Objections Considered and Answered
Many are the objections brought against this doctrine.
Sometimes the objectors are loud and furious. Alas! that so
many of these objectors are in Baptist ranks. To preach this
old-fashioned doctrine of our faith as did Bunyan, Fuller, Gill,
Spurgeon, Boyce, Broadus, Pendleton, Graves, Jarrell,
Carroll, Jeter, Boyce Taylor and a host of other representative
men of our denomination is to court the bitterest kind of
opposition. John Wesley himself never said harsher words
against this blessed tenet of our faith than do some so-called
Baptists of today. Arminianism that offspring of popery, has
had an abnormal growth in the last decade or two as the
adopted child of a large group of Baptists.
1. IT IS OBJECTED THAT OUR VIEW OF ELECTION LIMITS
GOD’S MERCY. Right here we criticize the critic, for he who
makes this objection limits both God’s mercy and power. He
admits that God’s mercy is limited to the believer, and to this
we agree; but he denies that God can cause a man to believe
without doing violence to the man’s will, and thus he limits
God’s power. We believe that God is able to give a man a
sound mind (II Tim. 1:7) and make him willing in the day of His
power. (Ps. 110:2) At this point we must face two self-evident
propositions. First, if God is trying to save every member of
Adam’s fallen race, and does not succeed, then His power is
limited and He is not the Lord God Almighty. Second, if He is
not trying to save every member of the fallen race, then His
mercy is limited. We must of necessity limit His mercy or His
power, or go over boots and baggage to the Universalist’s
position. But before we do that, let us go “to the law and to the
testimony”, which says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion…Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have
mercy and whom He will He hardeneth” (Rom. 9:15-18). It
needs to be said for the comfort and hope of great sinners,
that God’s mercy is not limited by the natural condition of the
sinner. All sinners are dead until God makes them alive. He is
able to take away the heart of stone. No man is too great a
sinner to be saved. We can pray for the salvation of the chief
of sinners with the assurance that God can save them if He
will. “The King’s heart is in the hands of the Lord as the river
of water; He turneth it whithersoever He will” (Peter 21:1). We
rejoice to say with Jeremiah that there is nothing too hard for
God. We can pray for the salvation of our loved ones with the
feeling of the leper, when he said, “Lord, if thou wilt thou canst
make me clean” (Matt. 8:2). When Robert Morrison was about
to go to China, he was asked by an incredulous American if
he thought he could make any impression on those Chinese.
His curt reply was, “No, but I think God can.” This should ever
be our confidence and hope when we stand before sinners
and preach to them “CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED”.
2. ANOTHER OBJECTION TO ELECTION IS THAT IT
MAKES GOD UNJUST. This objection betrays a bad heart. It
would obligate the CREATOR to the CREATURE. It makes
salvation a divine obligation. It denies the right of the potter
over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel to honour
and another to dishonour. By the same parity of reasoning it
makes the governor of a sovereign state unjust when he
pardons one or more men, unless he empties the prison and
turns all the prisoners loose. Our view of election is in
harmony with what even the Arminians allow to be proper and
just for a human governor. All can see that a governor, by
pardoning some men, does not harm others, who are not
pardoned. Those who are not pardoned are not in prison
because the governor refused them a pardon but because
they were guilty of a crime against the state. Isn’t God to be
allowed as much sovereignty as the governor of a state?
Salvation, like a pardon, is something that is not deserved. If it
were deserved, then God would be unjust if He did not bestow
it upon all men.
Salvation is not a matter of justice but of mercy. It wasn’t the
attribute of justice that led God to provide salvation but the
attribute of mercy. Justice is simply each man getting what he
deserves. Those who go to hell will have nobody to blame but
themselves, while those who go to heaven will have nobody to
praise but God. Rom. 9:22,23
3. IT IS AGAIN OBJECTED THAT OUR VIEW OF ELECTION
IS AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF WHOSOEVER WILL. But
the objector is wrong again. Our view explains and supports
the doctrine of “WHOSOEVER WILL”. Without election the
invitation to “WHOSOEVER WILL” would go unheeded. The
Bible doctrine of “WHOSOEVER WILL” does not imply the
freedom or ability of the human will to do good. The human
will is free, but its freedom is within the limits of fallen human
nature. It is free like water; water is free to run down hill. It is
free like the vulture; the vulture is free to eat carrion, for that is
its nature, but it would starve to death in a wheat field. It is not
the buzzard’s nature to eat clean food; it feeds upon the
carcasses of the dead. So sinners starve to death in the
presence of the bread of life. Our Lord said to some sinners,
who were in His very presence “Ye will not come unto me that
ye might have life” (John 5:40). It is not natural for a sinner to
trust in Christ. Salvation through trust in a crucified Christ is a
stumbling block to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek; it is
only the called, both Jews and Greeks, who trust it as the
wisdom and power of God. I Cor. 1:23,24
Here is a physical corpse. Is it free to get up and walk
around? In one sense, yes. It is not bound by fetters. There is
no external restraint. But, in another sense, that corpse is not
free. It is hindered by its natural condition. It is its nature to
decompose and go back to dust. It is not the nature of death
to stir about. Here is a spiritual corpse–a man dead in
trespasses and sins. Is the man free to repent and believe
and do good works? Yes, in one sense. There are no external
restraints. God does not prevent but offers inducements
through His Holy Word. But the corpse is hindered by its own
nature. There must be the miracle of the new birth, for except
a man be born from above he cannot see or enter into the
Kingdom of God. John 3:3-3:5
It is painful to some of us to see our brethren forsake the faith
of our Baptist forbears at this point and join the ranks of the
Roman Catholics and other Arminians. If anyone doubts this
charge let him read the article of faith adopted by the
Catholics at the council of Trent (1563). I quote their
statement on the freedom of the human will–”If anyone shall
affirm that since the fall of Adam man’s free-will is lost, let him
be accursed.” But alas, in this day, such a spirit is not
confined to the Roman Catholics. Horatius Bonar makes the
following quotation from John Calvin: “The Papist theologians
have a distinction current among themselves that God does
not elect men according to their works which are in them but
that He chooses them that He foresees will be believers.”
