As mentioned last week, I first became aware of and grappled with doctrine of election when I was seventeen. I had just graduated from high school a year early and started my freshman year at Baptist Bible College (BBC) in Springfield, MO. I went there because it was affordable, the largest Bible college in the world, and the school that Jerry Falwell—a giant in my fundamentalist days—had graduated from.
I was a zealous guy—the kind that would wear a Jesus Saves hat to an amusement park or put Chick tracks on the windshields of people’s cars at an adult bookstore. (Yes, I really did those things!). I loved God, but had a lot to learn.
At BBC, I quickly grew disillusioned by the numbers game (how many souls got saved at your church this Sunday?) and the shallow, manipulative preaching. I also met some guys on campus who called themselves “underground Calvinists”. They introduced me to a lot of “heretical” literature, at least from the school’s perspective, from Banner of Truth, as well as from authors like Calvin, Ian Murray, and A.W. Pink. At the same time, I took a part-time job with a roofer who had previously been a pastor. He gave me The Five Points of Calvinism: Documented, Defended, and Defined by David Steele and Curtis Thomas. It was that book and a little pamphlet by Pink on “Election” that tipped my hat toward this view of unconditional election.
As with many course changes or truths we initially embrace, there is a pendulum effect and I was no exception. In the “the sovereignty of God vs. responsibility of man” continuum, I swung hard toward the former or Calvinist side. I became fatalistic and wondered things like: If God’s choice trumps our choices, are we robots?, If we are dead until the Spirit makes us alive, what power and freedom of choice do we really have?, Does God love everyone the same? Is he just? Is he fair? An on, and on. These questions are beyond the scope of this post and many fine books like Steele & Thomas’ above attempt to address them. Suffice it to say now, as I’ve grown in my faith, I’ve swung back to a place of balance. With that in mind, I’d like to offer four benefits or tests of a proper understanding of election:
- Humility. (Deut 7:7-9; Eph 2:8-9) Interestingly, my initial introduction to election at BBC led me into a serious depression. I had always struggled with why I embraced the truth about Christ when my grandfather—who was smarter than me and beat me most of the time at chess—did not. The truth about election struck down my pride as I realized it wasn’t about my IQ or being in some way better than any other human on the planet. No, I loved God because he first loved me. Spurgeon says it well: “I know nothing, nothing again, that is more humbling for us than this doctrine of election. I have sometimes fallen prostrate before it, when endeavoring to understand it. I have stretched my wings, and eagle-like, I have soared towards the sun. Steady has been my eye, and true my wing, for a season; but, when I came near it, and the one thought possessed me, ‘God hath from the beginning chosen you unto salvation,’ I was lost in its luster, I was staggered with the mighty thought; and from the dizzy elevation down came my soul, prostrate and broken saying, ‘Lord, I am nothing, I am less than nothing. Why me? Why me?’”
- Courage. (Matt 16:18; Jn 6:37) If God is all-powerful and if only he can raise the spiritually dead (Eph 2:1) or bring spiritual birth (Jn 3:3), then even the hardest heart can be changed! Success in evangelism does not rest on our ability to persuade. It is about what God has done and is able to do. The doctrine of election tells us that God has been working behind the scenes for a long time. We don’t know who is elect and who is not. That’s not our business. We should share our faith in faith knowing that as Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
- Security. (Jn 10:10; Rom 8:28-39) The Father elected us, the Spirit set us apart, and we have been sprinkled with the identity-marker and covenant sign of Christ’s blood. Fleming Rutledge notes, “This covenant security is the foundation that allows us to come to God in full knowledge of our sinful condition… If a child is rebuked, the rebuke must be done by an unconditionally loving person, so that the child can receive the message in safety. That is the way grace works… it is the knowledge that we are already secure that allows us to receive the word of reproach with gratitude.”[1]
- Holiness. (Jn 15:16; Eph 2:10) Although the doctrine of election is a great comfort, it’s not just a pillow to sleep on. Think about how Jesus introduced election to his disciples. He said, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit…” As Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship” or poem “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand…” (NRSV) Or, as our anchor passage for this brief series, 1 Peter 1:1, says, we are “elect,” and set apart “FOR obedience to Jesus Christ.”
Friends, all this is a great mystery but it’s what the Bible teaches and it’s a family truth. In 1984, at IVP’s Urbana conference in Champagne, IL, I heard the late Billy Graham give his take on the mystery of election. He said before we come to Christ, we look up at this vast stone archway and written over the top it says, “Whosoever will, let him come.” After we repent and believe the gospel and go through, we look back at that same archway and it says, “Chosen in him before the foundation of the world.”
Next week we’ll look at the interesting second part of the phrase “elect exiles” in “Reclaiming a Christian Identity, Part 4 of 5.”
[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 246.
Note: the featured image above is the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona, Spain.