GOSPEL DELTA

Delighting in the Doctrine of Divine Election

// February 13th, 2010 // Doctrine

Many people abhor the doctrine of election. When most Christians talk about it, they do so reluctantly. They preface every mention of this doctrine with the qualifier “I really wish this wasn’t true, but…”.  They say that Christians should only speak of this doctrine with sadness and regret, and only talk about it when we are pushed or coerced. But there is something seriously wrong with us when we don’t take delight in what God takes delight in. If we find ourselves at odds in our soul with a particular doctrine that is clearly stated in Scripture, there’s a problem, and it’s not with God, or the Bible, it’s with us. 

The doctrine of election, like every other truth in Scripture, has been revealed to us so that we might “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9). Even if you don’t fully understand God’s purposes, and it frustrates us to have to look through a glass dimly, God has still given us his decrees so that we might delight in them, it’s why we exist, it’s why we were made, it’s why we were redeemed.

I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14:

13 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. – 2 Thes 2:13-14

But there are some who say, “It is hard for God to choose some and leave others.” Now, I will ask you one question. Is there any of you here this morning who wishes to be holy, who wishes to be regenerate, to leave off sin and walk in holiness? “Yes, there is,” says some one, “I do.” Then God has elected you. But another says, “No; I don’t want to be holy; I don’t want to give up my lusts and my vices.” Why should you grumble, then, that God has not elected you to it? For if you were elected you would not like it, according to your own confession. If God this morning had chosen you to holiness, you say you would not care for it. Do you not acknowledge that you prefer drunkenness to sobriety, dishonesty to honesty? You love this world’s pleasures better than religion; then why should you grumble that God has not chosen you to religion? If you love religion, he has chosen you to it. If you desire it, he has chosen you to it. If you do not, what right have you to say that God ought to have given you what you do not wish for? Supposing I had in my hand something which you do not value, and I said I shall give it to such-and-such a person, you would have no right to grumble that I did not give to you. You could not be so foolish as to grumble that the other has got what you do not care about. According to your own confession, many of you do not want religion, do not want a new heart and a right spirit, do not want the forgiveness of sins, do not want sanctification; you do not want to be elected to these things: then why should you grumble? You count these things but as husks, and why should you complain of God who has given them to those whom he has chosen? If you believe them to be good and desire them, they are there for thee. God gives liberally to all those who desire; and first of all, he makes them desire, otherwise they never would. If you love these things, he has elected you to them, and you may have them; but if you do not, who are you that you should find fault with God, when it is your own desperate will that keeps you from loving these things—your own simple self that makes you hate them? Suppose a man in the street should say, “What a shame it is I cannot have a seat in the chapel to hear what this man has to say.” And suppose he says, “I hate the preacher; I can’t bear his doctrine; but still it’s a shame I have not a seat.” Would you expect a man to say so? No: you would at once say, “That man does not care for it. Why should he trouble himself about other people having what they value and he despises?” You do not like holiness, you do not like righteousness; if God has elected me to these things, has he hurt you by it? “Ah! but,” say some, “I thought it meant that God elected some to heaven and some to hell.” That is a very different matter from the gospel doctrine. He has elected men to holiness and to righteousness and through that to heaven. You must not say that he has elected them simply to heaven, and others only to hell. He has elected you to holiness, if you love holiness. If any of you love to be saved by Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ elected you to be saved. If any of you desire to have salvation, you are elected to have it, if you desire it sincerely and earnestly. But, if you don’t desire it, why on earth should you be so preposterously foolish as to grumble because God gives that which you do not like to other people?  – C.H. Spurgeon

George Whitefield said this about the excellecy of election:

Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election, and of the saints’ final perseverance, to those who are truly sealed by the Spirit of promise! 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 the application of them to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed, not in himself but in the Son of God, who died and gave himself for him. Love, not fear, constrains him to obedience.

Spurgeon again:

And why should [the doctrine of] election frighten you? If you have chosen Christ, depend upon it he has chosen you. If your tearful eye is looking to him, then his omniscient eye has long looked on you. If your heart loves him, his heart loves you better than you can ever love.  – C.H. Spurgeon, Revival Year Sermons, page 49, altering the “thou” pronouns to “you.”