IF SOMEONE SAYS THAT THEY KNOW GOD, how can this be proven? Whether this is true or not, it is plainly a subjective statement. Millions of people of all religions in this world claim to know God. When the present writer was a New Ager back in the 1970’s and 80s, it was vogue to misquote Psalm 46:10 as “Be still and know God”, as a proof that the Bible supported eastern meditation! We all thought we knew God, and could even discover the “God within”, because we could sit cross-legged in the yogic Lotus Position for an hour or more and get a “buzz”. We knew God. He felt good. So we thought! (Of course, the real translation of that verse is God saying, “Be still and know that I AM GOD!” Be still = stop all your self-centred nonsense so that you can REALLY know who God REALLY is).

The Christian then steps into that situation and says: “Ah, but do you have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ? That is what knowing God is all about for He is the ONLY intermediary between God and humans”. However, while it is true that a person must really know God (1 Thessalonians 4:5) and that NOT knowing God will result in eternal condemnation (2 Thessalonians 1:8), there is still an element of subjectivity involved here. If I say that I know God, there is the possibility that I may be wrong, and that I may be no better than believers in any religion who also claim to know God.

The false prophets, false “deliverance ministry” merchants and false miracle-workers to whom the Lord Jesus is referring in Matthew 7:22 plainly thought that they knew God so well that they could justifiably address Him as their “Lord” and that they were assured of a one-way ticket to paradise (Matthew 7:21). But here we learn that the great objective element of salvation is not to know God but to BE KNOWN by Him. For He says to those people who relied on their subjective experience: “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (Matthew 7:23). Can you think of a more awesome and terrible thing to hear than those words from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ as you are (so you think) about to enter the gates of heaven? “I never knew you!” This is precisely how it is pictured in the parable of the Ten Virgins, where their entrance into heaven is not based on their “knowing God” but on His not knowing them:

“Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you’. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming” (Matthew 25:11-13).

As a remarkable mirror of the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 7:21-23, the Apostle Paul says this: “Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: ‘The Lord knows those who are His’, and ‘Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity’” (2 Timothy 2:18-19). It is not enough merely to “name the name of Christ”. Even the false prophets, false “deliverance” merchants and false miracle workers in Matthew 7:22 named the name of Christ in their work, performing it in the name of Jesus. They thought they knew God. But thinking you know God is not enough. Departing from iniquity or lawlessness is a great sign of the true believer; and the true believer is marked by the fact that s/he is “known by God” rather than that s/he merely thinks s/he knows God. “I am the Good Shepherd; and I know my sheep, and am known by My own”, says the Lord Jesus (John 10:14). While it is important to know God truly, it is not enough to think you know God. You have to be KNOWN BY HIM also: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). If He knows you, you will depart from lawlessness — i.e. follow Him as His disciple in a life of purity. Although you will never be perfect this side of glory, your life will be wholly given over to the desire to depart from iniquity.

Frankly, if we truly know God, it is solely because of the fact that we are known BY Him. This is the context in which Paul was so exasperated with those believers who had been deceived by the Judaisers in Galatia. He said to them:

“But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” (Galatians 4:8-9).

Paul is persuading the Galatians here to recognise that their salvation is not the result of them knowing God but of the fact that God knows them! What does it mean to be “known by God”? Well this is all part of the glorious Bible teaching of Election — the fact that God has chosen a people to be saved from before the creation of the universe (Ephesians 1:4-6, 11-12; John 17:2 & 6; Romans 8:29-30; 9:10-24; 1 Thessalonians 1:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Rev.17:8). This was precisely Paul’s meaning when he said that “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:2). Israel as the Old Covenant theocratic nation of God was indeed rejected (Matthew 21:43). But that nation consisted of both believers and unbelievers, and the believers were always in the minority and known as “the remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5), those whom God “foreknew”. They, as individuals, were NOT rejected, having been “known” by Him personally as His beloved elect from before the creation of the world.