Ah, the real trouble with the objector is not election; it is
something else. His real objection is to total depravity or
human inability to do good. I can do no better here than to
quote from Percy W. Heward of London, England. He says, “It
seems to me that the majority of objections to God’s sovereign
grace, to God’s electing love, are actually objections to
something else, namely objections to the fact that man is
ruined. If you probe beneath the surface you will find that very
few object to election. Why should they? Election harms no
one. How can the picking of a man out of doom harm anyone
else? The real objection at the present day is not to election,
though that word is made the catchword of sad controversy–
the real objection is to that fact which is revealed in Psalm 51,
that we are shapen in iniquity, that we are born sinners by
nature, dead in sins, until, as we read concerning Paul in
Galatians 1, “It pleased God, who separated me from my
mother’s womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son
in me…” Ah, beloved friends, we deserve nothing but doom.
Acknowledge this and election is the only hope. Acknowledge
that we are poor lost sinners, dead in trespasses and sins,
only evil continually; acknowledge that there is in man no
natural spark to be fanned into a flame but that believers are
born again of incorruptible seed which the Lord places;
acknowledge that if anyone is in Christ that there is a new
creation, for we are His workmanship, having been created in
Christ Jesus;–and election must be at once recognized.”
Every real believer on his knees subscribes to our view of
election. You cannot pray ascribing some credit to self.
Sovereign grace will come out in prayer though it may be left
off the platform. No saved man will get down on his knees
before God and claim that he made himself to differ from
others who are not saved, but with Paul he says, “By the
grace of God I am what I am.” And in praying for the lost we
supplicate God to convict and convert them. We do not
depend upon the freedom of their wills but beg God to make
them willing to come to Christ, knowing that when they come
to Christ He will not cast them out. John 6:37
A Methodist minister once went to hear a Presbyterian
minister preach. After the sermon, the Methodist said to the
Presbyterian, “That was a pretty good Arminian sermon you
preached today.” “Yes, ” replied the Presbyterian, “We
Presbyterians are pretty good Arminians when we preach and
you Methodists are pretty good Calvinists when you pray.”
MORE TRUTH THAN POETRY HERE!!
4. IT IS ALSO OBJECTED THAT OUR VIEW OF ELECTION
IS A NEW DOCTRINE AMONG MISSIONARY BAPTISTS.
The fact is that it is so old-fashioned that it has about gone out
of fashion. The ignorance betrayed in such a claim is indeed
pitiable. In refutation we resort to two sources of information
(a) Confessions of faith; (b) Statements of representative
preachers and writers.
4a) CONFESSIONS OF FAITH
The Waldenses declare themselves as follows: “God saves
from corruption and damnation those whom He has chosen
from the foundation of the world, not from any disposition,
faith or holiness that He foresaw in them, but His mere mercy
in Christ Jesus His Son, passing by all the rest according to
the irreprehensible reason of His own free-will and justice.”
THE DATE OF THIS CONFESSION WAS 1120!!!
The London Confession (1689) and the Philadelphia
Confession (1742) read as follows: “By the decree of God, for
the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are
predestined or foreordained to ETERNAL LIFE through Jesus
Christ, to the praise of His glorious grace; others being left to
act in their sins to their just condemnation, to the praise of His
glorious justice.”
The New Hampshire Confession (Article 9): “We believe that
election is the eternal purpose of God according to which He
graciously regenerates, sanctifies and saves sinners; that
being perfectly consistent with the free-agency of man, it
comprehends all the means in connection with the end; that it
is a most glorious display of God’s sovereign goodness, being
infinitely free, wise holy and unchangeable; that it utterly
excludes boasting and promotes humility, love, prayer, praise,
trust in God, and active imitation of His free mercy; that it
encourages the use of means in the highest degree; that it
may be ascertained by its effects in all who truly believe the
Gospel; that it is the foundation of Christian assurance; and
that to ascertain it with regard to ourselves demands and
deserves the utmost diligence.”
“Only one life to live and soon is past
Only what’s done for Christ will last!”
Hoping to make the time I have left count for the glory of God.
THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF ELECTION By C. D. Cole Part 6
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