LIVE DISCUSSION: "The Potter, The Clay & Reprobation" (Part 4/5)

The moment you assume grace must be “fair,” Romans 9 starts sounding offensive. We slow down and read Paul’s potter and clay argument the way it’s written: one lump of humanity, no special quality in the clay, and a God whose mercy is free because it isn’t owed. That leads straight into the toughest questions Christians ask about election, reprobation, and whether God is unjust.

We also unpack predestination without turning it into a cold math problem. The key move is foreknowledge: not bare awareness of future facts, but God’s forelove for his people. From that angle, predestination belongs to the beloved in Christ, and “double predestination” collapses under Paul’s own distinction between those “fitted for destruction” and those “prepared beforehand for glory.” Along the way we bring it down to earth with a debt-forgiveness analogy that exposes why forgiving some does not create an obligation to forgive all.

Then we zoom out to the story of salvation itself. Jesus is not Plan B, the crucifixion reveals real human blindness, and the Barabbas scene shows how pardon can be real even when the guilty go free and the innocent is condemned. If you’ve wrestled with God’s sovereignty, grace, mercy, justice, and what it means to be “condemned already” apart from Christ, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves theology, and leave a review with the question you’re still wrestling with.

Transcript

Asymmetry In Election And Reprobation

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Is is that on both sides, if you cut this this item in half, if both sides are the exact are exactly the same. So in this case, when it comes to reprobation and election, the doctrine that combines both of these elements is asymmetrical. It is not the same on both sides. The elect and the reprobate are very different. You see what I mean? They're not the same. They're very different. The treatment of the individuals characterized under election and the individuals characterized under reprobation, the handling is different. Now, in Romans 9, you see one of the most dominant biblical expressions of it when Paul and when Paul talked about this in Romans 9, 20 through 23. And he talks about how God is like a potter who forms one vessel for honor and another vessel for dishonor, and that he does so according to his own will. But notice it is not based on anything in the clay. God making one vessel for honor or another vessel for dishonor has nothing to do with the clay itself. We are the clay. Man, men, men and women, we are the clay. So when God separates mankind into these classifications of honor and dishonor, the choices that God made in this selection, selective process, it has nothing to do with the clay. The clay is the same. Whether vessel of honor or dishonor, the substance, the stuff that we are all, humanity, that we are all made of, is all the same. There is no distinction in us, apart from the sovereign work of God for his redemptive purposes in our uh purchase and our redemption by Christ. So the clay has no claim on the potter whatsoever, and the difference between the vessels arises completely, absolutely, and entirely from the purpose of the potter himself. Has nothing to do with the clay. Nothing to do with the clay. The clay is not confided in, the clay is not discussed with.

Predestination And Foreknowledge As Love

SPEAKER_00 4:20

But predestination, meaning that before anything was destined or man had come and done anything, um, that we we were chosen in him before. And then when man came and fell, they were destined to hell and destruction. But because he had already previously uh predestined us in him before he had created or done any of this, that's why it could be called predestination, correct?

