The Potency of God and the Doctrine of Divine Election

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And my message for this evening is entitled, The Potency of God and the Doctrine of Divine Election. A right view of God corrects our vision as we look at ourselves. God-colored lenses lend clarity as we gaze into the mirror. And the reverse is also true. I think Calvin said it well, and he argued that when we better understand ourselves, that doesn’t make us proud. It humbles us. If we would understand ourselves rightly, we must understand God. A proper view of oneself does not induce arrogance, rather it provokes humility and makes the broken heart beg for mercy. Without sin, we don’t need a savior. And because of sin, we actually can’t save ourselves.

But the gospel does offer hope. God shows his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. As Paul teaches us in Romans chapter five verse eight. That’s loving because we needed it. So I must warn that what I’m going to say tonight may at times be offensive. It may be strident in its delivery. I don’t ever wish to needlessly offend, but I do wish to unsettle any proud or self-confident hearts even in here tonight by confronting us all collectively with the clear teachings of scripture that do offend the natural mind. So if you’re hoping to get a feel good message, this might not be it, you’re likely to be disappointed if that’s the case.

If you have a high view of mankind, and it is born out of something other than the fact that he bears God’s image, if you are a humanist, well, then you may be in for a rude awakening. Because we bring a fallen consciousness and a fallen reason to the table as we discuss these things, And we have the audacity to presume to judge God. My God would never do that. Well, I can’t accept that blah, blah, blah law. Well, no loving God would, X, Y, or Z. And we set our own notions of God up as the standard rather than the starting point being what he has said. Isaiah 55, verses eight and nine says, God speaking here, for my thoughts are not your thoughts.

Neither are your ways. My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. And yet, we presume to try to understand the incomprehensible apart from what God has said. Because that’s what’s happening, is we try to make sense of what happens when we die. Why is there evil in the world? Why do the wicked seem to prosper and the righteous seem to suffer without looking to scripture and using our own intellect as a starting point, and that is a fool’s errand. It’s little wonder then why so many people hate this doctrine. I could spend an evening cataloging reference after reference from evangelical pastors and writers and theologians who have attacked with violence the doctrine of predestination, saying that this makes God some kind of monster.

Well, the reality is that this doctrine, predestination, and then coupled with it, total depravity, so the first, its neighboring tulip, pedal, total depravity, exposes the impotency of man and God’s great potency. We’d rather avoid many of the passages that we’ll read tonight, at least in and of ourselves, or we’d rather twist them to make something more palatable out of them than to bow before the absolute sovereign and good power of God. So as we try to plumb the mind of God tonight, let us do so with appropriate humility, looking first to what He has said in His word. So in our series, we are looking at the five points of Calvinism, and Dave talked a couple weeks ago about total depravity, I guess it would be three weeks ago now, I think three weeks ago, total depravity, and we pick it up now with unconditional election.

And I’ll give a brief abstract of the five points later on, but when we wish to examine the doctrine of unconditional election. There are a number of ways which to approach it. I would commend to you Dave’s talk as giving a very brief contextual orientation. And really, all of these different approaches have been very well documented and well taught elsewhere. So I couldn’t undertake to do that tonight. I think Steve Lawson’s series on unconditional election is six parts. and this is going to be one. And I was talking to my wife last night, and maybe a couple nights ago saying that there’s so much to say, and so a little time to say it.

I said, if you had 40 minutes or so to talk about music, what would you say? And at least you got the idea a little bit that this is vast. There’s a lot to say when we’re talking about an attribute of God. You could talk about the historical setting. Sean referenced the sentence of Dort. That was in the wake of the remonstrance of 1610. There’s the whole of John Calvin’s teaching, which operated on the presupposition of the doctrine of predestination. So if this is predestination, divine election is under that umbrella. But for our purposes tonight, I’m hoping that by looking at these passages, we can better understand about God himself.

That’s my desire is for us to learn more about the nature of God. And after some opening comments, we’ll just spend our time looking at a variety of passages of scripture that speak about this doctrine. And I’ll be clear, they advance the doctrine of divine election. So I’m going to point you to passages that do teach unequivocally that God chooses those who are his. And what we’re not going to do tonight, because again, our time is limited, is try to take different passages that many use to try to refute divine election and then refute the refutation. We’re not going to have time to address those tonight, but that would be a great study for a separate time.

