The Biblical Basis for the Idea and the Language
The idea of “unconditional election” is rooted in God’s choosing of his people Israel:
For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be His own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD was devoted to you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But because the LORD loved you and kept the oath He swore to your fathers, He brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8 HCSB, emphasis mine)
In the NT we read of God’s choosing of his people in passages such as these:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, in Christ; for He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6 HCSB, emphasis mine)
When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and glorified the message of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48 HCSB)
We must make the connection between election and love and understand that when we speak of unconditional election, we are really using one way of speaking about God’s love. It is clear from passages that teach election that this choosing of God’s people is not based on anything in them (e.g., foreseen faith, foreseen works, etc.), but in God’s unconditional love. This point is explicitly taught in Romans 9 where Paul uses the birth of Jacob and Esau as an example. He says that God set his love on Jacob and rejected Esau before birth to establish the “unconditional” aspect of this choosing prerogative of his.
We must make the connection between election and love and understand that when we speak of unconditional election, we are really using one way of speaking about God’s love.
The challenge, then, is to be able to speak of the unconditional election aspect of God’s love without at the same time screening out other aspects of God’s love which are also biblical.
The Ideas Screened Out by This Language
Unfortunately, though, our consistent (and sometimes exclusive) use of this terminology in Reformed circles has tended to cause us to leave out other aspects of the love of God. Here are some things I think we miss when we only think of the love of God and the gospel in terms of unconditional election:
The earnestness with which we ought to call men to faith.
One of the greatest Calvinistic evangelists was Charles Spurgeon. He called for men to repent and believe with such emotion and fervor that non-Reformed folk often don’t even realize that Spurgeon believed in unconditional election.
No real Reformed or Calvinistic person believes for one minute that election therefore negates the necessity to share the gospel or call people to repentance. The straw man that claims election discourages missions is not only a non sequitur, but also a complete blinding of the reality of history. The Great Awakenings were built on Calvinistic theology under the ministries of men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. The modern missions movement was fueled by Reformed teaching.
However, sometimes Christians who believe in election fail to be earnest in this calling to faith. I think our emphasis on God’s role in the process (while right and good) may scare us away from talking about man’s responsibility. We so value God’s sovereignty that we fear we will dirty it up, so to speak, if we also emphasize man’s responsibility. We must be careful to see the whole truth of Scripture here, and not to allow our terminology to screen out the rest of the story.
God’s love for the non-elect.
It is certainly true that the love God has showed to the elect is a very special kind of love, as demonstrated by the Jacob and Esau story in Romans 9. It is also true, though, that the love of God is greatly more complex than we often are willing to admit.
In his short, but excellent, book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, D.A. Carson lists 5 different ways in which the Bible speaks of the love of God. Our American evangelical culture tends to flatten out the love of God into a warm, fuzzy, “smile-God-loves-you” kind of thing. We Calvinists, on the other hand, have a tendency to flatten out the love of God into a cold, exclusive, elect-only-privilege kind of thing.
The language of “unconditional election” needs to be kept in its proper context and not allowed to dominate every discussion of the love of God. God loves in many different ways, and I would argue that his electing love is perhaps the greatest form of that love. That does not mean, though, that God only loves when he unconditionally elects.
Suggestions for a refined vocabulary
I’m not sure that what this particular topic needs is a change in vocabulary. The phrase, “unconditional election,” is legitimate, biblical and helpful. What we need is a willingness to speak of the effects of the gospel outside of the realm of the elect. That is, what has God’s love accomplished through Jesus even for those that do not believe.
Here are some ideas:
- The universe still holds together, even for those who are non-elect (Colossians 1:17).
- The sun shines, and the rain falls, even for those who are non-elect (Matthew 5:43-48).
- Beauty can be enjoyed, food can be savored, family and friends can be cherished, even for those who are non-elect (James 1:17).
God still displays his love outside the realm of unconditional election, and it would be good for us to remember that even as God’s chosen people with the benefits of his special electing love, the mission of God and the love of God are much bigger than unconditional election can capture.
