One gets the impression that God is a Potter who takes a lump of clay. From the same lump he makes one piece of pottery for honorable use and another for dishonorable use.

The Potter chose Moses for honorable use and Pharaoh for dishonorable use according to the Potter's desire, not because either Moses or Pharaoh deserved their destiny.

They both came from the same piece of clay!

That God would make such seemingly arbitrary decisions concerning people may seem to us grossly unjust. Therefore the final question becomes: Does God have the right to give one person a desire for righteousness and harden the heart of another individual? Does God actually have the right to do this apart from the "innate" goodness of the individual? Does God maintain His own righteousness when so doing?

If He does, then our response must be: "His ways are so high above us that we are unable to judge the righteousness of them."

If God does not have this right, then we ultimately are declaring we are saved by the righteousness of our personality and not by sovereign choice, and that the righteousness of our personality belongs to us somehow and was not given to us by the Lord.

Paul's writings suggest God indeed does have the right to make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor according to His own will. Humanistic reasoning would never agree to this.

If we accept the first position, that God does with people as He will, we agree then that we have no basis for boasting before God. He works in us to will and to act according to His good pleasure.

We understand something else from this discussion. We see what a solid foundation Christians have when they maintain our salvation is a sovereign intervention of God in our life and does not depend on our works.

Yet it is the conclusion drawn from this solid scriptural position that has wrought moral destruction in the Christian churches. The prevailing conclusion is that even if we Christians do not serve God as we should we cannot possibly jeopardize our salvation, our standing in God's sight. One can perceive how such a conclusion could be reached, given Paul's attitude toward God's sovereign intervention in our lives. The problem is, there are other passages of Scripture that absolutely prevent this conclusion.

So now we pass from sovereign Divine intervention to human activation. How important actually is our response to our Divine calling? Can we change that which has been sovereignly imposed? Can we be called of God and then lose our place in the Kingdom of God?

Current Christian teaching often answers no, we cannot. Salvation is a Divine intervention in our life, it is maintained; and although we should, to show our gratitude, make an attempt to live righteously, to believe our efforts really affect that which has been given from God is an affront to the cross of Christ.

It is my point of view that this is not true. Although our calling as saints is a sovereign intervention in our life, we have to activate our calling to make it valid. I think the Scripture teaches that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling—fear that we shall not be found worthy of the Kingdom of God.

To be continued.