God Loves… Himself

In the last blog we looked at Romans 9:6-12 in looking at the motives of God in saving sinners. Let me repeat from last time that Romans 9 is hard for people to deal with because it deals with issues from the perspective of God who is centered upon Himself and not man. Romans 9 is not hard to understand, but it is very hard for a human-centered person to submit to such a thorough God-centered passage.

Romans 9:6 – But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “THROUGH ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE NAMED.” 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. 9 For this is the word of promise: “AT THIS TIME I WILL COME, AND SARAH SHALL HAVE A SON.” 10 And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, 11 so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, 12 it was said to her, “THE OLDER WILL SERVE THE YOUNGER.” 13 Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED.” 14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

In Romans 9:6-12 we see with utter clarity that God chose Isaac to be born as a child of promise and then from Isaac and Rebekah Jacob was the child of promise. Ironically enough, though not found in this text but Genesis, Abraham wanted a son by the slave woman Hagar to be the child of promise rather than Isaac. Then Isaac favored Esau rather than Jacob. But God chose Isaac over his father’s wishes and then Jacob over his father’s wishes. When that is taken into consideration, along with God’s choosing before Jacob or Esau had done anything good or bad or had made any choices, God was the One who made the choices according to His own pleasures and motives. The natural human heart, especially in America where everything must be equal, cries out that this is not fair. Notice in verse 14 that Paul anticipates the objection and deals with it in a straightforward manner.

Paul does not worry about what is fair, which is what humans think is important, but he deals with what is just. Paul says that in no way (may it never be) is there injustice with God. He then goes to Exodus 33 and 34 where God revealed Himself to Moses and simply says that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. This is an answer that does not beat around the bush and it also does not leave any room for equivocation. Paul did not argue about the fairness aspect, he simply says that it is not unjust of God. Since God is God, the showing of mercy and compassion are decided by Him.

Just to be sure there is no mistake in the matter, Paul goes on to state the other side of the issue in v. 16. Again he makes a statement that is very hard to misunderstand unless people want to misunderstand it. He states that it does not depend on the man who wills/wishes/chooses or runs (activity). He specifically states in this part that it does not depend on man’s will. The Arminian position depends on the will of man to some degree. This text says that it does not depend on the will of man. Instead of depending on the will or efforts of man, salvation depends totally on the mercy of God. We can see that the words of this text are not hard to understand, but they are very hard for proud and self-sufficient people to submit to. There is nothing in man at all that would move or give God a motive to save him. When speaking about this personally, each of us rebel at that thought the first time we hear it if not forever. But until we give up the thought that there is anything that I can do or will to move God to save me, I will never stop trusting in myself alone and trust in Christ alone for salvation. The motive of God in salvation simply shows another aspect of grace alone. God’s motive must be Himself or it will be from a human being and that destroys His choice and His grace. The Gospel is the good news that God saves sinners based on His mercy and compassion and there is nothing they need to do of themselves to be saved. They must give up on all of their own willing and working and with brokenness ask God to give them a new heart. Faith is not the act of the will, it is having no faith in self and my will in order to receive grace alone.

I the past several blogs we have been looking at the motives of God in saving sinners. We have gone from Ephesians 1:5-14 to Isaiah and Ezekiel. In the last post we looked at Romans 3:23-27. Today we will focus on one passage from Romans 9. Let me just say at the outset that the reason Romans 9 is so hard for people to deal with is that it deals with issues from the perspective of God, Who is centered upon Himself and not man. When a human being who is centered upon self and full of religious humanism reads Romans 9, it is hard to swallow and so it is said to be hard and mysterious. The main thought of Romans chapter 9 is not hard to understand. But it is very hard to submit to such a thoroughly God-centered passage.

Romans 9:6 – But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “THROUGH ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE NAMED.” 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. 9 For this is the word of promise: “AT THIS TIME I WILL COME, AND SARAH SHALL HAVE A SON.” 10 And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, 11 so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, 12 it was said to her, “THE OLDER WILL SERVE THE YOUNGER.” 13 Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED.” 14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

This is a shocking passage when we read it from a human-centered viewpoint. What can it mean in reference to the children of the promise? The Israelites were children according to the flesh or according to who their parents were. Isaac was a child that was from the promise of God and in some way a supernatural conception. The text tells us without equivocation that not all of physical Israel were of true Israel. Why is that? It is because it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but it is the children of the promise. This is a tremendous revelation of the promises and purposes of God. Paul then shows through the example Jacob and Esau how that works out in reality. It was before the twins (Jacob and Esau) were born that God had already made a choice and it had nothing to do with the choice of the twins. Let me repeat the thought of that sentence by putting it in a different way. According to the text Isaac was a child of promise. The next generation was born to Isaac’s wife Rebekah. Jacob was the child of promise and Esau was the child of the flesh. Before they were born God had made a choice and Jacob was the child of promise rather than Esau.

