God’s Sovereign Election
© 2010 George Dunn
When we examine the scriptures, we should see that our Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul, John, and John the Baptist, have all given witness that for those who believe, God has first done something within them so that they can believe.
This subject is one that can make some men squirm and sometimes just downright angry! …
We are addressing the doctrine of election; and although the doctrine of God’s election can be received with demur, we must stand firm in acknowledging and sharing the entire council of biblical truths in love to others. Many of the messages in the bible can agitate the senses of men. For example, the Gospel is always at first an offense because it exposes our sinfulness and inability to proudly save ourselves from a just condemnation. That God has even provided One way at all to be saved is another of these messages that can be met with vehement objections and obstinacy. But God wants us to share the Gospel regardless of opposition; for it is the power of God unto salvation for those who believe. Once a person professes belief in Christ, they now should be discipled; being taught the apostles doctrines and one of these is election.
Though a message may be seemingly uncomfortable at first, professing Christians should be patient in learning, embracing whatever the scriptures teach, allowing for maturity in the faith and then very often things that once seemed difficult to embrace may begin to show themselves to be some of the sweetest things ever discovered. If you do not believe this doctrine of election, take it from someone who does, it’s actually so very sweet that God didn’t only give us Jesus to take our sins away, but also pursued His sheep and changed our hearts so that we would be able to and want to come repentant and by faith, to Christ. If He hadn’t come after us, we would never choose in and of ourselves to come to Christ.
All scriptures attending faith harmonize when we acknowledged that GOD IS THE FIRST CAUSE of Faith.
Let’s take a look at Ephesians 2:8 for a moment.
If we break apart the text for examination this is how it goes:
‘For by grace’- (Grace is a gift and work of God within us which changes the inclination of our hearts)
‘you have been saved through faith’- (Now because of the initial work of God’s Grace within us which is so powerful that it has the capacity to overcome our natural resistance to it, we are able to embrace Christ through Faith- [which is also a gift], whereas we were previously unwilling).
And ‘this’- (Faith, being the immediate antecedent of the word ‘this’ is now the focus) is not your own doing- Rom 9:16 agrees with this.
Now you may not agree with my discourse of this text, but let us reason over this a little longer using multiple scriptures. We can even look at a “whoever believes” verse; which are typically the verses used to counter God’s sovereign election, by those who feel that they can have faith by some percentage of their own power apart from God’s doing. But I think it should be clear after what I am writing that God is the first cause for “whoever believes”, and that the “whoever believes” is simply a reference to the elect of God.
In the words of our Lord, Jesus declares “no one can come to Me (believe in me) unless it is granted him by the Father.” John 6:65 In the same passage Jesus says: “all that the Father gives to Me will come to Me.” John 6:37 In both verses the phrase “come to Me” simply means “believe in Me” and so taken together Jesus is stating that no one can believe in Him unless God grants it, and all to whom God grants it will believe”. According to this passage, God grants faith, a faith that will melt the hardness of the hearts of those He has given His Son.
Who can believe in Jesus unless it is first granted by the Father? Based on the scriptures we just read, no one can! Jesus says it, that settles it! But also consider that until being “born again” or regenerated, we are dead in our trespasses and sin. This being ‘dead’ answers how far we fell from God in the Garden of Eden at the beginning. We fell to a death of complete moral and spiritual bankruptcy.
What can a morally and spiritually dead man do with regards to moral and spiritual things? NOTHING! Unless he is first resurrected from that deadness by a gracious God who chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. Eph. 1:4
Faith is not the product of an unregenerated human nature. Rom. 3:11 No one seeks for God. If a person becomes humble enough to submit to God it is because the Holy Spirit changes the inclination and disposition of our hearts, so that when we were previously unwilling to embrace Christ, now we are so willing, that we run to Christ and we embrace Him joyfully because now we are no longer unreceptive to the commands of God and the invitation of the Gospel. God gives His people a new, humble nature … not because some men are more humble than others. For then we could boast in our own humility, which is really a self-refuting action. It was not by chance that one person believed the gospel and not the other, nor was it because one had some innate virtue that the other lacked. It is grace and grace ALONE that makes men to differ, not the exertion of men’s wills. While God requires faith of all men, He promises to give to all those that are ordained to eternal life, his Holy Spirit, which quickens the sinner and disarms hostility so they are willing, and able to believe. John 6:63-65
Who should dare attempt to steal some of God’s glory by saying, “I believed due to all or even some of my own ability, and therefore was justified by God’s grace?Satan’s chief sin was his pride! How proud you too then must be of yourself if you believe that by your own ability, you chose Jesus! And how could you not be proud of yourself? Your belief necessarily implies your superior spiritual discernment compared to others who have rejected Him! How is that coming to Christ humble like a little child? Biblically it is proper to say, “because of God’s grace, His strength overcame my unbelief, therefore enabling me to believe, and was therefore justified. God’s grace is monergistic (i.e. one work – His work alone) not synergistic, and it is by this understanding that God gets all the glory for our regeneration, justification, salvation and so on.
