When you as a person are not completely in control of certain things, you can feel unhappy about that. You like to have all your ducks in a row. You have to be in control.

It is understandable then that a topic such as divine sovereignty and human responsibility causes you problems very quickly. If only we could control our faith, we would be able to believe with full assurance and peace of mind. But the sovereign God is also the God of election. So, faith has to be given to you (Ephesians 2:8). The Lord Jesus said so himself: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44).

The question can then become urgent: Why does the Lord not leave the decision to us? Now it looks like we have to sit back and wait to see if we will receive faith. But if the Lord would just leave it to us, then at least we could tackle that faith ourselves.

However, before we dig into this a bit more, let us also take some time to listen to the opinion of someone who was thankful for the gospel of the sovereign God who elects people: Calvin. He voiced this once in a sermon on Ephesians 1:3-4: “It would be better not to have been born than to be ignorant about the gospel of election.” ¹

Our Problem: We Often Consider Ourselves Too Good⤒🔗

You meet them also in church: people who do not dare to be sure of their salvation. But the remarkable thing is that when you ask such a person whether he believes that he is going to hell, he does not right away answer “Yes.” Somehow we seem to think that God can’t quite be like that: Don’t we believe?! Do we not have something to offer the Lord?!

That is how we think of ourselves.

That is how we can think also of people who die in unbelief: How can the Lord allow people to perish in unbelief? As if these people are actually too good and decent to be judged!

By talking like this, we are forgetting one thing. We forget the reality of our true situation, that on account of the sin of the first man his entire offspring has plunged into perdition and ruin (Belgic Confession, Article 16). No man can save himself. Man wanted no salvation. Adam and his wife maintained a defensive attitude towards the LORD who came to comfort them (Genesis 3:8). They even reproached the LORD (Genesis 3:12).

Man did not want to be saved. Yet he could not save himself either. Think of the message of Lord’s Days 5-6 of the Heidelberg Catechism: that if man had been able to save himself, the Son of God would certainly not have needed to become man. However, with man there was no point of reference, nothing to hold on to. In his loving resourcefulness, the LORD then gave his Son.

In this context someone drew a comparison to a graveyard.²There are only dead people there. Nothing can be expected of them. Of ourselves we have nothing to expect, because we are all dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1).

There is therefore no single reason to think there is any good in us. There is not a single reason to expect from ourselves that we would in faith look for salvation from the Lord.

God’s Initiative for Punishable People←⤒🔗

Yet in this dark and somber situation the sovereign LORD enters our life with his election. Already from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), God decided to save a definite number of specific persons out of the whole human race and to make them rise from the dead (see Canons of Dordt, Chapter I, Article 7). People had nothing to expect in and of themselves. The one man was no better than the other. Nobody stood out to make himself more worthy. No one is righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10).

For people without hope and expectation, election is the ultimate requisite. It is a matter of one hundred percent grace. We may never forget this, specifically also when we are dealing with the non-elect state of other people. We act sometimes as if all people have a claim on God’s grace. But that is not true. For the entire world is accountable (Romans 3:19). God would not be doing any injustice if he were to damn us all.

Questions remain, which we can not all answer. However, we do need to rid ourselves of one misconception: the idea that people have certain rights with the LORD. We need to learn to simply live in humility and to hold on to that one certainty: God chose. He chose me too from a humanity that had plunged itself into ruin. What a great miracle! When I want to grasp this miracle, reverence causes my spirit to become silent.

This means that you bow your stiff, proud neck under the authority of the Holy Scripture, as Augustine once said. And Augustine experienced much opposition as he defended God’s eternal election. People pointed him to consequences for which he did not have an answer. “But,” he said, “if only you bow under the authority of the Word, then I am at peace.”³,⁴

No Faith without Election←⤒🔗

It would be great if you could save yourself with faith, if you could give yourself faith. At least you would not have to wait until it was given to you.

From what has been written above we have learned that such reasoning is unsustainable. Not only Adam and Eve shut themselves off from God. On our own, we too, would shut ourselves off from the LORD. In a manner of speaking, we would have never been able or willing to choose for faith. Therefore, if the Lord did not initiate it, no man would come to faith. It would go for each one as it did for Adam and Eve: they hid themselves from God and they (we) continued to accuse God. You can see and hear this all around you, in how people talk about the Lord, and how they banish him from their lives.

But then the miracle happens: because the Lord has chosen us, he also brings us to faith. God elects us and brings us to believe. Christ earned the forgiveness of our sin. But he does more. Through his Holy Spirit he also works things in such a way that we accept this salvation. He earned for us the gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8).

God therefore demands faith.

But God also gives it. He promises this already at our baptism. And that is why we may ask him for it. So God gives sovereignly what he also demands from us as responsible people. He leaves our accountability completely intact. The sovereign God commands us to pray, while even our prayer is a work of God’s Spirit.

