Audio Transcript
God places lost souls into our lives. Not to mock them. Not to shun them. But to share the love of Christ that we have with them. But what happens if I don’t send the text I know I should send to reach my unbelieving friend? What if I don’t make the phone call I know I need to make to the neighbor who doesn’t know the gospel? What if I stop praying for my family and neighbors who need Christ? As a Calvinist, if I never do these things, does it really matter in the end? Today on Ask Pastor John: Can my silence cost souls eternity?
Today’s question comes from an aspiring missionary who sees two biblical truths in tension. First, Paul tells us that God “saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” That’s 2 Timothy 1:9. A beautiful picture of election and predestination behind our personal calling. But if that is the case, he wonders, why was Paul’s pain so necessary? Just a chapter later, Paul writes, “Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” That’s 2 Timothy 2:10. So, if God’s holy people will obtain eternal salvation, why must Paul suffer to bring about that same end? To make it personal, he asks: “Does someone’s eternity actually hang on my willingness to suffer as a messenger?”
Decreed Witness
There are two really good questions in this one question, at least as I hear them. One is fairly common and the other is less common.
The common question is, “If God decreed whatever will come to pass from eternity, does my effort to change things in the present make a difference? Specifically, does anyone’s eternal destiny hang on my willingness to be a messenger?” That’s the first question.
The less common question is, “If God decrees all things from eternity past, and my life really does make a difference, and things happen or don’t happen because of my effort, why did God set it up this way?” That’s the why question.
“God has set up the world in such a way that we human beings bear the burden of real causality.”
I think the answer to the first question is yes, your life and effort and prayer and witness make a difference — a huge difference — in what happens in the world, and, yes, there will be people who are not saved because some Christians failed to share the gospel with them. I know that sounds contradictory to some Calvinists, and I am one, and I say it believing totally that the Bible teaches God plans and predestines all things before they happen. I believe that.
Revelation 13:8 says there are names written “from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.” So, some names are there in the book from eternity, and some names are not there. These are the ones whose rebellion God plans to overcome and bring to himself. The names in the book are God’s elect. These are the ones Luke was talking about in Acts 13:48 when he says, “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” God appointed them, and so they believed. These are the elect that Paul is referring to in Ephesians 1:4: “He chose us” — he elected us, selected us — “in [Christ] before the foundation of the world.” And a few verses later, in Ephesians 1:11, he says that these elect are “predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things [all things] according to the counsel of his will.” It is a faithful, biblical teaching that God governs all things and that he decides from eternity whose rebellion he will overcome and save.
And it is equally biblical to say that God uses human means, human instruments, to accomplish those eternal purposes. Jesus says to Paul, “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light” (Acts 26:17–18). You do that, Paul. You’re my instrument. Go make that happen. I will give you the power. Paul says, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation” (2 Timothy 2:10).
Instruments of Salvation
Paul is the means of the salvation of the elect who have been destined to salvation before the foundation of the world. In Romans 10:1, he says, “My heart’s desire [Paul says this] and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” He says he magnifies his ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles to make his fellow Jews jealous, if by any means he might save some of them (Romans 11:13–14). He is a real instrument by prayer and by witness — a real instrument in the salvation of his kinsmen. James 4:2 says, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” And when Paul addressed the elders in Acts 20:26–27, he said, “I am innocent of the blood of all [of you], for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” Had he not told them the truth, their blood would be on his hands. That’s what he implies (Ezekiel 3:18; 33:6, 8).
“Jesus Christ crucified and risen is the most beautiful manifestation of God’s grace that ever was or will be.”
From these texts and many like them, we learn that God has set up the world in such a way that we human beings bear the burden of real causality. We are causes in the world. We make things happen under God’s providence. Our actions make things happen. Our failure to act fails to make things happen and, therefore, it is not right to say, “Because of predestination, my failure to act will not prevent someone’s salvation.” We don’t know that. We cannot see into God’s book of decrees and plans.
What we’re told is that we should pray for lost people, evangelize, tell the gospel to lost people, do good to lost people because that’s how they are saved, and we’re told, “You have not, because you ask not” (see James 4:2). Prayer makes a difference, and we are told we will be innocent of the blood of them if we tell them the truth.
So, our friend asks us in this question, “Does someone’s eternity actually hang on my willingness to suffer as a messenger?” And I answer yes. We don’t know who or when that is the case, but that it can be the case is what the Bible teaches, which is sobering. I hope he takes it to heart, and that if God is calling him, that he will follow, which brings us now to the second question.
Manifestations of Grace
Well, why did God set it up this way? He asked this. If the finish line was decided by a sovereign God in eternity past, why is Paul’s suffering now required to get them there? That’s his why question.
And here’s how I would go about trying to answer a question that may partly lie (we just have to admit this) hidden in God’s mind, and that he is just going to let us look through a glass dimly and not see the whole picture yet, but I think part of the picture at least is visible (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Paul says in Ephesians 1:6 that the aim of God’s election (God’s choosing a people for himself before eternity), of God’s eternal decrees before the foundation of the world, is “the praise of his glorious grace.” What an important phrase. In other words, God created and governs the world so as to maximize the authenticity and the intensity of our praise for the beauty of his grace.
Now, how is that grace manifest in the world and at the end of the world so that it can be praised with maximum authenticity and intensity? And of course, the center of the answer is Jesus Christ crucified and risen — that’s the most beautiful manifestation of God’s grace that ever was or will be. But that’s not the only place where God’s grace is manifest in the world for our admiration and our praise.
It’s manifest in the humble, happy service of God’s servants who are called stewards of God’s grace when they suffer in order to make him known (1 Peter 4:10). That’s a beautiful thing. That’s a beautiful demonstration of grace. In other words, when God plans that humans become the instruments to bring about his eternal purposes, he also plans that, in that very action, they are beautiful demonstrations of the grace of God.
For example, for missionaries, the very means by which God pursues his final purpose — namely, the praise of the glory of his grace — those means are themselves a demonstration of that final purpose coming back into this world. It’s a beautiful thing. Grace stands out as beautiful when a person lays down his life for another person in the cause of missions (John 15:13). So, Christians get to participate not only in real causation in bringing about God’s final purposes, but they also get to participate as manifestations of the beauty of God’s grace in their sacrificial service, and thus they become a foretaste of the beauty of the grace of God.
So, to put it in a sentence: Paul’s suffering as a means of saving the elect is required because that suffering for Christ is itself a beautiful manifestation of the grace we are being saved to praise.
