Whosoever Wills Is the LynchPin For Many Pastors

"Whosoever wills" seems to be the lynch-pin for many pastors against the idea that God has to positively elect and raise to spiritual life dead sinners. Yet do Calvinists argue against texts that speak of "whosoever wills"? For many sermons that I have listened to over the past couple of years, it certainly seems to be the case.

I would like to know why the only apparent possible understanding of "whosoever wills" is that a person must have a free, libertarian, autonomous will? As a Calvinist, I have never said nor have I heard anyone else say that believers, who believe in Jesus Christ, do so against their will, nor have I ever taught that those who are "Irresistibly Drawn" by the Father are drawn against their wills.

I have been told several times recently that God chooses His elect by looking down the corridors of time and seeing who will choose Him. Then in the same breath, I am told that God chooses His elect based on nothing in them nor what they do. So in the end, it seems to come down to some poor understanding of the term "foreknowledge".

I have heard statements that God chooses based on His foreknowledge. I think that is fair enough, but what does that mean? This can be a tricky area for many Christians who slip up and give away their Christianity without knowing it.

Christians have confessed God's Omniscience for nearly 2000 years. We must deal with the question of the basis of God's knowledge. If we do not, then the Open-theists (which many pastor friends of mine know nothing about, sadly) will continue to come into our seminaries and Christian colleges as being a legitimate viewpoint. It is not.

God's knowledge is not based on His ability to see the future, but is based in His Eternal Decree. If it is anything else, why is God ever glorified? If God is not in absolute control of history, how can we praise God for what He has supposedly done, if in fact, He has not done it! Are we going to argue that things accidentally worked out the way God wanted it too?!

If you are a Christian believer, you are so not because God saw the future and saw you choosing Him. Instead God chose you for His purpose and His will to the glory of His grace. If it is within man in any sense, then by definition God does not receive all of the glory.

There are other ways to look at this question, but they all come to the same conclusion. Any consistent Biblical view of the will of man must understand that the man who wills to come to Christ, does so by the Sovereign Act and Free Sovereign Grace of God.

Soli Deo Gloria