So then it might seem unfair to many of us that God dispenses His saving grace to some and not to others. I think this is probably a big part of peoples’ objection to God’s election. The Apostle Paul seems to anticipate this objection after Romans 9:10-13 ( in his exposition of Jacob and Esau) and addresses the objection in the very next verse.
If Paul were teaching a Semi-Pelagian or Arminian view of election, that is to say that saving grace rested on what someone would or would not do, then Paul would not have need of verse 14. No one would question the righteousness or justice of God if it rested exclusively on the obedient act or disobedient act of individuals. But verse 14 anticipates that one might question God’s justice after reading in the prior verses that indicate that God sovereignly chose Jacob over Esau to fulfill His elective purposes.
And then Paul reminds us in the very next verse what God had told Moses centuries before; Rom 9:15 This shows us that God has reserved His divine right to executive clemency when and where He so desires.
If 3 people do not receive grace, then where is the injustice with God? They will actually get justice in judgment because they have sinned against God. So there is no injustice.
If 3 people receive grace, then where is the injustice with God? They will actually get grace. So there is no injustice.
If the one group of 3 gets justice and the other group of 3 gets mercy by grace, then who gets injustice? No one! So there is no injustice with God. “A woman once said to C.H. Spurgeon, ‘I cannot understand why God should say that He hated Esau.’ ‘That,’ Spurgeon replied, ‘is not my difficulty, madam. My trouble is to understand how God could love Jacob.’”
How and why God hated Esau and chose to love Jacob is a secret thing of God-Deut 29:29 and a knowledge too wonderful for me Psalm 139:6. Isaiah 55:8 & 2 Cor. 9:15
Before we look at other scriptures which show that God grants us what we need before we can embrace Christ and some other witnesses to this truth, I will go over a “whoever believes” verse. I will use the famous one; John 3:16
Now look in the same chapter John 3:27
Did you catch this part?; “cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.” John does not say that the ‘ability to believe’ is the only exception to his statement.
Now we have demonstrated up to this point that our Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul, John and John the Baptist, have all given witness to the fact that belief is granted by God to His people. He is the FIRST CAUSE!
Now it’s time to have some fun with proof text scripture bombing! But seriously look to see how these harmonize with God’s Sovereign Election.
Notice- ‘the flesh is no help at all. ‘ and ‘no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’
Notice- ‘All that the Father gives me will come to me,’
Notice- ‘granted to you’ with regards to belief in Him.
Notice- ‘grant them repentance’
Notice- ‘as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.’
Notice- ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you’
Again notice- ‘So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.’ and ‘he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.’
Notice- ‘Everyone who believes’.’ and
‘‘has been born of
God’.’
Notice- ‘And because of Him’.’
Notice- ‘he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, and ‘he predestined us for adoption as sons’ and ‘according to the purpose of his will,’
Notice- ‘every decision is from the LORD.’
Really, we could keep going and going with verses. What does one do with these words of God? If you accept that they are literally true and indicate that God is the first cause of faith, then they reconcile with the rest of scripture including the ‘whoever believes’ verses, rather than seeming to be contrary to those scriptures.
So we can deduce that salvation is by Free Will. The Free Will of a Sovereign God who elects according to His pleasure. When God created us in the first place, He brought us into existence. We did not help Him. His sovereign work alone brought us to life biologically. When He brings us to Spiritual life it is His work and His work alone that brings us into that state of rebirth and renewed creation. So we call this Effectual Grace in that it brings about what God intends it to.
For more consideration:
The BAPTIST CONFESSION OF FAITH OF 1689
CHAPTER 9 – OF FREE WILL
Paragraph 3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation;4 so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, 5 is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.6
4.
5.
6.
CHAPTER 10 – OF EFFECTUAL CALLING
Paragraph 2. This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, nor from any power or agency in the creature,7being wholly passive therein, being dead in sins and trespasses, until being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit;8 he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it, and that by no less power than that which raised up Christ from the dead.9
7.
8.
9.
These confession statements are good. They are clear, concise and biblically accurate. R.C. Sproul says, “Creedal statements are an attempt to show a coherent and unified understanding of the whole scope of Scripture.” Many denominations in our day have moved away from great creeds and confessions of the faith, which are scripturally accurate, such as the one we just read and replaced them with new ones containing loose and ambiguous statements in many of their parts.
I think herein we have sufficiently proven the doctrine of God’s Sovereign Election and that it is the biblical view. The question is will this doctrine be continue to be rejected in spite of its proof biblical proof.
Finally,
“…if anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, “What have you that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7), and, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10).
(Council of Orange: Canon 6)
© 2010 George Dunn
- Soli Deo Gloria – God alone is to be glorified
- Solus Christus – Man is saved only through
- Jesus Christ
- Sola Gratia – Salvation is an act of God’s free
- grace alone
- Sola Fide – Salvation is through faith alone,
- not by any works of our own.
- Sola Scriptura – God’s word is the only rule
- and guide for man’s life.
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