Maybe you think that making this distinction between “knowing God” and being “known BY God” is merely a trifling theological or semantic diversion — rather like debating about how many angels one can fit on the point of a needle. But that would be a grave misjudgement, in view of the burgeoning religious movements of the world today. Allow me to explain:

Many of those in the world today who merely say they know God (by whatever means they are able to make such a claim) revel in their God as a pantheistic force which permeates nature and which can be tapped into through various techniques such as meditation, yoga, hallucinogenic substances (as shamans do, who are very trendy today), etc. This is why it is so important to be able to say that one is known BY God as well as truly knowing God. It is possible to claim to know God as a pantheistic force; but it is impossible to be actually KNOWN BY a pantheistic force. If you are “known” by God rather than merely knowing God, then the God by whom you are known can only be the awesome Transcendent God of the Bible — a personal God who is other than His creation. Election is the great buttress against pantheism! The big battle over the coming years will be right in this territory. This will be the heart of the spiritual battle: The objective reality of the awesome, supernatural transcendent God who chooses and saves VERSUS the subjective, humanly-invented demonically-encouraged mystical pantheistic force? That is what it will all come to hinge on in the coming years. And this is also why the Bible teaching on Election is so vital to the corpus of Christian truth today. Here is a dodgy quotation to ponder:

“When Christianity thinks of itself as the only true religion, it loses credibility. When Christianity sees itself as one of the world’s great religions, it gains credibility.”

This statement was made by Dr. Marcus Borg, professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University in the USA. It was made at an influential February 2000 conference on “The Nature of God”, which included — as one of the speakers — the late champion of ecumenism and interfaithism, Desmond Tutu. The question which is begged by the above statement is “With whom does Christianity lose or gain that credibility?” The simple answer is “with people who are opposed to the Christian gospel and who have an essentially anti-Christian mindset”! But there is a more complex, deceptive aspect to this, because these people claim that Christianity (as they understand it) is still “a great religion”; and many are taken in by their seemingly irenic posture towards Christian belief.

At this conference — and at many others like it which are being held today — the idea is that God is no longer to be seen as a spiritual Being who is sovereign over His creation but as a pantheistic force which can be “tapped into” by anyone. A report by ENI of that conference in Oregon stated that

“Each speaker described the developing image of a God who is ‘mystical’ rather than ‘supernatural’. Dr Borg said this meant no longer seeing God as a person-like being ‘out there’ who was constantly measuring us against his requirements and one who could intervene at any moment but often chose not to. Instead they described God as a presence that pervades everything”.

What we are dealing with here is the age-old process of inventing “God” according to our own desires, which is what each of the speakers at this conference was engaged in. In fact, one of the speakers at the conference actually said, “the God I make will be the God I seek”. To make such a “God” is, of course, idolatry — although because there is no statue or graven image necessarily involved many would not realise it. But when you say, “the God I make will be the one I seek” — whatever that “God” may be — you have “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man” (Romans 1:23), and “exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

This pantheistic, interfaith, mystical approach to God is going to increase mightily in the next few years. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that it is going to engulf the world and the church. It will not be very long before we who believe in the necessary Transcendence of God (as well as His Immanence) will begin to be totally isolated in the global world of religion. Here is what I wrote about this in my 1994 book, “The Serpent and the Cross” many years ago, quoting the great Bible teacher J. Gresham Machen:

“By far the most important and far-reaching of the liberal incursions into Divine truth was the assertion of the immanence of God (His omnipresence) at the expense of His transcendence (His ‘otherness’ from His creation), so that the Creator becomes styled simply as ‘an expression of the cosmic process in all its manifestations’. The central importance of this aspect of theological liberalism to Christian doctrine is shown by J. Gresham Machen when he writes: ’The truth is that liberalism has lost sight of the very centre and core of the Christian teaching. In the Christian view of God as set forth in the Bible, there are many elements. But one attribute of God is absolutely fundamental in the Bible; one attribute is absolutely necessary in order to render intelligible all the rest. That attribute is the awful transcendence of God. From beginning to end the Bible is concerned to set forth the awful gulf that separates the creature from the Creator. It is true, indeed, that according to the Bible God is immanent in the world. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him. But He is immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world, but because He is the free Creator and upholder of it. Between the creature and the Creator a great gulf is fixed’. [J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Liberalism” (Eerdmans, 1923), pp.62-63.] This obsession of theological liberalism with upholding the ‘immanence’ of God to the exclusion of His transcendence — which is the Western theological expression of ancient pantheism — has great significance to the charting of the transition from the old Gnosticism of the second century AD to the new Gnosticism of the twentieth century today.”

