Unconditional Election (Calvinism Series: Part Two)

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, in part two of our five -part series on Calvinism, we are discussing unconditional election.

What do we even mean when we say that term, unconditional election? We talk about some of the misconceptions that exist and try to demonstrate why those are wrong.

We turn to the Bible because we figure that would be a good idea, and talking about a difficult doctrine, where many like unconditional election is, and then we think about why this doctrine matters for us in our daily experience following Christ.

And then in the member's podcast, we answer the question, how do I know if I'm elect? And we talk about the fact that so often the answer that's given to that question basically makes assurance impossible.

Stay tuned. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are

John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota.

And myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. John, you've got the cultural update for us today, man.

So why don't you give the people what they want? Well, it was great to hear my name change for the first time,

Grace Reformed Church. So for those of you that don't know, we officially have changed our name, and maybe we'll do a podcast on it one day as the reason why.

But yeah, so that was last Sunday. Two days ago, we officially, the church brought that name in, and we have to now get all the website.

And not only that, I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but we have been looking for a new location.

We've been at a Christian school for the last eight months, and we no longer fit at that little school.

And so thankfully, the Lord has provided an elementary school a mile down the road from where we're at right now.

So October 27th is hopefully the day we'll be moving in, and we've got to get everything we need.

We need chairs and a trailer, and we need to set up a nursery because apparently we can only use the hallway for a nursery. So we're not the first church that's had to do that.

But yeah, we're excited. The church is very excited, and it'll be a fun transition for us.

So for those of you who want to follow along, it's gracereformed .org. Finding a location for a church plant is proving itself as one of the most stressful things that I've ever had to do in my life.

No doubt. You know, Jimmy, when we first started this conversation, we're like, yeah, I'm not worried about it. We'll find something pretty easy. And I was like, oh, what he doesn't know.

I know. My naivety was showing. It's crazy. I mean, you just have so many factors to think about.

I mean, you have kids, and what do you do for nursery? I mean, if you're going to have Sunday school space, what do you do for that?

And then sound and all of these different things. And then location. I mean, you don't want to be out in the sticks, per se.

But man, it is. John, I feel your pain. We all need to get stickers that say church plant life on them.

I mean, it's a real thing. Speaking of, we're trying to get Theocast stickers, hopefully soon.

I don't know if anybody wants them. I know Justin does. Justin wants them. So we're getting them for Justin. Justin is the swag guy.

He likes the swag. Wow. Shot across the bow. Hey, do you know what came out last week?

Well, this is like several weeks ago, but in our time frame, what comes out Wednesday is some fun information.

If you didn't listen to Footnote and Grace, the members podcast, you missed out on some juicy information about JP.

Juicy. You are just leading people all kinds of astray, John, by calling it juicy. People are going to get the wrong idea, bro.

Justin was elected to be a part of something that many people in the world are not elected to be a part of.

Oh my gosh. Here we go. Well, John, you just did that.

I did. I did. I did. I feel like our transitions are just... The more we get to know one another, the worse they get.

That's the whole reason they're great. I know. Anyway, so yeah, that's what we're talking about today, guys.

We are continuing in our series on what is known as the five points of Calvinism. Last week, we talked about total depravity.

This week, we are talking about the U in the TULIP acronym, if you will.

We're talking about unconditional election. One of the wisest things that I've ever heard is that one of the fundamental problems of Christianity today is what we would call category confusion.

We know there's a lot of language surrounding the various five points of Calvinism.

We want to be clear on what we mean by these terms and what we mean by unconditional election.

John, why don't you help us out? Absolutely. We're just going to define a couple of these terms. One of them you'll read in Scripture.

If you start reading theology, whether you hold to Calvinism or not, these are terms that everyone has to deal with.

The first term is foreordination. Foreordination means God's sovereign plan.

He decides whatever is to happen in the entire universe. Nothing in this world happens by chance.

God is behind everything. He is the movement behind everything. He decides and causes all things to happen.

When we think about Calvinism, foreordination is very much a part of our understanding.

I would say that everyone would agree with that who is conservative theologically, whether you're

Calvinist or not. Here are the next two phrases where definitions might change a little bit.

The way we understand underneath foreordination is what we call predestination, and it's a part of it.

Foreordination refers to God's plan for everything that is to happen, but predestination is the part of the foreordination that refers to man's eternal destiny, so heaven and hell.

