The Doctrine of Election Part I

The election is now a long forgotten doctrine that needs to be revived on account of the fact that it is crucial to our better understanding of other derivative teachings that are closely linked to God's grace, our faith and our ultimate salvation. It is in essence, therefore, the cornerstone, the actual foundation of our faith, without a serious and careful study of which the substance of sound Christian thought cannot be fully developed and perfected. Granted that we are speaking of a highly profound and complex concept, which is without a doubt one of the many reasons why there exists so much divergence of biblical interpretation even among those of us who believe in the principle of Sola Scriptura (latin for Scripture alone as our only source of divine revelation and sole authority on matters of faith and practice). From this point forward I shall identify such believers by the common designation of Evangelical or Bible-believing Christians. Nevertheless it is a matter of such import that every effort should be made, instead of assuming that all study of it has been exhausted, to continue the search for the most convincing argument possible unceasingly, until the final resolution becomes perfectly unassaiblable. An impossible task? Possibly, but that should not discourage us from more and more diligently--and especially carefully--probing into it each day if possible, as none of us can claim with sufficient certainty that such perfection in this regard has been achieved. As it is, many questions remain unanswered in this and many other areas of Christian thought, not so much because we find no answers for them but largely because we avoid, ignore or do not even bother asking them ourselves even if they make our heads spin in confusion or doubt.
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Section I: How sovereign is God's will?:
This may sound like a silly question until upon careful and honest introspection we finally and suddenly ascertain that in many ways we do restrict what we believe, at least theoretically, to be God's absolute sovereignty. Instead, most modern-day Christians, a great number of Evangelicals included, favor the doctrine of free will, which in essence supposes--for there is no biblical language to that effect--that God gave man, beginnig with Adam and Eve, freedom to choose whatever suits him best. This implies that Eve chose, of her own free will, to believe the serpent much rather than God. Adam in turn did likewise by choosing to eat the forbidden fruit that the woman offered him instead of rebuking her and reminding her of the Lord's warning, hence deliberately ignoring and disobeying Him. Afterward, the woman blamed the serpent and Adam blamed the woman instead of repenting and accepting responsibility for their unbelief and disobedience. That has been the story of mankind ever since. As we have already noted, the ensuing consequences are attributed to the wrong choice they made where the human race is concerned, and rightly so. However, where God is concerned, we must assume, in accordance with the free will doctrine, that He is thereby entirely responsible for granting that faculty to men alone of all His creatures. Besides this dangerous assumption, several other serious problems arise when we accept the free will proposition without pausing to consider the full extent of divine sovereignty. Here follow at least two of those problems:
1) In the first place, it appears that what on the surface sounds logical prevails over what the Bible actually says, probably because it sounds like a more palatable solution to the human mind. The core of the argument against God's unencumbered and sovereign judgments is that if He had predestined some for salvation and others for damnation, based not on His foreknowledge of each individual choice or response, but solely on the basis of His absolute Lordship, thus making His election an arbitrary procedure, then divine justice is no better than man's. The adherents of this doctrine do not seem to take into account that while men have to choose between good and evil, God is not faced with any such choice, given the fact that He is a righteous, perfect and incorruptible God who can and will do no wrong. Furthermore, He does not predestine anyone to damnation, for we are all hellbound regardless, unless we become reconciled with Him through faith in Jesus Christ His Son (2 Cor. 5:18-21). He predestines only the saints for and to eternal glory and inexpressible bliss.
2) But while it is true that the elect were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ...(1 Peter 1:2), we must notice, first of all, that He did not base His election on the basis of His foreknowledge of how some were going to respond to His message of salvation or on account of His foreknowledge of certain particular qualities He found in them that were absent in others. There is not a hint of such conditions in the entire New Testament. On the contrary, God could not possibly have made that election on the basis of anything other than the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:5), for He knew even before we were ever born that none of us were deserving of His grace, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me (Romans 3:23; Psalm 51:5). So this being our sorry condition, what reason could our Maker have possibly had to exercise His foreknowledge of all things when in His sight we are all equally guilty? After all, the scripture reads that if salvation be by grace, then it is no longer of works [or human merits of any kind, for that matter]; otherwise grace is no longer grace, but if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work (Romans 11:6). Can the reader now see the absurdity of the hypothesis in question? For a hypothesis is all it is.
