ordo salutis

John Piper in Bloodlines on ordo salutis:

Acts 13:48 puts it like this after Paul’s sermon in Antioch of Pisidia: “When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” Faith does not come first, and then God’s decision to ordain to life. It’s the other way around. First comes God’s choice, and that determines who will believe. “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”

First comes God’s sovereign “purpose of election,” as Paul says in Romans 9:11; then comes faith. Faith and repentance are a gift (Eph. 2:8; 2 Tim. 2:25). Therefore, the condition of who gets the gift cannot be that one has the gift already. God chooses for reasons that are wise and mysterious and shattering to human self-exaltation. So the “purpose of election” is not conditional on faith or any other human decision or feeling or behavior or distinctive. It is unconditional. God is free and unconstrained by anything outside his own will when he elects his people.

He makes his appointments before we were “born and had done nothing either good or bad” (Rom. 9:11), so that “it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Rom. 9:16). Thus Paul says of his own salvation and calling, “He . . . set me apart before I was born, and . . . called me by his grace” (Gal. 1:15).