This is what lies behind the current vogue for staging religious conferences about “the nature of God”. It is a ferocious, subtle, deceptive New Gnosticism which will soon engulf the visible church as much as the Old Gnosticism did in the second century AD. The awesome Transcendence of God. THAT is what we need to hold onto today. Unless we can grasp the importance of this teaching — that the true God is a spiritual Being who is OTHER than His creation and who chooses as He will — and the implications of its eclipsing today, we will be all the poorer as apologists for the faith. This is precisely why such basic Bible teachings as Election are so vital today. For it has enormous relevance to upholding God’s astounding transcendence over against the mystical pantheism of the New World Order.

Now someone may object here that the Bible teaching on Election has always caused division and confusion wherever it has been asserted. My reply is to say that the only reason the Bible teaching on Election has caused division in history is because it has either been misunderstood, misused or deliberately rebelled against! If professing Christians were prepared to — in the words of Luther — “let God be God”, and were not so egocentrically triggered by it, then most of the kerfuffle over Election would never have happened.

If you think that God is unjust for saving a specific countless number  of people for whom He has come and for whom He died, you might just as well say that God is unjust because He does not save everyone! But those ‘Christian’ authors and pastors who would tell you that the teachings I am giving in this article are ‘execrably extreme’ do not say that. They seem okay with God allowing people to go to hell, even though they say that He loves them. Yet they draw the line at God foreordaining it. But both of those amount to the same thing. Their teaching is really that God could save them but He doesn’t. It is just that their version, which is “God allowing people to go to hell when He could actually save them” still leaves Man in the driving seat, which is what they want to preserve at all costs.

Furthermore, they do not object to God having revealed Himself ONLY to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament and leaving all the rest of the nations in complete darkness bound only for hell. Yet they object to God choosing His people in the New Covenant. They do not even object to the particular election of certain individuals within that nation Israel, as revealed by Paul in Romans 9:6-13, where he also says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”. They don’t mind that, but this just shows their cognitive dissonance!

Do you see what I am saying here? The reality is that people just do not want to let God be God. They want to cling onto making a ‘god’ out of an imagined human freewill. But that is not what the Bible teaches, if it is read without the humanistic filter which prevails in both the world and to such a large extent in the visible church.

The reasons why it is vital to hold onto the Bible teaching on Election today — especially today — are that it vindicates the personal, transcendent nature of God, and it upholds the reality and integrity of the Trinitarian Godhead which lies at the heart of the Christian faith. I have said many times that the big battle for the faith and the truth in the coming years (however many there are left!) will centre on whether or not God is a supernatural transcendent spiritual Being who is other than the creation, or a mystical pantheistic force which permeates the cosmos. If God is merely the latter, it completely undermines His Divine initiative in creation and salvation.

A mystical pantheistic force which permeates the cosmos and is identified with the cosmos cannot exist before the existence of that cosmos. A mystical pantheistic force cannot personally choose people for salvation before their existence and before there is even a cosmos. The Bible clearly shows that even before the universe was created there existed the Godhead as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When the Lord Jesus prayed to God the Father, He spoke of “the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5). This is not an interaction between mystical pantheistic forces — this is PERSONAL. And it gets even more personal later in His prayer when the Lord Jesus says to the Father: “For You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

The Bible teaching on Election is intimately wrapped up in the doctrine of the Trinity — the personal transcendent Godhead. In that great prayer in John 17, the Lord Jesus says to the Father: “You have given [the Son] authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him” (John 17:2). Here we see something which cannot possibly be the work of a mystical pantheistic force. God the Father has given a people to God the Son. This is one of the great themes of the gospel. God the Father sent God the Son into the world to become flesh as the Man Christ Jesus in order that He should take upon Himself the penalty for the sins of the people whom the Father had given to Him. As the angel said to Mary: “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins”. He does not save everyone from the penalty for their sins but only “His people” — the people whom the Father has given Him and for whom He sent Him. “This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day” (John 6:39). Not only have these elect people been “given” by the Father to the Son, but, as the Lord Jesus says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). No one! God the Father has to do the drawing, otherwise they cannot come. That is Election in action. And it is God’s sacred prerogative to do that. These sayings are like baseball bats smashing into the falsely-concocted face of freewill. For all this very specific and personal saving activity is hardly the action of a mystical pantheistic force! This is the work of the Trinitarian Godhead. GOD THE FATHER sends the Son into the world and guarantees that the call of the Gospel will be effective in those who He [the Father] has given to Him [the Son]. GOD THE SON comes into the world and accomplishes all that the Father has given Him to do in the cosmic work of salvation, crying out “It is finished!” as the sign of its achievement. GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT personally applies all that the Son has accomplished to the hearts of those for whom He came (John 3:5-8; Romans 5:5; John 6:63; 1 Corinthians 6:11).

