[BBC List] s election

[Mike Abendroth]

Election - B. B. Warfield

This article was originally published in 1918 by the Presbyterian Board of
Publication as a pamphlet of twenty-two pages. 

"By grace have ye been saved," says Paul to the Ephesians (Eph. ii. 5, 8);
and so important does it seem to him that his readers shall understand this
and bear it on their hearts that he says it twice in the course of four
verses. He says it in such a way, moreover, as to throw a tremendous
emphasis on the word "grace," and therefore on the manner in which they had
been saved, as distinguished from the salvation itself. He is not assuring
the Ephesians that they had been saved. They knew that for themselves, and
were rejoicing in this wonderful thing which had come to them. What he is
eagerly repeating to them, intent on fixing it so firmly in their hearts
that they cannot escape from it for a moment, is that it is just "by grace"
that they have been saved. 

He is engaged in this context in reminding his readers of the greatness of
their salvation. They had been dead in their trespasses and their sins,
children of wrath by nature, like the rest of men. But God is rich in mercy
and has loved them mightily. Because of this his great love for them, he has
come to them, lying helplessly dead in their sins, and has made them alive
in Christ. Here the apostle breaks in on himself to cry, for the first time,
"By grace have ye been saved"! God has raised them with Christ and seated
them with him in the heavenly places, for no other reason than that he might
show forth in the ages to come the surpassing riches of his grace, as
manifested in this his kindness to them in Christ Jesus, for-the apostle now
adds with iterant emphasis--"by grace have ye been saved." 

We see that the apostle is most eager to impress on his readers this one
fact, asserted and reasserted as the one thing needful for them to keep
fully in mind, that it is by grace that they have been saved; that it is by
grace, and nothing else than grace, that they have been saved. In this
reiterated phrase we have in effect the heart of the heart of his gospel, to
know which is our prime necessity if we are to know what that gospel is. The
whole gospel turns as upon its hinge on this fact, that salvation is of pure
grace. 
There are, especially, three ideas which are conveyed by the word "grace,"
all of which must be given full validity if we are to understand what the
apostle was impressing with such earnestness upon the Ephesians. 

The first of them is the idea of power. Grace is power. And it is only
because grace is power that it can save, save dead men, men dead in
trespasses and sins. If men were not dead, possibly they might be saved by
something else than power. By good advice, say; by pointing out to them
something, some good thing, to do, by which they might inherit eternal life.
That is what the law does. And that is why the law cannot save, cannot, that
is, save dead men. The law tells us what we ought to do. Because the law is
the law of God, perfect and holy and just and good, it tells us perfectly
what we ought to do. But it is of no avail to tell dead men what they ought
to do. Dead men cannot do anything. They need not instruction but life; not
good counsel but power. That is the reason why Paul, when he is assuring the
Romans that the salvation which had been begun in them should certainly be
completed, hangs it all on the fact that they were not under law but under
grace. "Sin shall not have dominion over you," he promises them-and what a
great promise that is!--"sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are
not under law, but under grace" (Rom. vi. 14). If they were under law, sin
certainly would have dominion over them. Law can do nothing but tell us what
is right and what is wrong; and after that there is nothing that it can do.
It cannot enable us to do the right and refuse the wrong which it has made
known to us. But grace is power. It does not instruct, it energizes; and
what dead men need is energizing, such energizing as raises the dead. Only
God's grace, which is almighty power, can do that. It is, says Paul (Eph. i.
19, 20), the same "working of the strength of his might which he wrought in
Christ, when he raised him from the dead." This is the first idea which is
conveyed by the word "grace," when we are told that it is by grace that we
have been saved. Grace is power, and because it is God's grace, it is
almighty power. 

