The Election of Grace

When I was a young man, just beginning to learn of my Saviour Jesus, a well meaning women in our church recommended that I read the gospels. This was wise advice, but her recommendation came because I was listening to preachers who were teaching God’s sovereignty in saving His elect, and that God sent His Son to live and die and rise to save only those whom the Father had given to Him.

This woman believed that reading the Gospels would show that these ideas were not Biblical ideas, but the invention of a sad preacher called John Calvin.

So I began reading the Gospel of John, and this is what I found:

First I noticed that those who received him [the Christ] were born, not from blood (family ties), nor from the will of the flesh (our sinful nature), nor from the will of man (human influences), but from God (John 1:12-13). The preceding verse (v.11) implies that those who should have received Him, on natural grounds, did not because they would not.

Then I found that Jesus understood how treacherous human beings are: he would not entrust himself to man (humanity) John 2:25.

Further, Jesus told Nicodemus that people must be born again or they would not be able to see (understand) or enter the kingdom of God. When Nicodemus asked how that rebirth might be achieved, Jesus told him that the new birth came according to the will of the Spirit (referring to the Holy Spirit). This reinforces the statements of Chapter 1, that the new birth is by the will of God, not by human will. John 3:16 tells of the particular way God’s love is shown to the world – by giving of His Son to die (to be lifted up on a cross). Whoever believes in Him shall not perish but has eternal life.

In Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus told people (v. 43) not to grumble among themselves regarding his statement that he has come down from heaven. He then said (v. 44), ‘No one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me drags him, and I will raise him up on the last day.’ There is no other word for this but compulsion. It indicates the sinful unwillingness of human beings to come to Christ for salvation. Now, the Bible does make it clear that those for whom Jesus died will come to him willingly, but they become volunteers as a result of God’s gracious power acting upon them to turn them from their sinful unwillingness and to make them willing in the day of His power (Ps. 110:3).

Finally, I read in John 10 about the Good Shepherd. The shepherd calls his own sheep (code for people of God) and they know his voice and they will only follow him v.3. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for those sheep v.14. The shepherd who dies for his sheep will rise again v.18 according to the command of God the Father.

Jesus told a group of people who asked if he were the Christ that he had already told them but they did not believe him. Their unbelief was despite the evidence of His words and works.

Jesus goes on to say, ‘But you do not believe for you are not from my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know my very own sheep, and they follow me. I give eternal life to them, and no one can snatch them out of my hands. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of his hand’ John 10:26-29.

Notice that Jesus does not say to those particular people that “You are not my sheep for you do not believe” but rather “You do not believe for you are not my sheep.” Jesus knows His sheep because the Father gave them to him. For these sheep he lays down his life and takes it up again. They believe because they are his sheep whom he has redeemed. When he calls, they will come to him.

Reading the Gospel of John allowed me to see that those who preach God’s sovereignty in saving His elect were following the Bible and not something that John Calvin just made up. The well-meaning woman from my church was not as overjoyed at my discovery as I was.

To summarise:

• receiving Jesus is something that God’s will enables sinners to do
• we are not to be trusted
• we must be born again to understand and enter the kingdom of God and it is the Spirit who brings people to new birth according to His will (born of the Spirit).
• Without the Father dragging a sinner to Christ by His Spirit, none will come to him.
• The Father gave ‘sheep’ to Jesus in order that he die and rise for them. These ‘sheep’ were given to Jesus before they believed (John 17:20 & 24).
• A characteristic of those who are Jesus’s sheep is that they will hear His voice and follow Him.
• The sheep of Jesus trust (believe) Him.
• Jesus knows who are His sheep and who are not (You do not believe for you are not of my sheep).
• Jesus’s sheep are eternally secure because of what He had done for them (His death and resurrection) and because of His mighty keeping of them. They cannot be lost.