“Those who are passed over by God will never complain that God is being unfair. Left to themsleves, they have no desire to be chosen.” – Ian Duguid

Iain Duguid, Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace: The Gospel in the Lives of Isaac and Jacob (P&R, 2002), 27-29.

The doctrine of election is a difficult one for many people. They struggle with the justice of the idea that God chooses some for salvation and passes over others. Some people, therefore, have argued that it is a matter of God’s foreknowledge. God knows in advance which people are going to choose him, and therefore he responds by choosing them. The Bible, however, is clear. God’s love for his chosen people existed long before their birth, all the way back to the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5). God does not love us because he foresaw we would love him. Rather, we love God because he loved us from the first (Rom. 9:16).

Yet, as we pointed out earlier, even though God’s election is sovereign, it is not arbitrary or unjust. It is not as if Esau desperately wanted to be a chosen son and God harshly turned him away, not allowing him a place among his chosen people. No, Esau has twice turned his back on his spiritual birthright. First, he sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of lentil soup (Gen. 25:31:34). Now he compromised the fundamental goal of God’s election: the creation of a separate, holy people for God. Under the circumstances, Esau could have no complaints about being passed over.

We should also notice, however, that Jacob is not chosen because, in contrast to Esau, he is such a wonderful person. Jacob shows himself to be a scheming, conniving, calculating little rat, especially during the first part of his life. Nonetheless, because God’s choice rests upon him out of his sovereign mercy, God is going to work on Jacob, reshaping him, purifying him into a person he can use. Neither Jacob nor Esau deserves God’s grace in his life, but God’s sovereign mercy rests upon Jacob for his blessing, and so his grace begins the transforming work in his heart.

So it is also for us. Our election and our salvation are entirely of grace. God did not choose you because you were better or smarter or more beautiful or holier than everyone else. God did not choose you because he foresaw that you would exercise faith while others wouldn’t. God chose us while we were still filthy sinners, because of his electing grace. Even with his transforming power at work in our hearts, thou, the best of saints make only small beginnings on the path of holy living. We never outgrow our need for grace while we live on earth.

But God’s sovereign choice on salvation is not arbitrary. Those passed over by God have no cause for complaint. Their condemnation is thoroughly deserved. Even though we plead with them with tears to abandon their self-destructive course and find salvation in Jesus Christ, they will have none of it. The whole idea is foolishness to them. Those whom God chooses, he then begins to reshape into a people for his pleasure. As Ephesians 1:4 puts it, He chose us . . . to be holy and blameless in his sight. The result is that those chosen have no cause of arrogance. Their justification is undeserved by them. It is merited only by the righteousness of Christ that is credited to their account, and it is worked on them by the indwelling power o the Holy Spirit. All is of God, so that God may receive all the glory.

That truth should give us boldness in our sharing of the gospel. We may freely call all who will come to Jesus and be saved. The invitation to the party is open to all. Whoever you are, whatever you have done, your sins too can be paid for by the death of Jesus on the cross. No one is too guilty or too defiled to come. You too can receive Christ’s righteousness credited to your account. You too can participate in the feast that God has prepared for all who are his people on the final day. It’s a genuine offer, and we pray fervently and intently that many people will respond to it in faith. But we trust the outcome of our evangelism to the care of a good God, who chose a people who would be his before the foundation of the world.

That too is a comforting thought, given the imperfection of so much of our gospel witness. It is God who determines the outcome of our speaking for him, not the quality of our speech. It is God’s choice whither our words fall on the ears of an Esau, to whom they are all nonsense, or on the ears of a Jacob, for whom the road to faith may be long and hard but will eventually bring him to glory. It is God’s choice whether our words fall on the ears of an Abraham who is ready now to hear and trust and believe. We therefore invite all to come to Christ of receive the living water from him, confident that all those whom the Lord our God is calling to himself will hear his voice and will come. To him indeed be all the glory.

This truth should also give us great joy on the midst of our manifold sins and failures. Do you know yourself to be a sinner in God’s sight? Are there areas of your life where you continue to fail God over and over again? If so, the bad news is that you are normal. But the good news is that if God has laid hold of you by his electing grace, he will sustain you by that grace through every step of your earthly journey. He will use even that son which you find so difficult to combat as a means of driving you back to the cross. And one day, at the end of all things, you too will be purified completely by his grace and will stand before him without fault or blemish. What a wonderful, heartwarming, comforting, doctrine the doctrine of God’s election is!

Just a reminder concerning how this blog operates. The fact that someone is quoted here does not mean that I agree with everything that person might teach elsewhere. It simply means that this particular article/quote/video was something I found to be useful and insightful.

As the saying goes, “even a broken clock is right twice a day.” The fact that the clock is referred to in the moment it is telling the correct time, does not mean that I am not aware that it is inaccurate the rest of the time.

The following is from Dr. Tim Keller (original article here)

The doctrine of election—that those who freely come to God are those whom God has freely chosen—is easy to understand, and clearly taught in God’s Word, but it is not easy to accept. It has given thoughtful believers problems for centuries, and continues to do so today.

