We remember that we are spending some time looking at what is called “the Doctrines of Grace,” as nicely packaged for us in the acrostic “TULIP.” Further we remember that this acrostic was developed in response to the theology we are swimming in today in the West and that is religious humanism known as Arminianism. There was a confab in the Netherlands in 1618 to settle the issue between religious humanism and Biblical Christianity. Which one would the Church support? That International conference in the Netherlands spent seven months and 154 sessions to hammer out their decisions on various subjects. The result of this Synod of Dordt is the Canons of Dordt which is contained in our Blue Psalter hymnbooks and is one of three Confessions that this Church embraces.
We also remember that last week we noted that the reason these matters need considered is because too often the Modern American church has misidentified the problem of man. The modern church, when it thinks about these matters at all, tends to think that man is misguided… or even perhaps gravely wounded, but it does not really believe that fallen man is dead.
As such having misidentified the problem the solution likewise is all bollixed up. Listen to J. C. Ryle on this point,
“There are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature. Wrong views of the disease will always bring with the wrong views of the remedy. Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always bring with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption.”
We want to note as we start this morning that even though we look at these various doctrines of grace that has come to us as TULIP, that the doctrines that we examine week by week rise and fall together. That is to say that though there are five points, the fact of the matter is that these five points are so integrated that they rise and fall together. This is not a matter of picking and choosing like some kind of smorgasbord buffet. A thousand times “no.” If one buys the T (total depravity) that we examined last week then one is committed to ULIP. There is no way to get off the TULIP train once it leaves the Total Depravity station. At least one can’t get off the TULIP train without being a walking contradiction.
This means that there is no such thing as a 3 point or 4 or 4.5 point embracing of TULIP. It is all or nothing. If one says, for example, that they refuse Limited Atonement as part of their understanding of the Bible then they have told me that they refuse all of TULIP. One simply cannot reject any part of the doctrines of Grace without rejecting all the doctrines of Grace. There is a unbreakable connection between each of them and all of them.
Now, Lutherans, for example as famous for breaking TULIP, but then Lutherans will tell you that the problem with Calvinists is that Calvinists use “human logic,” and that “we just have to have a mystery box for matters like this.” Which is just another way of saying, “We are in contradiction without ourselves and we don’t care.”
There are many other like people who like to break up TULIP.
This week we see an example of TULIP rises and falls as a unit. We noted last week that man is dead in his trespasses and sins. That is heart is deceitfully wicked above all things. That any freedom man has is a freedom to act consistent with his dead in sin nature.
Now this week, we begin to ask… “What is the solution for this graveyard of spiritually dead in sin people?”
Well, the text tells us in Ephesians
2 And you He made alive,who were dead in trespasses and sins
and is repeated by St. Paul.
4But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!
So clearly we see that Michelangelo in his Sistine chapel is wrong. You remember…. We see Adam sitting and Adam is weakly lifting his hand so that God may touch him to give him life. No, Michelangelo when God makes us alive we are not reaching out to Him.
But even if we agree here that God is the one who makes us alive we are forced to ask why did God bring me to life and not the chap next door? It is in the answering of this question whereupon we alight on the U in TULIP and begin speak in keeping with God the Spirit upon Unconditional Election.
Why did God choose some Pervasively Depraved dead people and not others? The answer is that from eternity past God determined who would stay dead and would be made alive and then sent forth the Son, per a Trinitarian covenantal arrangement, to be the one who would pay the sin price for those dead chosen by God from eternity past to be made alive.
We call this “Unconditional Election.” The idea of “election” is just that God does the electing (choosing) and He does so quite apart from any condition set upon those chosen (elected). We see it everywhere in Scripture. Here are a few examples.
Ephesians 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love
Acts 13:48 Now when the Gentiles heard this (that Salvation was coming to the ends of the earth), they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.
II Thess. 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,
II Timothy 1:9 He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,
There you have it. Unconditional election is the idea that God chose a distinct people from eternity past who were dead in their sins. Unconditional Election teaches apart from God choosing us, we would have never chosen God.
Let us contrast this with the doctrine of Conditional Election that we get from religious humanism (Arminianism) … from 9.9 churches out of 10 that you might visit today. In those Churches where we find religious humanism (Arminianism) God’s electing us is conditional upon an “independent from God arrived at” faith. Faith becomes a good work done on our part, that God foresaw and foreknew that we would have and so on the basis of God seeing through the tunnels of time that we would one day exercise faith He elected us to salvation.
But you see the problems here don’t you?
The problems are
1.) Faith is never described as a work that we do that requires God to give us Salvation. God says in Ephesians that faith is a gift
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
Faith is passive… it receives. (Ill. – Prongs on a diamond)
Remember, people who are totally depraved and so dead can’t meet any conditions for salvation. Consequently in Biblical Christianity God Elects us, Christ dies for the Elect and the Spirit regenerates with the consequence that we have faith.
In “Conditional Election” the condition God places on man is faith and man then uses faith as a work to offer up to God as an exchange for salvation. Faith becomes a work that man can glory in.
2.) The spotlight is on man’s meeting God’s condition and so the spotlight is on man’s performance of the work necessary to receive salvation. Man is glorified for meeting the condition that allowed God to elect him.
3.) In this arrangement man takes the initiative and God responds. God looks down the tunnels of time to see which men elect him God and then as a result elects man. Whereas in Biblical faith God does all the electing and man responds.
4.) And again remember … people dead in trespasses and sins can’t meet conditions.
This is the difference between Biblical Christianity which teaches unconditional election and unbiblical non-Christianity which teaches conditional election.
Of course we must bring out the other side of this. If God discriminates and so chooses some that means that He does not choose others. This is the teaching of Scripture,|
John 10:25 Jesus answered them, (the Pharisees) “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, [e]as I said to you.
