Need help!!!: Election versus why the reprobate are being born ?

[Mayflower]

Today i got a question and comment from someone concerning election:

If God elected some sinners before the founadtion of the world for salvation, why are are reprobate are born at all ? Are they born for damnation ?
She underand that mankind was orginal created to glory God and to enjoy God forever, but it's difficult to understand why God choose before the foundation of the world, those sinners as the reprobate for hell ?

Can anyone help me, that through a pastoral way i can give an answer for this ?

 

[Galatians220]

Everything God does, He does for His glory. There are some things we don't understand, as we see through a glass darkly here, but someday, we will see things as they are... We can understand, though, from Romans 9, 10 and 11, and from the OT, that He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and this is because He is sovereign. He makes some things (people) for common use, and others He adopts as His heirs with His dear Son. None of us deserves adoption, but some of us are given saving grace and become His. Others do not. Some continue in a pattern of sin, are stiff-necked - and God hardens them. He allows their consciences to become seared. They and they alone are responsible for their sins and for unrepentant unbelief.

We're all left with some measure of unbelief as long as we're here on earth, but the indwelling Holy Spirit provides a witness with our spirit that we belong to God, that we are not among those who are perishing. "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief." (Mark 9:24.) If we're His, we will repent of our unbelief; we will cry out to the Lord - and who has the Lord rejected who ever cried out to Him, craving the grace to believe? No one.

The thing is, we don't know who will remain reprobate and who will not. Only God does and all we can do is trust Him. This is why Calvinists should be among the most fervent evangelists: reprobate? Who can know? I never give up on anyone.

Hyper-Calvinism says God creates some people for destruction... No, there's 2 Peter 3:9 sitting there in the Bible! This is a mystery and we must leave it to the Lord.

The reprobate are not born for damnation; they're born for God's glory, for all things work to His glory. How He does this and why He does it, we must leave to Him. We know there are reprobates, some in the visible church, but we don't know who they are.

We're told to pray for others; we're also given the Great Commission. Ultimately, however, we must concede that God is sovereign over everyone and everything.

Margaret

 

[Pilgrim72]

I don't think it's hyper-Calvinist to say that God creates some for destruction - as we see in Romans 9. As a matter of fact all who are born into this world are condemned already, as we all believe in original sin. And until one believes he is, as Edwards put it, being dangled over the pit of hell. Jesus said that a person is condemned already because he hasn't believed (John 3:18). So, I don't think it's hyper-Calvinist to say that God created some just to be examples of His justice. 2 Peter 3:9, I believe, is talking about God not wanting any of the elect to perish -- and that He won't return until after all those that are His are saved.

I think the hyper-Calvinists have a problem with the manner in which the Gospel is preached. If I remember right, they have a problem with ministers preaching the Gospel to the unregenerate and pleading with them to come to Christ. I honestly can't remember all the identifying marks of a hyper-Calvinist, though...

 

[Hippo]

But God does create some with a view for destruction in at least one sense, and that is a very important sense. I really cannot see how you can be a consistent calvinist and not accept this doctrine. How can that not be the case?

2 Pe 3:9 is a complex verse with some difficult impications, but one of these is not to deny that God sovereignly created according to hs own purposes, purposes that were electively decreed at the start of time.

 

[panta dokimazete]

from my blog

So...God's foreknowledge - and I really think that the concept of foreknowledge is a limitation of the language, not a limitation of God - is perfect and complete because He is not required to be bound by time or the rules of time, since, well, I hate to point out the obvious here, but He created time. He is also not bound by this "middle knowledge" scenario, since creation (including Time) from the initial BANG to the final judgment is a tapestry he has woven and ordained/decreed to be. And just as I have exhaustive knowledge of a tapestry I have woven does not detract from the pleasure I receive by putting it to its decreed purpose; in this instance - God glorifying Himself, saving some of His creatures, thus displaying his loving Mercy as well as glorifying Himself through the exercise of His divine Justice. Justice without Mercy is not true Justice. Love without Justice is worthless.

God chose whom He chose for salvation for one reason we know and one reason we don't know. One reason is to glorify Himself through the Son by the display of His perfect Mercy and perfect Justice. Why he chose some and not others? It is a mystery.

 

[Zenas]

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-"

We find your answer here.

Q: What is God's purpose?

A: "to show his wrath and make known his power... in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy".

Q: How is He accomplishing his purpose?

A: By "enduring with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction".

The damned are born and endured to make it clear to God's children the measure of His glory and mercy toward them, and make known to all His Holy Wrath and Power.