The second idea conveyed by it is the idea of love. Grace is power. But it
is not bare power; "wild" power, as we say; power operating without
direction, producing any variety of effects. It is power directed by love.
That is the fundamental meaning of the word "grace"-favor, love, yearning
desire. And that is what grace always means, when it is spoken of in the New
Testament with reference to God. It always expresses the idea of good will,
kindness, favor, love. Power, in itself considered, may blast as well as
bless. The power that grace is, always blesses, because grace is love. The
grace of God is the power of God, exerted in kindness; it is the love of God
acting, according to its nature, in blessing. And therefore, in the passage
from Ephesians which has been in our mind (Eph. ii. 1-10), it is because he
is telling his readers that it was due only to the riches of God's mercy and
"his great love wherewith he loved us" that we are saved, that Paul is led
to interject suddenly in explanation of it all, "By grace have ye been
saved." To be saved in the riches of God's mercy because of the greatness of
his love-that is what it is to be saved by grace. For the same reason, when
Paul comes to speak, a little later, of the manifestation of the exceeding
riches of God's grace in our salvation, he explains that the precise thing
in which these exceeding riches of God's grace are manifested, is "kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus." Grace is manifested in kindness: to deal kindly
with us is to deal graciously with us. The second idea which is conveyed by
the word "grace," when we are told that it is by grace that we are saved,
then, is that we owe our salvation purely to the love of God. Grace is love;
and because it is God's grace by which we are saved, our salvation is a pure
product of the love of God. 

The third idea conveyed by the word "grace" is the idea of gratuitousness.
Grace is gratuitous just because it is love, that is, because it is the
"love of benevolence," as we say, the love that is good will, kindness,
favor. It is the very nature of the love that is good will, kindness, favor,
that it is gratuitous. We might do something, perhaps, to attract to
ourselves, to secure, to deserve the "love of complacency," that is to say,
the kind of love that seeks and finds gratification for itself in its
object, rather than is intent only on benefiting its object; that seeks its
own pleasure in its object rather than purely seeking to do it good. But
that is not the kind of love that grace is. Grace is the love that is good
will, kindness, favor, and the love that is good will, kindness, favor is in
the nature of the case gratuitous. At all events this is what the Bible
speaks of when it speaks of the grace of God. Paul, for instance, is at
great pains to make it clear that the grace of God is not earned by us, is
not secured by us, is not obtained by us; but is just given to us, comes to
us purely gratuitously. What is of grace, he tells us, is by that very fact
not of works; if it be in any way, in the slightest measure, earned, by that
very fact it ceases to be of grace (Rom. xi. 6). He carries the idea,
indeed, to its extreme height. Grace, with him, is not only pure kindness,
kindness which has not been earned (had it been earned, it would have ceased
to be kindness), but kindness to the undeserving in the positive sense,
kindness to the ill-deserving. Grace is very distinctly and very
emphatically love to the ill-deserving. This is the third idea which is
conveyed by the word "grace" when we are told that it is by grace that we
have been saved. Our salvation is a pure gratuity from God. We have not
earned it; we have not secured it; we have not obtained it. God has fixed
upon us in the riches of his mercy and the greatness of his unconstrained
love, pouring out upon us in the exceeding riches of his grace his pure
kindness in Christ Jesus. 

This is then what Paul means when he tells us with reiterated emphasis that
it is by grace, by grace and nothing else than grace, that we have been
saved. He means that we have not saved ourselves. It is God who has saved
us, God and God alone. If we had saved ourselves, or supplied anything
whatever which entered into our salvation as in any measure its procuring
cause, it would not have been distinctively by grace that we have been
saved; and Paul's strong emphasis on the assertion that it is "by grace,"
that it is by nothing else than grace, that we have been saved would be
misplaced. We were in point of fact dead in our trespasses and sins and
therefore utterly unable to move hand or foot to seek salvation. We were
helplessly and hopelessly "lost." We owe our salvation wholly to God's
kindness, to his undeserved love, to his "grace." It is all from him, in its
beginning and middle and end: all from him. Just as Lazarus was called out
of the grave by the sheer power of the God who raises the dead, we have been
called out of our death in trespasses and sins by the sheer grace of God,
the grace which is the power of God, working under the direction of his
ineffable love, poured out in gratuitous kindness upon ill-deserving
sinners. We have not made the first step in knowledge of the salvation of
God until we have learned, and made the very center of our thought of it,
this great fact: that it is by the pure grace of God, by that and that
alone, that we are saved. That, as we have said, is the heart of the heart
of the gospel. 