Now all this Trinitarian work is a personal work. The electing, saving work of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So believers can say that “He [the Father] chose us in Him [the Son] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Ephesians 1:4-5). A mystical pantheistic force cannot possibly be attributed with such work in that way. If we deny the Bible teaching on Election, we utterly weaken the transcendent power of God. The freewill mentality of so many professing Christians today is a slap in the face for that transcendent power. For “God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden” (Romans 9:18). That is the prerogative of His transcendent power. Do you submit to that or not?

This is why the Bible teaching on Election, rightly understood and applied, is so important today. For it flies completely in the face of the New Age, interfaith “cosmic force” which is the preferred idea of “God” in the politically correct religion of the New World Order. This is why I have contended over the years with so much might against such bandwagons as the “Toronto Blessing” and other similar charismatic idiocies in recent decades. For they lend support to the idea of a mystical pantheistic force which “comes down” on gatherings of people. One of their teachers inadvertently supported this pantheistic idea when he touched a piece of material which then (in people’s minds) became “charged” with a mysterious power and which could then be thrown at people in order to ‘zap’ them and make them fall down in a heap, as Rodney Howard-Browne did in Birmingham, England. (This is not to say that there was an actual force in the material; but a combination of gullible minds and demonic stimulation laid the ground for much delusion). The “Toronto Blessing” and other such charismatic idiocies are impersonal and completely undermining of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. They have far more in common with the preferred mystical pantheistic “god” of the New World Order than with the personal Trinitarian saving God of the Bible. I believe that all those charismatic bandwagons have been a major work of the demonic realm in bringing the church even deeper into religious syncretism than had already been the case. (And I can assure you that there will be even darker works yet to come which are designed to ensnare the church). God does not carry out His saving work through indiscriminate mystical forces but through specifically personal electing grace.

It would seem that the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian trend towards denying Election as an unmerited, sovereign, predestinarian act of the Triune God before the creation, and thereby making an idol out of human freewill (the greatest myth apart from the theory of evolution!), has played right into the hands of the liberals and New Agers of today, because it effectively nullifies the Lord’s sovereign power and makes His saving work subject to creaturely permission. I am convinced that many who uphold that there is human freewill do so not because they believe such a teaching is logical (because it isn’t!), but because they are too triggered by, and frightened of, the full implications of divine sovereignty (especially as it is laid out so clearly in Romans chapter 9).

Certainly, it is vitally important to be able to say for real that we know the one true God personally. But it is not enough for us ONLY to be able to say that. Those who claim that they know God are not necessarily known BY God. Those who claim that they know God will not necessarily depart from lawlessness. But those who are known BY God always know Him truly as their Lord and Saviour, and always do all they can to avoid acts of iniquity.

Until one has submitted to these profound truths, one is an infant and has not proved oneself worthy to make any kind of judgements about this matter. This is why it is so important to come of age and stop being a baby. Do you not realise what God is doing over time? He is building up a people for Himself who will be the population of the new heaven and new earth. He has chosen these people carefully for this development throughout their lives here on earth and they are humbled to have been created and singled out for this destiny. I can assure you that there will be no one who, in the end, will be saying “But I want to be saved” who will not be saved. All those who desire to come to Him will be received by Him. No one who is not among the elect will be wishing that they were. Do you understand all this? It is a mark of Christian maturity to understand it. We cannot have the untaught dictating to the church that election is a lie and freewill is the truth (although now such nonsense has got out of hand).