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Right. See, predestination has to be understood in the context of the believer. The, and this is what this is what I'm gonna get into later, but I want to I want to address it now because you're talking about it now. Those who are predestined are those who were foreknown. If you remember the study that we did on the foreknowledge of God, you will understand that foreknowledge doesn't mean he knew you beforehand in a sense of he just acknowledges your existence. But it's talking about his love for you, his love for you beforehand, for no, to for love. And what this is saying is that those who were predestined, their predestination was predicated, if you want to put it in an ordered type of format, their predestination was predicated upon God's for love of them, which is why predestination cannot be double predestination when it comes to the reprobate. You follow what I'm saying? Because the reprobate, they are not those who are loved by God. Not in a sense as those who are the elect. And so when Christ says, Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. Those people who he never knew cannot be said to be to have been predestined to anything, whether it be life or death, because foreknowledge has to do with God's love for you beforehand, which is what warranted your predestination. Before the foundation of the world, you were chosen to be in faith to Christ and to trust Christ. So there is no, so double predestination is a figment of somebody's imagination because they refuse to deal with the idea that what is being conveyed here, that there are reprobate men who are vessels of dishonor fitted to destruction. Fitted to destruction. And there are those who are the saved who are who were prepared beforehand for glory. Notice the difference. Paul says two different things. He says that the reprobate is fitted for destruction, but the righteous was prepared for glory from beforehand. So what essentially is happening, sister, is this. All who believe. Not one. Think about that for a second and see what that means. Because it's heavy when you understand it. And it should strike awe and fear in the souls of the believer and the unrighteous person alike. And to be thankful that the Lord Jesus Christ died and he had me. He had my name inscribed on one of those nails, along with all of you. We were in him before the foundation of the world. And the clay has no claim on the potter. The potter does whatever he wants to do. And whatever difference that there is between one vessel and another, that difference is made by God Himself and is not made by the clay. Brother Penn, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Because I want you guys to think, just I'm going to give the example of the crucifixion on the cross. Who do you think those men who beat our Lord and Savior were? Who nailed him to the cross? Who unjustly tried him, if you even call it a trial? The farce of a false trial, right? The scriptures declare that if they had known he was the Lord of glory, they would have never crucified him. No one would have dared. Right? Yep. But it's only for their blindness that we we see. Right?

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Yep.

Embodying Christlike Love In Practice

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Absolutely, Brother Pat.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Transformation. Welcome. Would you like to add anything?

SPEAKER_04 11:17

Hi, everybody.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Hey, sister.

SPEAKER_04 11:21

Hi, good to it. It's my first time here, and just hearing your word is pretty, pretty amazing, very uh, very fulfilling to the soul. And I just yeah, I just want to share, um, just from my heart, like just want to share um that we just have to embody uh Yeshua, Jesus' love in our heart. Embody that love, that unconditional love, the Holy Spirit. And uh I was hearing you earlier that you were saying like we're just the clay, like the flesh is just the clay, and that is so true. So like um sometimes our flesh will cry, will scream, it's a little stubborn sometimes, but sometimes it's just like you know what, like I'm not gonna hold and grip onto these things, it's all about like letting it go, releasing it, detaching it, removing it, and then just let God uh the Holy Spirit, your soul, take control of everything else in your flesh, because like that's who He really is that controls the flesh. And I have tried this myself and it just works wonderfully.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

That's right, so that's right. You got a great voice. You need to be one working in one of them, one of those hospitality places where they speak overall, you know, softly and you know, you get a great voice.

SPEAKER_04 12:52

I just it's just um just trying to speak with love and in the heart, you know. It's not easy to be um to have this eye. Because sometimes when people hear this voice or this kindness or this humbleness or just love, sometimes like people are not used to it and they kind of take it like weakness or like oh, like she's too nice, she's too good, right? But there's also power behind it too. It's also healing in in so many ways.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Absolutely, sister. Well, thanks for coming up, and I'm glad you can hang around here as long as you like. So just hang out as long as you want, and uh hopefully you can make some more contributions to the conversation. So thanks for coming up and and thank you for the words. It's good.

SPEAKER_04 13:37

Thank you, thank you for allowing me sharing the words.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

So, Paul, again in Romans 9, 23-23, he's he specifies, as I said earlier, that there were some vessels, and I've said it over and over again, that were prepared unto destruction.

