“By predestination we mean that the external decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.”[i] It is based on God’s love. This love is not a feeling but a behavior. It is an attribute of God and is involved in all of God’s acts and thoughts.
In God’s predestination, “by his secret counsel chooses whom he will while he rejects the others.”[ii] The Bible shows that by His eternal free agency, good pleasure, and mercy, God, without considering human works or godly value of any kind, chooses the elect for salvation, and dooms the rest to condemnation (Eph. 1:4, 5). The fact that the election by the Father was done before the foundation of the world proves that it was not a matter of human worth. God’s foreknowledge and the works of man do not enter into the equation (1 Tim. 2:9). God by his good pleasure and free will has chosen the elect (John 15:16).
Just as some Israelites are the elect and many are not, God chose the second born Jacob to inherit from the father instead of the firstborn Esau. Jacob’s election was decided by God before the foundation of the world and nothing Esau or Jacob did influenced election or reprobation.
The Bible is clear as to the election and reprobation of Jacob and Esau (and every human being) in that neither had done any bad works or sinned against God, He chose to give the inheritance to the second son rather than the first son out of ONLY His good pleasure, will, and mercy (Rom. 9:13). Jacob was thus elected and Esau was reprobated, and this proved that election and reprobation was not founded in works.
As Paul said in Romans 9:18, “So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” His election and reprobation are due only to the good pleasure He gets from His mercy in doing so and has nothing to do with the will of the human being.
The author of this article has previously written on predestination on this blog. This article describes the two elements of predestination: election and reprobation.
ELECTION
The Bible generally speaks of election in three different ways. The first way involves the speaking of the Israelites who were selected by God for special privileges and services (Deut. 4:37, 7:6-8, 10:15). The second way is when God chooses specific individuals for exceptional service (Deut. 18:5; John 6:70). The election we are speaking of here is not the first or second form of election but the third form.
The Bible speaks of election in the third way as “The election of individuals to be children of God and heirs of eternal glory (Matt. 22:14; Rom. 11:5; 1 Cor. 1:27, 28; Eph. 1:4; 1 Thess. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:2; 2 Pet. 1:10).”[iii] This is the way that we talk about election as part of predestination.
Election as a doctrine, “may be defined as that eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of [people] to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.”[iv]By God‘s eternal decree, of all the human beings He determined to create in the future, He chose a certain number of those individuals to receive the special grace of eternal salvation.
There are special elements of this way of looking at the election. 1) it is the will of God; 2) it is unconditional; 3) it is eternal; 4) it is immutable; 5) it is irresistible; 6) it is justice.[v]
The purpose of the election is 1) the salvation of the elect and 2) the glory of God.
REPROBATION
The doctrine of “Reprobation may be defined as that eternal decree of God whereby He has determined to pass some men by with the operations of His special grace, and to punish them for their sins, to the manifestation of His justice.”[vi] Though Augustine and Calvin taught this doctrine, it was opposed by the “Roman Catholics, the great majority of Lutherans, Arminians, and Methodists.”[vii]
him Reprobation, too, has two elements. The first is preterition, or the determination to pass by some men. It is a sovereign and pleasurable act of God for which the Bible gives no reason except that it is the will of God. The second is condemnation, which is the determination to punish those who are passed by for their sins. The reason for it is sin.
God sovereignly acts out of his good pleasure to make the elect recipients of eternal life, whereas the condemned people suffer the penalty of sin as a judicial act. As John Calvin wrote “in Calvin’s Articles on Predestination: ‘Although the will of God is supreme and the first cause of all things and God holds the devil and all the impious subject to His will, God nevertheless cannot be called the cause of sin, nor the author of evil, neither is He open to any blame.’”[viii]
CONCLUSION
God choose certain individuals, to be the elect and receive salvation and all the other individuals would receive condemnation for their sin, before the foundation of the world because of the good pleasure, will, and mercy of the Father. This choice was not based on any foreseen response from the individuals. The free will of the individuals involved had nothing to do with the decisions as the elect or the condemned.
However—and this is a big however—Christians should present the gospel to all people, since they do not know who is really the elect and who is really the reprobated. Only God knows.
[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Hendrickson, 2008), p. 610.
[ii] Calvin, p. 612.
[iii] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, combined ed., (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2021), p. 104.
[iv] Berkhof, comb., p. 104.
[v] Berkhof, comb., p. 104-05.
[viii] Berkhof, comb. 107, citing John Calvin.