Predestination is composed of two parts. You have election and reprobation.

So election concerns those who go to heaven, and reprobation concerns those who do not, and they are punished and they go to hell.

Then we have the term which we're going to be talking about today, which falls underneath predestination, which is what's called unconditional election.

The rest of this podcast is going to be working off of that foundation. Foreordination means God is sovereign.

He is the one who plans all things. Predestination is a reference to man. How is it that man is predetermined or predestinated?

It's through unconditional election. So the rest of the podcast will be to explain that foundation of unconditional election.

I think that's helpful, John. Thanks for those. I mean, that was really good. You did a good job there. Oh, thanks.

I'm really proud of you. I'm just really proud of you. I appreciate that. I've been talking about it for a long time, so for many years.

Yeah, you have. Yeah, I couldn't tell. So I think it would be wise at this point to perhaps label some common misconceptions as we think about unconditional election.

And so what would you guys say are some of the most popular misconceptions when we think about this?

One of the ones that immediately comes to mind is this idea that election is this kind of mechanical transaction.

It's this situation where people who don't even really want to be saved are sort of drug kicking and screaming to Jesus because of God's sovereign choice of them.

And then there are other people on the flip side of that coin who really want to be saved. They want to come to Christ.

They want to spend forever with God and the new heavens and new earth, but their names are just simply left off the list.

And therefore, they can't come to saving faith in Christ. The way that it's often framed, maybe we could even put it this way, is that it's posited that election, unconditional election is serving the purpose of shutting out the many.

Rather, what we would want to turn that to, and we'll talk more about this later, is that in fact it is unconditional election that invites people to participate in the riches of God's grace in Christ.

The reason we would label that a misconception is one, and I think this is important to note, is that there are people outside of the sovereign hand of God electing them who want to be saved.

There is this mysterious group out there that so badly wants to use biblical language to call upon the name of the

Lord and be saved, who God then says no. We call that a misconception because I just have

John 6 in mind where Jesus is drawing men unto the

Father, that there has been a sovereign work in their heart to draw them to God.

I had a college professor who used to say it like this. He used to poke fun at what is known as the seeker -sensitive movement.

He would say, this whole targeted ministry towards seekers is so funny to me because it's a biblical category that does not exist.

That is, those who are seeking after God who have not had the Holy Spirit drawing them unto

God the Father, God the Son. I think that's important to label.

We understand that to be a misconception because that person who wants to be saved, who wants to call upon the name of the

Lord, ultimately doesn't exist without the sovereign hand of God working on their heart.

On the flip side of that, Jimmy, the reality is this too, that nobody comes to Jesus who does not want to come to Jesus.

When the Holy Spirit of God comes and does that sovereign work by which our eyes are opened and we see

Christ for who He really is, in that moment, our response is like,

I might not know everything, but I know that I know that I know that I want and need Jesus Christ.

He, in that moment, is irresistible to me, and I am joyfully running to Him in faith.

You're exactly right that none of us would seek God on our own. Paul makes that very clear in Romans chapter three, no one does good, no one seeks after God.

So yeah, the idea that there are seekers out there who are really, from the heart, wanting to know

God in Christ and God just shuts the door because of His sovereign purposes of election, that is a misguided conception.

I think it's important that when you think about Calvinism and starting with the anacronym

TULIP that it does begin with total depravity and I do not believe you can fully understand this entire conversation if you don't start with total depravity.

You cannot really pull one apart, theologically speaking, because it does break apart one, the nature of God, and number two, the nature of sin, and number three, the nature of man.

Going back to our podcast from total depravity, that is the foundation of understanding.

If you do not understand that men are dead, deaf, and blind, they have not capacities within themselves to desire

God, then you won't understand the rest. In my personal opinion, it's going to be hard to understand the rest of the

Bible because there is so much that Jesus says and Jesus is assuming that people are depraved.

Not only does He assume it, He has to explain it to them. This happens in John 6, this happens in John 10, and this happens in John 15.

I would say that if you're going to understand this conversation, total depravity has to be our foundation.

I want to add one thing to this conversation you guys were saying, and this is a part of the misconception.

I believe that everybody gets what they want, so I've never seen a person who wants to get into heaven not get into heaven, and I've never seen someone who doesn't want to be in heaven all of a sudden.

