Nothing will prevent the Spirit of God from uniting all souls of God’s elect church to Christ by faith. Not even foreseen unbelief will prevent this. It too will necessarily give way and be overcome by grace. Having chosen men without regard to conditions, no condition will hinder Him in bringing those appointed to eternal life to saving faith.

Let us not take away half the love of God by saying he only started to love us at our baptism or only after we came to faith. Let us not take away half the love of God by saying he only loved us in a trickling, generally vague way until we ourselves harnessed and focused his love like a laser through our own reciprocation.

Leave God’s love wholly intact. Leave him be. Let his love for his elect church be as old and as particular as he wills it to be, for the scripture says: “…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 to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:3-4).

To take away half God’s love is to eclipse the glorious gospel of grace. Let the gospel shine fully without shadows. Where part of the gospel is darkened, part of the believer’s soul is darkened by doubts, fears, and many injurious introspections. Proclaim divine unconditional election.

God did. God does. Through Jeremiah he says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jer. 31:3). Here is the place of refuge and renewal for a sin-sick church who needs a foundation for her repentance that melts her heart and ignites her faith. As Geerhardus Vos said of this stunning text: “The best proof that He will never cease to love us lies in that He never began. What we are for Him and what He is for us belongs to the realm of eternal values. Without this we are nothing, in it we have all.”

It is popular, yet certainly wrong, to suggest God predestines individual men and women to salvation in Christ based upon the foreseen belief of different individuals and the foreseen fruitfulness of the same.

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