Category Archives: Election & Predestination

Ten Great Quotes from ‘Chosen by God’

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Tim Challies000 copies! It has been invaluable in helping me, and so many others, navigate a very tricky topic. Here are 10 great quotes drawn from its pages.

What predestination means, in its most elementary form, is that our final destination, heaven or hell, is decided by God not only before we get there, but before we are even born. It teaches that our ultimate destiny is in the hands of God.

If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.

God is free. I am free. God is more free than I am. If my freedom runs up against God’s freedom, I lose. His freedom restricts mine; my freedom does not restrict his.

The assumption many of us make when we struggle with the Fall is that, had we been there, we would have made a different choice. We would not have made a decision that would plunge the world into ruin. Such an assumption is just not possible given the character of God. God doesn’t make mistakes. His choice of my representative is greater than my choice of my own.

Total depravity is not utter depravity. Utter depravity would mean that we are all as sinful as we possibly could be. We know that is not the case. No matter how much each of us has sinned, we are able to think of worse sins that we could have committed. Even Adolf Hitler refrained from murdering his mother.

Before God pronounces a deed “good” he considers not only the outward or external conformity to his law, but also the motivation. We look only at outward appearances; God reads the heart. For a work to be considered good it must not only conform outwardly to the law of God, but it must be motivated inwardly by a sincere love for God.

People do not seek God. They seek after the benefits that only God can give them. The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God himself. We are, by nature, fugitives.

Most non-Reformed views of predestination fail to take seriously the fact that fallen man is spiritually dead. Other evangelical positions acknowledge that man is fallen and that his fallenness is a serious matter. They even grant that sin is a radical problem. They are quick to grant that man is not merely ill, but mortally ill, sick unto death. But he has not quite died yet. He still has one tiny breath of spiritual life left in his body. He still has a tiny island of righteousness left in his heart, a tiny and feeble moral ability that abides in his fallenness.

Unless we conclude that every human being is predestined to salvation, we must face the flip side of election. If there is such a thing as predestination at all, and if that predestination does not include all people, then we must not shrink from the necessary inference that there are two sides to predestination. It is not enough to talk about Jacob; we must also consider Esau.

We must never underestimate the importance of our role in evangelism. Neither must we overestimate it. We preach. We bear witness. We provide the outward call. But God alone has the power to call a person to himself inwardly. I do not feel cheated by that. On the contrary, I feel comforted. We must do our job, trusting that God will do his.

Universality and Particularity

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Calvin05John Calvin, chapter 22:

Section 10. THE UNIVERSALITY OF GOD’S INVITATION AND THE PARTICULARITY OF ELECTION

Some object that God would be contrary to himself if he should universally invite all men to him but admit only a few as elect. Thus, in their view, the universality of the promises removes the distinction of special grace; and some moderate men speak thus, not so much to stifle the truth as to bar thorny questions, and to bridle the curiosity of many. A laudable intention, this, but the design is not to be approved, for evasion is never excusable. But those who insolently revile election offer a quibble too disgusting, an error too shameful.

I have elsewhere explained how Scripture reconciles the two notions that all are called to repentance and faith by outward preaching, yet that the spirit of repentance and faith is not given to all. Soon I shall have to repeat some of this. Now I deny what they claim, since it is false in two ways. For he who threatens that while it will rain upon one city there will be drought in another [Amos 4:7], and who elsewhere announces a famine of teaching [Amos 8:11], does not bind himself by a set law to call all men equally. And he who, forbidding Paul to speak the word in Asia [Acts 16:6], and turning him aside from Bithynia, draws him into Macedonia [Acts 16:7 ff.] thus shows that he has the right to distribute this treasure to whom he pleases. Continue reading →

Election and Evangelism

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stormsIn an article entitled “Election and Evangelism: Friends, Not Foes” Dr. Sam Storms writes:

When I hear people object to the doctrine of unconditional election they don’t typically direct my attention to a particular passage of Scripture that they believe teaches conditional election. Instead, they insist, for example, that unconditional election is inconsistent with any meaningful call to evangelistic outreach. “Why should I preach or share or in other ways make known the gospel of Jesus if God has already determined from eternity past who will ultimately be forgiven and granted entrance into the eternal kingdom? Why should I put my life at risk in taking the gospel to foreign, unreached people groups if God is finally sovereign over who does and does not believe?”

