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In our verse by verse study of Romans we completed our Expanded Translation of Rom 9:9; "For the word of the promise is this, at this time (after Abraham's spiritual maturity adjustment to God's justice) I will come to impute blessing, and Sarah will have a son."
We see here that God has fulfilled his longstanding promise to Abraham regarding a son. That fulfillment had been in God's decree from eternity past when God's omniscience had inserted it and it had been read out as a promise to Abraham many times during his lifetime.
Last time we noted that that those who pre-existed the decree are those who are glorified in the decree.
Being alone before all creation God's decree concerned no one but the members of the Trinity for the purpose of God's glory and pleasure. Being eternal and infinite, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are worthy of glory. God's glory is what He is in His essence and in His person.
As the subject of the divine decree it is logical and inevitable that God will be glorified in what He is and in what He has decreed. The manifestation of His glory secures the highest glory for His creatures and their greatest good that is attainment of spiritual maturity and resultant blessing from God's justice that brings glory to God from their maturity adjustment to God's justice
God is glorified that action and because of His integrity it results in additional imputation from God that was placed in the decree in eternity past.
God is pleased and God is glorified both in spiritual momentum and in the advance His plan. The divine decree is executed through imputations from God's justice so God's entire plan is predicated upon God's imputations into the decree.
There are seven imputations that glorify God in both time and eternity, and these seven imputations become the categories of the believer's tactical victory in the angelic conflict.
Each advance in God's plan provides imputation of blessing from God that glorifies God. Blessing from God and glorification of God are potentials based on positive volition toward Jesus Christ at salvation and positive volition toward the thinking of Jesus Christ after salvation.
God's decree determines what will happen because everything that happens comes out of the decree.
Omniscience knew the actual and that was put into the decree but the potential was not put into the decree. So you have to understand that omniscience knows potential and actual but foreknowledge only reveals what is in the decree.
In eternity past God knew what thoughts, decisions and actions that would carry one believer to maturity and another believer into reversionism.
Omniscience knows the factual and the potential while foreknowledge knows only the factual that was fed into the decree. Omniscience fed the decree foreknowledge is a printout.
Human volition and freedom are consistent with God's plan. God is the inventor of freedom. He is the inventor of freedom and the author of human volition. He does not tamper with His own invention.
We must differentiate between what God causes directly such as the cross and what God permits indirectly such as the evil of sin and human good.
God's omniscience fed only what is actual into the His decree. Election is a part of the decree and information from that category of the decree is only related to believers. In eternity past God's omniscience knew everyone who would believe in Jesus Christ as He is revealed to them throughout all of human history.
Election therefore is that part of the decree that prints out the thoughts, decisions, and actions of believers only because all election is exclusively related to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the predicate for election. Isa 42:1; 1Pet 2:4-6.
In addition to Jesus Christ God's Word only reveals two general elections: TRUE Israel (Matt 24:1-25:46; Rom 11:1-7); and the Church Eph 1:3-6; 1Thes 1:4; 2Thess 2:13; Titus 1:1; Elected or not everyone who believes in Jesus Christ will be saved. Rahab and Ruth are examples of this.
During the Church Age all believers are elected as part of the church Gal 3:28.
Unbelievers are not elected or saved because they do not believe in Jesus Christ so they are in the decree as condemned and under God's wrath. Matt 7:22-23; Matt 25:41;
Predestination is described by the words predestination, foreordination, and predetermination. Foreordination is God's preconceived and predesigned plan for the believer. It is synonymous with the decree.
Predestination is that part of the divine decree that relates believers in Christ permanently to God's plan. It has nothing to do with the unbeliever. There is not one word in scripture that ever says the unbeliever is foreordained, predestined or predetermined.
The Father predetermined the grace concept of propitiation, as described in Rom 3:25; so that election, foreknowledge and predestination is always viewed is the context of propitiation.
God's integrity is that part of His essence that combines His perfect justice and His perfect righteousness with His omniscience. Election, foreknowledge and predestination are information that God's omniscience fed into the decree that only deals with the believers.
God's omniscience also fed into the decree information regarding the unbeliever that can be categorized many ways but they all describe condemnation under God's wrath.
