Here all I really want to do is think about a few questions.
The first has to do with the will of God. This is simply to ask, if God wills or desires that everyone be saved then why isn’t everyone saved if God is choosing those who will be saved?
The short answer is that a distinction must be made in the will of God so much so that we can rightly talk about two wills. One is God’s prescriptive will where he tells us what he desires. I know that God’s will for me is to be a faithful husband, father, and pastor. He does not want me to lie, steal, etc. God also has a decretive will which is his will and purpose that will bring all to pass. This is also called his secret will. This is the will of God that we cannot know until it comes to pass. This is something of what James is getting at when he writes about how we should view the future and our intentions saying ‘If the Lord wills...’
So what does this mean for salvation and people being chosen for salvation? John Frame writes, ‘God’s will is sometimes thwarted because he wills it to be, because he has given one of his desires precedence over another...God does not intend to bring about everything he values, but he never fails to bring about what he intends.’ To say it another way, God is often pleased to ordain his own displeasure. A quick example can be seen in the death of Christ. God does not desire people to murder and betray, yet he purposed and willed that Christ would be betrayed and killed so that he would provide salvation.
If you want to read more on this (and before you ask any questions), I highly recommend John Piper’s article Are There Two Wills in God?
The second thing I want to consider as we close deals with the issue of prayer and evangelism.
Many will say that if God chooses who will be saved then it doesn’t matter what we do because it won’t change or have any effect on the outcome of things. Well, for one, that is ludicrous. To say that what I do doesn’t have any effect is to deny the obvious and contradict reality. Also, to say that I don’t need to evangelise because of election is to neglect clear instructions of scripture. That is to sin. To say that the doctrine of election encourages me to sin is silly. Nor I am told anywhere in scripture that I am to base my actions on the secret will of God, which I do not know. John Pipers writes, ‘The unknown purposes (or decrees) of God are not the rule of our conduct nor the grounds upon which we act, so the inscrutable operations of God are not the rule our ground of our action, but his revealed (prescriptive) will is. The rule for us in every case is the revealed will presented to our consciousness.’ One author reflects that if one says that election would keep us from evangelism, it would also keep us from eating:
If God has eternally decreed that you should live, what is the use of your breathing? If God has eternally decreed that you should talk, what is the use of your opening your mouth? If God has eternally decreed that you should reap a crop, what is the use of you sowing the seed? If God has eternally decreed that your stomach should contain food, what is the use of your eating?...In order to educate us, [God] demands that we should use the means, or go without the ends which depend upon them. There are plenty of fools who make the transcendental nature of eternity and of the relation of the eternal life of God to the time-life of man an excuse for neglecting prayer. But of all the many fools in the United States, there is not one absurd enough to make the same eternal decree an excuse for not chewing his food or for not voluntarily inflating his lungs.
J.I. Packer writes - So far from making evangelism pointless the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For it creates the possibility--indeed, the certainty--that evangelism will be fruitful. Were it not for the sovereign grace of God, evangelism would be the most futile and useless enterprise that the world has ever seen, and there would be no more complete waste of time under the sun than to preach the Christian gospel.
The doctrine of God’s sovereign grace is the only thing that gives up hope in our evangelism that people will indeed be saved.
On the side of prayer, if one does not believe in election then if he or she is to be consistent there should never be any prayers offered to God that people would be saved for this would be praying to God to do something that he is incapable of doing if it lies merely within the will of man to accept God. So, if you do not believe in election I would suggest that you stop praying for God to save people, but rather pray to people that they might accept God.
Here is one last link if you want to think about another question this might raise.
I hope this has been helpful and biblical. Let’s rejoice in the amazing grace of our great God!
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