Predestination And Free-Will

Sheep Versus Goats

 
One point that can help us to understand this matter of “who accepts whom” has to do with Bible references to sheep and goats. Here are some related verses: “And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world … Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:32-34,41).
 
Was the kingdom prepared for the goats? Not according to scripture.
 

Matthew 10:5 – “These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: 6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

 
Note that lost sheep become found sheep but goats do not become sheep. Also, lost sheep do not find themselves nor is there ever any mention of them seeking the shepherd, but there is mention of them going astray and going their own way:
 

Isaiah 53:6 – “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

 
Notice that the words “us all” refer back to the sheep, God’s elect, as confirmed just two verses later in the same chapter of Isaiah, by the use of the term “my people”:
 

Isaiah 53:8 – “He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.”

 
Note also how it is the shepherd who seeks the sheep and not the other way around:
 

Matthew 18:12 – “How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?”

 
Summary: This article is a section of a much larger article on the Bible doctrines of Election and Predestination called “Who accepts Whom?“. You are urged to check out that larger article for many other thought provoking questions pertaining these “Doctrines of Grace”. — RM Kane