The unbeliever is excluded from God's plan for believers that are described in the categories of foreknowledge, election, and predestination.
This means that racial Jews who reject Jesus Christ as savior are not under foreknowledge, election, and predestination, because they are under the principle of condemnation and wrath so they are not God's people. Rom 9:8;
In Jer 18:3; God's plan is described as a wheel and believers are commanded to not to try to reinvent the wheel.
The wheel is God's plan that has existed from eternity past. God's plan keeps rolling no matter what. The wheel must turn on an axle and the axle for God's plan is God's imputed judicial righteousness.
Every believer has God's imputed judicial righteousness but the believer also has the option to invent his own axle of self-righteousness.
You must decide which axle you will use. God's perfect righteousness that God has provided or are you going to invent your own righteousness that is some form of self-righteousness. If you choose self-righteousness you reinvent the wheel and by doing that you attempt to dictate to God what the plan is.
So much then for the perfect plan of God that excludes the ability of man, the personality of man, the morality of man, the works of man, the ideas of man, the schemes of man. There is nothing you can do to ever receive blessing from God because God set it up for you.
When you believed in Jesus Christ God did the same thing that He did for Abraham. He imputed His own perfect judicial righteousness and that becomes the home or the target for all blessing from God in time and eternity; that sets up the potential for God's plan. Any function of our self- righteousness is never going to impress God Isa 64:6.
Rom 9:10; starts with conjunctive particle "de" (but) with the negative adverb "ou" (not), and the adverb "monon" (only) "But not only."
This is a reference to Sarah having Isaac as the son of promise in verse 9. Human viewpoint might object to the first case history. It might object on the basis of the fact that Ishmael, the firstborn under primogeniture was born to Hagar not Sarah.
The issue is not really legitimate versus illegitimate birth, good mother versus bad mother. Neither physical birth nor the character of the mothers, nor any other human factor is the issue. This is confirmed by the second case history that is now brought into view.
The second illustration is twins are born to Rebecca. Esau, the eldest twin is a Gentile; Jacob, the youngest twin is a Jew. Again primogeniture is set aside. The difference between them was not in their natural birth, their personality, or anything related to their human birth. Their difference was in their spiritual birth or lack of it.
In eternity past God's omniscience of God knew that the firstborn, Esau, would reject Jesus Christ as savior. This means that the information in the decree includes many types of discipline for time and condemnation for all eternity.
What is in view here is that he was not a Jew because he was not born again. So God's omniscience fed information, resulting in the election of Jacob and the condemnation of Esau into the decree.
Physical descent, natural birth, is worthless in the transmission of God's promises and the imputation of God's blessing. Only regeneration through faith in Jesus Christ can regenerate the racial Jew into an elect Jew.
Without salvation there is no imputation of God's judicial righteousness and eternal life. Therefore the predicates for fulfilling the unconditional covenants are missing.
The twin boys had a common physical origin were from the same father and mother. The differences between them are not in the physical realm, although some existed. Jacob is a Jew, Esau is a Gentile, and the difference between them is spiritual, not genetic.
Consequently the true Jew is not from genetic descent from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but it is from the spiritual seed of regeneration. This explains why Paul was so concerned about the racial Jews who in rejecting Jesus Christ as savior had also rejected the spiritual seed of the true Israel.
Foreknowledge, election, and predestination only describe Jacob they never describe Esau or any unbeliever. The difference between the twins is not simply Jew and Gentile, it is far more important than that; it is the difference between being a believer and an unbeliever and having God's judicial righteousness and eternal life or not
Physical descent in natural birth is absolutely worthless in the transmission of God's promises and the imputation of God's blessing. Only regeneration or salvation adjustment to God's justice through faith in Christ can create the capacity for the racial Jew to become the elect Jew.
Without salvation there is no imputation of God's judicial righteousness or eternal life. These are the predicates for the fulfillment of all of the promises contained in the Abrahamic, Palestinian, Davidic and New covenants to Israel.
The twins, Jacob and Esau, had a common genetic origin. They had the same father and the same mother. But the difference between Jewish Jacob and Gentile Esau was salvation and regeneration.