In Huckleberry Finn, Huck found himself taken up by a family that was in the middle of a blood feud. All week, the two families would kill one another; except on Sunday, when they would all go to church together. Huck described the sermon: “It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.”
Huck would probably think this is a pretty ornery article too, because the doctrine of predestination and election is a most humbling teaching and it rubs against the grain of our natural feelings. The doctrine of election is that in eternity, before God created the world, He chose among the children of men sinners to whom He would show mercy and save in Jesus Christ. God “predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” where God had made us accepted in Christ (Ephesians 1:4-6 ).
The fact of God’s sovereign election of sinners unto salvation is found throughout the whole Bible. Whether in explicit, clear, undeniable teaching, (Ephesians 1; Romans 8:28-30; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14) or through examples of the lives of believers, you find God’s choice of particular people. God chose Noah and his family. God chose Abram out of all the other Chaldean men. God chose Isaac, not Ishmael. God chose Jacob and not Esau prior to them being born, doing either good nor evil (Romans 9). God chose Israel and not Egypt or the Canaanites, or Amorites. God chose Paul on the road to Damascus, and not his traveling companions. Why? Grace – underserved favor to undeserving sinners.
Election is a worshipful, God exalting doctrine because God gets all the glory. Men will allow God to be everywhere, except His throne, but the Lord is in Heaven and does as He pleases. Charles Spurgeon said “…I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.”
The question for Bible believers is not whether God chooses, but why. If God saves based on what we do, then it is no more grace. Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”. Christian, love God as he has revealed Himself. Worship the Potter (Romans 9:20-23) and believe that salvation is of the Lord. dougnewell4th@gmail.com