God is not doing all this creation and recreation just to stroke the egos of those who have made an idol out of freewill and who moan, “God wouldn’t do that”. Maybe now you will say, “But that just makes you into God’s puppet”. Another deeply ignorant statement from people who just do not get it. Coming to Christ makes me into God’s servant, not His puppet! God’s free servant who knows what freedom is for the first time. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So, no, God birthing us to salvation does not mean that we become puppets. Though, frankly, I would infinitely far rather be God’s puppet than Satan’s robot, which is what all those who have not come to Christ truly are!

Saying these words: “That horrible doctrine of election makes people into God’s puppets. God would not violate our freewill like that” is one of the most objectionable statements I have ever heard. It sums up the tremendous wilful ignorance which pervades the modern visible church. Firstly, prior to faith in Christ we have no freewill other than the will to sin. So many professing Christians just do not understand the true state of the unsaved human heart. This why Paul said to the believers in Ephesus “you were dead in your trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13), adding that it is God who “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!” (Ephesians 2:5). How can someone who is DEAD “make a decision for Christ”, as that corny saying goes? He or she simply cannot. That is precisely the problem. So to say that we have freewill before coming to Christ is nothing less than a provable lie. To paraphrase Augustine, although after the Fall all humans came to be in a state of being ‘not able not to sin’ (“non posse non peccare”), we who are Christ’s are now in a state of “posse non peccare”, being freely ‘able not to sin’ (which is as far from a puppet as one could get!). Our will is not in bondage to sin as it was before we came to Christ. But before one does come to Christ, there is only a bondage of the will, not freedom of the will. Before coming to Christ, there is no freedom of the will. That is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born from above” (John 3:3, where “born from above” is the correct translation of the Greek, γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, gennēthē anōthen — although “born again” has become a popularised translation, as being born from above by God amounts to the same thing as being born again). Reborn from ABOVE, through the work of God NOT through your freewill! Have you got it yet? As Jesus said there, you cannot even SEE the kingdom of God — nevermind be in it — unless you are “born from above”, that is, unless God births you. That is why Paul says, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). If you come to Christ by your freewill, then you jolly well COULD boast! But the whole panoply of salvation has been worked so that no one can boast, for it is ALL the work of God. All of it! It has to be that way, because “separated from Christ we can do nothing” (John 15:5)! When anyone believes in Christ’s name, it is because He Himself “gave the right to become children of God — children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God” (John 1:12-13). You become a child of God not through your will — “the will of man” — but because God has (re)birthed you! It is those who have been “appointed to eternal life” who believe (Acts 13:48). Appointed by whom? Is that not now obvious?

Is it not true that every genuine saved-by-grace disciple of Christ says, “It was not so much that I chose God but that God chose me!”? Or “Even though it seemed at the time like I was choosing God through Christ Jesus, I realise now that it was God enabling me to do that”. They know that they were dead in their trespasses and sins. They know that they were blind and lost. And they also know that it was really the case that it was God who came to them and overturned that state into the blessed state they are now in — that it was really all the original work of God. That is how they inevitably come to see it in hindsight. Is that not true?

Now, you may say, “Well why does God still find fault with people if, according to you, they are unable to come to Him?” To which I answer,

“Who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why did You make me like this?’ Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use? What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory” (Romans 9:21-23).

This is the crunch point: That God has the right to do whatever He wants and does not have to make Himself answerable to puny us. This is why I say that those who oppose Divine election have no belief in or understanding of the awful transcendence of God. Even if He has elected some and not others from before the foundation of the world, that is His business as it is His creation. To find fault with God and His ways is faithless.

Now you may say, “But what if someone wants to be saved but cannot because they are not a ‘vessel of His mercy’? Isn’t that unfair?” That would be impossible. There will be no one who wants to be saved but cannot. That would be ridiculous. Let’s put it this way: There will be no one in hell who would rather be in heaven. The truth is that there is infinitely more wonder, glory and assurance in the fact that God alone saves you than there is in the dodgy insecurity of you saving yourself through your own freewill (which, in any case, is crazy because it is a spiritually dead person’s freewill, which is a contradiction in terms!). There is far more wonder, glory and assurance in the fact that you have been predestined to salvation rather than that you have randomly saved yourself through your own will (no glory in that). Yes, we still have to respond to the Gospel call when it comes, but if we will be profound enough and serious enough and courageous enough to face up to it, we will realize with great amazement that it is God who willed it to happen. For who can resist His will?!?

