GOD'S ELECTION

Election-Questions and Problems

1. Why doesn't God elect all men?

• God certainly has good and wise reasons for what He does.
• Paul 's remarkable statement in 1 Tim. 1:15-16
• Cf. Strong, 'the uses God can put men to may have something to do with His choices."

2. When the books are finally balanced and closed, we shall find;

• That God has saved more souls than we had ever dreamed.
• That He has saved all who could be saved consistent with His own wise and holy purposes for a redeemed humanity. Now we know in part. Some day we shall know more fully. Until then, let us walk by faith, believing his word, fully assured that the Lord of all will do justly.

          It is a dangerous thing for men to weigh God's movements in their own minds for the purpose of arriving at an elevation of rightness or wrongness. Due to the finiteness of our minds, and the tendency to sin, we are bound to come out on the wrong side. This leads always to peril.

          There is a conclusion that there should be freedom of thought. This is true only in one sense; namely, to think that which is true and holy. Any other thought is forbidden and sinful. God is Lord and He has the right to determine what men, especially His own, think. He has revealed what He wants men to think, and what they are able to think. The rest He has left unrevealed.

An illustration of the situation is the relation between parents and children.

2. Is it not just for God to elect some and not others?

• Salvation is not a matter of justice. If it were, no one would be saved.
• If God had saved no one, He would have been perfectly just.
• Election shuts no one out of heaven. Cf. Matt 15:22-28 "Whosoever" The mother.

3. The doctrine of election will discourage efforts to win the lost.

• Ought to stimulate such work-because without election all would be lost-our only hope is in the Sovereign grace of God.
• It is our duty to bear the testimony: whether men accept or reject it. Ezek. 2:7; 2 Tim 2:10

4. Election encourages sinners to sit down and do nothing.

• If men neglect-it is certain they will be lost. Heb. 2:3
• Any man can prove he is one of the elect by believing and obeying the gospel-there is no other way.

5. Election makes Christians proud and pharisaical

• Actually it humbles the true Christian. All he is and has is only by the grace of a sovereign God. Cf. 1 Tim. 1:12-15
• A proud and haughty spirit is a sure mark of the non-elect. Cf. Matt. 3:79

6. How can we reconcile Divine election with human freedom?

• This problem is not peculiar to Christianity.
• Same problem in another form exists in science and philosophy under other names (Determinism and Indeterminism.)
• In a world of natural law, how can there be any freedom?

(2) Kant, great philosopher, argued the problem was insolvable

• As a scientist accepted determinism
• As a moralist had to have freedom, and hence assumed it withpout scientific proof.

(3) Modern Physicists: Some think they may have found an area in material universe where freedom exists.

• Cf. The unpredictable electron-only uncertainty
• Cf. Movement of molecules as though they had freedom

7. Since men bound by sin are not free, how can the sinner accept the gospel?

1. One view is that since man is enslaved by sin, he cannot accept Christ until God regenerates him. Man does not believe in order to be born again. He is regenerated in order that he may believe.
2. Another possible view is that although man is brand by sin, unable to act on the basis of good motives, he is perfectly capable of acting on the basis of selfish motives. Hence, although he hates God and loves sin, he may also fear punishment. Such a motive, though selfish, may lead him to come to Christ for escape, and later, when born again learn to love Christ for Himself.

8. What is freedom?

          (1) The answer

• Negative-We mean absolute freedom to do aanything at all.
• We do mean that freedom operates within limits

          (2) The limitations

• External-the laws of the land
• External-the laws of nature
• External-the law of custom
• Internal-Lack of ability (physical, mental, spiritual)
• Internal-Controlled by wrong motives
• A man has a motive for everything he does, conscious or unconscious. Generally the motives of saved men are good while those of sinners are bad.
• Can a man choose contrary to his motives? The general answer is no, but in every human life there are introductory motives.
• Sinners are against God, yet men have a motive for self-preservation.
• Some men keep themselves pure, not because they respect purity, but because they fear impurity.

Eph 1:11  "who works all things after the counsel of His will," 

• In this verse we see God as a self-determining Agent, a free personal Being acting purely in accordance with His own perfection.