Condemned Already And Human Responsibility

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Um, but here's the thing we need to understand. Even though they were prepared for destruction, and this is where these folks who talk about double predestination come in. But it's not this, because what's happening is this also assumes by these folks injustice. God is not unjust because he prepares those who are already deserving of condemnation, condemnation. So here's here's what I mean. Let me see if I can put this in simpler terms. If you have a if you have somebody who owes you, who has a bank, and they as a bank, they lend out money. And they have a hundred people who couldn't pay what they owed. But they decided, well, we're going to um we're going to forgive the debt of 10 of these people, but the other 90 people, we're going to call in um their debt. Now, if they decide to forgive 10% of the people who owe a debt, that doesn't absolve the other ones who have a debt from their debt. Again, it goes back to what I was saying about symmetry and asymmetry. Just because they forgive the debt of some doesn't mean that those whose debt who owe a debt aren't forgiven of their debt, that they have a claim on the bank. They can't go to the bank and say, you know what? You can't, it's not fair, it is not just of you to not require what these 10 people owe and make this other 90% of us still pay. If you're gonna forgive them, you have to forgive our debt as well. That's not true, that is not true, especially when it comes to the Lord. He decides that you are going to stand responsible for your sin. If he gives you somebody else grace and mercy, and puts their sin on his son, and if the son puts his righteousness on some of us, those who he doesn't do that for are in no position to complain. This is why Paul says in Romans 9 20, this is why he says, Nay, but oh man, who are you to reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me this way? This is what Paul is arguing. If he doesn't save this person or this person or this group of people, they have no grounds to complain to God, the potter, because they are still being held responsible for their sin, even though he imparts grace and gives mercy and compassion of his own free will, if you want to use that language, to whomsoever he will. And this is what he means when he says that he can do whatever he pleases with his creation, whatever he wants. And we who believe should be thankful and have the utmost eternal gratitude for such a savior as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is. And this just the force of this illustration, it emphasizes that God has this absolute sovereignty that he has, and it denies that the creature has any standing to demand equal treatment. No person who is condemned of their sin has any claim or argument that they can make to the potter that they deserve equal treatment with the grace that was given to those who were saved. And so you have this other this other idea that Mariah was brought up when you talk, we start dealing with the masses of people, because the masses of people, we're all one lump of failed, fallen humanity. We all of us are. Humanity is viewed as a single condemned mass. All of us. Yet God chooses to save some from that condemnation that all of us deserve. But he leaves others to stand in their own just ruined. You can't be a Christian and say that you deserve condemnation and then turn around and get mad at God after giving you salvation and say, Well, if you gave it to me, then you must give it to this person as well. And that person and this person, my mother, my child, my son, my daughter, my brother, my sister. What we need to understand is that God does not make men wicked. Rather, finding all in Adam already ruined and undone, he mercifully rescues some and he leaves others to undergo dealing with their debt owed to God and holds them accountable and responsible for their sin. We need to understand and believe that God is under no obligation to save any. And if he is under no obligation to save any, we cannot condemn God and speak ill of him because he chooses to show mercy to some. If none deserve it, and all deserve to be damned, nobody should complain because the damned get what they deserve. They are answering for their sin. But every one of us who is saved, we answer for our sin, not in that we are actively obedient to God's law, but because we trust that the obedience that Christ acquired for us was imputed to our account, and God rendered that acceptable. And he also rationalized, he also justifies us and reconciles us to himself by this trust in his son. So all sin is being dealt with one way or the other. All sin is being dealt with. So we the believers, we receive the justice due to our sin. We receive it, we received it in Christ. Those who were not given to Christ to redeem are going to be responsible for their own sin. And most of them, especially today, especially in 21st century America, they know who Christ is. They've heard, they've been preached to, they heard these things. God does not make anybody wicked by not saving them, he simply leaves them in their condition to stand before him the way all men must. But because he chose to have mercy and to pardon some. Men have a problem with that. And yet, here in America, in our very own constitution, presidents are allowed to pardon guilty people. We don't complain. That's part of his presidential powers. We grant and approve acceptable pardon powers by a man in our government. But we reject it, we reject it when it comes to God, and we believe that, well, if you're gonna pardon one, you gotta pardon all. Again, election and retro and reprobation, they are not symmetrical. Election is this. Reprobation is leaving us in ruin. He leaves men in ruin. He leaves them in ruin. Christ himself, when he talked, when he when he in John 3, he tells us that those who don't come to him in faith, they are condemned already. His words, not mine, if you reject the son, you are condemned already. John 3 18, Sister May put on the screen. Condemned already. So we can't be embracing this idea of double predestination. Because if you're condemned already, there's nothing for you to be predestined to other than condemnation, which God has promised to leave on all of those who reject his son. And so this ends up um reframing the question, so to speak. But what we need to understand is that no one deserves salvation. No one deserves salvation. No person, the whole lump of clay deserves condemnation. So reprobation is not injustice, it is the non-deliverance from the deserved and just condemnation. In other words, when it comes to those who perish ultimately, all God had to do was nothing. I know these things are very bitter pills for some people to swallow, especially people who say they're Christians. But we need to tell people the truth about the matter. We're being saved from our sin, and we're being saved from the consequences of our sin. And that salvation that we got, whereby we are saved, we didn't earn, we didn't ask for, we weren't seeking for it. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world to believe. And this is why there's no point in all of us getting in an uproar because there's so many people in the Christian community who want to fight and argue about this fact. Don't argue with them. They can't understand because the greater part of them are not Christians. But a believer, a true believer, is going to understand these things.

