The truth of election embraces the necessity of evangelism and missions and guarantees their success in God’s time and God’s way. This has been the strength and courage of thousands of faithful missionaries.

The Preciousness of God’s Election by Grace

What Romans 8:28–30 teaches is that God really accomplishes the complete redemption of his people from start to finish. He foreknows (elects) a people for himself before the foundation of the world; he predestines this people to be conformed to the image of his Son; he calls them to himself in faith; he justifies them through that faith; and he finally glorifies them. And nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ forever and ever (Rom. 8:39). This great work of salvation is rooted and grounded in the electing love of God. If that foundation stone crumbles, biblical salvation crumbles. But it cannot and will not crumble because God has pleasure in election, the unshakable ground of the glory of his grace.

I am often asked by people, “Does it really matter what we believe about election? Is it really relevant to how we live and minister?” My answer is, obviously, yes. And I think it will be helpful if I close with seven reasons why this teaching is precious to me and why I believe God has pleasure in it. In each of the following points, “this truth” refers to the truth of God’s free, sovereign, unconditional, individual election by grace of who will be saved.

First, this truth is biblical. It is biblical not only in being found once in Scripture but in being found throughout Scripture. George Müller said:

To my great astonishment I found that the passages which speak decidedly for election and persevering grace, were about four times as many as those which speak apparently against these truths; and even those few, shortly after, when I had examined and understood them, served to confirm me in the above doctrines.¹

George Whitefield, the great eighteenth-century evangelist, spoke for many saints when he wrote to John Wesley to explain why he believed in the truth of election: “Alas, I never read anything that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I had from Christ and His apostles; I was taught them of God.”² God has pleasure in election because he exalts his word (Ps. 138:2) and his word teaches that these things are so.

Second, this truth humbles sinners and exalts the glory of God—especially the glory of his grace. This is the point of 1 Corinthians 1:26–31 that we saw above: “God chose…so that no human being might boast in the presence of God…[but] let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” The great design of God’s way of salvation is to magnify his glory and bring down human pride. George Whitefield wrote to John Wesley urging:

that he seek the truth that shall most debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus. Nothing but the doctrines of the Reformation can do this. All others leave free will in man and make him, in part, at least, a savior to himself. My soul, come not thou near the secret of those who teach such things.xxxI know Christ is all in all. Man is nothing: he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will and to do his good pleasure.

Oh, the excellency of the doctrine of election and of the saints’ final perseverance! I am persuaded, till a man comes to believe and feel these important truths, he cannot come out of himself, but when convinced of these and assured of their application to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed.³

Third, this truth tends to preserve the church from slipping toward false philosophies of life. History seems to show that this is so. For example, toward the end of the eighteenth century, “Calvinistic convictions waned in North America. In the progress of a decline which [Jonathan] Edwards had rightly anticipated, those Congregational churches of New England which had embraced Arminianism after the Great Awakening gradually moved into Unitarianism and universalism, led by Charles Chauncy.”⁴ It seems that there is something about the truth of God’s free and sovereign election that stands guard over the mind and heart of the church and keeps her alert to tendencies and shifts that swing wide from the plumb line of God’s word.

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