Now, of course, no one will imagine that God, who saves us thus by his
almighty grace, has saved us by the exceeding greatness of his power to
us-ward according to that working of the strength of his might which he
wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, inadvertently, without
meaning to do so. Of course he has meant to save us, just as he does save
us, by his pure grace; and has meant thus to save us all along. It is this,
his meaning to save us by his grace before he actually does so, which we
call "election." Election, we thus see, is but the first moving of God's
grace looking to our salvation; and therefore Paul calls it "the election of
grace" (Rom. xi. 5), the election, that is, which has its origin in the
grace of God toward us, which proceeds from it, comes out of it as its
appropriate manifestation. It is the first step of God's love, as he
prepares to save us by his grace, the setting of his love upon us, that in
its own good time and way it may work its will on and in us. It is nothing,
in other words, but God's purpose to save us, a purpose which he must, of
course, form before he saves us, and a purpose which equally of course he
fulfills in saving us. What God purposes he certainly performs, no purpose
of his is idle or ineffective. This, his purpose of salvation, therefore
becomes the sure beginning and pledge of our actual salvation and draws in
its train all else that enters into our salvation. 

Read Rom. viii. 29, 30, and see "the golden chain" which, as a fine old
divine, John Arrowsmith, puts it, "God lets down from heaven that by it he
may draw up his elect thither." "For whom he foreknew"--that is election,
the setting upon his people with distinguishing preoccupation and love,
according to the pregnant use of "know" in such a passage say, as Amos iii.
2, "You only have I known out of all the families of the earth" -"for whom
he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his
Son"-this is the high destiny prepared for us!--"that he might be the
firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also
called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified,
them he also glorified." Count these five golden links, all acts of God's
own, working our salvation, and note how they are welded together in one
unbreakable chain, so that all who are set upon in God's gracious
distinguishing view are carried on by his grace, step by step, up to the
great consummation of that glorification which realizes the promised
conformity to the image of God's own Son. It is "election," you see, that
does all this; for "whom he foreknew, . . . them he also glorified." That
fine old divine to whom we have just referred tells us further that
"election, having once pitched upon a man, will find him out and call him
home, wherever he be. Zacchaeus out of cursed Jericho; Abraham out of
idolatrous Ur of the Chaldeans; Nicodemus and Paul out of the college of the
Pharisees, Christ's sworn enemies; Dionysius and Damaris, out of
superstitious Athens. In whatever dunghill God's jewels be hid, election
will both find them out there and fetch them out from thence." "Rejoice,"
our Savior cried (Luke x. 20), "rejoice in this- that your names are written
in heaven," in, that is, the Lamb's book of life (Rev. xxi. 27), which the
same fine old divine counsels us always to remember, is "a book of love-the
writing of our names in which is the firstborn of all God's favors." 

That God has set upon just us in this his electing grace, must ever be to us
a matter of adoring wonder. Certain it is, that there was nothing in us,
whether quality or deed, which could attract his favorable notice, much less
make him partial to us, and, moreover, there is no respect of persons with
God. We were dead, dead in trespasses and sins, even as others, and
therefore the children of wrath even as they (Eph. ii. 1-3). "For the wrath
of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men" (Rom. i. 18); and surely there has been enough ungodliness and
unrighteousness in us. That God has chosen just us from among our fellows to
be saved from this wrath, 1 Thess. v. 9, finds no explanation in us. We can
only say, "Yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight" (Matt. xi.
26). It has all hung upon his mere good pleasure, and he has given us this
unspeakable blessing for no other reason than that he has chosen to give it
to us in the unsearchable counsels of his own gracious will. For, as our
fine old divine reminds us, we are "predestinated after the counsel of his
own will, not after the good inclinations of ours." We had no good
inclinations of will; men dead in trespasses and sins have no good
inclinations. All that is good in us, in the inclinations of our wills as in
the conduct of our lives, is from him, the product of his electing grace,
and cannot be its cause. It is only because God has set upon us in his
inexplicable love, and has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of
his Son, that, through his calling, and justifying, and sanctifying grace
-all in execution of his gracious election-any good is formed in us. It is
not "of works," says Paul (Eph. ii. 9, 10), that we are saved but "for good
works"; and he adds that, in order that we may do these good works, we have
needed to be made over, and that by so profoundly revolutionary a change
that we can be looked upon as nothing less than a new creation- "for we are
his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works," the good works
which God has afore prepared that we should walk in them. 

