January 15th: Unconditional Election
Speaker: Chris Laws
Here is the overwhelming determination of God to save sinners and to rescue them from their fate - hell.
(Ephesians 1.1-14)
The doctrine of election or predestination to salvation. It is a great deep – the mind of God.
We know God predestinates – but what does that mean?
We will be following the BCF and WCF which track this subject beautifully.
It may seem unfair: “If God hasn’t elected me, I can’t be saved. My fate is sealed.”
But we get into difficulties if we don’t lay the foundation.
Election isn’t fate. Election is God determining to loose us from our fate – hell.
TOTAL DEPRAVITY
The body ages and dies. Mind “darkened”, heart “deceitful above all things”, and will is corrupted: “ye would not.”
The will was the main issue of the Reformation. Luther’s most famous book is The Bondage of the Will.
Before conversion we serve Satan, “taken captive by him at his will” (2 Tim 2.26). Slaves.
BCF 9.3 “Man, by his fall…has completely lost all ability of will to perform any of the spiritual good which accompanies salvation.”
Result: “There is none that seeketh after God.” Men will not seek, have no desire to seek, cannot turn to God.
We are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2.1), and “shapen in iniquity” (Psalm 51.5).
Think of the scene of dereliction that God sees – Satan and sin have ruined His entire world.
Men are resolutely against Him, their benefactor. Will God let Satan win?
An architect spends his life and a fortune making a beautiful village, and it is trashed by a mob.
Think of a battlefield after a great battle, covered with dead and dying. Dunant.
ELECTION
Election is God stirring into action! Satan and sin will not succeed. God determines to save.
God must make the first move or no one will be saved; man’s will is so obstinate he will never turn to God.
Gk word eklektos is translated 50% ‘elected’ and 50% ‘chosen’.
Ephesians 1.4: “He hath chosen us in [Christ]...”
We have to be born again (John 3.7). But we can’t bring about our own birth, much less our spiritual birth!
BCF 10.3 “Man is dead in sins and trespasses until made alive and renewed by the Holy Spirit.”
“Determined to save, He watched o’er my path, When, Satan's blind slave, I sported with death.”
God has a great purpose:
To save a “host no man could number” (Revelation 7.9), and to restore all of Creation.
“The purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1.11).
Nothing will stop Him. Election is God’s heart of love, and determination to deliver us from evil, revealed.
We may struggle with God choosing some and not others.
We know God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, and left the rest to their heathenism.
God chose to bless the nation of Israel, and not other nations.
So with us: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you (John 15.16).”
Every true believer feels that is true – it is His arms round me, not me clinging weakly to Him.
Intriguingly we are repeatedly exhorted to pray for the unconverted; somehow we can influence whom God elects.
ETERNITY PAST
To this choosing (election) of God we have to add that it was done long ago – in eternity past.
God planned well in advance; He pre-determined to save.
Ephesians 1.4: “He hath chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world.”
1.5: “having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ.”
1.11: “predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things...that we should be to the praise of his glory.”
It is extremely clear in Scripture.
FOREKNOWLEDGE
Arminians sidestep the issue: God foresees who will believe, and elects them.
Their view is based on Romans 8.29 “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.”
For them predestination is based on foreknowledge. God foresaw who would turn, and chose them!
But what need is there to choose those who He knows will choose Him?
But their view of Romans 8.29 is not true; “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate” ?
‘Know’ means love; ‘foreknow’ means fore-love.
Those He loved in eternity past He determined to bring to salvation.
Amazing to think that God set His love on me so long ago.
Saul of Tarsus. He was determined to exterminate Christians when God cut across his path.
Who chose who? A dramatic early example to make the point.
In Antioch we read: “as many as were ordained [predestinated] to eternal life believed” (Acts 13.48).
UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
Why did God love us, choose us? 1 Timothy 1.9 : “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to…his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.”
Certainly not chosen “according to our works”.
Not chosen because we were better unbelievers.
Heaven isn't full of naturally better people, but people like Saul of Tarsus, the thief on cross.
We didn’t love Him when unsaved. “We love him, because he first loved us (1 John 4.19).”
So why did he love us? It was “according his own purpose”. God’s one, great purpose (singular).
It was “according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1.5).
The mystery of the divine will and purpose: the first cause of salvation is in God himself.
“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion (Rom 9.15).”
We don’t know on what basis God chooses some individuals and not others.
But election is not conditional on anything God sees in us: unconditional election.
How wonderful that God should be the one to choose, and not us! None of us would ever have chosen Him.
Doesn’t God elect people to damnation?
BCF 3.3 “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated or foreordained to eternal life through Jesus Christ…others are left to act in their sin to their just condemnation…”
Election is active: God commits himself to redeem, call, justify, adopt, sanctify.
Exceedingly costly, detailed plan.
Reprobation is passive; God just leaves men “to act in their sin to their just condemnation.”
He would be just to leave us all on our journey to hell.
BCF and WCF teach this position - called Infralapsarianism.
PROBLEMS
1. “My fate is sealed. If God hasn’t elected me there's no point in seeking; if He has, I can only wait.”
Eg: Gospel Standard churches. Hard to escape!
People would ask C H Spurgeon, “Am I elect? Is there any hope for me?”
“I cannot tell you. I have never been to Heaven to search the roll.” (See quote below.)
Listen to Christ: “Come unto me…” Go! He promises to receive you! You need nothing else.
2. “If I'm elected then I'll be saved however much I sin.”
Ephesians 1.4 “He hath chosen us in [Christ]...that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”
You are probably not elected. God chooses believers to be in His ‘holiness team’, set apart.
Christian: this is the purpose of your life. Selected to live differently from the world.
2 Peter 1.10 “give diligence to make your calling and election sure.”
3. “What’s the point of praying if it was all decided long ago?”
God commands us to pray. God hears and answers our prayers.
So somehow He took our prayers into account in eternity past.
APPLICATION
No assurance? Troubled by unpardonable sin? Understand that salvation is God reaching down to you.
Not our weak decision to follow Him.
Quotation: C H Spurgeon on predestination.
I see another stumbling block. A trembler cries, “I am afraid to come and trust Christ, because I do not know whether I am one of the elect.” Well, I cannot tell you. I have never been to Heaven to search the roll. A young friend over yonder is starting in business. He opened his shutters last Monday, and he is in hopes that he may prosper in the world. My dear young man, why did you open your shop? Why did you not sit down in idleness and moan, “I would open a shop, but I do not know if I am predestinated to prosper”? If you do not try you will never prosper; that is quite certain. As to secret things, we act upon the rule of common sense. When this service is over you will go home, will you not? But if you sit still and say, “I shall not go down the aisle because I do not know whether it is predestinated for me to get home,” you are predestinated to be a fool. Any man who talks about predestination as if it could be an excuse for living in sin and refusing the Saviour is acting like a fool. If you trust Jesus Christ I will tell you then that you are God’s elect, to a certainty; for whosoever believes in Christ is called by the Spirit of God, and none are called in that way but those whom God has chosen from before the foundations of the world.
Bishop Hall’s Contemplations III p536. Speaking about Saul’s death which was foretold by the witch. “When it [the soul] is assured of the worst event, it is utterly discouraged and dejected. It hath therefore pleased the wisdom of God to hide from wicked men his determination of their final estate, that the remainders of hope may hearten them to good.”
