Chosen for Life
Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine Election
By: Sam Storms
“Election is God’s gracious and loving action to which we contribute nothing and for which, therefore, God receives all the glory.”
Predestination. Election.
Words that are sure to suck the life out of any room. At least in my circles, these topics tend to be avoided in conversation. Nervous chuckles and nudges to get back to talking about easier things like the fruit of the Spirit.
I think it’s pretty common. For two reasons: either people don’t really know anything about it and it feels like an overwhelming thought to entertain or people don’t want to end up in arguments and cause division.
I came into this book with a Calvinist belief already in place. I had done some study of it and most of the avenues of discussion are not new to me. However, I still found this book to be helpful because it turns out I had a skewed view of the Arminian side of the coin.
Sam Storms does a great job of presenting fairly both sets of beliefs and explaining them as the belief holders would. His hope in writing this book is to dispel the caricatures of both camps and bring clarity.
“Often people proceed to define ‘Calvinism’ as an inflexible, fatalistic system of theology, devoid of life and joy, in which God is portrayed as a celestial bully who takes sadistic glee in sending people to hell whether they deserve it or not… Some argue that Calvinists empty human choices of all moral relevance and reduce men and women to robotic automatons.
…Sadly, many Calvinists think of Arminianism as an intellectually flabby, overly sentimental view of the Christian faith that borders on liberalism, if not universalism.”
It’s good to be upfront that though this book is presenting ‘a case’ to persuade readers to believe a certain belief, it is not because believing that belief is essential to salvation. Storms assures us that he has believing Calvinist friends AND believing Arminian friends.
So why even talk about it?
I believe this doctrine is important in terms of how you view God, yourself, others, evangelism, and the Bible. It informs how we preach, how we pray, and how we worship.
To put it plainly, both Calvinists and Arminians believe the Bible teaches election; the question at hand is: “Does God elect people because they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, or does God elect people in order that they shall believe in Christ?”
Storms gives chapters to each the Arminian and Calvinist view of election and then has chapters discussing freedom of the will, faith and repentance, and grace.
Then he looks at specific Bible passages in the Gospels and Acts, the Epistles and Revelation, and then several chapters on Romans 9 which is one of the most prominent Bible passages in defense of unconditional election.
He briefly covers the ‘order of salvation’ and then addresses crucial questions surrounding this topic like- how can God be just? how can God be loving? why should we preach or pray?
Lastly he provides a defense for the defense of unconditional election.
[Ultra-lastly, there are three appendices regarding: problem passages, who can pray for the lost, and my personal favorite I’ll call ‘big words you can pull out at a dinner party to feel super smart but probably won’t make you a lot of friends— see bonus section.]
To help put things in perspective, Storms sets up an illustration at the beginning of the book: two brothers with the same genetics and familial upbringing— one ends up in heaven and one ends up in hell. Why? How can we explain why Jerry believed and Ed did not?
Is it ultimately God who saves or is it our own choice to believe?
If this is a doctrine you are confused, unsure, or curious about, reading the entire book is the best course of action. But for those who won’t, I’ll try to explain the two views and summarize the main points. Storms wrote a whole book about it, so this review is in no way a complete resource on the topic.
The Two Beliefs Summarized
The Arminian (who believes in individual election rather than corporate election which I’ll just ignore at this point) would explain salvation like this:
Because we are spiritually depraved, “God graciously, mercifully, and supernaturally restores to all human beings the freedom of will lost in the fall of Adam.” This is called “prevenient grace” and provides people with the ability to choose or reject God. This grace can be resisted as some still reject God.
I’ll state here that there is no biblical grounds for the doctrine of prevenient grace. John 1:9 is often cited but it’s not convincing on its own.
Salvation then occurs if and when the person meets the conditions set by God: faith and repentance. Arminians do not believe this undermines God’s sovereignty or grace. They say his sovereignty is upheld because he alone sets the conditions; his grace is upheld because people don’t deserve to have these conditions made available to them.
They also believe this upholds his justice and impartiality because the conditions are the same for all people.
God’s elect, then, is determined by God using divine foreknowledge to see in advance who would choose to believe and who would not. Thus, he elects those who believe.
Jerry is in heaven because he chose to believe and repent. Ed is in hell because he chose to reject God.
This doctrine is named after James Arminius, though it did not originate with him. Other names associated with Arminianism are John and Charles Wesley (Methodism in general), Pentecostal denominations, Nazarenes, and Free-will Baptists.
