We hear the word “election” and suddenly the hairs on our neck stand up as we think to ourselves, “That’s not fair. It is unjust of God.”(Romans 9:14)
“The fallen human mind tends to think it is unjust for God to choose some but not everyone – as if we had a right to demand His grace. That’s not fair! is the typical response. But it’s not supposed to be fair. We wouldn’t want it to be fair. “Fair” would mean everyone is eternally condemned.”
John MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel
Or we read about God’s sovereignty in salvation and immediately our knee jerk reaction is to cry “What about human free will? After all we are not robots.” I believe the reason we react in this manner is due to a basic misunderstanding of the biblical truth of election due to myths and outright lies that have been perpetrated.
MYTH #1: It is unloving of God to elect some and not others.
God makes it very clear that the reason He chose Israel over other nations was not because of anything in them but simply because He sovereignly chose to love them.
“The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you”
Deuteronomy 7:6-8(emphasis added)
In writing to the church in Ephesus, the apostle Paul wrote unequivocally that God’s motive that He predestined us to adoption as sons was love.
“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 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.”
Ephesians 1:4-6(emphasis added)
“If you reject divine election, you undermine His love.”
Mike Abendroth, Things That Go Bump in the Church(p. 116)
MYTH #2: Election is a debate for the ivory towers of seminary and thus has no practical implications for life.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Christians Peter was writing to were under severe persecution. Nero burned Rome because he wanted to rebuild it so as to bring fame, glory and majesty to his name. The persecution the Christians were facing intensified when Nero blamed them for the burning of Rome including its cultural and religious artifacts.
So Peter’s purpose in writing to them was to encourage them in the midst of their trials and suffering. And the very first thing he brings to their attention is election.
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,…”
1 Peter 1:1-2
So how does election encourage suffering Christians? Peter is using an argument from the greater to the lesser. Since God is sovereign over salvation, in choosing you according to His foreknowledge, His predetermined plan and purpose, then surely He is sovereign over any trials. Stuff for real life not for ivory towers.
“I know of nothing that is so strengthening to faith, nothing which so builds up my assurance, nothing which gives me such certainty about the blessed hope for which I am destined, as the understanding of Christian doctrine, the understanding of the way, yes, the mechanism of salvation. And that is why I personally ‘bother’ with it. It is not an intellectual interest, although it is entrancingly interesting from the standpoint of intellect, but I confess frankly that I am concerned about it primarily for a most practical reason: it is so comforting, so strengthening, so upbuilding.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
