Question: What would be the point of evangelism if some people are “elect” and some are not and don’t have the free will to choose Christ? Doesn’t this make evangelism a farce?
Well may I first alter the question? In that I am convinced that Divine election is clearly taught in Scripture, I believe it would be better to ask, “Since Divine election is true, why are we told to evangelize?”
The first obvious answer to this is because God tells us to. The same Bible that teaches Divine Sovereign Election in Romans chapters 8 and 9, also gives us Romans 10, saying “how shall they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10 is in no way a contradiction to Romans 8 and 9.
The simple answer to this question is that God has ordained both the ends and the means. The ends are His elect coming to Himself in saving faith. The means is the proclamation of the Gospel.
In John 10: 16, Jesus, in speaking of His sheep amongst the Gentiles said, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”
Notice the experience of the early Apostles in Acts 13:
43 Now when the meeting of the synagogue had broken up, many of the Jews and of the God-fearing proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, were urging them to continue in the grace of God.
44 The next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord.
45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul, and were blaspheming.
46 Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.
47 “For so the Lord has commanded us, ‘I HAVE PLACED YOU AS A LIGHT FOR THE GENTILES, THAT YOU MAY BRING SALVATION TO THE END OF THE EARTH.'”
48 When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.”
Question: Who was it who believed the Gospel here?
Answer: “As many as had been appointed to eternal life.” All who had the appointment, made the appointment. The ends – the elect’s salvation; the means – the preaching of the Gospel.
Dr. James White points out the parallel between 13:46 and 13:48 – “the Jews “repudiated” the word of God (to push aside, ignore, refuse to listen to) and, by so doing, judged themselves unworthy of eternal life (a conclusion they would have rejected, of course, but this is Paul’s divine interpretation of their actions). In contrast, the Gentiles rejoiced at the word of the Lord. But the second half of the contrast is very interesting, for though our English translations tend to place the verb at the end of the clause, in Greek the verb comes first (“they believed”) and the controversial descriptive phrase comes after. Who believed? Those who had been appointed to eternal life. The number of attempts to get around the meaning of the phrase is large, but the meaning is clear: while both groups had heard the same message in the same context in the same language based upon the same Scriptural texts, it was not that one group was “better” or “more spiritual” so that they believed: no, those who believed did so because they had been (graciously) appointed to eternal life (just as Lydia later in the narrative).”
We should also note how the Lord spoke to the Apostle Paul, in the middle of an intense situation, telling him to stay in a certain city. Why was this? Well let’s read the text in Acts 18:
9 And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent;
10 for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.”
11 And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
In other words, the Lord said to Paul, “Stay here, for I have many people in this city… I have many of My sheep here that will hear My voice and follow Me as you preach in My Name.”
God ordains both the ends – His chosen sheep who will hear Christ’s voice, and the means – prayer, and the preaching of the Gospel to all. And all who are ordained to eternal life will believe.
The fact is, we don’t know who the elect are. They are not walking around the countryside with the letter “E” for Elect stamped upon their foreheads. We are therefore to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to everyone, knowing ahead of time, that only His elect will respond to the preaching of the Gospel.
Without election, evangelism would be much like a salesman trying to sell his products in a graveyard. Mankind is spiritually dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), and only through the gracious act of God in electing, predestinating, and regenerating a specific people, will anyone ever turn to Christ. As Dr. R. C. Sproul has commented, “If the final decision for the salvation of fallen sinners were left in the hands of fallen sinners, we would despair all hope that anyone would be saved.”
Again, God ordains both the ends and the means. Prayer and evangelism are vital components of the means.
A. A. Hodge once asked, “If God has eternally decreed that you should live, what is the use of your breathing? If God has eternally decreed that you should talk, what is the use of your opening your mouth? If God has eternally decreed that you should reap a crop, what is the use of your sowing the seed? If God has eternally decreed that your stomach should contain food, what is the use of your eating?” (Evangelical Theology, 92-93). Hodge answered his own questions, by saying, “In order to educate us, [God] demands that we should use the means, or go without the ends which depend upon them. There are plenty of fools who make the transcendental nature of eternity and of the relation of the eternal life of God to the time-life of man an excuse for neglecting prayer. But of all the many fools in the United States, there is not one absurd enough to make the same eternal decree an excuse for not chewing his food or for not voluntarily inflating his lungs.” (p. 93)
I think its important to point out that our prayers for unbelievers would be next to useless if God did not have the power to bring someone from death to life. Those who reject God’s sovereignty in salvation are trusting that God cannot really help the unregenerate by giving them a new understanding, for in their way of thinking, this would mean that God is tampering with free will, something He would not do. So in that way of thinking, when we pray for unbelievers, God can only do something outside of them, (wooing, encouraging, offering grace, etc.) but never anything inside of them (taking out the heart of stone, putting in a heart of flesh with a positive desire for Christ), which, when you think about it, is not very helpful to those who have no desire for God and who are dead in trespasses and sins. In other words, praying for people to come to Christ makes no sense unless God alone does the saving.
Much more could be said. Church history shows that rather than belief in election causing missions work to wane, the exact opposite is true. A case could be made that in the history of the Church, the men most used by God in the cause of evangelism, were passionate believers in God’s Sovereign Grace in election.