“I am wondering about predestination. Are some people predestined to be saved and the rest predestined not to be saved?”
The doctrine of predestination is sometimes referred to as “election,” in the sense that God chooses people for his own purposes. For example, Abraham was chosen, or elected, by God, as were his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob. Other chosen ones included Moses, Joshua, David, the prophets, and the Israelites were the “chosen people.”
The apostle Paul wrote about predestination, or election, in several passages. In Romans 8:28-30 and Ephesians 1:3-6, he emphasized that election is “in Christ,” and that it is a matter of God’s own choice for God’s own purposes. In Romans 9-11, Paul takes the topic of election further by exploring Israel’s rejection of her Messiah. In the course of his argument in Romans 9-11, Paul asks the question,
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Romans 9:22-24)
This passage has been much debated over the centuries. Taken out of context, it might sound as though some people are predestined to be saved and the rest are predestined for destruction. But that is not what the passage says, nor is it the argument Paul is making. Paul argues in Romans 9 and 10 that Israel has failed to be found righteous before God because they sought after righteousness their own way instead of putting their trust in Christ (9:31-32; 10:3). This does not mean that God’s covenant promises have failed, however, because God is free to have mercy on whomever he chooses (9:15) and is using Israel’s unfaithfulness to draw the Gentiles to himself though faith (9:16, 22-26, 30; 10:11-13).
Next, Paul asks, “Have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” (11:11-12). Yes, Paul argues, Israel has rejected Christ and therefore, except for a believing remnant, falls under the covenant judgments.
But that is not the end of the story, even for those who rejected Christ. Paul declares in verse 23, “And even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.” These people rejected Christ, yet God does not abandon them. The God who is forever faithful to his covenant love is so powerful that he can and does provide opportunity for unbelievers to become believers, even dead unbelievers (many of the unbelieving Israelites were dead, but God’s work of mercy involves all of them, see 11:32). We aren’t told how or when God does it, only that it is so.
read more why not all Jews will be saved
Paul continues:
So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” (verses 25-27)
God works in his own ways and in his own times, but his work is aimed toward one final outcome, his desire for all people to be saved:
Paul introduces his letter to the Romans as a letter about the gospel, and he describes the gospel as “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” In the gospel, he says, God’s righteousness is revealed. The good news is that God, in his righteousness, is giving us salvation.
After stating his thesis, Paul explains the gospel in more detail, starting with our need for the gospel. Why do we need this message of salvation? Left on our own, we would be trying to live and form societies in wrong-headed ways. Paul explains that we were not just going in a different direction — we were enemies of God. And we would naturally expect God to be angry at us. We need a message of good news so that we come to love God rather than be afraid of him.
The wrath of God
Paul explains the problem starting in verse 18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” God is angry at sin — and we should expect him to be. History books and newspapers report all sorts of crimes and atrocities that we should all be angry about. When one of our children hurts another, we should be angry. And many people believe that God is going to punish all the people who do evil.
However, there is something odd about this. It is like a prison warden who is so angry at the prisoners that he sends his son into the prison to tell them how to escape, and he gives them the key to his own home so they will have a place to live. This is not what we normally expect from “wrath.” The gospel reveals that our concepts of God’s wrath are wrong.
Paul is turning religious assumptions upside down — he may begin with a concept like “wrath,” but he does not leave it there. The gospel reveals how Christ has turned things around. We cannot take verse 18 as Paul’s final statement on the matter, because it is not. It is merely the starting point in his explanation of the gospel. We have to see these verses as part of Paul’s strategy of explaining the gospel. He is starting with ideas that his readers probably agree with, but he explains that the gospel calls those assumptions into question.
People assume that God is angry at sinners because they sin even when they ought to know better. (In Paul’s day, it was generally people from a Jewish background who made this assumption; today it is generally Christian conservatives.) But as Paul will soon explain, this would mean that God is angry at absolutely everybody. Instead, the gospel reveals a God who loves people even when they are his enemies, a God who sets the ungodly right, a God who rescues people from their addictions. He wants us to escape the punishment
