2 Thessalonians: Unconditional Election. Part Two.

¹³ But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. ¹⁴ To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 2:13–14 (ESV)

A SERMON DELIVERED ON SABBATH MORNING, SEPTEMBER 2, 1855, BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT NEW PARK STREET CHAPEL, SOUTHWARK.

First, I must try and prove that the doctrine is TRUE. And let me begin with an argumentum ad hominen—I will speak to you according to your different positions and stations. There are some of you who belong to the church of England and I am happy to see so many of you here. Though now and then I certainly say some very hard things about church and State, yet I love the old church, for she has in her communion many godly ministers and eminent saints.

Now I know you are great believers in what the Articles declare to be sound doctrine. I will give you a specimen of what they utter concerning election, so that if you believe them, you cannot avoid receiving election. I will read a portion of the 17th Article upon Predestination and Election— “Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) He has continually decreed by His counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He has chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor. Wherefore they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God’s purpose by His Spirit working in due season: They through grace obey the calling: they are justified freely: they are made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.”

Now, I think any Churchman, if he be a sincere and honest believer in Mother Church, must be a thorough believer in election. True, if he turns to certain other portions of the Prayer Book, he will find things contrary to the doctrines of free-grace and altogether apart from Scriptural teaching, but if he looks at the Articles, he must see that God has chosen His people unto eternal life. I am not so desperately enamored, however, of that book as you may be and I have only used this Article to show you that if you belong to the Establishment of England you should at least offer no objection to this doctrine of predestination.

Another human authority whereby I would confirm the doctrine of election is the old Waldensian Creed. If you read the creed of the old Waldenses, emanating from them in the midst of the burning heat of persecution, you will see that these renowned professors and confessors of the Christian faith did most firmly receive and embrace this doctrine as being a portion of the truth of God. I have copied from an old book, one of the Articles of their faith: “That God saves from corruption and damnation those whom He has chosen from the foundations of the world, not for any disposition, faith, or holiness that He before saw in them, but of 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.”

 It is no novelty, then, that I am preaching—no new doctrine. I love to proclaim these strong old doctrines, which are called by nickname Calvinism, but which are surely and verily the revealed truth of God as it is in Christ Jesus. By this truth, I make a pilgrimage into the past, and as I go, I see father after father, confessor after confessor, martyr after martyr, standing up to shake hands with me. Were I a Pelagian, or a believer in the doctrine of free-will, I would have to walk for centuries all alone. Here and Sermons #41, 42 Unconditional Election Volume 1 3 3 there a heretic of no very honorable character might rise up and call me brother, but taking these things to be the standard of my faith, I see the land of the ancients peopled with my brethren. I behold multitudes who confess the same as I do and acknowledge that this is the religion of God’s own church.

I also give you an extract from the old Baptist Confession. We are Baptists in this congregation—the greater part of us, at any rate—and we like to see what our own forefathers wrote. Some two hundred years ago, the Baptists assembled together and published their articles of faith, to put an end to certain reports against their orthodoxy which had gone forth to the world. I turn to this old book—which I have just published, the Baptist Confession of Faith, and I find the following as the third Article, “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated, or foreordained to eternal life through Jesus Christ to the praise of His glorious grace. Others being left to act in their sin to their just condemnation, to the praise of His glorious justice. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. Those of mankind who are predestinated to life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, has chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory out of His mere free grace and love, without any other thing in the creature as condition or cause moving Him hereunto.”

As for these human authorities, I care not one rush for all three of them. I care not what they say, pro or con, as to this doctrine. I have only used them as a kind of confirmation to your faith, to show you that while I may be railed upon as a heretic and as a hyper-Calvinist, after all I am backed up by antiquity. All the past stands by me. I do not care for the present. Give me the past and I will hope for the future. Let the present rise up in my teeth, I will not care. What though a host of the churches of London may have forsaken the great cardinal doctrines of God, it matters not. If a handful of us stand alone in an unflinching maintenance of the sovereignty of our God, if we are beset by enemies, ay, and even by our own brethren, who ought to be our friends and helpers, it matters not, if we can but count upon the past, the noble army of martyrs, the glorious host of confessors. They are our friends.

More to come. May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here.

Soli deo Gloria!