The very good works which we do, then, have been prepared for us by God in
his electing grace, that we should walk in them. We are not chosen because
we are good; we are chosen that we may be good. That is precisely what we
are elected to-goodness, holiness. And that again is what is meant by the
declaration that we have been predestinated to be conformed to the image of
God's Son: we can become like him only as we become holy. Accordingly we are
told with the richest fullness of expression (Eph. i. 3, 4), that God chose
us "in Christ . . . before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and without blemish before him . . . having foreordained us unto
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good
pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace." It is all
here-the rooting of all our goodness in the elective decree of God, and the
rooting of that decree in God's mere good pleasure. Everything else hangs on
election, election itself on God alone. But what is especially emphasized is
that what God has chosen us to, in this electing decree, is that we should
be holy. 

It follows, therefore, that those whom God has set upon in his electing
grace, certainly shall be holy. This is what he has chosen them to-that they
shall be holy. And, having chosen them to be holy, he has not left them to
themselves, but, in his infinite grace, has taken them in hand to make them
holy. That is why he has predestinated them to be conformed to the image of
his Son, and then in pursuance of this destination of them, called them and
justified them and sanctified them, yea, and will glorify them. These are
the several processes through which he frames them into the holiness to
which he has chosen them. They are not shallow processes, moving only on the
surface and depending on our independent cooperation to produce their
effects, and therefore liable to fail because of our weaknesses and sins. In
these processes God remakes us and therefore we emerge from them his
workmanship, created unto the good works which he has "afore prepared that
we should walk in them." It is wholly of God that we are in Christ Jesus (1
Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. v. 18); and being in Christ Jesus, we are new creatures
(2 Cor. v. 17), the old things have passed away and all things have become
new. As, under the molding hand of God, we are being thus renewed in the
spirit of our minds, we put off more and more the old man and "put on the
new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of
truth" 

(Eph. iv. 24), we rejoice with trembling, because surely we see that the
Lord is in this place. Full of joy, because we perceive the hand of God upon
us, working in us both the willing and the doing, we "work out our own
salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. ii. 12)-that is to say, not with
hesitation and doubt lest it may not be real, but with overmastering awe
that it should be so with us, that God should be the impulsive cause of all
of both our willing and doing. 

It is precisely in this that we have the salvation of our God. For it is in
this that the salvation to which we have been chosen consists: that we
should be God's workmanship, created unto the good works which God has
"afore prepared that we should walk in them"; that we should be holy; that
we should be conformed to the image of God's Son. Of course, when we are
like Christ we are saved men. Certainly we do not yet see all that is
included in this high destiny. But we already know that when he shall be
manifested, "we shall be like him" (1 John iii. 2). And having this hope in
us, we purify ourselves, "even as he is pure" (1 John iii. 3). Our eyes are
set on the goal; and we run with steadfastness the race that is set before
us, "looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith" (Heb. xii.
1), looking unto him not only as he who has framed the faith in us by which
we live in him, and who will perfect it to the end, but also as the model to
which we shall be conformed. For what we shall attain to in this salvation
is nothing less than "the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." The glory that he
has shall be ours. And the way we shall attain to it is "in sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth." For this, says Paul (2 Thess. ii.
13), is what God chose us to from the beginning--"salvation in
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." And to this, he adds,
God also called us--"to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ." All that is contained in this glory which Christ possesses, and
which we shall in him obtain, who can tell? No doubt we must cast our eyes
forward to the world to come to see it all. When he shall be manifested, "we
shall be like him." But when we obtain it all, it is still the salvation to
which God chose us from the beginning, "in sanctification of the Spirit and
belief of the truth." These are the means through which that is reached. 

Clearly God has not chosen us to sloth. The salvation to which he has chosen
us is a salvation "in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth."
We have not been chosen to any salvation which does not stand in
sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. If we do not believe
the truth, if we are not being sanctified by the Spirit, we have been chosen
to no salvation. What we have been chosen to is that we should be holy and
without blemish before God. We cannot profess to be chosen of God, then,
unless we are becoming holy and without blemish before him. It is not
possible that there should be an "elect race" which is not also a "holy
nation"-a holy nation which shows forth the excellencies of him who has
called us "out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter ii. 9). Seeing
that predestination is conformity to the image of God's Son, we are not
predestinated unless we are being conformed to the image of God's Son.
Unless we are like Christ, we cannot share in his glory. It is idle then to
dream, profanely, that, being elected to bliss, we may be careless of good
works. Precisely what God has prepared for his elect is good works that they
shall walk in them, whereunto, in his grace, he has created them. Precisely
what he requires of them who believe his gracious assurances, is, therefore,
that they "be careful to maintain good works," in order that they may give a
good account of themselves in the world (Titus iii. 8). Faith and good works
are the characteristics of God's elect, and where faith and good works are
not, there are no elect. 

