BY ROY ADAMS
"The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples. . . . But it was because the Lord loved you" (Deut. 7:7, 8, NIV).
ne theologian, commenting on this passage, says: "Why . . . [God] chose Israel rather than any other people, we do not know."1 Well, I think we do! The text has just told us! The reason is that God loved them!
Allan Richardson (the theologian in question) was struggling, I believe, with the apparent bias of the text, perhaps finding the reason Moses supplied for God's choice of Israel inadequate. And he is not alone. Instinc-tively we expect something else-something more logical, more rational, more politically correct.
But here's the astonishing thing: From God's perspective, the reason given in the passage is sufficient. As Richardson himself goes on to say a little later: "It was an act of pure grace."2
The passage can easily be misunderstood, however, leading to horrible distortions of God's motive and character. The seemingly arbitrary choice of Israel was not a sign of some cosmic divine partiality in favor of a single people. On the contrary, that selection was precisely to benefit the rest of the world. And as Richardson himself says a little later in his article: "[God] chose Israel for salvation, certainly, but also to be the bearer of salvation to the world," a task, incidentally, that "involved a good deal of suffering."3 God's intention was that Israel would become the flesh-and-blood conduits of His grace to the entire planet (see Gen. 22:18).
Unless we understand it this way, the Bible becomes the most jingoistic document on the planet, deserving to be rejected by Gentiles everywhere.
God Is Not Capricious
Just about a year ago I had the opportunity (with several Adventist colleagues) to sit down with a group of theological leaders of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, in conversation over the doctrinal positions of our respective churches. As we came to their position on grace and salvation, I had the sense (listening to them and watching their body language) that many contemporary thinkers of that communion are uneasy about their church's historical stance vis-à-vis the teaching known as "double predestination" (the belief that God ordains some to eternal life and others to eternal damnation).
But not all are. In his 1,264-page Systematic Theology,4 Wayne Grudem, professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in Deerfield, Illinois, takes a section to respond to objections raised against this teaching, citing two biblical passages commonly used.5 In the first (1 Tim. 2:4) Paul writes about a God "who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (Grudem's rendition). In the second Peter explains that God does not wish "that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9, Grudem's rendition).
The two statements are as close to watertight as possible. But Grudem manages to find a way around them. "One common solution to this question (from the Reformed perspective advocated in this book)," he says, "is that these verses speak of God's revealed will (telling us what we should do), not His hidden will (His eternal plans for what will happen). The verses simply tell us that God invites and commands every person to repent and come to Christ for salvation, but they do not tell us anything about God's secret decrees regarding who will be saved."6
"God's secret decrees regarding who will be saved"! The idea has got to be among the most egregious teachings ever perpetrated in the name of God. In a manner of speaking, it attributes criminal motives to the Almighty. Against all such exclusivist interpretations of grace the apostle John hurls the the Magna Carta of our salvation: God "gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
No, salvation's not just for some. It's for everyone.
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1 "Grace," Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Allan Richardson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid. (Italics supplied.)
4 Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
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Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.
