Does The Bible Teach The Doctrine Of Election?

Jun 17, 2017

This is our ONLY authority. It does not really matter whether the Reformers and the Puritans taught it. It does not really matter whether John Gill and C.H. Spurgeon taught it. It does not matter whether Baptist and the Presbyterian Creeds teach it. However the real question is: Does the Word of God teach this doctrine? If so, we must embrace it. If not, we must reject it and refuse to hear those who teach it. Isaiah 8:20 states, “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them.”

In fact the Lord Jesus Christ taught election, “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” (Luke 18:7) The early churches heard the message of election as we read about in Acts 13:48, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” The Apostle Peter spoke of election in 1 Peter 1:2, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.” The Apostle John spoke of the “elect lady” and the “elect sister”. The Apostle Paul brought the doctrine of election thorough in Romans 8:29, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

God’s election of men to salvation is gracious and free, absolute and sovereign. It is an unconditional act of sovereign mercy. He did not choose us because He foresaw that we would repent and believe in Christ. Our repentance is the result of God’s election, not the cause of it. God’s election is personal: He chose not a mass of nameless faces, but individual sinners, calling them His sons and daughters. This election of grace is also, eternal and immutable (Ephesians 1:4). God chose those He plans to save because of His eternal love and sovereign pleasure, simply because He would be gracious. We (the bride of Christ) were chosen in Christ Jesus. We read in Acts 15:14, “Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.”

Additional Reading