There is no election, then, to the rewards of glory which does not include
in itself, as the indispensable means to this end, election to the works of
grace. We are not elected in order to dispense us from the necessity of
being good. We are elected to make it possible for us to be good, yea,
rather, to make it certain that we shall be good, not apart from but through
our own efforts. We are not elected that we may not have to fight the good
fight, but to secure that we shall fight it to the end, fight it
successfully, and so finish the course; not that we may not require to keep
the faith, but that we may, that we shall, keep it triumphantly and receive
the crown. We are not released by our election from the duties and struggles
and strifes, not even from the trials and sufferings, of life: we are
elected to be sustained in them and carried safely through them all. Another
good old divine, John Davenant, therefore wisely instructs us that
"Whosoever understandeth this doctrine aright, understandeth withal that he
was elected not straight to be carried unto heaven on a bed of down, but to
become conformable to the Head of the elect, Christ Jesus, as well in the
cross as in the crown, and first in the cross, after in the crown." Yea, he
adds, "afflictions therefore do not only not tire the patience of the elect,
but they beget within them a secret spiritual joy. For, being afflicted,
they rejoice and, as Luther says, 'embrace their sufferings like relics
consecrated by the touch of Christ.' " 

Accordingly, Peter exhorts us (2 Peter i. 10), to make our "calling and
election sure" precisely by diligence in good works. He does not mean that
by good works we may secure from God a decree of election in our behalf. He
means that by expanding the germ of spiritual life which we have received
from God into its full efflorescence, by "working out" our salvation, of
course not without Christ but in Christ, we can make ourselves sure that we
have really received the election to which we make claim. The salvation of
God, being a "salvation in sanctification of the Spirit," ought, when worked
out, to manifest itself in such forms as faith, virtue, knowledge,
temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly love, love. By working out the
salvation which we have received into such a symphony of good works we make
sure that it is the very salvation to which God has chosen his people. Good
works become thus the mark and test of election, and, when taken in the
comprehensive sense in which Peter is here thinking of them, they are the
only marks and tests of election. We can never know that we are elected of
God to eternal life except by manifesting in our lives the fruits of
election -faith and virtue, knowledge and temperance, patience and
godliness, love of the brethren, and that essential love which does not put
limits to its object. He that gives diligence to cultivating such things in
his life will not stumble in the way, for it is with such things in their
hands that men enter the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. It is idle to seek assurance of election outside of holiness of
life. Precisely what God chose his people to before the foundations of the
world was that they should be holy. Holiness, because it is the necessary
product, is therefore the sure sign of election. All holy people are the
elect of God and are sure of eternal life. 

It is folly, therefore, to fancy that a sincere lover of Jesus Christ who
trusts in him as his Savior and lovingly obeys him as his Lord, can possibly
lack the election of God. It is only because he is one of God's elect that
he can believe in Christ for the salvation of his soul, and follow after
Christ in the conduct of his life. This is precisely what election brings
with it-the calling to Christ which cannot fail, justification which frees
us from our guilt, and sanctification which conforms us to Christ, and all
that that implies. It marks out those in the loving prevision of God whom
his almighty grace shall raise out of their death in sin, to the powers of
that new life in which and in which alone they embrace Jesus Christ as their
all-sufficient Savior and live in and for him. It is impossible that a
believer in Christ should not be elected of God, because it is only by the
election of God that one becomes a believer in Christ. Election is nothing
but the preparation of grace, and grace is nothing but the loving operation
of God unto salvation. Wherever there is salvation, then, there is, of
course, grace, since grace alone can save, and wherever there is grace there
is of course election, since grace hangs on election. We need not, we must
not, seek elsewhere for proof of our election: if we believe in Christ and
obey him, we are his elect children. 

