What does that word ‘choose’ tell us about the nature of our spiritual deadness before conversion? Now some people say – and they are quite mistaken in this – that, viewed by God, before salvation the person is like a corpse, completely and utterly dead and completely and utterly unable to understand or to process anything spiritual. They base it on such texts as that in Ephesians, ‘And you hath he quickened [brought to life], who were dead in trespasses and sins.’ The question arises – in what way are we dead? and the answer that some give is – totally and utterly senseless and dead. But that is not the scriptural position, and it isn't the position of historic Calvinism either. It's a complete misunderstanding. It is rather like someone who wants to paint, but who puts on his palette only two colours of paint: black and white, and any picture they produce will be composed only from those shades, and that's how they mentally reason and process things. They see everything in rather stark terms, so they come to the notion that we are dead in trespasses and sins, and that means as dead as dead can be. But that's not the teaching of the Scripture.
While we are spiritually dead certainly, we are not intellectually dead, and we are not morally dead. We still have the knowledge of right and wrong and moral consciousness. These things are still active and therefore if we choose death rather than life, evil rather than good, unbelief rather than the Lord, it is a responsible choice. It is a choice for which God will hold us responsible. And from cover to cover the Bible not only pleads with souls, but it warns about judgment, and what judgment is, and what is the basis of judgment as it is repeatedly unfolded in the Scripture. The basis of judgment is our sin, of course it is, the things that we consciously determined to do, things for which God will hold us entirely responsible in the day of judgment. We are responsible beings and responsible creatures. So while we are truly spiritually dead in that we have no communion with God, and we do not have the light and understanding that God gives to those who he calls to himself, nevertheless, we are intelligently and morally conscious, aware, and responsible.
Now even a total atheist can understand theoretically the plan of salvation, the ways of God. We know this well enough when we hear the criticisms that are made of it. They show tremendous understanding, even if they describe it in extreme and absurd terms. They have understood the atonement, they have understood the position of a holy God. They have understood his love and his justice. They have understood the whole principle of atonement and the substitutionary death of Christ. They understand it better than some of the Anglican bishops. They understand these things and they make a conscious, intelligent repudiation or rejection. That is very important to understand, and this word here, ‘death shall be chosen’ as the result of test and trial – there is some sort of intelligent weighing of the options, belief or unbelief, paganism or the God of Abraham – ‘rather than life’. That is what they are being held responsible for in this chapter.
Of course, everyone, left to themselves, chooses death; that is inescapable. Through the fall, and since the fall, everyone responsibly chooses death. It is only because God overrules in his predestinating love and determined to do this from before the foundation of the world, that he overrules the rebellion and the rejection of himself in the case of millions and millions of people. He convicts them at their sin, and he gives them a special light and understanding and he inclines their hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit to desire salvation and to seek him and to find him, and he brings them to himself. He does it in such a way that they come to him willingly, hungrily, longingly, urgently seeking salvation. God doesn't just, to use an Americanism, zap them so that they discover they have become Christians overnight. He regenerates them and inclines their hearts and their wills so that now the message of the Gospel really pierces their hearts. They come of themselves – though it is because of the work of God – to choose him.
Everybody who is in heaven, who is saved by the blood of Christ, will be there because they chose to be there, and they desperately wanted to be there. and they pleaded to God to save them and forgive them. Everybody will be there by choice. Perhaps with the exception of people whose hearts God overrules in a direct and marvellous and special way as infants, and perhaps people who have lost their reason; there may be God's special cases. That is a deep and mysterious thing. We are thinking about the ordinary course of events.
Heaven will be peopled by those who long to be there. That's why the witness of God's people and the preaching of the Gospel is so important because God actually uses it. In itself, it cannot turn a sinner to the Saviour. My persuasion and preaching cannot soften the hardest heart. But God uses it, this is his means, his method. Spoken, printed communication, and he wings it right to the heart of a person and to the mind and makes it persuasive in their eyes. But we have to preach because God wants everybody to have a conscious change of heart and change of mind and longing and desire. So everybody in heaven will be there because they wanted to be there. If somebody went round asking, ‘Did you want to be here?’ They will not simply answer, ‘Well, I think it's marvellous here. I'd rather be here than anywhere else.’ But they will say, ‘Yes, I was made willing. I chose of myself. It was an act of God on the one hand, but carried out in such a way that I for myself needed to be here.’ That is the situation that God will have produced.
There is another reason too, of course, why we preach the Gospel, because we simply don't know who those people are in whose hearts God will work a work of grace, so we preach to all. We preach to all because we don't know. We preach to all because those who are truly saved have to be persuaded consciously, and we also preach to all because those who are not saved have to be warned, so that God may be just in his judgment of them in the last day. But all who are lost, are lost because they refused him. They chose in some shape or form. Death shall be chosen rather than life.