Most of the time when I'm talking with somebody who is not a Christian, they have this objection, and they'll say, well,

I just don't think it's right that God pulls people kicking and streaming into heaven. I'll say, let me ask you a question, do you believe in Jesus Christ?

And they're like, well, no. I said, well, do you want to live with God in heaven? No. So, okay, then you actually are getting what you want because it's very obvious.

Jesus says only those who believe in him will go to heaven, and then if you talk to someone who is absolutely a believer and they don't like predestination or election and they want to go to heaven, they love

Christ, and so there's a side of it where those realities can't exist unless the

Spirit comes and does something, and we're just trying to explain what the Spirit is actually doing when he's doing his work.

Petey Another misconception that is commonly thrown into this conversation is that unconditional election just completely tramples and removes any possibility of man's will being real, or maybe another way to frame that is it removes any possibility that we as human beings make real and meaningful choices.

And we want to just clarify what we're saying here. We absolutely make decisions as human beings.

We are morally culpable beings. We are, in that sense, free agents to make choices that are significant.

So, we do choose to follow Christ. I mean, so that song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, is an entirely legitimate song to sing.

We do make a decision. We decide every day on the one hand, we decide that we are going to follow

Christ. The question, though, that we are speaking to in this conversation about unconditional election is not, do people make choices?

The answer to that is, of course, yes. We are asking the question, why did you make the choice you made?

What's underneath your choosing for Jesus? And we're going to get to this more later.

Underneath your choosing of Christ is God's choosing of you long before you ever made a decision for God.

He made a decision for you. And this is a really good thing. This is wonderful news. And we look forward to talking more about that part of it, maybe in the second portion of our podcast today.

That's right. Yeah, John, I want to go back to something that you said that, I mean, ultimately, everybody is getting what they want.

They are chasing after what they want. And I'm going to bring in a pop culture reference, because that's what

I love to do. And there's a movie, perhaps you've seen it. It's called I Am Legend.

Will Smith, probably the greatest actor of all time. That's a strong statement. I'm kidding.

Come on, Fresh Prince, y 'all. It's coming in hot. That's right. I was going to start singing the theme song, and I decided against it.

Maybe in the members podcast, I'll do it. Maybe you should just continue talking.

Okay. Anyway. So, spoiler alert, if you haven't seen this movie, perhaps fast forward 30, 60 seconds.

But at the end of this movie, it's a zombie flick. And at the end of this movie, Will Smith is in his basement and he finds this cure to cure the human race who have been infected by this zombie apocalypse type thing.

And at the end of this movie, this leader of the zombie movement, he's running headlong into this glass barrier between him and Will Smith's character.

And Will Smith is screaming at this zombie, I can cure you,

I can fix you, I can heal you. But ultimately, the zombie just keeps running into Will Smith.

And what you see in the film is Will Smith also has the power to blow up whole house in order to save himself and to save humanity.

And I think that's just a perfect picture of what we are talking about, is that ultimately, what's driving the zombie character is his hatred toward the savior, is his hatred toward the one who can save him.

And so he is getting what he wants. He wants to destroy the savior figure. He wants to destroy the person who can save him.

He is getting ultimately what he wants. And so at the end of the film, the house blows up and the cure can occur.

But I think that is a perfect picture of what we are talking about here. The concept of free will is the argument.

We go back to John 3 16 for whosoever, and does God not give an actual call to everyone, which we will cover.

But we need to clarify, to add to Jimmy's illustration, which was a great illustration,

Jimmy, is the difference between free agency and free will.

Free agency is what we would actually hold to, is that someone within their nature has the capacity as an agent to make decisions, vanilla versus chocolate, white versus black.

The freedom of the will is not something that humanity actually holds to. What we hold to is because we believe that the will is bound.

To be a free will, the only person who has a free will is God. That means they can decide and do whatever it is that they please, and there is nothing that hinders them, that influences them, or that chains them.

We as humans do not have that capacity. We are not free to choose to do whatever we so please.

Therefore, our will is bound. This is a very famous book by Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, where he explicitly explains this struggle that's within us.

In order to understand Scripture rightly and understand the struggle of Scripture, there is absolutely free agency.

You have decisions being made. One thing you do not have is free will, which is men choosing

God without anything hindering their decision at all.