People can try to explain this away by saying that it referred to nations or other things, but we must be honest with this text and ourselves. There is nothing within Jacob that made him the child of promise and there was no act of his that was foreseen by God that made him a child of promise. In fact, the text tells us that this was all so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand. We must wrestle with this point and try to get at the heart of it. What were the motives of God that are expressed in this text? What were some things listed that could not have been the motives of God? God’s motive is seen in v. 11 where we see He did it this way so that His purpose of choice would stand and it would not be by works. We simply must see the ramifications for this in context of our series on Augustinian versus Arminian theology. Augustinianism teaches that salvation is by God’s choice and work. Arminianism teaches that salvation is by the choice of man and by at least one work of the free-will. Our text is specifically against the Arminian view. It states that salvation is by God’s choice and not by the works of men.

As we look at the text above, surely it can be seen that God’s motives in saving sinners are from Himself rather than the act of a human will. We can argue about these things and draw out many fine points from philosophy, psychology and common sense, but the text says what it says in its own context. The only motive for the salvation of human beings given in the text is God’s motive of Himself. Salvation is all of grace and nothing of works.

The examination of the motives of God in salvation will continue in this BLOG. But of course we cannot know God’s motives apart from Scripture, which is the revelation of God.

Isaiah 43:25 – I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.

Isaiah 48:9 – For the sake of My name I delay My wrath, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.

In Isaiah 43 it is God telling us why He will forgive the sins of Israel. Why does He wipe out their transgressions and sin? He tells us that is for “My own sake.” Why does He delay His wrath and restrain it? “For the sake of My name” and for “My praise.” Why will He act and why does He act that way? It is for His own sake and in order that His name would not be profaned. In all of that it is because He will not give His glory to another. This is a passage that is extremely God-centered and those who are man-centered are likely to choke on it. God did not save them because they were moral, good or religious. He saved them for the sake of His own name. He did not save them because they had a free-will and used it to make a choice by that freedom, but He saved them for His own glory and His own name. He saved them in order to keep His name from being profaned. In other words, God’s motive in what He did was Himself. In acting for His own glory and name He shows us what His motive was.

Ezekiel 20:9 – But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made Myself known to them by bringing them out of the land of Egypt. 14 But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, before whose sight I had brought them out. 22 But I withdrew My hand and acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

Ezekiel 36:22 – Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.”

In the above passages we see the same basic teaching we saw in Isaiah 43. When God acts, He does so for the sake of His name and in order that His name would not be profaned. God delivers from nations for the sake of His name and He turned His people over to other nations for the sake of His name. He specifically tells the people in Ezekiel that He is not going to deliver them for their sake, but rather for His. Now it might be argued that in delivering Israel it was a physical deliverance and not one so great as delivering souls from hell. Surely, it might be argued, that God does not save for His name’s sake when He delivers sinners from hell.

Here is a passage from the New Testament that speaks directly of why God saves sinners. A few BLOGS ago (BLOGS 64-66) we looked at some passages from Ephesians 1:5-14 that showed that God saves according to His good pleasure. Here is another passage:

Romans 3:23-27 – for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed, 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.

Romans 3:23 defines sin for us and it is that which does not glorify God. However, justification is done apart from human cause (as a gift, freely, or apart from cause as in human cause) and so by grace. Grace is only grace when it is shown apart from any cause in the human being. This grace came to human beings through the redemption or purchase of sinners in Christ. This was accomplished by Christ being the propitiation of one who removes the wrath of God from sinners. Why did He remove His own wrath in sending His Son to bear His wrath on the cross? “To demonstrate His righteousness” (v. 25) the text tells us, and then again “the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one how has faith in Jesus” (v. 26). In other words, God saves sinners from His wrath by sending His Son to the cross as a sacrifice in their place. He did this, however, to demonstrate His own righteousness and so that he would be just and the justifier. This is saying the same thing as the Old Testament texts said when God is said to deliver for His name’s sake and to make His power known. The Gospel is about the glory of God who saves according to Himself which is to say that He saves by grace. The Gospel of grace destroys any room for boasting (v. 27). If God saved according to the slightest thing in man (smallest act of a free-will), that would be a reason for boasting. In Romans 3:23-27 we see the motives of God shining. It is to demonstrate and manifest His own glory. The text specifically denies that there is a cause within man and so man has utterly no room to boast. God saves for His own glory and no other reason and that is His motive. He has no need for man to provide Him a motive in an act of a free-will that is free from His grace. That would be something apart from grace and so apart from the Gospel.

