ABOUT PREDESTINATION
Elder J. R. Respess (deceased)
What one predestinates, he of course devises means to accomplish. If we predestinate to build a house, we count up the cost; we gather together the material and we build it; it is the result of our predestination. See, whom God predestinated, them he called; that is, he worked out his predestination in them. So if we say that God predestinated sin, we are understood to say that he prompted man to sin. But we know that he did not prompt man to sin; that he could not prompt man to sin; that no man, nor even the devil himself, could sin prompted by the Holy Spirit. God prompts to righteousness, and never to sin.
No Primitive Baptist believes that God worked sin in man; it never has, in any age, been believed by the church that God in his word forbade a thing and that God in his Spirit prompted disobedience to his word. That would destroy his unity. But it is sin to violate God’s word, and hence repentance is required. God the Spirit convicts the sinner for violating the word of God; shows him his guilt. But if done by God’s prompting, there would not nor could there be any sense of guilt for it, for it would be no sin. But as the Jews said when they saw Jesus weeping at the grave of Lazarus, “Could not this man that opened the eyes of the blind have caused that this man should not have died?” And of course his death could have been prevented; but because it was not prevented, we are not therefore authorized to say that Jesus caused it; nor are we authorized to say that because God did not prevent Adam’s sin and overruled it to the good of the elect and the glory of God, that therefore he caused it. [from an article reprinted in The Collected Writings of Elder John R. Respess.]