In his seminal work, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, theologian Lorraine Betner, yes it’s a man, and he was a man’s man, said, a man named Lorraine, boy named Sue, man named Lorraine. It is important, said Betner, that we have a clear understanding of this doctrine of divine election, for our views in regard to it determine our views of God, man, the world and redemption. That is not an overstatement. He then quotes John Calvin from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 21. Calvin, now, we shall never be nearly convinced as we ought to be that our salvation flows from the fountain of God’s free mercy, till we are acquainted with this eternal election, which illustrates the grace of God by this comparison, that He adopts not all promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some what He refuses to others.

Ignorance of this principle detracts from the divine glory and diminishes real humility. So Calvin is addressing the elephant in the room, And while he was not explicit about the doctrine of double predestination, Theodore Baiza, who came after him, was one of his disciples, was much stronger on that. He is saying that it does necessarily mean that God’s favor is not given the same way to everybody. And if we try to depend, or we try to argue or insist otherwise, we do nothing less than diminish God of His glory. So along with its tulip predecessor, Total Depravity, as I mentioned earlier, the doctrine of unconditional election crushes human pride.

As we become accurately aware of God’s omnipotency, we become increasingly aware of our impotency. So this petal of the theological flower shifts our focus from man’s absolute spiritual inability, his impotency, to better examine God’s absolute omnipotency. And of course, while the five points of Calvinism are themselves no, they’re not exhaustive, they don’t exhaustively advance all that Calvin taught. They represent plenty to offend the mind of the natural man or even the Arminian. Consider with me briefly each of them in turn and how they do violence to the notion of man’s power. Total depravity. This is elsewhere dubbed total inability.

Man’s sinful nature is systemic. Sin touches every part of us from within. And though none of us are as sinful as we could possibly be, we’re all capable of civic virtue, Calvin said. We have God’s law written on our hearts so unbelievers and men in the flesh do things like helpful. Ladies cross the street all the time. So that happens. But that does not mean that sin is not pervasive in us. It’s like a drop of poison in a glass of water. The water is then poisoned, or a drop of ink, in a glass of water. It doesn’t all become ink. It’s not all as black as can be, but it’s all touched by it. But since the fall, we are then, by nature, completely incapable of choosing God.

God must do all of the work in our salvation, or that work won’t get done. anything at all that we bring to the table is as filthy garments. Second, unconditional election, which we’re on tonight, and this doctrine argues that God chooses or elects those who are saved, and it is not conditional on anything they have done or will do. Men can do absolutely nothing to save themselves. God does all of the work. God saves men not because of what they do, but rather in spite of what they do. And for many, and many even professing Christians and otherwise, who believe that good works are the grounds for our salvation. That’s heresy, by the way.

But there are many ignorant Christians, people who love God, who believe that they have to do good works or they will not have God’s favor. And then other places just teach that explicitly. So for many who believe that good works are the grounds of our salvation, this doctrine teaches instead that good works are the product of our salvation. And grace that saves is never alone, right? More on that, of course, when we get to perseverance of the saints here in just a moment. So limited atonement is third. And this doctrine teaches that although Christ’s atoning work was unlimited in its ability to remove sins, it indeed is limited in its scope.

Christ died for the sins of all who would believe in Him past, present, or future. And this means He did not pay for the sins of those who would pay for themselves, for their own sins in hell. There’s no double payment for sin. This confronts our human demands for fairness as we presumptuously then judge God. That is, we do nothing less than that when we call God unfair when we look at what he has said. We call him unfair for his evident plan not to redeem every human. See how this is offensive? It’s offensive. Irresistible grace is the fore of petal. And this doctrine teaches that the calling of God effectual, that is it intends what it set out to do. For the elect of God, the outward call of the gospel is accompanied by an inward call of the spirit. And those whom God has chosen do not want to resist that call. Indeed, they cannot. They cannot. Because this is God who is calling. This is offensive because we think it reduces us to robots or automatons with that God, drags us, the elect kicking and screaming into the kingdom.