The Calvinist would explain salvation like this:
Because we are dead in our sin, the only way we can be made alive in Christ is if God makes us so. [Ephesians 2:1-10] He has elected from eternity past and out of “his good pleasure,” before anyone was born and made any choices good or bad, those who would be his elect.
“That God should set his electing love upon any individual is not in any way dependent upon that person’s will, works, holiness, or obedience. Rather, election finds its sole and all-sufficient cause in the sovereign good pleasure and grace of God.”
God regenerates us and enables us to repent and believe. It is unconditional because there is nothing we did to justify our justification, nothing we can point to that says ‘I’m saved because I chose to believe.’ It’s only- ‘I’m saved because God saved me.’
This belief upholds God’s sovereignty because he alone does the work and gets the credit. It upholds his grace because we do nothing to deserve the gift of salvation that he bestows on us.
“…saving faith is the effect, not the cause, of God’s sovereign good pleasure in election.”
This doctrine is named after John Calvin (again, not because it originated with him) and others associated with this doctrine include Benjamin B. Warfield, William G. T. Shedd, John Owen, Johnathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Herman Bavinck, and others.
Some verses that support this: Rm 8:29-30; 1 Pt 1:1-4; Jn 17:1-2; Acts 13:44-48; 2 Cor 4:3-4; Mt 11:25-27; Eph 2:1-10
What about Free Will?
This is where the term total depravity must be discussed.
“The term depravity refers to the moral disposition or inclination of fallen humanity’s nature toward evil and against good… The inclination of his heart, the delight of his soul, the orientation of his will is toward wickedness.”
“The term total… is not that man’s mind is depraved but not his will. It is not that man’s emotions are touched by sin but his heart is somehow insulated. The moral pollution that sin brings has touched and affected the whole of the person, the totality of his being.”
So if humanity is so depraved, why do we see unbelievers doing good things?
Enter: the doctrine of common grace. It “is called ‘grace’ because no one deserves it… called ‘common’ because it is universal”. (Mt 5:44-45; 2 Thess 2:7; Lk 6:35)
Storms uses the illustration of all the looting that occurred after Hurricane Katrina. Good people didn’t just decide to become criminal, but certain barriers that were previously in place— electricity for lights and alarms and police— were now absent making thievery easier. Common grace is like electricity and alarms— the Holy Spirit’s global restraint on the full capacity of humanity’s wickedness.
Storms also makes sure to distinguish between ‘free will’ and ‘free agency.’
Free agency means that a person is free to do whatever they want, whatever their heart desires.
Free will “is to say that he has equal ability or power to either accept or reject the gospel.” In this sense, the Bible does not teach that people are ‘free.’
We are free in that we can freely choose according to our nature. But our nature is sinful.
“A person’s will is the extension and invariable expression of his nature. As he is, so he wills. A person is no more free to act or to will or to choose contrary to his nature than an apple tree is free to produce acorns.”
This is Calvinists’ explanation to why it is completely of God that anyone is saved, because by our very nature, we do not voluntarily choose to come to God, we cannot. We are spiritually dead. All we make is acorns. We cannot choose to make apples.
This is different than Arminians:
“The Arminian will concede that man is in a lamentable, indeed dreadfully infirm condition, but he is not dead. As long as there is a spark of spiritual life in him, as long as he can think, feel, and will, he is able to extend his hand and take the healing medicine that God through Christ offers him… What’s wrong with it is that Scripture does not portray people as merely sick or even confined to intensive care. They are spiritually dead. (Eph 2:1-2)… the sinner must be made alive by the power of God’s grace before he is able to repent and believe.”
Our sin nature derives from the original sin of Adam who acted as our representative. Sin nature begets sin nature—we all have it. I’ve heard it said that if we were in the garden, we would have made the same choice as Adam.
For those who protest that maybe they wouldn’t have, Storms makes a good point:
“All persons without exception, notwithstanding a variety in circumstances, time, and place, do in fact sin sufficiently to warrant eternal condemnation. If such universal sin were not evidence of a propensity common to human nature, surely someone (or many) would never sin at all.”
I sin every day. My kids sin every day. I don’t know how I could ever not.
Storms refers to a whole host of Bible passages underlining this doctrine of human depravity and sin nature including: Psalm 14:2-3; Prov 22:15; Gen 8:21; 6:5; Ps 58:3; Job 15:14-16; Ps 51:5; Eph 2:3 ; and Jn 3:6.
He also says that Arminians don’t deny spiritual depravity, but their explanation for why some come to faith and others don’t relies on their doctrine of prevenient grace as mentioned before. Prevenient grace is different than common grace because common grace is all the blessings short of saving grace, but again, prevenient grace is not in Scripture.
