Grace Bible Church
PastorTeacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Friday, October 31, 2014
Point 9. Election and the sovereignty of God with the free will of man.
The sovereignty of God and the free will of man co-exist in human history in order to resolve the angelic conflict.
Even if there was no angelic conflict, free will would still exist.
We know this because the angels possessed free will before the angelic conflict came into being.
Then He programmed in the divine decrees just exactly how each free will would function.
In the divine decrees, both the sovereignty of God and the free will of man operate simultaneously.
That one decision was to provide for you selection and your very own election related to His plan for your life, and to provide for you your very own predestination related to His plan for your life.
In the divine decree is a pre-creation record of each one of our lives, and it reads either winner or loser, depending upon our decisions.
There is no excuse for being a loser, because you have equal privileges and equal opportunities under election and predestination.
The distinction between the winner and the loser is in the divine decree but never in the sovereignty of God.
The divine decrees consist of both inputs and outputs.
(1) “Input” is a technical word for facts being entered into a system.
(2) “Output” is the information signal discharged from the system. God decreed for both the angels and humans to have a free will, and yet none of them ever passed the test of remaining holy except for one person only TLJC.
“Did 13 of the Angles fall, as REV 12:9-10, teaches or did they ALL fall and then 23 of them came back to Christ” because they are said to be ELECT?
We know that before coming into the creation of mankind, Satan had fallen (Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28).
We also know that there was a category of angelic creation that was fallen and a category that was elect, called holy angels.
Did just one-third of the angels fall or did all of the angels fall and then two-thirds accepted some form of salvation offered to them by God?
The key word is HOLY, HAGIOS = the translation for holy is used to express the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The word for holy is used eight times in the Scriptures and is only for TLJC and it looks at the absolute uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is used of His person in Acts 2:27 and Acts 13:35
It is used as the guarantor of blessings for the believer in Acts 13:34
And as His qualification to be High Priest in HEB 7:26
Jesus Christ is seen as the unique holy one, the ONLY ONE to remain experientially holy.
The point is that Jesus Christ is called the only Holy One (Revelation 15:4) which can only refer to the fact that He alone is the only one who remains experientially holy.
In REV 7:10-12 Resurrected believers praise the Lord for salvation and the angels join in by twice saying Amen in which they concur, agree, express that they believe it!
Notice that they say amen concerning salvation because they personally understand it.
In the Tribulation, while angels bring divine judgment upon the earth, no angel is allowed to execute this judgment apart from Jesus Christ because He alone is worthy.
No one is perfect but Jesus Christ.
In Job we find the statement that God charges error against His angels and this is used to argue that no man can be just before God.
The condemnation against Satan in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 is very specifically against him and him alone.
God did not interfere with this evil scheme because in His omniscience, He knew they would buy the lie and yet He had something better for them, salvation.
He would have judged Lucifer first since he was the instigator of the angelic rebellion.
JOH 16:11 the ruler of this world has been judged.
Upon being judged and found guilty and condemned, Satan objected and accused God of not being a just and loving person NOT a just and loving God.
Because Satan thought that He was a god, not God Himself.
As Satan fell and stood condemned, all the angels also fell and stood condemned because they questioned who God was and what His character and nature was all about.
In the plan of God condemnation must precede salvation.
God offered to the angels a way for their sin to be forgiven in which His divine attributes would in no way be compromised.
We only have one vague reference to Angelic salvation in the Scripture: HEB 2:2-4
We can see in the initial fall of man and the subsequent attempt at deception by Satan and then the salvation offered by God a possible parallel to Angelic salvation:
Satan’s fell due to his own initiative and then deceived other Angels. Adam, however, fell without deception. He chose to disobey God just as Satan did.
At the fall then we have one who disobeyed out of his own initiative and one who was deceived.
At the fall, Satan had offered man a counterfeit salvation prior to God offering man a true salvation:
Note that Satan’s counterfeit was fig leaves: Genesis 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. A counterfeit presupposes understanding of the real.
Satan would have had to have some prior knowledge of salvation in order to offer a counterfeit plan for covering sinfulness and disobedience.
The only sin that is unpardonable is the sin of rejecting the Gospel in the allotted time.
Angels would not have been exempt from this condition.
If only 13rd of the Angels fell, would not God have offered some salvation to them?
If offered are we to suppose that not one of the angels who fell accepted it?
Satan would have had a very strong objection if God was willing to offer a means of salvation to man and had not offered a means of
salvation to the 13rd angels who fell.