We hate the notion of our coming to Christ being initiated by somebody other than ourselves. But God, who will not share, He will not share credit for our salvation with us. God changes our hearts and gives us new loves and desires. The elect can do nothing more, I’m sorry, the elect can no more resist answering that call to salvation than we can resist the air that we breathe. You can do it for a little while, but eventually it will prevail and you’ll take a deep breath. Fifth is perseverance of the saints. So far in this little abstract, I’ve not mentioned any Bible verses proper. One of the things that’s compelling about these doctrines is that they are intellectually reasonable.

They are logical and they are consistent. They’re from the mind of God. But that’s not why we believe them. We believe them because they’re what God has said. So when God pulls back the curtain and lets us see kind of behind the veil what’s going on, that is a grace. That is not an obligation. God is not an obligation to run his plan by you to make sure that you get it before he goes ahead and moves forward. Do we understand? So when I became a Calvinist, I was impressed with how logically it made sense. But that’s fine. There are a lot of lies that make logical sense as well. So that’s not why we believe them. We believe them because of what God has said first.

Last is perseverance of the saints. God does preserve to the end those who are saved because if He didn’t, they’d never make it. If men could lose their salvation, there would be no Christians at all. To suggest on the contrary that men are capable of remaining in the faith as maybe a cooperative act with the Spirit. So He just gives us the ability and He does most of it and we cooperate. That is giving way too much credit to men. God must uphold us or we will fall. And the fact that they’re in antiquity or in the present day are saints who die in the faith is itself an evidence of the perseverance of the saints.

It is an evidence that God preserves his own because there’s no way that fallen men could preserve themselves. He saves us and sustains us in spite of us. And he does so by giving us new hearts, by giving us new loves. And then those new hearts and new loves will necessarily bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And that’s how men may be sure of their election. So again, you can see why these doctrines are offensive. They’re counterintuitive to the natural mind. We’re autonomous creatures, it feels like we’re doing it all. This is also why they’ve been so wild and popular in recent generations. They slaughter our pride and they point to God as the only actor in the drama of our redemption.

And then, gloriously, the saved get to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, Philippians 2, 12. So with our remaining minutes, I would like to take a look at what the Bible has to say about the doctrine of divine election. This is not gonna be exhaustive, So I’ll make no pretenses that it will be. From early in Genesis, God has been making choices. Making choices from among people, from among races. He chose Abraham and called them out of Ur. He chose to make from Abraham the nation of Israel. He put his favor on Israel, although they were this teeny and weak nation compared to the pagan nations around them.

So he did not choose them because they were impressive. Rather, he chose them of his own free will. God is the one free entity in existence. And not only did He choose them, but He also preserved them. Israel exists today as a race and as a political nation because God has preserved them. They were not as mighty as the Egyptians, the Persians, or the Babylonians, at whose hands they suffered. But they were chosen by God, and so they were marked for greatness. But while God’s treatment of Israel as an elect race, as an elect nation, is instructive about how He treats His people, There are some that would argue that his picking a nation for his own doesn’t translate automatically to the election of individual souls for salvation.

So I’ll save that debate for another day. But, and focus now on the New Testament references. So in the scope of the discussion, there’s lots of stuff we could talk about. I have chosen for even those purposes just to narrow my focus primarily. There’ll be a few references, maybe ancillary, but primarily to New Testament scriptures. Now Paul doesn’t limit his discussion in the New Testament scripture, so sometimes he’s going to reference the Old Testament. I can’t stop him. Right? What’s done is done. But if the case is evident from the New Testament arguments regarding individual souls, then clearly that can be applied to an entire nation.

If it can be applied to one, it can be applied more greatly. If it works at the macro level, then it must necessarily work at the micro level. If Jesus is concerned about presenting the church to himself pure and spotless, that church comprises individuals, so he has a vested interest in the sanctification of the individual parts of his bride. Nevertheless, we’re gonna focus on the New Testament. So many of you have heard my testimony with relation to how I became a Calvinist and my time spent in the Gospel of John. When I was a junior at Washington State, I spent that year studying the Gospel of John in the mornings.