I understand the reason for this kind of thinking and I do not take it lightly or casually dismiss it as the misguided musings of a typical Arminian. Our Arminian brothers and sisters have a genuine concern for the integrity of gospel proclamation and intercessory prayer for the lost souls of the world. And so must we who identify as Calvinists.

What I find especially interesting is that instead of answering such questions in the sort of straightforward way we might prefer, the NT authors prefer to describe evangelistic fervor and the unqualified universal appeal of the gospel alongside and in virtually the same breath with the reality of divine sovereignty. It never seems to strike them as in the least inconsistent or contradictory to affirm both truths side by side.

One of the places we see this is in the ministry of Jesus himself. In Matthew 11:25-26 Jesus declared: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” He then tells us that “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27).

This is precisely at the point where some assume Jesus’s next words would be something like this: “You who are elect, and you only, I now invite to believe in me and follow me. After all, why would I extend such an invitation to those whom the Father didn’t give me in eternity past? They alone are the ones for whom I will lay down my life and the only ones whom the Father, through the Spirit, will draw to faith in me” (see John 6:37-40, 64-65).

But much to the surprise of everyone, Jesus immediately extends this universal and indiscriminate appeal: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Evidently there was no conflict in the mind of Christ between, on the one hand, the sovereign and distinguishing choice of the Father to grant knowledge of the Son to some but not others and, on the other hand, the universal offer of eternal life and spiritual rest. You and I may wrangle over the two, insisting that the truth of one necessarily precludes the truth of the other, but Jesus had no such problem.

Yet another place where this dual emphasis is found is in the words of the apostle Paul to Timothy. He exhorts his young spiritual son to remember Jesus as risen from the dead in spite of the fact that he, Paul, is “bound with chains as a criminal” (2 Tim. 2:9). The reason for this is that although the messenger is in jail the message continues to flourish and spread. Then he says this:

“Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).

Paul believes that some hell-deserving sinners have been chosen by God; they are his elect people. He also knows that the only way the elect can enter into the experience of salvation “with eternal glory” is through conscious faith in Jesus. Therefore, he is determined to endure incredible pain and hardship and even imprisonment so that he might spread the truth of the gospel everywhere. The fact that people are “elect” does not lead him to say: “Whoo! That takes a load off my mind. I can ease off the gas pedal of gospel proclamation and stop praying so fervently for people now that I know with certainty that God has chosen some for eternal life. Furthermore, I can stop behaving in the sort of way that leads to chains and imprisonment.” No, instead he confidently persists in preaching and willingly embraces suffering precisely because he knows that such are the means by which God will bring the elect to saving faith in Christ.

Some might assume that if the doctrine of election didn’t lead him to cease praying and preaching then surely his belief in the necessity of praying and preaching would lead him to reject the doctrine of election. But that’s not what happened. At no point does Paul or any other NT author reason like this: “Well, if I have to preach the gospel for people to be saved I can only conclude that there is no such thing as unconditional election. The only thing that counts is that people make a choice.” Instead, Paul is determined to endure great suffering and hardship precisely “for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain” salvation (2 Tim. 2:10a).

In other words, his commitment to suffer so that the gospel might spread and be made known does not mean that no one has been chosen before the foundation of the world to believe it. Rather, it means that he and others like Timothy are the ordained instrument through which God is pleased to save the elect.

Let me cite just one more example. After preaching in Corinth, Paul was opposed and “reviled” (Acts 18:6) by the Jewish community there. He left town determined to take the gospel to the Gentiles. But Jesus appeared to him one night in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:9b-10).

Paul’s response to this revelation from Christ was not to say: “That doesn’t make any sense, Jesus. If you’ve got many elect people in Corinth then they will undoubtedly come to faith in you regardless of whether or not I or anyone else preaches to them. I’ve got better things to do with my life and time than to preach unnecessarily.”

No, instead “he stayed a year and six months [in Corinth], teaching the word of God among them” (Acts 18:11). Again, we may not be able to grasp how these two truths are compatible, how the reality of unconditional election actually requires rather than precludes gospel proclamation and intercessory prayer, but God nowhere asks or expects us to. He asks and expects us to preach and pray, confident that such are the means by which he is pleased to bring his “people”, the elect, to eternal salvation in Christ.