly, inevitably and unchangeably. This is absolutely certain because of the infinitely perfect character of God: “God is not a man, that He should lie...Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” (Num. 23:19). (462)
Two things must be kept in mind, when we consider the execution of God’s decrees in time. (1) When God’s eternal decree is actually executed in time, the execution exactly corresponds to the decree in the mind of God, with absolutely no deviations,
“according to His infallible foreknowledge”...(2) The decrees of God cannot ever be
defeated or fail of execution, according to “the free and immutable counsel of His own will”: “For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?” (Isa. 14:27). (463)
God carries out His eternal plans in the works of creation and providence. In creating the universe, He provides Himself with the “raw materials” to accomplish His eternal “blueprints.”...In governing and providing for His creation, i.e., providence, He causes the creation to reach all of His purposes for it: Having made the world, He now upholds, (or “moves along”), “by the Word of His power” (Heb. 1:2–3; see also Ps. 104). He created the universe “out of nothing,” using no means or “second causes” whatsoever (Gen. 1:1); but He executes the work of providence, ordinarily, by means and “second causes.” (463-464)
To conclude chapter five then...
Emptied as we are by election of all that cannot abide the scrutiny of heaven, we are pointed to inexhaustible treasures at God’s right hand, which are bestowed only upon those who habitually depend upon His grace. Blind, naked and miserable in ourselves, we take the counsel of the Holy Spirit and lean upon the Lord for all that we need. (464)
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