We see this clearly in Acts 2, particularly verse 23, where it says, This Jesus delivered up to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

Those are some of the categories we're speaking about. But then it says, You crucified.

This is Peter saying, this Jesus, definite plan, foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

That's exactly what you are referencing there, John. Here's where I also want to be clear.

When we talk about Calvinism, one of the common bombs or balls that is lobbed against Calvinism is that it doesn't embrace mystery.

That's just absolutely not true. Particularly when it comes to this topic here, that we are holding these things and embracing them in severe mystery.

That somehow, according to Acts 2, 23, Jesus was delivered up to be crucified according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

Yet there are people, this you, who are responsible for it.

They crucified. And they're doing what they want to do. Absolutely. We are talking about, yeah, they freely did it.

God planned something, man did it, and man is responsible for the sins that they committed.

Very briefly back to what you were talking about a moment ago, John, in the difference between free agency and freedom of the will.

You're exactly right. You're spot on on all of that. The bondage of the will is the reason why the

Bible is so clear that unless the Holy Spirit of God comes and does a work in us to set us free so that we might actually choose

Christ, no one would ever come to faith in Jesus. Those things are essential for us to remember as we're having this conversation.

So guys, why don't we look to the Bible now that we've defined some terms and we've considered some misconceptions?

Any objections to turning to Scripture? Do you guys feel good about making that choice?

Let's do what we want to do. So do we just come out of the gates hot with Romans 9, or do you guys want to start elsewhere?

I want to start with one. I'll get us rolling. You guys can add to it. I would like to start actually with Christ dealing with this particular issue and Jesus actually exposing the depravity of man.

John, in general, is a wonderful book in trying to understand a

Reformed perspective of the gospel because I think it encapsulates within its gospel this struggle.

I'm going to jump to just chapter 10, and then we're going to go back to John 3 .16, and then I'll throw it to you guys. But in John 10, you have

Jesus who's at the middle of his ministry, coming towards the end. He's done many miracles. Thousands of people have witnessed him.

So you have these Jews who, in verse 24, gather around him and say to him, how long will you keep us in suspense if you are the

Christ? Tell us plainly. So it's a very direct question to Jesus. Now, Jesus could have said a number of things, but this is how he responds to them.

Now, typically, if someone were to walk up to you, Jimmy, and say, I want to know if Jesus is real.

I want to know the gospel. Tell me plainly. You would begin to share with them the gospel, but this is not what

Jesus does. Jesus says, I told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my

Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

He doesn't tell them they need to simply choose. He says, listen, your lack of belief, there's a connection to it.

In a minute, I'm going to connect back to John 6 and John 3. We are excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

You can get this at theocast .org. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

You can do that by joining our total access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years or simply by donating to our ministry.

You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

John 10, 26, that you're referencing is critical in this conversation because Jesus looks at those men and he doesn't tell them that you're not my sheep because you don't believe.

The relationship is actually the opposite. He says, you don't believe because you're not mine. That's critical.

John's gospel, you're right, John, speaks to this issue over and over and over and over again.

You've already referenced John 3. I'm not meaning to steal anybody's thunder here, but even as we look at John 6, when

Jesus will make the statement in verses 37 and following, all that the Father gives to me will come to me and whoever comes to me,

I will never cast out. So even in that verse, we see all of these realities at play that there are people who were the fathers that he gives to the

Son and then whoever comes to Jesus, he'll never cast out. So we see the sovereignty of God, the purposes of God in election, and we do see the free agency of man doing what we want to do.

Anyone who ever comes to Christ will never be cast out. In verse 44, maybe famously in John 6, just a few verses later,

Jesus makes it very plain that no one ever comes to him unless the Father who sent him draws that person to Jesus so that faith might be a reality.

We also see this kind of language in John 17, the high priestly prayer, where Jesus will talk about his followers and he'll say to the

Father, yours they were, but you have now given them to me. So we see

God has had these people for a long time.

We're going to talk about that more later. I know, John, you're going to want to go to chapter 15, where Jesus talks about the fact that the disciples did not choose him, but that he had chosen them.

We could talk about other texts in John's gospel perhaps, but I want to give you guys an opportunity. I'm going to get off the mic for a second.

Yeah, I want to take us back to John 3, which is, I think, the pinnacle verse of everybody.