But why do you think it is that the Bible teaching on election is so despised by so many Christians? The lengths to which people will go to deny it is phenomenal. Mental and biblical gymnastics are easily at their most rampant insofar as vitriolic opposition to the teaching on election is concerned. Really, the mind boggles! People will tie you in knots quoting verses out of context to try and knock it down, as they will, no doubt, after they have been outraged by this harmless article. What desperation but, above all, what hubris and arrant arrogance! I actually had a guy say to me once, after I had explained to him what the Bible teaches on this subject, “I can see that what you are saying is true… [pause]… but I exercise my freewill by refusing to believe it”. So what is really going on here is not that people regard the Bible teaching on election as being wrong but that they simply cannot take it and refuse to entertain it. In other words, pure narcissistic rebellion against the absolute sovereignty of God. So I say to these folks: Please go and start your own religion based on freewill and the denial of the awesome transcendence of God, and do not continue to pervert the Bible truth of Election, for it effectively denies so many other Bible truths.

Now at this point a Christian could cry out “I long to be known by God but how can I have the assurance that God knows me? How can one know that one is among the Elect?” This is an understandable question to which there are two sides. The first side applies to whether or not we can know who the Elect are before we preach the Gospel. The second side applies to whether or not we ourselves can positively know that we are among the Elect once we have come to Christ. So far as the first side of the question is concerned, we cannot know the secret will of God in His Election of people to be saved. Of course, this must NEVER deter us from proclaiming the gospel indiscriminately to all people. We must still proclaim the Gospel AS IF everyone could be saved, for we do not know the identity of the elect. If we take the secret decrees and will of God in Election as the starting point for our preaching, and limit its extent in our proclamation, then we will fall into what has been (rather erroneously) known as “hypercalvinism”. The other side of the coin, and just as counterproductive is that if we tell everyone that God loves them, has already died for them and that He is only being hampered from saving them because of the resistance of their human freewill, then we not only deny the power and sovereignty of God but we put humanity in the driving seat rather than God and fall into a whole pile of errors such as Pelagianism and “easy believism”, and play right into the hands of the mystics and spiritualists who deny the astoundingly awesome Transcendence of God.

We cannot possibly know the identity of God’s elect in this world when we go out to proclaim the gospel. But we do so powerfully and persuasively to every creature indiscriminately and leave the logistics to the Lord. As Paul puts it:

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers…” (1 Corinthians 3:6-9).

In the business of gospel preaching, we are God’s fellow workers. We spread around the world the fragrance of Christ through our witness with the Gospel, but ultimately it is God who chooses to make the general call of the gospel effective in a person’s heart. “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). “He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens” (Romans 9:18). The awesome fact is that

“through us [God] diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).

So far as the second side to the above question is concerned, about whether or not we can positively know that we are among the Elect once we have been saved, the answer is clearly given in Scripture. In 1 Peter 1:10, the Apostle says: “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble”. So (apart from the changes which will be so obvious within us) there is a way that we can assure ourselves that we have been “known by God” from eternity and are thus among the Elect. And that way is to examine our behaviour. When Peter says, “if you do these things you will never stumble”, he is referring to the chain of qualities and characteristics which, as Christians indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we can develop. Peter has already said that “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). Then comes the chain of characteristics:

“Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:6-8).

He then says “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble” (2 Peter 1:10). Our improving character, increasingly conformed to Christ, is a sure sign of our being among the Elect and therefore “known by God” from eternity. This fits with the dictum of James that “faith without deeds is dead (worthless)” (James 2:20) — the corollary being that faith evidenced by actions is real. As J.C. Ryle put it so succinctly: “We can never be justified by our works, but the justified person works”. This is also the context of the passage about our having been saved by grace alone and not through works in Ephesians 2:8-10. Yes, it is grace alone which saves us; but we have been elected not only to salvation but also to a lifelong improvement of character: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

This is also echoed by John when he says: “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:6). So we CAN make our calling and Election sure (i.e. we can assure ourselves that we are among the Elect) when first, we repent and believe in Jesus Christ, and second, we have the desire to grow, develop and improve, and see these things happening in our lives. This is also what is meant by the words of the Lord Jesus when He said that the sign of being among the sheep at His right hand was the evidence of good works in our lives (Matthew 25:31-46). The justified person works! Incidentally, when the Lord Jesus refers in that passage to “My brethren” (Matthew 25:40), he is not referring to everyone in the world but to those who are obedient to God’s will, for such are Christ’s true brethren (cf. Matthew 12:46-50). I emphasise this because this passage has been used by all kinds of secular philanthropists to show that anyone of any religion or none can be saved through good works to all.