And I didn’t know the first thing about Calvinism or divine election, or really, I barely know how to tie my shoes. So this was not a theologically sophisticated study by any stretch. I still have the notes and it’s kind of funny. Like some of the questions that I had were actually decent questions but they were not born out of an agenda other than just to understand. So I did have a series of questions that then popped up along the way many of which became crystal clear when I was introduced to this doctrine of predestination. In reading John here’s what I saw. John 644 Jesus says and you’re welcome to turn with me to these passages or just sit back and listen.

We, yeah, there’s so much we could do, but I’m probably not gonna wait for you. John 644, Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. So I read that and wondered, so who decides whom the Father will draw to the Son? So if that is not extended to everybody, then who? Then who’s it happened to? That has to be decided by God. And again, my unlearned mind could deduce this much. Natural men won’t ask God to draw them to the sun by themselves. And even if they did, would they have come up with that idea then on their own? So clearly there must be designated individuals whom the Father determines to give to the Son and then draws.

Few chapters later, chapter 10, verses 27 to 30, Jesus says, “‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.’ so then I wondered, but who are the sheep? So you see, it’s kind of funny looking back because some of the questions that I would ask actually aren’t the point of the passage, but there’s still questions that may pop up in the context of examination, but who are the sheep in the first place?

And why use this illustration? Do sheep then make themselves sheep? Like is there a time when they’re not sheep and then they’re invited into the fold? the Fueamo, you are now a goat, voila. I mean, I guess God can do that. Or once they are sheep, can they go back to being goats? Well, if no one can snatch the knot of my father’s hand, yeah, probably not. So it’s obviously an illustration, but Jesus is definitely making the point that not everyone’s a sheep. Not all are a part of his flock, he says. Jesus not only teaches the eternal security of the believer here, but also that not everyone is chosen of God. John 17, lots of it.

So I’ll read some excerpts. This is a high priestly prayer and has long been my favorite passage and my favorite chapter in the Bible because Jesus is praying for us as we’ll see. I’ll just skip around here in order, not randomly. Verse one, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “‘Father, the hour has come. “‘Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you. Since you have given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him, and this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Skip ahead to verse nine.

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. Verse 20, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory, that you have given me because is you loved me before the foundation of the world.

And when I read this, I knew pretty quickly that the disciples had been given to the son, but he, and Jesus says in John 15, you didn’t choose me, I chose you. And people will often point to that to say, aha, divine election. Well, okay, just because you picked the disciples doesn’t mean he picks everybody, but that is his habit.

So Jesus goes a step further and says two things. I don’t only pray for them, But I pray for those who would believe in me through their word. And I’m not praying for everybody. The overwhelming thrust of this passage was that Jesus of course was praying to the Father for those whom the Father had given to Him, including first the disciples and then those who had believed in Christ through the testimony of the disciples. That of course includes you and me. And that was what brought me tremendous comfort then, and still does, these 20 years later. Well certainly Jesus was not praying for everybody. He says so in verse 9, I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me.

Well my ignorant collegiate mind read that and thought that even those given to the Son by the Father had to include a determined and a set number evidently or Jesus would have prayed for everybody indiscriminately or he would have just been quiet about it and not been explicit that he’s not praying for everybody. So those who are given to the Son by the Father comprise a set number without any sort of outside influence. My mind read that and drew that conclusion. So later on when I learned about God’s sovereign choice and the doctrine of predestination, these passages from John came flooding back, but in much greater clarity now.

for they made sense. The Gospel of John teaches that God chooses believers as a gift for the Son, and the Son takes a vested interest in not only saving them, but also preserving them. So moving past John now, let’s look at some other passages. We’ll start in a passage that opponents to the doctrine of divine election will often point to to make their case or to suggest that God’s election is conditional based on maybe the anticipated righteousness of the elect, the anticipated righteousness of the elect. Romans 8 verses 28 to 30, Paul says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, and for those who are called according to his purpose.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified. So let me answer the objection here. There are many today who, zooming in on verse 29, maintain that God looks down the corridors of time, He’s separate from time, so He looks down the corridors of time and sees what men will do, and then He predestines them based on that information. Well first, that’s not at all what this passage says, But let’s just pretend that it is.