Certainly it is equally true that where no election is, neither is there
salvation. Since all the salvation there is, is of grace, and grace is of
election, there is of course no salvation where there is no election. But
this does not mean that election excludes from salvation. What election does
and all that election does, is to bring into salvation. It is not where it
is, but only where it is not, that salvation fails. Wherever it is, there
salvation is -certain, sure, complete salvation. Salvation is its sole work.
When Christ stood at the door of Lazarus' tomb and cried, "Lazarus, come
forth!" only Lazarus, of all the dead that lay in the gloom of the grave
that day in Palestine, or throughout the world, heard his mighty voice which
raises the dead, and came forth. Shall we say that the election of Lazarus
to be called forth from the tomb consigned all this immense multitude of the
dead to hopeless, physical decay? It left them no doubt in the death in
which they were holden and to all that comes out of this death. But it was
not it which brought death upon them, or which kept them under its power.
When God calls out of the human race, lying dead in their trespasses and
sins, some here, some there, some everywhere, a great multitude which no man
can number, to raise them by his almighty grace out of their death in sin
and bring them to glory, his electing grace is glorified in the salvation it
works. It has nothing to do with the death of the sinner, but only with the
living again of the sinner whom it calls into life. The one and single work
of election is salvation. 

We may ask, no doubt, why God does not extend his saving grace to all; and
why, if he sends it to some only, he sends it to just those some to whom he
sends it rather than to others. These are not wise questions to ask. We
might ask why Christ raised Lazarus only of all that lay dead that day in
Palestine, or in the world. No doubt reasons may suggest themselves why he
raised Lazarus. But why Lazarus only? If we threw the reins on the neck of
imagination, we might possibly discover reasons enough why he might well
have raised others, too, with Lazarus, perhaps many others, perhaps all the
dead throughout the whole world. Doubtless he had his reasons for doing on
that great day precisely what he did. No doubt God has his reasons, too, for
doing just what he does with his electing grace. Perhaps we may divine some
of them. No doubt there are others which we do not divine. Better leave it
to him, and content ourselves, facing, in the depths of our ignorance and
our sin-bred lack of comprehension, these tremendous realities, with the O
altitudo of Paul: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the
knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past
tracing out!" Or may we not even rise to the great consenting "Yea!" which
Christ has taught us: "Yea, Father, for so it was well- pleasing in thy
sight!" After all, men are sinners and grace is wonderful. The marvel of
marvels is not that God, in his infinite love, has not elected all of this
guilty race to be saved, but that he has elected any. What really needs
accounting for--though to account for it passes the powers of our extremes"
flights of imagination--is how the holy God could get the consent of his
nature to save a single sinner. If we know what sin is, and what holiness
is, and what salvation from sin to holiness is, that is what we shall feel. 

That is the reason why meditation on our eternal election produces such
blessed fruits in our hearts and lives. That God has saved me, even me, sunk
in my sin and misery, by the marvels of his grace, can only fill me with
adoring praise. That he has set upon me from all eternity to save me,
wretched sinner that I am--how can I express the holy joy that fills my
heart at every remembrance of it! This is the foundation of all my comfort,
the assurance of all my hope. "Sure I am," says John Arrowsmith movingly,
just to the point, "Sure I am that our blessed Savior once said to his
disciples, 'In this rejoice, that your names are written in heaven'; and
that nothing cloth more inflame a Christian's love than a firm belief of his
personal election from eternity, after he has been able to evidence the
writing of his name in heaven by the experience he hath had of an heavenly
calling and an heavenly conversation. When the Spirit of God hath written
the law of life in a Christian's heart, and therewith enabled him to know
assuredly that his name is written in the book of life, he cannot then but
melt with flames of holy affection, according to the most emphatic speech of
Bernard--'God deserveth love from such as he hath loved long before they
could deserve it'; and, 'his love to God will be without end, who knoweth
that God's love to him was without any beginning.'" For this is the
beginning and middle and end of the whole matter: that the election of God
is but the beginning of God's manifestation of love to lost sinners, a
beginning which must go before all other manifestations of his love because
the purpose must precede the execution, and which carries all other
manifestations with it because God never repents of his purposes but
executes them.

 

 

Thanks.

 

Charis,

 

Mike Abendroth

 

 <http://www.bbcchurch.org> www.bbcchurch.org

 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

 

"The typical modern Christian breastplate is a little paper bib.  Absolutely
useless!  It's made up of a system, or a method, or a program... 10 to 12
sessions with a counselor.  That's not what you need.  What you need is
about 10 or 12 hours in the presence of God until you sort out the unholy
characteristics in your life and get right with Him." John MacArthur, The
Believer's Armor, Study Notes. Eph. 6:10-24, pg. 33.

 

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