What about free will and moral responsibility?
This is one of the sticky questions. If God has complete sovereignty over ALL things— which the Bible teaches (even the roll of the dice is under God’s control)— then why are we responsible for our actions? Can’t we basically say, God must have made me do it, so he can’t condemn me for something he was in control of.
But the Bible teaches both complete sovereignty and moral culpability. The way these interact are one of the mysteries that God has not yet revealed. But logically speaking, we all feel like we make our own choices. We choose according to our will. I know when I decide to be selfish and to lie.
Yet somehow that is all under the hand of God. I don’t know how, but I know it to be true. If people can act outside of God’s sovereignty than how could we ever believe that all things would work together for the good? How could we ever believe God would win? God can’t only be partially sovereign. It’s all or nothing. He’s not playing defense, waiting to see what people (or Satan) do so he can spin it into something great. God is always on the offense.
We can’t always grasp this but if the Bible teaches it, we must believe it.
But then where did sin come from?
The fear in believing in both free will and moral responsibility is that we worry we are accusing God of creating sin. Is he then, the author of evil?
This again, is a sticky question.
From eternity past, the creation of the world and everything in it, the fall (original sin), and then the redemption of that world and everything in it, was God’s plan to bring glory to himself.
Storms says this:
“Sin was ‘necessary’ in the sense that in its absence there would be no occasion for the display of God’s righteous wrath, justice, and holiness (or at least no display sufficient for a ‘complete’ or true knowledge of what God is like and why he is glorious). And without a revelation (or ‘shining forth’) of the wrath that sin deserves there would scarcely be a revelation of the true and majestic depths of goodness, love, and grace that deliver us from it.”
I don’t view sin and evil as a created thing. Evil is the corruption and distortion of what is good. It’s twisting what is created. Lies are distortion of the truth. Selfishness is the corruption of selflessness. Murder is the taking of life. So I don’t think we have to accuse God of ‘creating’ evil.
A lot of people use the word ‘ordains’ in the context of God and evil. I agree with Storms’ assessment that God ordained sin because without it, we are not seeing God’s full character which includes wrath, justice, grace, mercy, and love. How can we have grace without that which we are being saved from?
“Grace is glorious because of the degree of horror from which it delivers us: eternal punishment. Grace is glorious because of the immeasurable unworthiness of those on whom it is lavished.”
Romans 9 reiterates that God, as the potter, has authority and right to make “one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use” because “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy…”
Storms interprets ‘endured with much patience’ to describe that God allows people to continue to store up wrath for themselves in order that his power and wrath might be shown to be greater.
“…with a greater measure of sin comes a greater display of wrath, which in turn sheds an even greater light on the glory of mercy toward those who themselves deserved judgment no less than the others.”
Sin and wickedness is an essential part of the Gospel and God, though he does not value it or condone it has decided this in his infinite power and wisdom in order that he would get the most glory.
Can We Lose Our Salvation?
If our salvation is a matter of our own personal choice that is uninfluenced by God (which an Arminian view would logically have to hold because otherwise at what point is God’s influence overcoming our own will?) then what happens if we choose to stop believing?
Our ultimate salvation would seem to be in the hands of wishy-washy humanity- how could we know that we will endure to the end? This explanation does not feel very secure.
But in the Calvinist view, God chooses the elect, his choice can not be thwarted and once we are in Christ we are “sealed until the day of redemption.” (Eph 1:13; 4:30; Rm 8:28; Jn 6:37-40) We don’t have to wonder if we have what it takes, our future is secure because it’s not up to us— every step of the way is in the sure hands of God who decided it was so.
Is God Unjust or Unloving?
I’ve noticed in a lot of the conversations I’ve about this, that a lot of people have a hard time understanding why God would essentially reject some and not others. It doesn’t seem fair and it doesn’t seem loving.
We might have this image in our heads of someone at the feet of Jesus saying ‘Can I please come in?’ and Jesus saying, ‘No, you are not the elect, sorry. Off to hell you go.’
But that is not at all what is at play.
Jesus says “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37)
This verse tells us three important things:
It confirms that God does the ‘giving’ in salvation, it is not of our own will.
It assures us that if we come to him, he will not turn us away. God never rejects those who desire him.
It confirms the idea of ‘irresistible grace’ which just means if God elects someone, that person will come to faith; his word does not come back void. The term ‘Irresistible grace’ is often misleading because we picture God cruelly forcing someone who does not want him to want him, but in truth: “If God did not at some point make us willing to believe we would forever have remained unwilling and consequently lost.”