Jesus Is Plan A

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Brother Penn, go ahead. This is something that we need to meditate on. For believers, this is because I was raised the way 90% of us were all taught a story. If you were raised in America in the 20th century, this is what you were taught about how to interpret the Bible. The Bible is the story of a creation gone wrong, and the gospel is trying is God trying to fix his boo-boo, right? That that's basically this some version of that is really what religion is saying, right, Jonathan? Yep. And I'm here to tell you that um Jesus has never been plan B. This creation was made for him, by him and through him, but for him. He was always plan A. So what is Adam? I'm gonna tell you what Adam is. Adam is for reprobation, and so that those of us who can live must die first in Adam, so that we can be born again into a new creation in Christ. Jesus is no plan B. He is plan A. And Adam and Jesus are not equals. One is much greater than the other.

Mercy Is Free Not Owed

Barabbas And The Released Prisoner

SPEAKER_03 27:53

Amen. Amen. I mean, you know, it's it's so true. It's so true. And we can go on with this illustration. Like I already gave you one of like um uh that was that was very good, brother Pat. Really, really good. So I gave you uh, you know, one other comparison with creditors and and and and those who we're in you're in you're in debt to. And I was making the point that that just because a creditor forgives a debt on this on this with for this person, these people, doesn't necessarily mean that he is forced to not have to exact payment from those others whose debt was not forgiven. But so we really need to understand how this really works. Because if you don't, then you don't understand mercy. You don't understand grace. Because we all know when we give lip service to it that it is unmerited favor. So if it is unmerited favor and we accept that, then we should not have a problem with a person standing before God, having a debt to be paid, which is the wages of sin, we cannot say that because God saved us, that he is now under an obligation to not exact wages from those to whom he is not extending mercy. And it's it's difficult. So just because if just because a creditor forgives one person who's in debt and exacts payment from the others, it doesn't mean that the creditor did anything wrong. He didn't. God is the creditor, he can forgive whatever amount of debt he wants to, assuming that the criteria or his requirements are met. And the only one that can meet the requirement that God expects from man is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He's the only one that can fix that problem. So if anyone who is left holding the bag to pay for their own sin, that can only happen if God has ordained that that person not be pardoned, that that person be not redeemed. He's under no obligation. The potter can do whatsoever he wants with the lump of clay. This is the point that I'm trying to make and get and get make sure people understand. Mercy that is shown to some does not create in and of itself an obligation on the part of God to show mercy to all. He doesn't. This is why the Christian needs to be thankful. This is what intensifies, hopefully, our humility. It should intensify our humility. And this highlights this idea of comparing justice with mercy. Mercy is free, not owed. He does not owe anyone mercy. If we understand that, it makes our understanding of salvation much more pronounced, much more articulate in our understanding. A king can have many condemned criminals. And yet he can choose to pardon some and leave others to have to go to undergo the execution. But like I said, this about our own president. An American president can pardon as many people as he wants. Do we allow? Do we not allow for God what we allow and grant for our president? God can do whatever he wants. If you remember, the Romans, when Christ was being indicted, they tried to find a way to let Christ go. They didn't see any guilt on the part of our Savior. So what did they say? We have a law. And that law permits that during this particular time of feasting, the Passover time, we are having in our law to be able to release one of our prisoners. He assumed that the Jews would say, okay, let Christ go. This was when it got even more heated for the Jews who wanted to see Christ. Christ. But they let they were willing, they but they they said, give us Barabbas. Barabbas. Now they everybody knew that they had the right to release one prisoner who could go. Barabbas was the one who was released. Was he innocent? No.