In the last BLOG I gave several verses from Scripture to show that God forgives and saves sinners because of Himself. His motives arise from Himself and not from an act of man’s will. There are many other verses like the ones listed and there are many others that make the point from a different angle. For example, what motivated God when He promised a Savior in Genesis 3:15? The original promise of a Savior was made to Satan and it was a promise that the coming Savior would crush his (Satan’s) head. What would have motivated God to have done that? Was it an act of the will of man?

We can also learn of the motives of God from how we are taught to pray and of the prayers of the godly in Scripture. Jesus taught us to pray first for God’s name to be hallowed (glorified, revered) – Matthew 6:9ff. Then we are to pray for God’s kingdom to come. Then we are to pray for God’s will to be done. If these things are to be the things we pray for, then surely we must see that the motives of God are not human-centered in what He does. He is not moved to answer prayer based on the free-will of human beings, but He is moved to answer prayer based on His own name. We are also taught that when we pray, we are to pray in the name of Jesus. If we are to pray and ask for things on the basis of our own will, then answers to prayer are based on our own name. But instead we are told to pray in the name of Christ which means we are to pray in accordance with who He is and His glory. Perhaps that is one reason why the professing Church is so weak in our day and that is because we pray according to our own selves rather than seeking the Lord for desires to pray for His glory in the name of Christ. God is motivated by His own name and not our acts of the will. It is only when our desires are conformed in truth to His desires that there is power in prayer.

Let us think through some of the verses from the previous BLOG.

Psalm 79:9 – Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; And deliver us and forgive our sins for Your name’s sake.

This is a psalm of Asaph. We see that this is a cry for the help of God. On what basis does he cry for help? His plea for help looks to the motivations of God as God rather than anything else. God, as perfectly holy, will only do and be motivated to do by what is best. Since God loves holiness and truth, He can only be motivated by what is truly holy and true. He can only love what is utterly holy and is worthy of His love. That means He can only be moved by His own name in prayer. When human beings bear His name, they can pray for themselves and that in truth be for His name. But of course that must be the true desire of the human’s heart and not just a use of the name of God as a magic potion of some sort.

It seems so strange to the modern mind to read or hear of a sinner crying out for forgiveness for the sake of God’s own name. Yet if we put audible words to the desires of our hearts, wouldn’t we be crying out for God to save us for sake of our own name and our own good no matter if God has to stop being God to do so or not? Look at how opposite that is of the Greatest Commandment, which is to love God with all of our being. Look at how contrary that is to the command of I Corinthians 10:31 to do all to the glory of His name. When we pray for forgiveness, the true desires of the heart are being shown. If we desire forgiveness more than the glory of God, then what does that say about the chief love of our hearts? If we desire to be forgiven more than we desire God to be glorified, what does that say about the desires of our hearts? While it is not wrong to desire forgiveness, our desire for forgiveness must be out of a love for His name or we desire forgiveness for the wrong reason.

The desires of our hearts for forgiveness must be looked at in terms of the God’s motives. What could possibly be the desire for God to save sinners who hate Him and do nothing but what is at enmity with Him? Psalm 106:8 sets this out for us: “Nevertheless He saved them for the sake of His name, that He might make His power known.” God saves sinners for the sake of His name which shows something of His glory. He saved the Israelites because they bore His name as His people and it demonstrated His power. Why does God save sinners by the blood of Christ? Is it because they have acted according to a free-will in their own name and power? No, and a zillion times no. The only motivation worthy of God is what Psalm 106:8 tells us. He saves for the sake of His name. He does not save according to anything a sinner can or may do. He saves according to His name alone which is grace alone.

We are continuing to look at God’s motives in salvation. We are looking at this primarily from information revealed to us in Scripture. The issue of God’s motives is very important. We know how important motives are for human beings. The goodness or badness of the outward act, though important itself, is determined by the motives. If I saved a person from drowning, that would normally be thought of as a good thing. On the other hand, if I saved the person to the glory of Satan that would not be a good thing in terms of my motives. If I saved a person from drowning in an effort to gain glory and honor, then I would have saved them for a selfish reason and that is the same thing as idolatry. I am commanded to do all things out of love for God and all things are to be done for His glory. What is motivated by anything other than love for God and His glory is a sin in the motives and the heart.