Section II: The Old Testament Parallel of the New Testament Method of Election
The case for the elect is the same as what God did in the case of Jacob and Esau. Neither of them had even done good or evil, yet God had already predetermined which of the two was to be Isaac's heir in spite of Esau's legitimate claim to his natural firstborn right, which he frivolously surrendered to his twin brother (Genesis 25:29-34; Romans 9:6-12). What did Jacob do to merit such an honor? Certainly nothing more meritorious than what his brother did, but the exact opposite, as he resorted to the basest of means to wrest his father's blessing of primogeniture away from his brother, so if anything, his misdeed was, in a way, even more grievous than Esau's. As we can see, then, God's prescience had no part in His determination. Likewise, His method of election of the saints is not based on His foreknowledge, but rather His foreknowledge is in direct connection with equipping them to remain saved once they have attained salvation. But not to do their own pleasure as some erroneously believe and teach, but to do God's will and God's will only, as the rest of the Peter quote above reads and as corroborated by Paul... just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,/ having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:5). Additionally, Peter writes that the elect will be preserved by the power of the Lord through faith for salvation (1 Peter 1:5). This is something that, from all appearances, very few, if any, have ever taken notice of. The saved will remain saved, not by what they are naturally capable of doing or not doing, but by the power of God, since it is for that very purpose that He has chosen them (Ephesians 1:9-11; Romans 8:28): And, For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son (Romans 8:29), not to their own image. Also, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).
So, Arminians (those who believe that salvation can be lost if certain conditions are not met), please stop blasting those who believe in the authentic Eternal Security doctrine, for there are two versions of that doctrine, one true and the other false. Unfortunately, the conditional salvation advocates, apparently being familiar with the false one only, and undoubtedly having a deficient understanding of the true one at best, bunch all eternal security believers together into one single lump and call both versions cheap grace teaching, as they congratulate themselves and boast that they are the ones that got it right. Additionally, please pay close attention to all of Romans 9 and 11:5-6, plus Ephesians 2:9-10 among many others, and study them over and over until you do get it right instead of creating contradictions and unwarranted division within the body of Christ.
Section III: Is it true that God is the Author of the Faculty of Freedom of Choice or Free Will?
No such teaching is found in the Word of God; on the contrary, it is God's will that all men walk in holiness of life, but because He knows better, He has made provision to save at least those who believe in the name of His only begotten Son that they should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Since no man is willing to submit to His holy precepts of his own free will, He has taken it upon Himself to predestine some to be heirs to His heavenly kingdom. These He will draw to Himself one way or another until, as they say, they get the message, and for that purpose He had to take on human form (Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Timothy 3:16). That is why Jesus said such things as, "You [His disciples] did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16), and those that the Father gave Me..."no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand" (John 10:27, 29). Speaking of God's awesome diversity of resources in drawing the elect to Himself (as in everything else), just consider the amazing contrast between the way Jesus hand-picked His first twelve apostles and Paul's terrifying experience on his road to Damascus, or His healing of so many suffering souls that would not otherwise have ever come to His feet; there is also, of course, the case of the jail keeper, who, filled with fright and anxiety, accepted the Lord as his personal Savior (Acts 16:31). This is every Christian believer's personal experience. So where is our freedom of choice when it comes to the salvation of our souls? If anything, free will is a hindrance to salvation and a reproach of God's immutable pronouncements. For, as the Lord says, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Romans 9:15-16), and, Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens (Romans 9:18). This is the way the Almighty designed things and there is just nothing we can do about it.
. As the reader will easily remember, ...the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:4 and 5). This passage suggests that up to that point Adam and Eve did not have that much touted freedom, first enunciated and developed by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and, during the declining years of the Protestant Reformation, echoed by Jacobus Arminius. Later, the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, to know good and evil (Genesis 3:22). This is a clear indication that only God and the devil knew good and evil (presumably, the angels too), the difference being that God knows but does no evil, while the devil also knows evil, but does nothing but evil. Since Adam and Eve's spiritual eyes were opened to this new awareness on account of their act of unbelief and disobedience, who was the author of freedom of choice? Certainly not God, was He?
For our free will naturally opposes God's will, so the two are incompatible with each other, notwithstanding Arminianism's claims to the contrary. Aquinas, who boasted that his free will theology made more sense than the Augustinian, later Calvinistic, concept of predestination, made nothing more than an empty boast at best, only no one but predestination-minded Protestants ever contested or challenged it. To better understand the difference between free will and the election of the saints we offer the following basic explanation: Men play no role whatsoever in their salvation. Everything that pertains to it has been foreordained by God from the foundation of the world, from their initial conversion, usually referred to as justification or the born-again experience, right down through their sanctification and all the way up to their ultimate glorification, all of it the sole work of the Holy Spirit and God's Word; all that those of us who believe to be saved had to do was only what our merciful Lord had already preplanned for us from start to finish. As we also read elsewhere,...But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, 5... not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:4-5). And, Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). Summing it all up, if Jesus Christ and His followers had never preached His gospel of... faith, repentance and forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47; John 3:16) no one could ever have so much as hoped to attain salvation. Or, This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (Galatians 3:2)
All of the above should be enough to prove conclusively that, contrary to the prevalent opinion among Christians of all creeds, the notion of freedom of choice not only has no biblical basis, but its supposed logic is no longer so evident when God's unchallengeable sovereignty is brought into the picture. 19. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 20. But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21. Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? (Romans 9:19-21). These scriptures are the best biblical illustration of God's absolute sovereignty. Nothing more can or should be added to them; even if we cannot quite assimilate their powerful impact, we will do well to just leave it all alone, because even conceding that God's presumed arbitrariness is somewhat disquieting, the idea that God gave us a freedom which proceeded from Him in the first place, and that as a result we would inevitably do nothing better than emulate the first human couple's example, should be far more disturbing to the honest, sincere lover of divine justice and truth.
