“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:” (Romans 9:22)
“Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” (Romans 9:18)
“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” (1st John 4:8)
The wrath of God abides on the wicked, not His love, just because the rain falls on the just and the unjust does not change the fact that His wrath abides on the wicked, it does not change the fact that if they die in their sins that He is going to cast them into the Lake of Fire at the end of the Millennial Period. They will not be loved then.
The Almighty is Sovereign over all His creation, all belongs to Him and He will do with it as He pleases. All that is created, including your soul, is at His disposal to do with as He desires, the Potter does not listen to the clay. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:” (Romans 3:10)
I pose this question to you today, is it possible for the wicked to be saved? Were you wicked before the Father called you to the Son and you were born-again, or were you one of the lost? “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” (Eph. 1:4)
You were not here before that time, and to say that an action you took before you were born is ridiculous to say the least, to say that the Most High “looked forward into time” to see your action of belief on the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ makes Matthew 22:14 redundant. “For many are called, but few are chosen.” If you were chosen because you believed, then God is not Sovereign, if His wrath abides on the wicked, then it does not abide on the lost, if there are vessels fitted for wrath by the master Potter then those vessels had no choice because they were not chosen before the foundation of the world.
The Living God knew what Satan would do before He created him, He knew what Judas Iscariot would do, the question is this then, did they do so of their own free will, or were they appointed by the Almighty to that path?
I would ponder this question deeply if I were you, will all the lost be found and all the wicked remain wicked?
If those angels who rebelled against the Lord can never return to their first estate, can those who have clearly seen the invisible things of God, as all mankind has, go from the state of being wicked to one of salvation? Were the lost, those chosen before the foundation of the world, ever wicked? Can those swine that we are not to cast pearls before be saved?
The verse that should enter into your mind is this, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2nd Peter 3:9) It opens the door to the notion of man’s free will in deciding who he will serve, yet those vessels are still fitted for wrath, and those for mercy still exist.
“Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” (John 15:16)
“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:12)
From a man long ago I read these words, a man much wiser than myself, “The free will of man and the Sovereignty of God cannot be reconciled in the mind of man.”
Did Judas Iscariot have a choice, or was he appointed to a particular path? If the former is true, then he deserves his place he is at, if not, then God is not justified in His actions in our minds. “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” (Rev. 4:11)
Contemplate that word sovereign and the only One it applies to, and always in great humility.