When we look at God’s motives in salvation, we are looking at His highest and purest intentions in saving sinners. From the human point of view we think that the greatest thing that God can do is to save sinners from hell. That is the view of a fallen man who has fallen so far from seeing and loving God that he thinks that what is good is determined by what happens or does not happen to himself. In other words, man views things in terms of himself rather than in terms of God. Man now determines what is good or bad as how it relates to himself rather than God. So when man thinks of salvation, he looks at it in terms of himself and how it benefits him. He thinks of salvation as being all about man and sees it as good mainly because it keeps man from paying for his own sin in hell. Man can think of no higher motives in God than His doing something to benefit man. We must also continue to keep the issue of Augustinianism and Arminianism in our minds as that is the overall point of the discussion. The reason that God’s motives are important in this context is that the Gospel is of grace alone. The motives of God should help us see the issue of the will in a different light. If God is motivated to save sinners by an act of man’s free-will, then salvation is not totally motivated by God’s love for Himself and so is not totally of grace,

There are many texts which tell us what motive God has in forgiving sins. A few verses are given to demonstrate the prayers and desires of those men who desired God. Notice that their prayers were for His name’s sake. Only a few will be listed below, but enough will be given to get the point across:

Psalm 79:9 – Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; And deliver us and forgive our sins for Your name’s sake. 106:8 Nevertheless He saved them for the sake of His name, That He might make His power known.

Isaiah 43:25 – “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.” 48:9 “For the sake of My name I delay My wrath, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.

Jeremiah 14:21 – Do not despise us, for Your own name’s sake; Do not disgrace the throne of Your glory; Remember and do not annul Your covenant with us.

Ezekiel 20:9 – “But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made Myself known to them by bringing them out of the land of Egypt. 14 “But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, before whose sight I had brought them out. 22 “But I withdrew My hand and acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

Ezekiel 36:22 – “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.

Daniel 9:19 – “O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.

In the last post we looked at God’s motives in salvation. In looking at God’s motives in salvation as set out in Scripture this gives us, so to speak, a divine view of salvation. God had a motive for creating all things and He had a motive and intent in the fall and then in the Gospel. It is utterly vital to look at the motives of God in terms of salvation and the Gospel. If He saves sinners with motives entirely and wholly based on Himself and His own glory rather than anything found in sinners, we can see that the notion of free-will as taught by Arminians cannot be why God saves sinners. If His motives are for Himself and from within His triune being, an act of the will of a human being that is free from His grace would be a motive apart from and not of Himself. The Gospel of grace is not just that God does things for sinners that they cannot do for themselves if only they will make one act of the will, but instead it is that God saves sinners based on Himself and His glory alone. That alone is grace alone.

Last time we focused on the motives of God that He gives us in Ephesians 1:5-14. This time we will approach it from a different angle, though with the same basic thought. Rooted in the fallen human nature is a thought that we find in our own fallen hearts: we tend to do things for others based on something that is within that person or that he/she will do. But God saves sinners based on Himself and nothing that the sinner can do (for self or for God). He saves sinners to manifest His glory through the sinner rather than expecting the sinner to do one thing for self or Him at all. God displays the glory of His self-sufficiency through the sinner rather than expecting any sufficiency from the sinner at all. In fact, the sinner’s efforts to exercise self-sufficiency in the smallest of things are an act of enmity to God’s self-sufficiency as displayed in His grace.

Let us look at the motives of God in this sense as to what could move Him to save sinners. We know that He is a God who does as He pleases (Psalm 115:3). What else could please God to save sinners if not Himself and His own glory? What else would be a holy and good motive for God to save sinners but Himself? Should God love sinners as His primary love when He commands sinners to love Himself with all of their beings? He commands sinners to love Him rather than their own lives. Does it make sense for Him as a primary motive to give the Son who was God in human flesh for the souls of sinners who are commanded to love Him at the cost of their lives? Did God love sinners more than He loved His Son? Did the Son love sinners more than He loved the Father?

The questions in the previous paragraph should show us that we must think through these things from a God-centered perspective or we will fall into the trap of thinking God is just like us. The Lord Jesus Christ is said to be the outshining of the glory of God (Hebrews 1:3). The same thought is in John 1:14 where the Word is said to become flesh and in that we see His glory which is full of grace and truth. If God loves His own glory, He must love the Son who is the shining forth of that glory. When the Father is said to love His glory it is the same thing to say that the Father loves the Son. The only fitting motive for the Father to save sinners is out of love for His own glory which is to say that He loves His Son. The only fitting motive for the Son is to love the Father and His glory, and He said many times that He did in the Gospels.