Section IV: The Abel-Cain Parallel
We do not want to conclude this essay without offering another striking Old Testament parallel of the New Testament election issue. Why God found Abel's offering more pleasant and acceptable than Cain's is a question to which the most common answer appears to be, Abel was a righteous man, and Cain was not, or something to that effect. That people who are amply familiar with the Bible can reach such an eminently unscriptural conclusion defies all understanding, for nowhere therein do we read that Abel was more deserving of God's grace than Cain. Furthermore, it is contrary to the very concept of God's undeserving kindness to the crowning glory of His creation that the whole Bible repeatedly speaks of. Another answer I have personally and often heard is simply, Nobody knows for sure, a statement that is seemingly easy to subscribe to until we come across Hebrews 11:4: By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. Just as by lack of faith the first members of the human race fell from God's grace, so are some of us saved by exercising that very faith that Adam and Eve lacked (2 Eph. 2:8). As a matter of fact, Abel's is the first model of faith we find among those listed as heroes of the faith in this part of the book of Hebrews. Carefully considering and examining this verse should stimulate our individual "think tank" and set all our spiritual thought processes in motion. One of the first promptings of the Holy Spirit in this worthy endeavor should be His reminder that, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9./ not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:8, 9); and ...not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). The very notion, then, that a sinner would make the right decision of his own volition would be a work of righteousness that is contrary to God's Word. What the Genesis account of the first recorded murder in human history teaches us is that it was through Abel's faith, and not by his personal behavior, that he was justified before God, his offering of faith being what pleased Him. This is quite consistent with the recurring Bible theme of justification by faith alone apart from works of human fabrication. It is, moreover, quite fitting that it should be so, for it is precisely the flaunting of their presumed virtues what makes deeply religious men so reluctant to come to terms with their Creator, thus placing Him in the impossible position of being indebted to them rather than the other way around; hence their self-satisfaction and confidence that they do not need a Savior.
So how did Abel acquire that faith that was not natural in him to exercise? The same way as has been described above: God prepared him beforehand to believe that his animal offering was the sacrifice acceptable to Him (no doubt a type of the Lamb of God's self-immolation, as the product of the soil sheds no blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins--Hebrews 9:22). Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17), is it not safe to assume that before acquiring faith Abel first acquired knowledge of God's desire and His subsequent command, either directly from Him or indirectly through his parents? And by the same token, can we not also infer that Cain, having been the recipient of that same knowledge simultaneously with his brother, had therefore no excuse to modify what God had already stipulated, just as Adam and Eve had no reason to succumb to the wiles of the devil? Besides being another example of man's full exercise of his free will, Cain is also a type of the spreaders of false religion, who arrogantly suppose that their methods are better than God's.
Because we receive God's unmerited favor (His grace), faith cannot be a condition or requirement of salvation, as this writer himself once believed, but it is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8). How is faith God's gift? Simply by the repeatedly stated reality that God had elected, predestined, or foreordained those who were to be saved a myriad of centuries before they were even born and ever began to believe. What might hopefully be a plainer explanation is simply that the elect or chosen had no choice in the matter. When their time came to be converted, they believed because God had previously so disposed it, in such a way in fact that they would have no other option, For who has resisted His will? (Romans 9:19). Those who were equally exposed to the revealed truth of Christ but rejected it offhandedly, or first accepted it with joy, but at some point later in life fell back prey to the temptations of the world or the hardships of life, and became discouraged, their faith withered away because it was superficial, it had no root (Luke 8:12-14), so consequently it stopped prospering. In this connection we would do well to remember that works--the works prescribed beforehand by God and not by men--always immediately follow or act jointly with true faith, but never precede it (Eph. 2-10), for faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26). In consequence, a person whose faith is unproductive, inactive, or not deeply ingrained or rooted in his heart and mind will ineludibly suffer the same fate as that of one who never believed; couldn't we then conclude, just as well, that either such a person was never saved in the first place or else threw away the gift of God? This will by no means be the case of those who have been predestined by God for the very purpose of inheriting immortality and heavenly glory upon our Lord's second coming (1 Cor. 15:50-55; 1 Thes. 4:14-17; Phil. 3:20, 21). A final word: If we keep in mind the idea that God prepared good works beforehand that we should walk in them, and believe with the faith that obeys as we are directed to do in James 2:21-24, we should have no trouble reconciling this latter passage with Paul's solemn statement in Ephesians 2:8-10 and several others, since even good works, like everything else in life, are also God's gift to us.
More on this in our next installment. That the peace and wisdom of the Lord may continue to comfort, sustain you, and enrich your lives. Amen.