If God were to choose men based on what righteousness He sees that they are going to do, who is the sovereign in that equation and who is the respondent? So man is sovereign there and God is responding to what man would do. That also presupposes that man is capable of choosing righteousness without God first giving him life. So it’s fraught with problems from bottom to top. But now we’ll just zoom in on the word for new. In scripture, and I’ll try and do this quickly because I’m a whole lot of time, this refers to not a knowledge of information. It’s not an awareness of data. It is a relationship. And we know this because of later uses of this word.

But Adam knew his wife and she conceived. When David was an old man, they brought a young woman in to keep him warm, but he did not know her. Jesus says to the hypocrites, depart from me, I never knew you. It’s not an awareness that they exist. There was more that went on between Adam and Eve than he was just aware that she was there. There is more that goes on between Jesus and these hypocrites than to say that He doesn’t know that there is, in fact, a lie. We know what this means. It means to have a relationship with. Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 18 through 20 that Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world.

Now that does not mean that the Father had an awareness of what Jesus planned to do. Did you agree? There’s more to it than that. It doesn’t even mean that God was aware and was involved in the details of the outworkings of that cooperative plan between the Father and the Son, although that is true. That’s just not what that means. What it means is that from eternity past, the Father and the Son had an intimate relationship. Same word for foreknown. Those who meet fore knew. So what that necessarily means is that Paul is telling us in Romans 8 that God has foreknown those whom he predestined, then called, then justified, then glorified.

Beforehand, being removed, we agree, from the trappings of time, he had an intimate knowledge of those who were his. And then that golden chain of redemption, as it’s sometimes called, Betner and Warfield use that term, refers to several things in the like in the past tense. They’re already done. Those who be predestined, He also justified, predestined. He called, justified, glorified. And all of them are like in the past tense because they’re as good as done as far as God is concerned. Still staying in Romans, flipping the page to chapter 9. I’ll read verses 9 through, chapter 9 verses 10 to 24. This one I’ll go ahead and read all of.

You knew I’d get here eventually, right? So Romans 9 verses 10 through 24. We’re starting in the middle of a paragraph. Not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac. Though they were not yet born, it had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God’s purpose of election might continue. Not because of works, but because of his call, she was told, The older will serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob, I love, but Esau, I hated. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means. For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

So then, it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills. You’ll say to me then, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Well what does molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. In order make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not from the Jews only, but also from among the Gentiles.” So from before men were around to do good or bad, or to provide a rationale for his choice, God had a purpose of election. And in order for that to continue, for that plan to be executed, he chose that Jacob’s line would represent the continuation of the covenant, not that of his older twin brother Esau.

Verses 14 through 18 here anticipate the question about, yeah, but how? So who does he choose and on what does he base that? How does God decide to save whom he saves? And it doesn’t provide an answer that is satisfying to the human mind. It says in effect, God says in effect, that’s my business. As an aside, can you imagine what kind of monsters we become if we could identify the elect? Think about that for a moment. There’s no telling what sorts of diabolical discrimination we’d be guilty of if we could tell which people were God’s chosen ones and which ones were not. I’m talking about Christians, what Christians would do.

Well we don’t know whom He has chosen. So we share the gospel with every man, sowing the seed liberally. And we must humbly recognize that it is God’s prerogative to choose whom He will and to harden whom He will. So now if you’re inclined to respond, that’s not fair. Then you’re probably getting the idea. In verse 9, Paul anticipates that response. That is a very reasonable response given the preceding verses. So Paul anticipates it. But he replies with a rebuke rather than an answer. Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? And then when we’re, you realize there’s an infinite chasm between those two nouns there.

Who are you, oh man, keep that in mind, to answer to God. It’s unthinkable that a clay vessel would complain to the potter, not just, even if it did have a mouth, right, and like cognition and ears and, you know, eyes and all that. If the vessel could speak and raise this little clay fist to the potter saying, how How dare you? We would say that is out of line, would we not? And there’s an infinitely larger gap between a potter and a vessel than there is between God and us. The prerogative of the potter is to make what he wishes from the clay, and the clay’s job is to do what it was made to do. Whatever it’s intended to carry, flowers or soil or water, or to be an urn.