We have such an impoverished view of grace in our day. In reality, however, such an impoverished view of grace turns grace to be non-grace. Another way to put that would be to say that an impoverished view of God’s grace makes it to be a different kind of grace, which is to say that it’s not grace at all. Scripture tells us that a different Gospel is no Gospel at all (Galatians 1:6-10). If God’s motive in saving sinners is dependant on a human act of the will, even though ever so slightly, it is no longer grace alone. That little act of the human will turns grace from being 100% to 99.9%, but that means it is not grace at all. We can see this from a picture of His holiness. God is perfect in His holiness. If He turns from 100% holiness to 99.99999% holiness, then it is not holiness any longer but something different. For God, holiness is 100% holiness or it is something else. God’s motive in saving sinners is all Himself and so by grace or it is a different motive and so grace is no longer grace. Romans 11:6 must be pounded into our heads and hearts. One little work destroys grace and makes it no longer grace. A diluted substance is no longer the same substance. If we add just a little poison to water, even .005 %, it is no longer the same substance but it is water and something else. Grace is the same way. One work, no matter how little, turns a pure grace into grace plus something else and so it is no longer grace alone. God’s motive in salvation must be entirely from within Himself as seen in His love for His own glory, that is, His love for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father or salvation is not wholly of grace and is a different Gospel. The teaching of free-will is not just some minor issue with a minor difference, it is the drop of poison in the Gospel of grace alone that changes the very nature of it.

In the past few BLOGS we looked at God’s motives in salvation. We are doing this because we are looking at the history and theology of issues between the Augustinian view and the Arminian view. In looking at God’s motives in salvation as set out in Scripture it helps us to get a handle on why He saves sinners. If He saves sinners based on Himself and not for anything found in sinners, we can see that the notion that a person must exercise a free-will in order to be saved is contrary to the Gospel of grace alone.

Ephesians 1:9-11 – He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.

In the preceding passage in verse 9 the phrase “according to His kind intention” should once again be translated as “according to His good pleasure.” Sinners only know the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure and not according to their own pleasure and will. This has all been purposed in Christ and all things will be summed up in Christ, whether they are things in the heavens or things on earth. We see the teaching of predestination come back up referring to those who have obtained an inheritance which is all those who have been truly saved. Predestination is said to be according to His purpose rather than according the purpose of man who chooses according to his own free-will. Predestination is said to be according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will. The text does not say that salvation is according to His purpose who works all things except for a little act of a free-will according to the counsel of His will. But the text says that He works all things after the counsel of His will.

Ephesians 1:12-14 – to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation– having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Verse 12 (flowing from verse 11) then gives us the reason that He works all things after the counsel of His own will. It is to the end (His purpose) that those who hoped in Christ (not hope even a little in themselves and own act of the will) would be to the praise of His glory. In Ephesians 1:5-6 we saw that goal of salvation was to the praise of the glory of His grace. Here we see the same thing. Salvation is all about the glory of God and of His grace and not about the free acts of human wills that choose Him. If we come down and enter time and simply view a person from the outside, we might be led to believe that a person must make a choice and then be saved. But Scripture gives us the eternal and Divine view of things and we must go by that view rather than our sight of things in time. The goal or purpose of God’s working all things after the counsel of His own will is so that it would end up being to the praise of His glory. If something is worked according to a free-will and by definition that is apart from divine influence or it would not be free, then that little part not influenced by the Divine will would not be to the praise of His glory. We must deal with this issue honestly or we have not really dealt with it at all.

There are a few different interpretations of what the sealing of the Spirit means. However, we can still ask questions that relate without dealing with those issues. What does the free-will have to do with being sealed with the Spirit of God? We can all agree that believers are baptized into Christ by the Spirit of God at salvation (Romans 6:3; I Corinthians 12:13). Why does God baptize believers into Christ and seal believers with the Holy Spirit? Does He do this based on His eternal knowledge knowing that man would choose Him? Therefore, does He do this based on the free choice of the will of man? How does that fit with our text of Ephesians 1:14 which tells us that the Spirit “who is given us as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of the glory of His grace”? The Spirit baptizes sinners into Christ based on the grace of God or upon the free choice of the human will. Does the Spirit baptize people into Christ based on the motives of God or the motives of man? Does the Spirit baptize people into Christ based on the choices of God or the choices of man? As Paul teaches us from 1 Corinthians 15:32: “If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me?” Does the Spirit operate based on human motives and choices or as the text teaches us to the praise of His glory? I cannot but believe that the Spirit operates on Divine motives and so grace is applied by grace alone.