2 Thessalonians: Unconditional Election. Part Three.

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.

The witnesses of truth stand by us. With these for us, we will not say that we stand alone, but we may exclaim, “Lo, God has reserved unto himself seven thousand that have not bowed the knee unto Baal.” But the best of all is God is with us. The great truth is always the Bible and the Bible alone. My hearers, you do not believe in any other book than the Bible, do you? If I could prove this from all the books in Christendom, if I could fetch back the Alexandrian library and prove it thence, you would not believe it anymore, but you surely will believe what is in God’s Word.

I have selected a few texts to read to you. I love to give you a whole volley of texts when I am afraid you will distrust a truth, so that you may be too astonished to doubt, if you do not in reality believe. Just let me run through a catalog of passages where the people of God are called elect. Of course if the people are called elect, there must be election. If Jesus Christ and His apostles were accustomed to style believers by the title of elect, we must certainly believe that they were so, otherwise the term does not mean anything.

Jesus Christ says, “Except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved; , but for the elect’s sake, whom he has chosen, he has shortened the days.” “False Christs and false prophets shall rise and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.” “Then shall he send his angels and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost parts of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.” Mark 13:20, 22, 27. “Shall not God avenge his own elect who cry day and night unto him, though he bears long with them?” Luke 18:7.

Together with many other passages which might be selected, wherein either the word “elect,” or “chosen,” or “foreordained,” or “appointed,” is mentioned, or the phrase “my sheep,” or some similar designation, showing that Christ’s people are distinguished from the rest of mankind. But you have concordances and I will not trouble you with texts. Throughout the epistles, the saints are constantly called “the elect.” In Colossians, we find Paul saying, “Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies.”

When he writes to Titus, he calls himself, “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect.” Peter says, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” Then if you turn to John, you will find he is very fond of the word. He says, “The elder to the elect lady.” And he speaks of our “elect sister.” And we know where it is written, “The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you.”

They were not ashamed of the word in those days. They were not afraid to talk about it. Nowadays the word has been dressed up with diversities of meaning, and persons have mutilated and marred the doctrine so that they have made it a very doctrine of devils, I do confess. And many who call themselves believers have gone to rank Antinomianism. But not withstanding this, why should I be ashamed of it, if men do wrest it? We love God’s truth on the rack, as well as when it is walking upright.

If there were a martyr whom we loved before he went on the rack, we should love him more still when he was stretched there. When God’s truth is stretched on the rack, we do not call it falsehood. We love not to see it racked, but we love it even when racked, because we can discern what its proper proportions ought to have been if it had not been racked and tortured by the cruelty and inventions of men. If you will read many of the epistles of the ancient fathers, you will find them always writing to the people of God as the “elect.” Indeed the common conversational term used among many of the churches by the primitive Christians to one another was that of the “elect.” They would often use the term to one another, showing that it was generally believed that all God’s people were manifestly “elect.”

But now for the verses that will positively prove the doctrine. Open your Bibles and turn to John 15:16, and there you will see that Jesus Christ has chosen His people, for He says, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” Then in the nineteenth verse, “If you were of the world, the world would love his own, but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Then in the seventeenth chapter and the eighth and nineth verses, “For I have given unto them the words which you gave me; and they have received them and have known surely that I came out from you, and they have believed that you did send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me for they are yours.”

Turn to Acts 13:48, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” They may try to split that passage into hairs if they like, but it says, “ordained to eternal life” in the original as plainly as it possibly can. And we do not care about all the different commentaries thereupon.

You scarcely need to be reminded of Romans 8, because I trust you are all well-acquainted with that chapter and understand it by this time. In the twenty-ninth and following verses, it says, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?”

It would also be unnecessary to repeat the whole of the ninth chapter of Romans. As long as that remains in the Bible, no man shall be able to prove Arminianism. So long as that is written there, not the most violent contortions of the passage will ever be able to exterminate the doctrine of election from the Scriptures. Let us read such verses as these, “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calls; it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.” Then read the twenty-second verse, “What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory?”

Then go on to Romans 11:7, “What then? Israel has not obtained that which he seeks for, but the election has obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” In the sixth verse of the same chapter, we read, “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.”

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

Soli deo Gloria!