Here are three of the most common questions the doctrine of election raises:

1. If you believe in election, doesn’t that leave you with the problem of why God doesn’t choose to save everyone?

Yes, but the same is true for Christians who don’t believe in election. Election doesn’t create the problem, it only leads us to think about it. To deny the doctrine of election does not help you escape the issue. All Christians have this problem, and so we cannot object to election by appealing to it. A person who doesn’t believe in election faces this dilemma:

(a) God wants everybody saved.

(b) God could save everyone.

(c) God does not.

The question, though, still remains: Why not? That is the ultimate mystery, but abandoning the doctrine of election does not answer it.

Someone says: “But I believe that though God doesn’t want us to be lost, some are lost because they choose wrongly and God will not violate their freedom of choice.” But why is freedom of choice sacrosanct? I try to honor my child’s freedom of will, but not if I see he is about to be killed by it! Why can’t God “insult” our freedom of will for a moment and save us for eternity?

Regardless of whether you think we are saved by our choice or by God’s, you still face the same question: Why wouldn’t God save us all if he has the power and desire to do so? Again, it is a hard question, but it cannot be used as an argument against the doctrine of election.

We can go further. Suppose election is not true. Suppose that eons ago God set up salvation on this system: Every person will have an equal ability to accept or reject Christ, who will die and be raised and be presented through the gospel message. The moment God determined to set up salvation on that system, he would’ve immediately known exactly which persons would be saved and which would be condemned on that basis. So the minute he “set it up,” he would be de facto electing some and passing over others. We come out to the same place. God could save all, but he doesn’t.

So why doesn’t he? We can only know two things. First, the answer must have something to do with his perfect nature. He is perfectly loving and perfectly righteous, and neither can be preferred over the other or he wouldn’t be God. Somehow the answer has to do with his being consistent with himself. Second, we cannot see the whole picture. Why? If we can conceive of a more merciful system of salvation than God has, we must not see it rightly, for God is more merciful than we can ever imagine. Indeed, when we finally see the whole plan and answer, we will not be able to find fault with it.

2. But if everything is fixed and certain, why pray, evangelize, or do anything at all?

This objection is short-sighted. First, if everything was not planned by a holy and loving God, we’d be absolutely terrified by the prospect of even getting up in the morning. Our actions (always done with very little understanding) could have horrible consequences. Everything would depend on us! If everything was not planned by a holy and loving God, there’d be enormous pressure on Christians when we evangelize. We would know our inarticulateness could result in a person missing his or her one “chance” for salvation. It would be a horrible prospect.

Second, we evangelize and pray because of the privilege of sharing in God’s work with him. For example, a father might be able to chop wood for the stove himself, but he asks his children to learn to chop the wood and stoke the fire as well. What if the children say, “We have no incentive to chop the wood. We know that if we don’t cut it, our father will do it anyway—he won’t let us freeze!” But the father would respond, “Of course I could do it myself, but I want you to share the work with me.” The authority and the privilege of working with our heavenly Father is surely plenty of incentive. He wants to work with us and for us.

Also, we are not supposed to second-guess God. We are never to try to guess who is “elect”—ever! God calls all to repentance and so should we. In fact, the doctrine of election should give us far more hope about working with people. Why? Because no one is a hopeless case! From a human point of view, many look totally hard and lost, but since salvation is by God’s election, we should treat everyone and anyone with hope, since God calls the dead to life through us.

Therefore, God’s absolute sovereignty is a motivation to evangelize, not a discouragement. In Acts 18, Paul is in Corinth and the gospel has been rejected by the Jews there. How does God encourage Paul not to be afraid, to “keep on speaking and not be silent” (v. 9)? “I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city” (v. 10). God assures Paul of his presence, his protection, and his election. And Paul responds by staying “for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God” (v. 11). The point is this: the next person you pray for and/or share the gospel with may be one of God’s elect, and you may be part of the way God has ordained to bring them to faith.

3. I believe the Bible and I see all the teaching about election, but why do I still dislike it?

My theory is that the biblical gospel is so supernatural that it always combines qualities that by natural reason and culture we cannot keep together. The doctrine of justification is one way of looking at the gospel. It combines both law and love in ways no one could have thought up. We are saved apart from the law so that now we can obey the law. All other philosophies are either law-ism (legalistic) or law-less (antinomian). Now, the doctrine of election is just the gospel viewed from another perspective. It combines the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of human beings. Here, too, we find that human cultures and philosophies cannot combine these things.

Whoever you are, you come from a culture that has saturated you in some view that’s so unbalanced that you will see the doctrine of election as something more simple and extreme than it really is. Eastern philosophies and religions have always been more fatalistic. They believe individual autonomy to be an illusion. When people from that background come to the gospel, they may see it as “just individualism.” On the other hand, Western secularism believes strongly in the right and power of individuals to determine their own course and destiny. When people from that background come to the gospel, they see it as “just fatalism.”

No matter which “side” we come from and no matter our culture or temperament, then, we must make an effort to discern the carefully nuanced balances of the gospel of free election and justification. We must remember the prejudices we bring with us to the Scriptures. And we must be willing to learn to balance out our own views.

I was interviewed yesterday for a BRIDGE radio podcast on the subject of unconditional election (the “U” in the well known acrostic TULIP). Guest teachers in the series so far include Dr. John Frame and Jeff Durbin, and will be followed by Dr. James White, and Dr. Joel Beeke.

Here’s a link to yesterday’s podcast.