What do they say? Well, what about John 3 .16? I would say this is very important to understand when you are studying

Scripture that you have to look at the context of the conversation. Who is

Jesus talking to? He's talking to Nicodemus, who is a Jewish leader. Nicodemus comes to him at night because he's afraid to talk to Jesus in public because he doesn't want to be scrutinized.

He's having this conversation with Jesus because Jesus is saying things he's never heard before. In this conversation,

Nicodemus walks up to him, and Jesus immediately begins to answer him. Nicodemus really didn't get a question out.

He says, Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

In Nicodemus' mind, he's blown away because Nicodemus is basically saying, how can these things be?

He says, Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. What Jesus is doing to Nicodemus' world is creating two impossibilities.

One, you are not saved by the law. This is what he's saying.

He does not say obey the law. He does not say adhere to the Jewish tradition. The second thing he's doing is that according to Nicodemus' world, only

Jews and only those who adhere to the law can be saved. Jesus says, Oh no, Gentiles too. Whosoever shows the evidence of the

Spirit, whosoever believes, because you can't believe, according to Jesus' own statement for the rest of John, John 6,

John 10, John 15, you cannot believe unless Jesus chooses you to do so.

So John 3 .16 is not, I think, the pound against election. It's Jesus explaining in context that everyone, not just Jews, can believe in the gospel if the

Spirit brings them to life. And let's be clear here that this idea of election, what we are talking about, it's not like this came about in the

New Testament. It's not like Jesus showed up the scene and said, All right, now we're going to start sovereignly electing people.

We see this echoed throughout the Old Testament when God speaks to the nation of Israel.

He says, It wasn't because you were great among the nations. It wasn't because you were the best and the prettiest.

It was because you were the least. We see God's sovereign purpose in election moving in the

Old Testament as well as the New. Well, Jimmy, in that reference you just made to Deuteronomy 7, verses 6 through 8 in particular,

Moses is saying to the congregation of Israel, God has made you His treasured possession. Amongst all the nations of the earth, you are the one

He chose. And He didn't choose you because you were the greatest. In fact, you're the least. And then he goes on to say, essentially,

God loves you because He loves you. This is grounded in Him. He loved you this way because He loves you and because He's keeping the promise that He made to your fathers, which

He made freely, that promise even. And so, yeah, the election of God's people, our salvation ultimately, is grounded in God Himself.

It's not conditioned upon anything in us, which is the conversation we're having. And we might want to just very quickly make that distinction between conditional and unconditional election.

I know we've kind of danced around that a little bit. John, I can see you're wanting to jump in on this perhaps, and I'm happy to kick it over to you.

Yeah, this is why it's so important. Because if God's choosing was conditional, which there are people who believe that God chooses those who choose

Him, that's a condition. So if God chooses those who choose Him, then there is reason to both.

This is why in Ephesians it is so important Ephesians 2, it says that it is by God's grace through faith.

This is a gift of God. Now, the grace and faith, He's referencing both. They're going back to it.

It's not that God gives us grace and we bring the faith. They're both gifted to us so that no one may boast.

Unconditional means there is not a condition that you have met that God looks upon and says, you are the ones to whom

I choose. Let me give you a good example here, I think, that is helpful, and then I'll throw it back over to you.

Acts 13 .48 is the new beginning of the church. You have Paul, who's referencing this here.

He says, and when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. Again, the concept of it is that there were not those who met a condition.

It's the appointment that they had, something that God had. This is the full ordination connection. This is the foundation that we set up.

I'm going to go to Romans 9, just not in a very detailed way, but just referencing it. It's scripture, and it's a wonderful section of scripture because we have these tremendous promises that Paul points us to in Romans 8.

Then he brings up something that's very relevant to that conversation. The reality is so many of the covenant people of Israel, ethnic

Jews, are denying Christ. It's like, hey, if all of these

Jewish people are not coming to the Messiah in faith, how in the world can we be confident as Gentile believers that the promises of God would ever ring true for us and that we can rest in them and trust in them?

Paul defends, in one sense, the word and the promises of God in Romans 9. It's not a treatise on God's sovereignty.

It's a defense of God's faithfulness and His promises, the legitimacy of them. But in that chapter, in verse 11, maybe most pointedly, and then also in verse 16, very pointedly,

Paul makes it clear that God's choosing of us is not grounded in anything in us, even anything that God foresees.