So, while we cannot know who is among the Elect when we gaze out across the world, we have a litmus test as to whether or not we are among the elect — known and loved by God from before the world was made. Just to convince you that this is not some wacky teaching of Alan Morrison, here is what Matthew Henry (1662-1714) says on the matter, taken from his commentary on 2 Peter 1:10:

“What in v. 5 is expressed by giving diligence to add to faith virtue, etc., is expressed in v. 10 by giving diligence to make our calling and Election sure. Here we may observe, (1.) It is the duty of believers to make their Election sure, to clear it up to themselves that they are the chosen of God. (2.) The way to be sure of their eternal Election is to make out their effectual calling: none can look into the book of God’s eternal counsels and decrees; but, inasmuch as whom God did predestinate those he also called, if we can find we are effectually called, we may conclude we are chosen to salvation. (3.) It requires a great deal of diligence and labour to make sure our calling and Election; there must be a very close examination of ourselves, a very narrow search and strict enquiry, whether we are thoroughly converted, our minds enlightened, our wills renewed, and our whole souls changed as to the bent and inclination thereof; and to come to a fixed certainty in this requires the utmost diligence, and cannot be attained and kept without divine assistance, as we may learn from Psalm 139:23; Romans 8:16. ‘But, how great soever the labour is, do not think much of it, for great is the advantage you gain by it’; for, [1.] ‘By this you will be kept from falling, and that at all times and seasons, even in those hours of temptation that shall be on the earth’. When others shall fall into heinous and scandalous sin, those who are thus diligent shall be enabled to walk circumspectly and keep on in the way of their duty; and, when many fall into errors, they shall be preserved sound in the faith, and stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. [2.] Those who are diligent in the work of religion shall have a triumphant entrance into glory; while of those few who get to heaven some are scarcely saved (1 Peter 4:18), with a great deal of difficulty, even as by fire (1 Corinthians 3:15), those who are growing in grace and abounding in the work of the Lord shall have an abundant entrance into the joy of their Lord, even that everlasting kingdom where Christ reigns, and they shall reign with him for ever and ever” (Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible [unabridged], comment on 2 Peter 1:10).

Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. Having a great concern about whether one is among the Elect is rather like being disturbed that one might have committed the unforgivable sin. If you had committed the unforgivable sin, you wouldn’t be in the least bit concerned about it! Similarly, if you were not among the Elect, I doubt very much that you would be horribly troubled about the matter! But we can so easily apply that litmus test to our lives. How do we square up? We may not fare as well as we would like, but if improvement is there, and one can see clear growth and development as part of a pattern, that is enough. Even if any of us squares up badly, that is not the end of the matter, for the way ahead is clear. Begin at the beginning. We only have to repent and believe, and we will not only be saved but we will also have a power that is at work in us (Ephesians 3:20), having been given “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), thus enabling us to put to death the sins which so easily ensnare us (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5).

At its most basic, we have the assurance that “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). That is something which has to be grasped by faith. But it is a Divine promise so we must believe it; then faith engraves it on the hearts of God’s elect. Like salvation itself, such faith is a miracle worked by God within us.

Known by God. The greatest blessing! When the time comes for you to shed your earthly tent, which words would you rather hear: “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” OR “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”? If you can only claim to know God, then you may still hear the first saying. But if you are also known BY God, then that second saying will ring sweetly in your ears more than anything else you have ever heard. “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and Election sure”.

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[For those who would like to understand more fully about the true nature of the human heart before a person comes to Christ, here is a little book I wrote which you can read, entitled “You Were Once Darkness: The True Nature of the Human Condition Without Christ”. It answers many questions which sceptics or opposers of these truths might ask, and deals with the Scriptures which they most often come up with (e.g., “God so loved the world” and “God wants all to be saved”, etc). You can freely download it here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2023/10/03/you-were-once-darkness-the-true-nature-of-the-human-condition-without-christ-new-ebook-for-free-download/ ]

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]