Chosen by God (R.C. Sproul)

 

Outline of Chosen by God — R. C. Sproul

1. The Struggle

• The difficulty Christians experience with predestination
• The apparent tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility
• Why predestination is often resisted emotionally as well as intellectually
• The importance of allowing Scripture to shape theological conclusions

2. Predestination and the Sovereignty of God

• God's absolute sovereignty
• Predestination as a biblical doctrine
• God's authority over salvation and human history
• The distinction between God's sovereignty and fatalism
• Why God's sovereignty does not make human actions meaningless

3. Predestination and Free Will

• Defining “free will”
• Human freedom and moral responsibility
• The distinction between freedom of choice and freedom from moral bondage
• The effects of sin upon the human will
• God's sovereignty and human decisions
• The relationship between divine predestination and human responsibility

4. Adam's Fall and Mine

• The Fall and original sin
• Adam's representative role
• Humanity's inherited corruption
• The consequences of Adam's disobedience
• Human inability apart from divine grace

5. Spiritual Death and Spiritual Life: Rebirth and Faith

• Spiritual death
• Regeneration
• Faith and repentance
• The new birth
• The relationship between regeneration and faith
• God's initiative in salvation

6. Foreknowledge and Predestination

• What Scripture means by “foreknowledge”
• Foreknowledge versus mere intellectual awareness of future events
• God's eternal purpose
• Election and divine initiative
• The relationship between God's knowledge and God's decree

7. Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Is Predestination Double?

• The difficult question of election and reprobation
• Positive and negative aspects of predestination
• God's justice
• Romans 9 and the sovereignty of God
• The problem of why some are saved while others remain in unbelief

8. Can We Know That We Are Saved?

• Assurance of salvation
• Perseverance
• The evidence of genuine faith
• God's preserving grace
• The believer's confidence in God's promises

9. Questions and Objections Concerning Predestination

• Common objections to predestination
• Evangelism and predestination
• Prayer and divine sovereignty
• Human responsibility
• God's justice and mercy
• The mystery that remains when finite human understanding encounters divine sovereignty

Questions (Chapter 3)

Chapter 3: “Predestination and Free Will”

Chapter 3 is arguably one of the most important chapters in the book because Sproul moves from the abstract doctrine of predestination to the more personal question: What does it mean for human beings to be free?

His basic argument is that the question cannot be answered simply by asking whether people make choices. They plainly do. The deeper question is whether fallen human beings possess the moral ability to choose God apart from God's transforming grace.

Sproul therefore distinguishes human volition from the stronger philosophical concept of an absolutely autonomous “free will.” His discussion seeks to hold together two propositions that Christians frequently regard as contradictory:

1. God is sovereign over salvation.
2. Human beings are genuinely responsible for their choices.

The tension between those propositions is central to Reformed theology. Sproul's approach is not to eliminate either side but to argue that the apparent contradiction arises partly from an inadequate definition of human freedom.

Five Challenging Questions Arising from Chapter 3

1. If God sovereignly determines the ultimate outcome of salvation, in what meaningful sense can a person's decision to believe or reject Christ be called “free”?

This question presses directly into the heart of Sproul's argument.

If God ultimately determines who will be saved, yet the individual freely believes, what exactly does freedom mean? Is freedom the ability to choose between genuinely available alternatives, or is it the ability to act according to one's own desires without external coercion?

Further question:
If God changes a person's desires so that the person willingly chooses Christ, is that person more free - or less free?

2. Can human beings be morally responsible for choices they were unable, because of their fallen nature, to make differently?

Sproul's understanding of fallen humanity raises a profound philosophical and theological issue.

Suppose the unregenerate person is genuinely unable to love God or embrace Christ apart from grace. If that inability is inherited through Adam and ultimately lies beyond the individual's control, why is the individual morally culpable?

This forces us to examine the relationship between ability, desire, responsibility, and culpability.

Further question:
Is it fair to hold someone responsible for what he cannot do, if his inability is itself the consequence of a condition he did not personally choose?

3. If regeneration precedes faith, can faith properly be described as a human response?

Sproul's position raises an important question about the order of salvation.

If God must first regenerate the sinner before the sinner can exercise saving faith, then (QED) faith is not the cause of regeneration but its consequence.

That raises a deeper question:

What remains of human agency in salvation if the decisive change occurs within us before we are capable of responding positively to God?

And conversely, if faith precedes regeneration, does that give the fallen human will a capacity that Sproul believes Scripture denies?

4. Does divine sovereignty actually threaten human freedom - or does it challenge our definition of freedom?

This may be the most philosophically interesting question in the chapter.

Much of the debate depends upon what we mean by free will. If freedom means autonomous self-determination, God's sovereignty appears to threaten it.

But if freedom means acting voluntarily according to one's desires without external coercion, divine sovereignty may not eliminate freedom at all.

The difficult question becomes:

Can a choice be genuinely free if God eternally knew, ordained, and sovereignly governs the circumstances and desires that produced it?

This question moves the discussion beyond Calvinism versus Arminianism into the deeper philosophical problem of compatibilism versus libertarian freedom.

5. If God's sovereign grace is ultimately responsible for why one person believes while another does not, what prevents election from becoming a reason for pride—or despair?

This question moves from theology into Christian spirituality.

If salvation is ultimately God's gracious choice rather than the decisive achievement of human free will, the believer has no basis for boasting.

But another question immediately follows:

What happens pastorally to the person who sincerely wants to believe but fears that he or she may not be among the elect?

Sproul's theology intends election to magnify grace and produce humility and assurance. Yet the doctrine can also generate profound anxiety if detached from the biblical invitations to repent, believe, and come to Christ.

The pastoral challenge is therefore: How can unconditional election be taught in a way that produces humility rather than pride, assurance rather than anxiety, and evangelistic urgency rather than passivity?

A Deeper Question for Group Discussion

If you are using Chapter 3 for a serious Bible study or theological discussion, I would add this overarching question:

Is God's sovereignty and human freedom ultimately a contradiction to be solved, a mystery to be accepted, or a relationship that requires us to redefine what we mean by “freedom”?

That question gets to the heart of Sproul's project. His broader argument is that Scripture may present realities that exceed our ability to completely reconcile them philosophically, while still insisting that they are not logically contradictory. The book's later chapters develop the implications for original sin, regeneration, foreknowledge, election, reprobation, and assurance.