It's not in foreseen performance. It's not in foreseen virtue, foreseen good works.

It's not about anything inherently good or bad in us. It's not about our willing or our effort, our striving, any of those things.

God's choice is grounded in His own purposes, in His own mind, in His own heart, driven by, motivated by His love and His mercy and His pursuit of His own glory.

Jimmy, I just want to say very quickly before I it over to you that you mentioned earlier, one of the things that is often levied against Calvinists is that we don't reserve place for mystery.

That's just not true because in this, there is tremendous amounts of mystery. We do not understand all the details of this.

We don't know the mind of God, but we can point to these realities that God has clearly revealed to us in Scripture and live underneath them and in them.

Yeah, exactly. If you look at this section of Romans 9 -11, how does

Paul end in Romans 11? Who can know the mind of the Lord? He is in praise.

Right. Then he says in Romans 11 -36, For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory.

I just also want to bring in here the 1689 London Baptist Confession from chapter 10 on effectual calling.

I think this is really undergirding what we are saying here because one, we are not making this up.

We are not the first people to think about these things. These things during the

Reformation era were really recovered. This is what the framers of that confession write.

I'm reading a version. It's just a little bit updated in its language to help us. This comes from chapter 10 paragraph 2.

It says, This effectual call flows from God's free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in those called.

That's, again, speaking against this conditional election that God could somehow see the faith of people and elect them based on that.

Then the confession continues. Neither does the call arise from any power or action on their part.

They are totally passive in it. They are dead in sins and trespasses until they are made alive and renewed by the

Holy Spirit. By this, they are enabled to answer this call and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it.

This response is enabled by a power that is no less than that which raised Christ from the dead.

Again, this is something that you guys have just been pounding in this episode, which I think is so helpful.

What's really undergirding this is God. It's God's special, unique, electing grace.

It's not any power within us or within ourselves to conjure up God's response.

Rather, our response flows from God's initiating one -way love in this.

Yeah, multiple times you have Paul speaking of love as it relates to this election.

Sometimes people think it's just kind of arbitrary. God lines all of humanity up on the wall and says, you, not you, you, not you.

That's not how Scripture describes it. You have Ephesians in love. He predestinated.

You have Romans 8 .28. It says, for those that love

God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. There's a purpose behind what he does.

Even in that, we call it the golden chain of redemption, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. There's an intimacy between God and those to whom he chooses.

It's not this cold, arbitrary choice that is disconnected from any plan or affection that God has towards those to whom he chooses.

One other verse I want to throw in here before we maybe move on to some more practical outworkings of this. 2

Timothy 1 .9. I'm actually going to start in verse 8 just for the context. It reads this way. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our

Lord, nor of me, his prisoner. This is Paul talking, obviously. But share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

It's not grounded, again, in our works. It's not because we were holy. It's God's choosing of us, grounded in his purposes in grace, that will make us so.

He is setting us aside in Christ Jesus, setting us apart in Christ unto holiness, and Christ will offer us blameless in all these things.

It's grounded in God completely. It's not grounded in our merit, our worthiness. It's not grounded in our inherent holiness or even lack thereof that God makes the choice that he does.

As we're beginning to descend with this topic, I love this quote by Horton because obviously the common objection here is, well, this just doesn't sound fair that God would do this.

We see this clearly in Romans 9. Paul anticipates that. Michael Horton, in his book, For Calvinism, he has a great quote where he says, is election fair?

Hardly, but who wants fairness in this matter? After all, if God were to give everybody what is deserved, nobody would be saved.

He could leave every one of us in our spiritual death and the condemnation that we have chosen for ourselves.

I think that is so helpful because if we want fairness with our lives, then hell is what we get.

J .P., you reference the practical outworkings of this doctrine.

I think one of the greatest here is thinking about election in light of our assurance.

I don't know if you guys want to jump on that. J .P. Yeah. I think the biggest question people ask all the time is, well, how do

I know I'm elect? There are people who have this internal struggle, and maybe we can get into this a little bit in the members podcast.

There's a couple of things I want to cover, but specifically this one in more detail. The doctrine of election should create rest and assurance within the believer.

Often, it's confused, and even in Calvinistic, predestinarian context, assurance is removed.

