Marc D. Carpenter #fundie outsidethecamp.org

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The doctrine of reprobation is one of the most despised doctrines of the Christian faith. It is despised by the irreligious and unconcerned, and it is despised by most who come in the name of Christianity. In spite the common notion that there is a dichotomy between "Arminians" and "Calvinists," people in both of these camps hate the true doctrine of reprobation. Some will dismiss it out of hand, while others will try to explain it away or water it down. This article, which is based on sermons this author has preached from Romans 9:11-22, will present the biblical doctrine of reprobation that exalts God and abases man.

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Why did God emphasize that He loved Jacob before Jacob had done anything good and hated Esau before Esau had done anything bad? Because He was showing that election and reprobation are both unconditional. They are not based on anything that Jacob or Esau did or did not do. Some false religionists say that God looked down through time and saw who would believe and then chose to save them, which is an utterly ridiculous and blasphemous notion. That makes salvation conditioned on what God foresaw man would do, and it would make God's choosing merely an empty gesture, since it was man who chose his own destiny, and God just affirmed it. But the truth in this passage is undeniable. God's choosing - God's election to life and reprobation to death - is completely, absolutely, totally without precondition. God did not decide to save Jacob once He found out that Jacob would be a good person or would believe. God did not decide to damn Esau once He found out that Esau would be a bad person or would not believe. God's decision was based purely on His own sovereign will and had nothing to do with the will of the sinner.

It is a given that Arminians hate the doctrine of unconditional reprobation. But it might surprise the reader that most Calvinists hate this doctrine as well. They will claim to love unconditional election, yet when it comes to reprobation, they turn into conditionalists. They say that God reprobates a person based on something in the person. They say that God reprobated Esau based on something in Esau. And who better to represent and articulate this heretical notion than the most popular Calvinist himself, Charles H. Spurgeon?

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The reader might think that anyone who professes belief in the absolute sovereignty of God would easily embrace the truth that God actively hardens people and actively causes sin. After all, a God who does not control all actions and events, including the sins of men and angels, is not God. But most who say they believe in the absolute sovereignty of God do not believe this. They will say that God is in control of everything, but not that He controls everything, and they concoct all kinds of theories in order to justify their view of their god who does not cause everything while remaining sovereign. They use high-sounding catch-phrases such as: "God withholds His restraining grace," "God withdraws His gracious influences," and "God leaves men to their natural blindness, to the hardness and unrestrained tendencies of their hearts, to the corruptions of their nature, to their own depraved wills and desires so they are free to act according to their own inclinations and the free exercise of their evil dispositions." These might sound good in Satanic seminaries and pulpits, but they have absolutely no basis in God's Word.

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