Joel Webbon & Dale Partridge Discuss Unconditional Election
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the role of God's grace in the lives of His own children, and how it can be traced through family lines. God saves through the ordinary means of spiritual, generational, familial lines, which is not a matter of genetics, but of covenant nurture.
Transcript
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This is essential. I'm going to steal your thunder for a second because I know you have really worked out this theology here is that unconditional election is not, as you said, arbitrary election.
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It's not random election. It is not that we have any creaturely value or meritorious works that God is looking at us and going, I'm electing this individual because of X.
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No, that is what it means by unconditional election, but really there is a reality that God saves through the ordinary means of spiritual generational familial lines, which is what we need to be talking about here is that at a basic level, we see this in scripture from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
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We also see that through Joseph or Boaz or Jesse and David.
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We see this trend of familial, multi-generational faithfulness is the normative reality in Christian life.
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I did a little bit of note-taking in Polycarp, Origen, Chrysostrum, Augustine, or Augustine.
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all came from lines of faithful parents, at least one faithful parent.
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We know Augustine's story about his mother consistently praying for him.
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We know this is also true of Spurgeon and MacArthur and Sproul.
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And so again, this is the normative means of grace
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extended through the familial line of covenant nurture
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experienced by the blessedness of being born to two or at least one regenerate parent. And so
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this is, again, unconditional election and expected redemption or covenant succession
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is not at odds, as you're saying. They are absolutely congruent. When you see that the
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unconditional nature, what that means is that it's talking about meritorious or creaturely value,
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I mean, we saw that obviously with the election of Israel
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We see this obviously as a normative flow of reality
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meaning that my son does not have the same likelihood
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of being saved as the Muslim child or Indian child or pagan child who is not under the
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covenant nurture and means of grace of the gospel proclamation to his ears as a steady diet of
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covenant blessing. Right. And this, just to pick up on what you're saying, this lineage of salvation
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that we can track from generation to generation with a singular family um it is not what we're
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not arguing is it's not um a matter of of nature family nature but it's the the whole point the
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way that we're defining and we we didn't this isn't our own definition this is the definition
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of covenant succession um we want to emphasize here covenant succession according to this
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definition is saying that um it's the expectant so number one not presumptuous not not guaranteed
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with 100 success rate um not not without ever having any exception but it's the expectant
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and it's expected not just with a wishful thinking that's not christian hope christian hope and faith
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has substance so it's expectant because we we are resting in the goodness of god his faithfulness
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to the thousandth generation but also um because we we believe that this is his ordinary practice
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i'm not guarantee not 100 of the time but it's normative that god would save not just
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some or a few of our children, but all of our children. So there's this expectant hope of the
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salvation of our children and that predestinated end, our children being saved, brought about by
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the predestinated means and the means being covenant nature, no, covenant nurture. So when
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we say that we can track through family lines, the reason why is not because of genetics. It's not
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like regeneration flows in someone's blood. No, it's because what we're assuming, and what the
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Bible, I think, assumes is that with parents who are believers, the reason why it is a benefit,
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there's a real advantage to being born into the household of parents who are believers,
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is because believing parents, if they are truly believing, that faith will work itself out in
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love. It will manifest itself in obedience, including the obedience to be a Christian
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father, to be a Christian mother, to lavish upon your children, not covenant nature, but covenant
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nurture, godly Christian parenting. And when we see the absence of this, when we see parents who
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truly are regenerate, but they neglect that, so they actually have Christian nature. They are
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new creatures themselves, but they're neglecting covenant nurture in their parenting and the way
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that they're not catechizing their children, they're sending them to public school, they send
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them to Christian childcare on Sunday instead of taking them to church, they don't have family
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worship in their homes, there's no, there's no, none of those kinds of things, then that person
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should not be expectant. They should not have a hopeful expectancy that God is going to save
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their children, because here's the deal. Again, all this is unconditional, and the things that
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God has revealed belong to us and our children forever, but the hidden things belong to God,
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and this is speaking of God's sovereign will, so we can't see these things, but we can, without
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having omniscience, we can still get a good idea. We can have an educated guess, is the way I would
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put it, right? It's not just a lottery crapshoot, but we can have an educated guess in what God's
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ends might be by observing what God's predestinated means in the present are. Meaning I can see what
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God is doing today and I can have at least an idea of what he may be planning to bring about
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tomorrow. Now, certainly we're not going to have a 100% success rate with these kinds of things,
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but my point is, because God confounds the wise, you know, but my point is I can look and say,
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you know what? It's not earning, it's not meriting the salvation of our children. My faithful
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Christian parenting, catechizing my kids, working hard so I can afford to send them to a Christian
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school, or then I'm not relying on my wife or second income so that we can have Christian
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homeschool, all these different things, doing family integrated worship at our church,
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all these things. I'm not saying if I do these things, God owes me the salvation of my kids.
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Not saying that. That is wrong. That is unbiblical. What I am saying though is God works
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through means. And if I'm doing these things, it's only because of the grace of God. I don't
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have the strength to do these things. Left to myself, I'm a lousy dad. So if I'm doing these
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things, it's because God is willing and working in and through me in my parenting that which is
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good and pleasing in his sight. So God is working these means through me by grace. And why does God,
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More often than not, why does God work his means of grace in an individual?
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Now, God does send missionaries and send preachers to go and preach, and the word of God never returns void.
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Sometimes it saves, and sometimes God uses the means of grace simply to further condemn an individual.
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And Dale and I have, we have that category in our theology as well.
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Sometimes God may, he may use an individual as his mouthpiece, as his instrument in the means of grace, lavishing the gospel on someone again and again and again with the intent of simply further hardening that person's heart and further justifying himself on that final day when he ultimately judges that person as being wicked.
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But what we're arguing is that's not normative as it pertains to Christian households.