But I want to go back to a verse that I read, and even in reference to one that Justin just read. Second Thessalonians 2 .13,

it says, but we ought to always give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved, by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the

Spirit and belief in truth. To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of the

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The affection that you have for God, if you can say, yes,

I love God and I trust in Jesus, Paul is saying that is the evidence of God's electing of you.

You can find great hope and great assurance in knowing that love and affection for God, and it doesn't say how much.

It doesn't say complete love, 100 % love, 100 % affection. I think it's helpful to know that through the

New Testament, it is pointing the believer that if you can look at God and your eyes have been opened and you can have affection towards him, that is to assure you that God's choice of you is sure.

In thinking about how unconditional election relates to assurance, let's just break it down this way, and I'm just going to state this part plainly.

Unconditional election is part and parcel of the good news, because if our salvation depended upon us in any way to any degree, nobody would be saved.

As we think about how all this hangs together, something that we should feel in our bones as we read

Scripture and wrestle with what the Bible says is that had God not chosen me,

I would never have trusted Christ. Because God did choose me,

I did place my faith in Christ, and given that God chose me and granted me faith in his

Son, God is faithful to keep me. So my salvation is not a fragile thing.

It has roots in eternity past, in the heart of God, in the love and the grace of God towards a wretch like me.

I'm mindful of a hymn written by Horatius Bonar that's called How Sweet and Awful is the

Place couple of the verses in that hymn speak to this reality quite poignantly. He writes this way, why was

I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?

Like, why me? And then it goes on, t 'was the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in, else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin.

We see the sovereign grace and love and mercy of God toward us as sinners.

It's what converted us in the first place. It's what will keep us and it's what will bring us home to heaven.

Yeah, and I think it would do well to just spend some time meditating on Ephesians 1.

I mean, this is a massive passage and perhaps this is a little foreshadow as we talk about covenant theology in the coming weeks, but what you see is in Ephesians 1, the covenant of redemption that from eternity past,

God has decided in the goodness and grace of his own heart to love a people that he would adopt.

Reflecting on that and meditating on what we see in Ephesians 1 is so precious to the believer.

Then you hold that against Ephesians 2, where we see how God has worked to save us.

I mean, it's just a beautiful passage. To reference another hymn, my Lord, I did not choose thee, for that could never be.

My heart would still refuse thee, had you not chosen me. I think that's all of this as we get ready to go into the members section.

I just want to say that for those of you who are listening, if you finally made it to the end, the encouragement that we want to give you here at Theocast is that the hope that you should have is if you believe you chose

God and that it is your choice and your free will that God accepts you based upon salvation.

What happens when you no longer make that choice? Your salvation is not secure. But if you believe that it is

God who has pulled you out of death and he holds you, according to Christ's own words in John 10, where he says that I will lose none of my sheep, they're in my hands and no one will pluck them out, and then you are in the

Father's hands. So if you cannot be plucked out, and I guarantee you God will let none of his children go, you can't even run from him because you belong to him.

I think it's helpful to understand that this is a doctrine that should cause you to rejoice knowing that you cannot do anything that would ever reverse your adoption.

It is secure, it's safe, and those are the truths. Unconditional election is not a doctrine because we want to sound smart or like to argue.

As a matter of fact, I have not found any benefit in arguing with people around unconditional election for the sake of arguing it.

The only reason I find it helpful is that it brings real, lifelong assurance and rest when others who often worry about their security don't have this type of rest.

It's life -giving, it's assurance -producing. Jimmy, you've said this before on the podcast that Reformed theology, or we could even pointedly talk about Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, they're not a sword to kill people with, but they're a pillow to lay your head on, to rest on.

That's really our posture here in thinking about this. I might conclude this portion of the podcast in thinking about John 6 one more time where Jesus makes it clear that he comes not to do his own will but the will of the

Father who sent him. He says that it is the will of the Father that he would lose none of all whom the

Father has given him but raise them up on the last day. That's our hope, that's our confidence, that's our peace and assurance, that's our rest.

We have a lot more to say, quite clearly. I know I've been looking at the timer ticking by on our recording thinking, oh my gosh, we could talk about this for hours.

We're going to head over now to the members' podcast and continue this conversation. If you would like to join us over there, you can find more information about our total access membership by going over to theocast .org.

We hope that you consider partnering with us in that way and then you can have that members' podcast conversation with us on a weekly basis.