What did the First Christians believe about predestination? Did the First Christians believe that a person’s life is completely mapped out before they are born? Did they believe that one person is born destined to be saved, while another is born destined to be lost? I emphasize that I am talking, not about present-day belief, but the belief of the First Christians.

It is a fact that much Christian belief today differs from what the First Christians believed. Times change, circumstances change, and so does religious practice—maybe for the better, or maybe not. So what did the First Christians believe about predestination?

The question was prompted by an email from a listener in Des Moines, Iowa. She had heard from her brother that the Lord has chosen who will be saved, but then of necessity it follows that he has chosen who will not be. We know that there is a wide streak of Protestant thought that believes in predestination at some level, and we assume that they came by this belief from Scripture.

That being the case, we should be able to find it readily enough. But before I start examining proof texts, we need to think about this for a moment with this everyday illustration…

Why on earth would anyone be happy about being in trouble? Why would you take satisfaction, even pride, in severe affliction? You read people in the Bible who talk this way a lot, but does it make any sense to you? Wouldn’t you be just as happy to be out of trouble?

Now every Christian has heard all about being justified by faith, about peace with God, and that faith gives us access to the grace of God which is our salvation. You may even have heard a lot about enduring tribulation, why bad things happen to good people, suffering with Christ.

But the odds are, you still don’t feel you understand it very well. In Romans 5, Paul says two very important things here that are closely related and not well-understood. He said we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and we glory in tribulations also.

What on earth did he mean? How can we hope for the glory of God? And why should we glory in tribulations?

The Christian faith is constantly at war with itself over questions of grace versus obedience. There is nothing new in this, because the discussion was going on right from the start.

I think the problem comes about because once you start talking about obedience you have to ask, Obedience to what? The logical answer is the Law. And once the Law enters the picture, legalism is not very far behind. And if the letters of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament seem a little confusing on this point, there is a reason for it. We are reading someone else’s mail, and there is a distinction in Paul’s letters that is lost on many modern readers. It is the distinction between the Law and legalism.

Legalism is, in simple terms, the doctrine of justification by works of the Law rather than by faith. But it is more than that. It is a view of the Law as master, rather than teacher. It is an error most Jews would not have made; but Gentiles, who thought in Roman terms of government, might well have made that error. Let's see how Paul explains these concepts in his epistle to the Romans, chapter 4.

I would have to conclude that there was a lot of tension between some of the Jews and Gentiles in the early Christian church. Paul is at such pains to chastise both Jew and Gentile equally in the early chapters of the book of Romans that there must have been some politics at work.

There had been no apostle at Rome by the time this letter was written, no central figure around whom they could rally, and it is likely that the five or more small house churches in Rome were at least a little divided.

Never having been to Rome, Paul has to lay some groundwork for his gospel.

There’s a lot of fatuous nonsense out there today masquerading as serious theology. It happens because of the doctrinal and theological disputes going on between sects and churches. In the discussion of proof texts and disputed passages, how much human reasoning is proper?

Now, when I bring up a common-sense approach in a theological discussion, someone might want to say, Hey, you're just trying to use human reasoning. To which I would reply, Thanks, it's the only kind God gave me.

Here’s a new insight into theological study: It is okay to bring common sense to the table when discussing theology. In Romans, Paul shows that was God’s intent from creation.

I used to be a teenager and, although it was a long time ago, I still remember some of the questions about the Bible that troubled me back then. Young people ask a lot of questions that their elders are embarrassed to ask and that somehow never get answered. Faith survives, sometimes, but it often gets badly bruised along the way. I remember as a teenager wondering about some of the stuff I heard from the pulpit and in Sunday school.

For example: Why would God give Man a set of laws he cannot possibly observe, and then punish him for not observing them? Yes, I know, by grace are you saved, but if you think about it long enough you will realize that doesn't answer the question. Even my parents didn't punish me for not doing something I couldn't do. If they gave me a rule and I broke it, at least it was a rule I could have kept if I tried. And the punishment fit the crime. They weren't cruel to me. The worst I ever got was a few swats on the behind. I survived.

But my question about God remained: Why would God give Man a set of laws he cannot possibly observe, and then punish him for not observing them? I don't remember when the answer occurred to me, but I came to realize that my question made an assumption. The assumption was that the law was arbitrary. That is to say that the law depended on the individual discretion of the judge; in this case, God.

There were, in fact, two assumptions. One, that the law was arbitrary and could have been otherwise. (That follows naturally from the assumption that the law could have been set aside.) Two, that the enforcement of the law depends on a sovereign act of God. In other words, God can let me off or punish me. If he doesn't, then I got away with it. But what if my assumptions were wrong? If they are, then there are two conclusions that might follow...

Is there any English-speaking person in the world who hasn’t heard of the Garden of Eden? That’s the garden that God planted, and the presumption is that the garden was fabulously beautiful and rich in every beautiful and fruitful plant.

I think a lot of people assume that Adam and Eve didn’t have to turn a finger. Just eat the fruit of the trees…make love. One thing I don’t think we have thought about very much: What would they do when their bellies were full and they had made love? Talk? What did they have to talk about—and more important to modern man, who did they have to talk about? No one. So allow me to call your attention a little noticed part of the story:

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became four heads. […] And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

The little secret about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is that they were going to have to work this garden. It was a two-fold task, as any gardener knows. They had to work continually to improve and preserve it. Have you ever wondered what happened to the Garden of Eden once Adam and Eve were cast out of it? The same thing that happens to your garden when you neglect it—it went to rack and ruin. It returned to a state of nature. The iron Law of Entropy did its awful work. As we’ll see, many generations ago a man named Paul wrote to some scattered Christian churches in Rome, perhaps with this in mind.

When you are reading someone else’s mail, it’s really easy to get confused. You don’t know the players, the history of the arguments, the attitudes, or the story behind the punch lines.

When we read the Apostle Paul’s letters in the Bible, we are not only reading a letter written to someone else, it was written 2000 years ago in another language to another culture. But in spite of everything, Paul’s message still comes through clear enough.

Today we begin a study on Paul’s long and fascinating letter to the Christians in Rome.

The Apostle Paul was steamed. He may have been a minister—gentle and kind—but don’t kid yourself, Paul got steamed. You can only take so much nitpicking, so much scratching around in your past, so much of people trying to find fault with everything you do. After a while, one’s patience begins to run a little thin.

A lot of us would like to think that Christian churches are just full of perfect people who do everything right all the time, who are very kind, and who never speak evil of one another. All I can say is: dream on. Wherever there are people, there are politics. And from the time you start to the time you are put under the ground, it is going to be a struggle.

To Paul’s credit, he knew that and was prepared to do it. But that doesn’t mean that, once and a while, you don’t go ahead and say what’s on your mind. Toward the end of this letter to the Corinthian church, it finally got to the place where Paul had to say something. We’ll find his tough conclusion beginning in chapter 11.

Looking back through 2,000 years at the apostle Paul, the man looks like a giant. He’s certainly a legend, but there’s no evidence from the New Testament that Paul was looked at that way by his contemporaries. The Gentiles, I think, were somewhat in awe of Paul. But even to them he was just a man. To the Jews, he was just one of them; they didn’t think that much of him, either. But Paul was a real man, an ordinary man. They tell us that he was very un-prepossessing in appearance. In fact, he suggests that himself in some of his letters—but we don’t really know. Some ancient sources say he was bald, and short, and bandy-legged. His physical appearance may not have carried much weight, but his letters…that’s another matter entirely.