Fantastic. Now, admittedly, we do have more value than clay because we bear God’s image, but we still exist for God’s use and for God’s glory at God’s discretion. And God’s glory, according to this passage, is on display in every vessel. That’s why Paul said, what if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy which he has prepared beforehand for glory.” We’ll look at a few more here. Acts 1348, like that transition. And 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.

Of course this passage does not include the word election proper, it’s pointed in this case, but it’s thoroughly predestinarian. Steve Lawson argued that this one laid him bare because he tried and he tried and he tried to make it mean something other than what it says. And you can’t. The surface meaning is plain and accurate. In simple language, an unseen agent designated some people to hear the gospel on this specific day in Acts and determined that they would believe it. And of course, that agent is God because it cannot be, it cannot but be God. If they were to have appointed themselves, then the text would have said as much.

Who else is going to appoint somebody to eternal life? It’s not the devil. It’s not men. It’s God. 3, verses 4 through 7, and this one, oh yeah, I’ll just read it. But when the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. So that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Now, this passage I admit doesn’t have the word appointed or election or anything or anything like that in it.

This doesn’t deal with the election part so explicitly as about the unconditional part, rather explicitly. Taken together, we can see that God chooses us, but it’s for his purposes, not because he’s impressed with our righteous behavior. He saved us, not on the basis of deeds that we have done in righteousness, not because of our righteous works. Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14, so now hang a left, go back in your Bibles.

I think that this passage might be even more definitive in Romans 9 in its celebration of God’s electing plan and purpose. Read it with me. Ephesians 1 verses 3 through 14. “‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the beloved.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth, verse 11. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.

In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire a possession of it to the praise of His glory. Now, Paul calls himself, he says us and we, calls himself and Christians and then by extension us. That’s a very reasonable conclusion. Chosen in verse four and predestined in verses five and 14. And as regards the conditions of His choosing, like Romans 9, it is in His mind, in His counsels. Paul says emphatically, it’s according to God’s purpose. Verses 5 and 9 say that. And according to the counsel of His will, He’s not taking counsel with me, and He’s not taking counsel with you, or Paul or the Ephesians, He’s taking counsel with Himself. And that most This certainly excludes our merit from being the grounds of God’s gracious choice.

Our merit is not the grounds for God’s choosing. So we can see that from this, before the foundation of the world, God chose us for salvation, and that that was according to a plan that was set in motion in Christ. By blessing us in the beloved, we would become adopted as sons, sealed with the Holy Spirit, spirit and all to the praise and glory of God. I’ll read that again. We can see from this that before the foundation of the world, God chose us for salvation according to a plan that He set in motion in Christ and that by blessing us in the beloved, we would become adopted sons, sealed with the Holy Spirit and all to the great praise and glory of God.

That triune, Father, Spirit, Son, act of redemption, according to a glorious plan, brings us great hope and brings God great honor. Let’s look at 1 Thessalonians 1, verses 4 and 5. For we know, brothers, love got by God, that He has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of man we prove to be among you for your sake and this and so on, but this is fascinating because Paul is saying in essence, well first of all he’s saying God chose you, but one of the ways we know he chose you is by how the gospel came to you.

The way that we know that you’re among the elect says Paul, chosen of God, is the way in which the gospel came to you with spiritual power. So do you want to know if you’re among the elect? Well, how did you hear the gospel, and how did you receive it? If I preach the gospel to you and it reduces you to dust and you repent in gratefulness, it has nothing to do with me and it has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with your spiritual calling. Second Thessalonians 2, verse 13, this is a favorite among predestinarians. But we ought always, the second Thessalonians 2, 13, we ought always to give thanks to God for you brothers be loved by the Lord because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.”

