(f) It discourages effort for the salvation of the impenitent, whether on their own part or on the part of others.—Answer: Since it is a secret decree, it cannot hinder or discourage such effort. On the other hand, it is a ground of encouragement, and so a stimulus to effort; for, without [pg 789] election, it is certain that all would be lost (cf. Acts 18:10). While it humbles the sinner, so that he is willing to err for mercy, it encourages him also by showing him that some will be saved, and (since election and faith are inseparably connected) that he will be saved, if he will only believe. While it makes the Christian feel entirely dependent on God's power, in his efforts for the impenitent, it leads him to say with Paul that he “endures all things for the elects' sake, that they also may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not, “Am I one of the elect?” but rather, “What shall I do to be saved?” Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.
No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him: “I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word. “Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.” If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching: “God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself” (see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.
Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”; cf. Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).
Jesus' own thanksgiving in Mat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation in verse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.
G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter): “Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”
(g) The decree of election implies a decree of reprobation.—Answer: The decree of reprobation is not a positive decree, like that of election, [pg 790] but a permissive decree to leave the sinner to his self-chosen rebellion and its natural consequences of punishment.
Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.
See Hosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”; 4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”; Rom. 9:22, 23—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory”—here notice that “which he afore prepared” declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while “fitted unto destruction” intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction; 2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”; 1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”; Jude 4—“who were of old set forth [‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.] unto this condemnation”; Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared [not for you, nor for men, but] for the devil and his angels” = there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a “book of life” (Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.” Men are not “appointed” to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are “appointed” to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher: “The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.” George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”