The 39 Articles of Religion: Article XVII Continued

Most people hear the word “predestination” and immediately think “Calvinist” and “God sends people to hell against their better wishes.”  It is like a bad game of word association.  What most people are really reacting to is what is called determinism.  Determinism is the idea that God controls us like puppets. This has nothing to do with either the doctrine of predestination or Calvin. Here’s the point: if we can claim that our faith is in some small measure attributed to ourselves—God makes the first move and then I have to respond—then salvation is not of God’s grace alone. If faith is a gift of God’s grace to sinners who otherwise would not choose it, then the question remains, “Who then gets faith?”

In Acts 13:48 Paul and Barnabas go to Pisidian Antioch and boldly preach the Gospel, and we are then told that “all who were appointed to eternal life believed.”  Now imagine that these believers are then told that their salvation is assured by God’s grace from the foundations of the world and they need not fear the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is the point of Article 17. “The godly consideration of Predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ.” In other words, we don’t preach predestination to sinners; we preach the Gospel and trust that God in his mercy will grow the seed (like the parable of the good soil, Matthew 13:1-23).  We then assure those who believe/convert with the doctrines of grace and election as Jesus did with his disciples:  “You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you to go into the world” (John 15:16); and again “My sheep know my voice and they hear me; I give them eternal life and none shall snatch them from my hand” (John 10:27ff). J.I. Packer describes the doctrine of predestination as “the family secret” of believers. These are words of comfort to the believer but it is most inappropriate, as the Article states, to apply or teach this to unbelievers, i.e. “curious or carnal persons, lacking the spirit of Christ.”

That being said, it is the pattern of Scripture to clearly present a picture of God electing a people for himself for salvation. The presence, therefore, of non-elect people in the pattern of Scripture is certainly there by default, but it is not focused on.  This was Calvin’s position and likewise that of the Articles. The Bible gives hardly any explicit material for developing a doctrine of double-predestination, except that it presents explicit material for predestining election, of which we may then conclude that if some are elect to salvation, some are not. The Articles of Religion follow this pattern in addressing the doctrine of election in Christ:  for believers to know that God chose them and that they are not saved by their own choice but by His is a doctrine of sweet and unimaginable assurance. Those who do not believe (are not elect) and therefore do not have this assurance. Article 17 mentions “God’s secret council” by which he alone, in his sovereign mind, chooses his remnant unto himself, of which we have no knowledge or revelation, except that by his grace and faith in Christ are we assured of his goodness and favor to us as elect from every nation. That is why we do not condemn but preach the Gospel to all, watering and nurturing, but trusting in the Lord alone to make the seed actually grow (1 Corinthians 3:6).

The simple question then is not, “Why would God send some to hell?” but rather, “Why would God send anyone to heaven?”  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and the judgment upon this earth would be complete, “if not for the sake of the elect”, as Jesus states in Matthew 24:22. The basic characteristic of our fallen state is that we reject the sovereignty of God.  In place of God’s sovereign will we lift up our own wills and tout them as “free” and that God must make room for ours, rather than the other way around. Fortunately the Gospel tells us that God loves sinners and saved them despite themselves:  “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The final choice is not ours but God’s, for he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy (Romans 9:15-16).