It’s worth noting what Paul does not say. This would be like turning it on its head. We are always to give thanks to you all for yourselves because in your greatness you chose God as the first fruits to be saved through your own sanctifying work and superior intellect. Yeah, of course that’s silly. God is the agent through all of this. He’s the one doing the work. And He saved the Thessalonians, and He was sanctifying them, and bringing them the truth, and He alone deserved the thanks for their belief. Jude 1, verses 3 through 4, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you, to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation. ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. I’ve included this one as a compliment to Romans 9. If men are chosen for salvation, then others are necessarily designated for condemnation. This is a very hard thing to accept, but I believe the unnamed agent here also is God. Now there are some who would say that where those passive verbs are introduced, then the agent in damnation is not God. In every situation, God ultimately, we know this, from this morning and our study with Joseph and whatnot, God ultimately works evil intentions of men for good purposes all the time.

And ungodly men designated for destruction absolutely serve their purpose in God’s great plan. Romans 8, 33, who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Of course, the rhetorical question can be answered quite easily, nobody. Romans 11, verses seven and eight, What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written. God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see, and ears that would not hear, down to this very day. God is the primary actor here. He’s opening eyes, He’s opening ears, He’s opening hearts unto salvation.

2 Timothy 2.10, therefore, you’re starting to get the idea, right? I’ll do two more. 2 Timothy 2.10, Therefore I endure everything for sake of the elect, says Paul, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” So the Elector of Thing, they exist, the Elect of God have a particular value as well to Paul who had a burden for the churches and loved the churches. If Christ has endured much for sake of the elect, and Paul was willing to do so as well. And if that’s the case, we ought to follow the example of them both and show great love for the people of God. Titus 1.1, Paul, the servant of God and the apostle of Jesus Christ, forsake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness.

And so on, and so on, and so on. Probably get the idea. The Bible assumes divine election, speaking frequently of God’s people as the elect. The doctrine of predestination is all over the Bible. And for me, once this domino, this particular domino fell, then all the others were doomed or predestined to fall as well. They couldn’t remain standing. And as we meditate on this, the reality of our election becomes increasingly sweet, or at least it should. It becomes increasingly staggering, increasingly humbling. And this doctrine is not hard to understand. But to the natural mind, it is hard to accept, and then by extension, it is hard to believe.

Because it takes ultimate and final control out of our hands. We remain responsible though, for our rejection of God, even if God does the choosing and the giving of new life. When our starting point is what God has said, when our starting point is how God is described to be in Scripture, well then this doctrine of divine election necessarily follows. If He is the uncreated Creator, if He is the God of all gods, if He is Lord of lords, well then of course, far from being surprised by the events of history, He is working them out. He orchestrates them. And He has done so in such a way as to bring about for Himself optimal glory, showcasing for all of creation, including the elect angels who exist to praise Him, His consummate and perfect holiness, His justice, wrath, mercy, and grace.

We love to think about mercy and grace while forgetting that there are lots of other faces to the diamond of God’s character. And in consummate greatness, they all require expression and praise. And if all of that is true, then this teensy weensy little thing about God determining who who were his own, according to his good pleasure, his own free will, and determining whom he will rescue from the consequences of their own sin, well that is included. And we call this the doctrine of unconditional election. As I close, I return once more to the rain bettner. He anticipates the cries of unfair or foul that God would redeem some and not all.

And then in talking about natural men, he says the following, as a result of the fall, they are guilty and corrupted. See if this describes us. They’re naturally anyway. Their motives are wrong. They cannot work out their own salvation. They have forfeited all claim upon God’s mercy and might justly have been left to suffer the penalty of their disobedience as all of the fallen angels were left. But instead the elect members of this race are rescued from this state of guilt and sin and are brought into a state of blessedness and holiness. The non-elect are simply left in their previous state of ruin and are condemned for their sins.

They suffer no unmerited punishment for God is dealing with them not merely as men, but as sinners. So what Betner suggests is both deeply humbling and it ought to bring the unredeemed to their knees in repentance and the redeemed to our knees in gratefulness. Let’s pray. Father, it would be good for us to meditate more regularly on our own worthiness to be saved. Please, may your spirit’s convicting work be active and healthy in us. Give us a healthy conviction of sin. Increase our appetite for your word and our desire to know you, not just know about you. May that increase our holiness. May we endure much for sake of the elect and may we leave even tonight profoundly grateful for your choosing us.

Help us to go forth in confidence, because if we are yours, you are greater than all and none can snatch us from your hand. We love you, we thank you for the work of Christ and we pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.