Storms quotes at length part of Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on this and I won’t do it here, (I’ve just linked it and if you scroll to almost halfway you’ll find it or search the word ‘morning’) but the gist is that if you desire to believe in Jesus and worship him and devote your life to him, great, you are elect! If you do not wish that, then why are you angry that it has been given to someone else and not you, for you do not want it!
This quote he gives from John Stott is also very good:
“If therefore God hardens some, he is not being unjust, for that is what their sin deserves. If, on the other hand, he has compassion on some, he is not being unjust, for he is dealing with them in mercy. The wonder is not that some are saved and others are not, but that anybody is saved at all. For we deserve nothing at God’s hand but judgment. If we receive what we deserve (which is judgement), or if we receive what we do not deserve (which is mercy), in neither case is God unjust. If therefore anybody is lost, the blame is theirs, but if anybody is saved, the credit is God’s.”
Storms gives us an important warning when we start to call God unjust, impartial, or unloving when it comes to whom he elects or that he elects:
“to be quite blunt he is obligated to no one or no thing other than himself… Let us be careful not to pass judgment on what God does based on our expectation of what a human should do.”
It is a sin for humans to be jealous, it’s not a sin for God to be jealous. In the same way, justice, love, grace, mercy, wrath, hate, and power do not function the same for God as they do for humans and our finite minds must not apply human boundaries to an infinite God who knows far more than we could ever imagine.
Predestination and Evangelism
J.I. Packer wrote a whole book on this— Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God and I reviewed it HERE. I won’t spend much time on this aspect, but the main point is that knowing God has elected certain people to be saved actually FUELS our evangelism for we know that success will happen.
He is still sovereign, he does the saving, but knowing that he will save gives us the confidence.
It is the same for prayer- if God is going to save who he is going to save, why pray? Because we are commanded to! Because we don’t know the means by which God has decreed to save his elect. Perhaps it is by your sharing of the gospel or by your prayer for your friend that he has decided to save someone. We cannot know. But evangelism and prayer are done in obedience and in confidence.
“it is inexcusably arrogant, presumptuous, and disobedient to suspend my prayers on the basis of a will that God has declined to disclose.”
We don’t know who is elect and who is not. It is not for us to speculate. God’s revealed will is that he desires all to be saved and he has commanded us to preach the gospel to all the world.
“Our calling as Christians is not to love God’s elect, and them only, but to love our neighbor, irrespective of whether he is elect or not.” — Packer
His hidden will is, obviously, hidden from us, and dictates who will effectually be saved.
Circling back, this pairs with God’s ordaining of sin.
His revealed will in Scripture tells us what God commands in terms of morality and his values— what is good and what is evil. But when we read Scripture we see all the ways that his revealed will is disobeyed. What actually happened is part of his hidden will. David commits adultery, Saul persecutes Christians.
Storms says, “One must reckon with the fact that God may decree what he has forbidden.”
All of God’s hidden will culminates into that which will bring him the most glory— something we could never begin to guess.
John Frame says, “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.”
This is a good segue to the objection:
Why doesn’t God just save everybody?
If God wants everyone to be saved then why doesn’t he?
The answer is: God wants something else MORE than he wants everyone to be saved. He has given a different desire precedence. Something else that gives him more glory than saving everyone.
This circles back to the difference between Arminian and Calvinist doctrines on election.
Wayne Grudem explains: “Reformed theologians [Calvinists] say that God deems his own glory more important than saving everyone, and that God’s glory is also furthered by the fact that some are not saved. Arminian theologians also say that something else is more important to God than the salvation of all people, namely, the preservation of man’s free will. So in a Reformed system God’s highest value is his own glory, and in an Arminian system God’s highest value is the free will of man.”
Should we be sad about this?
One new thing Storms exhorts us to is something I had never thought of.
“Some contend that we should believe in divine election reluctantly, wishing that it were otherwise than what we find in Scripture. They argue that we should speak of it with sadness and regret, and talk about it only when pushed or coerced to do so. But there is something seriously wrong when we fail to rejoice in what pleases God.”
I think there is a place to lament those who do not come to faith for sure, the Lord does as well. But the doctrine of the elect is not something we should speak of with sadness and regret.
If we love God, we love what God loves. And God loves his doctrine of election. Why else would he have chosen it? He has chosen it out of his good pleasure. Because it brings him glory. We should desire glory for him and celebrate his glory in all things. The doctrine of election displays his full character and that is worth praising.