You see it don’t you? There it is plainly said … “You do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.” You don’t belong to me. I am not laying down my life for you because the good shepherd gives his life only for the sheep. (John 10:11)
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
If there is a connection between hearing because one is one of His elect sheep and the idea that in order to hear Christ has to give His life for the elect sheep then those not hearing are also those who were not those for whom He laid down His life.
There are those who are elect and those who are not elect. This is the testimony of Scripture. Romans 9
13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” 16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
Now here is where Biblical Christianity sometimes loses people. Here the Religious Humanist will raise the cry that this idea of Unconditional Election is not fair. It is the same protest that Paul anticipates above. Is there unrighteousness with God because God elected Jacob and not Esau? The answer is the strongest possible negation. GOD FORBID.
We need to keep in mind here that this is not unfair in the slightest. Fairness here would mean that God leaves everyone (Jacob and Esau) eternally damned since all fell in Adam’s fall and since all have pursued rebellion against God. Because of this, outside of His own merciful character God was under no compulsion to save anyone. Fairness then would be for all men to be damned. So, let us be done with the accusation of God not being fair.
God is in Election merciful and just. He is merciful because He delivers and preserves from damnation all the elect whom God has, in His eternal and unchangeable counsel of mere goodness has elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, completely apart from any consideration of their good works. God is just (fair) in reprobation in leaving others in the fall wherein they involved themselves. This is the testimony of our own Belgic Confession of faith,
ARTICLE 16 DIVINE ELECTION We believe that, when the entire offspring of Adam plunged into perdition and ruin by the transgression of the first man,1 God manifested Himself to be as He is: merciful and just. Merciful, in rescuing and saving from this perdition those whom in His eternal and unchangeable counsel2 He has elected3 in Jesus Christ our Lord4 by His pure goodness, without any consideration of their works.5 Just, in leaving the others in the fall and perdition into which they have plunged themselves.6
1 Rom 3:12.
2 Jn 6:37, 44; Jn 10:29; Jn 17:2, 9, 12; Jn 18:9.
3 1 Sam 12:22; Ps 65:4; Acts 13:48; Rom 9:16; Rom 11:5; Tit 1:1.
4 Jn 15:16, 19; Rom 8:29; Eph 1:4, 5.
5 Mal 1:2, 3; Rom 9:11-13; 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 3:4, 5.
6 Rom 9:19-22; 1 Pet 2:8.
Secondly, on this score even if God were unfair (something we are in no way conceding) what makes anyone think that the Creator is answerable to the creature? God doesn’t have to answer to man. As Romans 9 asks, “Who is man to question God?” This is one of the lessons of the book of Job. We don’t get to question the Creator. To often,
We speak of a cruel and unfair God
As if man were the true Transcendent;
As if man were judge of all the earth,
And God the poor defendant.
As if God were arraigned with a very black case,
And on the skill of His lawyer dependent,
And “I wouldn’t like to be God,” we say,
“For His record is not resplendent.”
So… following Scripture we believe that God Unconditionally elects. We believe that must be the case because if man really is dead and so can’t do anything to contribute to his salvation then God must be the one who Unconditionally elects.
And… following Scripture we believe that God discriminates in His electing. He chooses some to eternal life and leaves others to remain dead in their trespasses and sins where they love abiding and where they would, if asked, testify that they never want to leave.
Here we quote Calvin,
“Indeed, many, as if they wished to avert a reproach from God, accept Election in such terms as to deny that anyone is condemned. But they do this very ignorantly and childishly, since Election itself could not stand except as over against reprobation.”
God elects some to salvation and so by necessity doesn’t elect others.
We must not miss the character of God that is set forth in this doctrine of
Unconditional election. We see His Eternality…. Aseity … Ominipotence… Goodness…Immutability. When we study the Doctrines of Grace then we see the Character of God. This is particularly true of Unconditional election. God’s eternality is seen inasmuch as there was never a time when the Elect were not Chosen by God. We see God’s aseity because being completely self sufficient in and of Himself he chose whom He would choose quite independent of us or anything about us. We see God’s goodness inasmuch as God freely chose to elect a great host when there was no necessity laid upon Him to do so. We see God’s immutability inasmuch as what God foreordained to happen has indeed happened in marking out generations and centuries of the Elect who have indeed been honored by Him.
And so this Unconditional Election is not merely a matter of learning about Soteriology. Soteriology is not abstracted from the rest of our theology. Rather when we look at the doctrine of salvation in the doctrines of Grace we also, if we pay attention, are learning theology proper. We are learning of the character of God.
Ah sweet Unconditional Election. Listen to the Hymn-writer
1 ‘Tis not that I did choose thee,
for, Lord, that could not be;
this heart would still refuse thee,
hadst thou not chosen me.
Thou from the sin that stained me
hast cleansed and set me free;
of old thou hast ordained me,
that I should live to thee.
2 ‘Twas sov’reign mercy called me
and taught my op’ning mind;
the world had else enthralled me,
to heav’nly glories blind.
My heart owns none before thee,
for thy rich grace I thirst;
this knowing, if I love thee,
thou must have loved me first.
And so understanding Unconditional Election more and more the impact that should descend upon is, is incredibly gratitude and then out of gratitude a great desire to praise God and so be His advocate. Likewise the impulse from understanding this doctrine should also be missionary. We understand God’s great grace towards us and so we desire others to be made aware of this magnificent God who’s Electing grace is so vast so as to mark out thousands upon thousands, ten thousand times ten thousand, indeed, a number that no man can count to receive the good news of salvation.
May we be a people who are lost in wonder, love, and awe, because of this doctrine of Unconditional Election and then who are animated by the truth of it to champion God’s name and cause at every turn.
