Created for eternal damnation
‘It was God’s eternal intention to save sinners by bringing them into a living union with Jesus Christ. God himself would take the initiative. By the sacrifice of himself (in the Son) he would provide the basis on which the ungodly could be justified. By God’s eternally offered grace, sinners would trust the complete work of Jesus Christ. God’s eternal intention is to save people through deeds he eternally ordained for his Son, Jesus Christ. That eternal intention is proclaimed to us in a foreordained message. Sinners are saved through the foreordained Christ (Acts 2:23, 1 Peter 1:19-20), by a foreordained gospel message (1 Corinthians 1:21) in order that they should live a foreordained way of life (Ephesians 2:10) and they are said to be a foreordained community of brothers and sisters (Romans 8:29-30) who bear the image of the Christ.
Compare what you’ve just read with this by John Calvin. "Not all men are created with a similar destiny but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or death." (Institutes, Book 3.23.) Calvin himself thought this to be a "horrible decree."
It wouldn't be so bad if Calvin allowed us to believe that God destined billions for eternal torture on the basis of what he foresaw them doing; if he had, so to speak, looked ahead and seen that these billions would freely choose terrible wickedness and in light of that he pronounced them damned to eternal torture. Not a bit of it! Calvin won't allow that. In 3.23.6 he says, "If God merely foresaw human events, and did not arrange and dispose of them as his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed that they are to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience, while it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign appointment."
[This is the doctrine that modern hardline Calvinists defend though they are not as up-front as Calvin.]
We cannot look at Christ who embodied and proclaimed the will and character of God and talk of God "having the right" to do what he wills with his creation! We cannot call tyranny and sadism "glorious" even if it should happen to be "divine" tyranny and sadism. God has spoken of the death of the unrighteous and says he finds no pleasure in it (Ezekiel 18:23,32). His "glory" involves his love for the whole world (John 3:16-17) for whom he sent Christ as a sacrificial offering (1 John 2:2).’
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.