“In the Arminian scheme of divine election God’s ‘good pleasure’ is fundamentally irrelevant. What God ‘wills’ or does ‘not will,’ what ‘pleases’ or ‘displeases’ God has nothing to do with election. If election is conditional on foreseen faith, it becomes a matter of obligation, duty, and requirement, not good pleasure and sovereign choice.”
Predestination tends to be a conversation stopper when it should be a worship-starter.
You’re Probably a Calvinist
In the second appendix of the book Storms quotes from Packer’s book when he says that basically if you look at the way you pray, you’ll realize you’re a Calvinist.
It actually makes a lot of sense and I wanted to quote it in length:
“When you pray for unconverted people, you do so on the assumption that it is in God’s power to bring them to faith. You entreat Him to do that very thing, and your confidence in asking rests upon the certainty that He is able to do what you ask. And so indeed He is: this conviction, which animates your intercessions, is God’s own truth, written on your heart by the Holy Spirit. In prayer… you know that it is God who saves men; you know that what makes men turn to God is God’s own gracious work of drawing them to Himself; and the content of your prayers is determined by this knowledge.”
If we believe it is ultimately someone’s choice to come to faith, why would we pray to God about it at all? If we ask God to do anything that would actually make a difference in their faith wouldn’t that be him overcoming their will by being convincing or persuasive enough or changing their heart to desire him? Why would we pray to God and ask ‘that our friend would just find it in themself to decide to believe in you’ and what could he do about that?
When we pray for our unbelieving friends, what do we say? What do we ask? Think about what your actual prayer is. Hasn’t He written on our hearts that we know it is entirely up to Him who He saves?
Our prayers are revealing aren’t they?
Some Last Quotes
“If any man or woman is ever converted to Christ it is not because the Holy Spirit outwits us or is more skilled in the tactics of religious debate. If we are converted it is because the Holy Spirit sovereignly, which is to say independently of our ideas or efforts, recreates within us a heart willing to believe.”
“To say God ‘denies’ something to one that he ‘gives’ to another implies that God is withholding what he ‘owes.’ Thus for God to ‘deny’ eternal salvation to some suggests he is refusing to give them what they deserve, or what he owes them, or what he as God is obligated to give them… Secondly, the word ‘denies’ suggests that people have asked God, indeed pleaded with him, for eternal life and he ‘denies’ it to them or refuses to grant it to them.”
“To choose people because they believe is an obligation to which God is bound; it is a debt he must pay… How can election be gracious if it is something God must do because justice requires it? Election is gracious precisely because it is the bestowal of life on those who deserve only death.”
“What is it, then, that dictates and determines God’s choice? God… Why that particular choice is more pleasing to God than another, or why neither choice pleases him, is not revealed in Holy Scripture… How can anyone object to the reason God elected Jerry instead of Ed when no one knows what that reason is?”
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book. It’s a topic that Christians need to be willing to engage in and Sam Storms does a great job of tackling this divisive issue with clarity and accessibility.
I’m one of the weird ones who enjoys a book on a theologically taboo subject, but even if that’s not you, I think you’ll find the book helpful and insightful.
And I would also recommend J.I. Packer’s book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God as mentioned in the review for more on why unconditional election does not take away from the urgency or charge to evangelize.
Bonus Section
For those two or three of you who enjoy learning big words, this section is for you. When I got to the third appendix I was immediately overwhelmed. Plus I was like- I have never heard this word used or seen it printed anywhere! There are apparently differences WITHIN each of these categories, but I opted not to figure those out.
Instead I will briefly explain these two:
Infralapsarianism and Supralapsarianism
‘Infra’ meaning ‘below’ and ‘supra’ meaning ‘above’ and ‘lapses’ meaning ‘fall’
These are the positions of thought in determining at what point in eternity past did God choose his elect.
Infralapsarianism- ‘below’ the ‘fall’ means that in eternity past God decided he would create the world and the fall and THEN he chose his elect; emphasizes God’s mercy
Supralapsarianism- ‘above’ the ‘fall’ means that in eternity past God chose his elect and THEN he decided to create the world and the fall; emphasizes God’s sovereignty
Storms labels himself an infralapsarianist largely because it makes more sense that God wouldn’t elect that which was not yet created.
But he is clear that we (obviously) cannot know what God was thinking in eternity past. I’m personally not sure why we even have camps of thought on this, but maybe it’s just one of those bonus theology questions seminarians enjoy contemplating.
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