The Pain of Predestination

I remember when I hated the doctrine of predestination.  I would go around saying, "Predestination?  I don't believe in that."  I could not bring myself to accept the fact that God decided, before the world and its inhabitants existed, the final destiny of individual sinners (definition loosely taken from Packer's Concise Theology)?  My intense hatred for this doctrine caused me to ignore its obvious usage throughout the New Testament as well as its clear meaning in those contexts.

I won't lie, predestination still doesn't sit well with me sometimes.   I read passages like Romans 9:22-23, "What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory..." and I can't help but have mixed emotions - emotions of great sorrow mingled with those of sober joy.

Therefore, when people come and ask me about predestination, I have learned to approach the topic with great care and understanding.  I am approached often, and more times than not, the questions are negative in nature.  Like me, many have a hard time realizing that this doctrine is in their Bible.  They come asking how they are supposed to understand it and deal with it.  My answer is a simple one.  It takes all of about three minutes.

First, I explain to them what the doctrine actually means.  Then I ask them what their chief problem is with it.  Without fail, it is that God predestines people to hell - that He decided beforehand that wrath should be poured out on particular people.

I take this opportunity to read Acts 4:27-28, "...for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place."  These verses, along with others like Acts 2:23, tell us that God predestined the death of His Son by the hands of lawless men.  In short, at the Cross, God predestined the innocent Son to die for the sins of others.

At this time, I ask, as I have asked my self over a hundred times, "Have you ever struggled with the fact that God the Father predestined God the Son to take the wrath of hell for sinners?"  "Do you struggle more with the fact that guilty sinners were predestined to hell than you do with the truth that the innocent Son was predestined to take your hell?"

Finally, I propose that our primary struggle should be with the fact that God predestined the Cross.  And until we feel the weight of that truth, then we can hardly proceed to struggle rightly with the fact that God predestines the destinies of individual sinners.