Romans 9:18 often misleads friends in this connection. ‘Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.’ That is a very interesting way of putting it, because the verse presupposes that those who are not going to be shown mercy have already rejected him, something for which they are tragically and sadly responsible. ‘Therefore he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy,.’ – it is not us, it is God who overrules in our lives – ‘and whom he will he hardeneth.’ Now, some people will read this verse and say – that says to me that God himself predestinates and determines who shall be lost, just as he predestinates and determines who should be saved. But it doesn't say that. If you correctly exegete this and the following verses – and you have to do this because otherwise it is out of line with all the other Scriptures – what Paul is using is the illustration of the potter and the clay. The potter can make a basic vessel. He will not adorn it. He will not fashion it to be an object of beauty. He will fashion it to stand square on the ground and be stable because this vessel is for some commonplace purpose. So what is important is that this vessel should be large enough and stable enough for its purpose. It is not going to be decorated with flowers and wreaths. It's not going to be glazed in different colours. But then there are some vessels he will make to grace the household, for people to find pleasure in, and he will give them extra attention, special attention. If a particular shape is more beautiful to the eye, then they will be less stable to achieve that shape. If it is necessary to make the pot of much thinner material and more delicately shaped, then he will adapt it to that purpose. The glazing and the baking will be quite differently done to preserve the colours, the paints, whatever and so on. He spent much more time and care on the article for noble use than he has on the article for much lower use.
All the passage is going to tell us is this: that God's special predestinating, saving love bypasses the mass of people who tragically will reject him and is focused only on those whom God will transform, in whose hearts he will work. The lost are responsible. They may protest and say – ‘Why should God ever create the world in the first place if he knew that human beings would rebel, and that all human beings would reject him without a single exception, and there would be nothing but tragedy and judgment and loss? Why should he when he knew he was going to save some, and bypass others? That is unfair,’ they will say. Who are you, the passages say, to answer back to God? The potter has the right to make less well-formed articles for that ignoble purpose. They live, they rebel, they are responsible for their rebellion. They are judged. Paul gives special emphasis to those who equally do not deserve it, but who, in his will, he chooses to bless. He is the potter, he is God. We can't appreciate the full reasons until we get to glory, but by doing this, there will be a heavenly eternity in which all the inhabitants are against sin.
Let us suppose Satan could reappear – in fact he cannot; he is eternally destroyed under punishment after Christ comes, after the judgment – but let us suppose he could. And let us suppose something even more absurd, that he could visit heaven. He cannot; it is unthinkable. It is a ridiculous illustration, but let us suppose he could, and he could walk round challenging ransomed souls in the eternal glory, and he could try the same lie that he tried in the Garden of Eden. Don't you think in this wonderful, wonderful place, God is withholding something from you? Don't you think he is doing you down, and you are not being allowed to understand or know about or see or experience good and bad too? Don't you think there is an alternative to God and he is keeping you in this position of holiness and bliss when there's something else beyond that, that you could have, that you could know? And all the inhabitants of heaven in one chorus would say – No, no, no, we know the alternative to God. We've seen it. We've seen a fallen world. This is to the glory of God that now all that is shut out for ever. There will be complete understanding and knowledge in heaven. There will be complete loyalty, fidelity to God and his will and his glory. People will be there by choice. God did it, yes. We can just begin to see why the potter allowed things to be as they are. A world that would rebel against him, and many who would be tragically lost as a consequence. But the Scriptures constantly tell us that God hates the death of the sinner.
Ezekiel 18.23 has these familiar words, ‘Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and live?’ Verse 32 also, ‘For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.’ And that's repeated in chapter 33 verse 11 and 2 Peter 3.9 takes up the same matter, that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. There are evidently two wills in God and down the years they have been given different names. There is a permissive will in God. He undoubtedly permits many things to happen of which he doesn't in any sense approve. And then there is another: some call it his victorious will, some call it his redemptive well, some call it his moral will, his absolute determination for all time of what will be. So, for example, there are many ways we can illustrate this. God didn't approve of the fall but he permitted it. God didn't approve of the Lord Jesus Christ, his eternal Son, being smitten. God didn't approve of Christ being scourged, but he allowed it, it was his permissive will. God didn't approve of Christ being subjected to those utterly unjust, dishonest trials, but he permitted it. Of course, he didn't approve of Calvary. Christ, the eternal Son of God, come in the flesh, suffering and dying, a terrible weight of agony to atone for our sins. But he permitted it to bring about salvation and God turned it to serve his ultimate will and purpose, the salvation of lost souls.
So we have to understand. You can't paint everything in black and white. There is God's permissive will, when even the heart of God is pained at the things that go on, but he permits them to bring about his ultimate purposes and redemption. So, in a sense we say, God is absolutely sovereign. Everything that ever happens in the world and eternally is by his sovereign will. But that doesn't mean he is ever the author of sin, and it doesn't mean that he is responsible for the sins of the lost. We are responsible for our own sin, and we would all fail, but for the grace of God in salvation.