 

[panta dokimazete]

Another thought - God decreed that Man would be in communion with Him. God gave Man free-will. Man fell. God will judge Man according to His Justice, but saves some to fulfill His decree.

 

[Hippo]

Another thought - God decreed that Man would be in communion with Him. God gave Man free-will. Man fell. God will judge Man according to His Justice, but saves some to fulfill His decree.

God also decreed that man would fall.

 

[panta dokimazete]

Another thought - God decreed that Man would be in communion with Him. God gave Man free-will. Man fell. God will judge Man according to His Justice, but saves some to fulfill His decree.

God also decreed that man would fall.

Absolutely, for Christ to be glorified, Man was decreed to Fall.

Man fell meaning to become like God, God planned the Fall to use it as a means of grace.

What Man meant for evil, God planned for good.

 

[Hippo]

This is a point that most will all struggle with, Calvin refered to this as the dreadful decree (paraphrased by wesley as the "horrible decree"), a fuller quote being:

I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is, dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknow what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what was to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it must be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so it belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand. This question, like others, is skillfully explained by Augustine: “Let us confess with the greatest benefit, what we believe with the greatest truth, that the God and Lord of all things who made all things very good, both foreknow that evil was to arise out of good, and knew that it belonged to his most omnipotent goodness to bring good out of evil, rather than not permit evil to be, and so ordained the life of angels and men as to show in it, first, what free-will could do; and, secondly, what the benefit of his grace and his righteous judgment could do,” (August. Enchir. ad Laurent).

Calvin, John: Institutes of the Christian Religion. Bellingham, WA : Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997, S. III, xxiii, 7

Schaffs History of the Christian Church commenting on the language used:

"Decretum quidem horribile fateor." This famous expression is often ignorantly applied to the whole doctrine of predestination, while Calvin only uses it of the decree of reprobation. The decree of election is glorious and most comforting. There is no need, therefore, of moderating the term horribile, which means horrible, terrible., dreadful. In French he calls it "ce décret qui nous doit espouvanter," a decree which should terrify us. Hase (Kirchengeschichte, Ill. I. 196) says: "Calvin ist ein dogmatischer Dante: dieselbe grauenvolle Lust, die Majestaet Gottes auch in der Hoelle anzuerkennen und zu preisen, diese grauenvolle Macht, welche fuehlende Wesen geschaffen hat zu ewiger Qual."

Schaff, Philip ; Schaff, David Schley: History of the Christian Church. Oak Harbor, WA : Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997

 

[TaylorOtwell]

Ultimately, this question isn't even unique to a Reformed view of salvation.

Even if election wasn't true, people have been born into countries with absolutely no gospel witness, have grown up in those countries, and have died in those countries still without ever having the gospel preached to them. Why were they born?

Any view of salvation wrestles with this.

But, as others have said, God is infinitely good and wise, and has seen fit that it should be so. We should humbly trust in Him and know that He does good.

 

[Neogillist]

Why did God create the reprobate?

My answer: That God might display the glory of His justice and wrath.

Interestingly, this question is often presented by Arminians in an attempt to trick the Calvinist when in reality, they themselves are bound to face the same problem. Because the Arminians do not deny the foreknowledge of God, they must conceive that God created many men whom He knew would choose to reject the gospel and damn themselves. This question is essentially part of the motivation that Open Theists have for denying the foreknowledge of God in some areas. They argue that a loving God could not possibly have willed the damnation of any of his creatures.

Besides, if the Semi-Pelagian will argue that God created man to save him, my response to him would be: "Why did he allow mankind to fall?" It would be stupid for God to make the salvation of a creature as an end in itself. Now, the same is true for damnation, it would be stupid for God to create man to damn him, thus making damnation an end in itself. The only reasonable and rational response we can provide, (and that even the Arminian must eventually admit) is that God uses salvation and damnation as means to an end, and not as ends in themselves. Now the only end that would be consistent with the revelation of God in Scripture is His glory. The Arminian will typically object to this, pointing out that this would make God selfish. To this, our response is that it is in the intrinsic nature of God to be selfish, self-centered, and jealous, since for Him to do otherwise would be a denial of His deity, as John Piper rightly points out. If there could be anything that God loves more than Himself, it would be proof that He is not truly God, but rather a god, as this would imply that there is another being or creature that is more admirable, beautiful and glorious than Him. There is nothing shameful with this. God creates man for His glory, whether it be fulfilled in his damnation or salvation. To deny this truth is to devise for ourselves a god to our own liking, a god who is powerful but not all-powerful, loving his creatures more than himself, desperately carried away by his creation rather than ruling his creature.