You can start asking difficult questions to which no one would know the answer. However, the issue is not about the answers to those complicated questions. What is important is the answer of faith. It is that we do what the Lord says.

We need to bow our neck under God’s Word.

Then we will also learn to believe in deep humility, in the realization that faith is a true gift from God.

Humility←⤒🔗

The things we wrote above will go against the grain of many people. People would rather save themselves. This becomes very clear — and distressingly so — in John 6. The people all marvel about Jesus’ miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. And they followed him to see even more miracles. Then Jesus says to them, “You are seeking me because you ate your fill of the loaves. But you had better believe in me because of the spiritual food. That means: accept and recognize me as Saviour. That is the work God demands of you.” (see John 6:26-29)

The people reply, “Then first do a miracle; then we’ll believe you. Give us real bread like manna from heaven” (see verse 30)

Jesus answers, “I am that manna. I am the real bread of life coming down from heaven. Come to me...” (see verse 32-35)

But the Lord Jesus sees right through his audience with their pride. They do not want to believe. And he tells them that too (see verse 36).

With this unbelief, however, Jesus’ mission has not failed: “For,” he says, “people do come to faith. All that the Father gives me will come to me.” (verse 37)

But the people who come to faith are not the people who think they can believe in their own strength (eventually with the help of a convincing miracle). The Lord Jesus implies that the Father gives me these people. They are the people who do not expect things from their own initiative or strength. You need to know yourself carried by the Father. Therefore, away with all pride and stubbornness.

The Jews remained prideful. What Jesus said left them cold. They grumbled and said, “As long as he is not giving any sign, we will not believe him” (verse 41-42). And then the Lord repeats to them once again, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (verse 44). That means that the fact that believers come to Jesus is not the fruit of their own sensible insight. It is not their own smart choice (which is how the Jews thought of it). But you need to recognize your faith as a mighty work of God who moves us to faith.

God is not simply advising us of something in the gospel. But he is drawing us to Christ with wonder and force. To that extent he employs his living Word (Hebrews 4:12), the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17).

Therefore, he who believes acknowledges that even his faith is a gift from God. I cannot accomplish it by myself. But we may and must knock on the door, and it will be opened to us. For Christ himself says, “I will never cast you out [verse 37].... I will even raise you on the last day” (verse 44). Election is not a half measure. The Lord completes my salvation all the way.

Not at Random←⤒🔗

God’s sovereignty — we so easily turn it into arbitrariness. We then accuse the Lord of being unjust. Is it not obvious to blame the Lord for this? Does the Lord himself not say that he is a God of unpredictable randomness? Just read Romans 9:15: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” In our way of thinking we tend to add quickly: and towards whom the Lord will not be like this, he truly does not show mercy or compassion. It causes us to exclaim that this is pure whim!

Yet, we have not properly understood the Lord.

Romans 9:15 is actually a citation of Exodus 33:19. The Lord speaks these words after the Israelites’ sin with the golden calf. In one blow he had wanted to destroy his people. And yet the Lord showed compassion. He showed his compassion to people who could no longer claim any right whatsoever to it.

And to ensure that Moses would not doubt that the Lord truly would show compassion to his people, the Lord repeats himself twice: “And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.” This repetition serves as a bold underlining of a good tiding. The first hearers and readers will have also understood this. In connection with Romans 9:15, they did not think of randomness. But their hearts were warmed as they read these words of divine compassion for people who have nothing to contribute but their bonds full of sin.

The Other Possibility←⤒🔗

The Lord is merciful to people who of themselves had absolutely no claim to his grace. The Lord could have acted very differently. The example of Pharaoh proves this, and Romans 9 deals expansively with it. The Lord does not show compassion to Pharaoh. He even caused Pharaoh to rise up against him.

Pharaoh remained personally accountable for his opposition to the Lord. God makes him responsible. But the Lord also hardens his heart. The Lord hardened his heart such that the Lord’s name would be proclaimed in all the earth (verse 17). Canaanites and Philistines trembled before the God of Israel who had dealt with the Pharaoh of Egypt.⁵

Now we might start harboring a reproach — the accusation of verse 19: What right has God to criticize? When the Lord himself sets up Pharaoh against him, he can’t actually be reproaching Pharaoh for it, can he?

It is remarkable that Paul does not take responsibility for this reproach. In verse 14 Paul speaks of we: What conclusion can we draw? But in verse 19 he is speaking of you. Paul anticipates criticism from his readers. But he does not share this criticism. For — and that is Paul’s intention — when you know yourself as a poor sinner taken up in the gracious compassion of the Lord, you will no longer come with such accusations as in verse 19.

Nevertheless, we will not deny it: this question is certainly alive with us people. Paul does not simply skip over the question, but neither does he dig straight into the matter.

That seems unsatisfactory for curious people.

However, for believing people, it is not all that unsatisfactory. For Paul is putting us here in the spot where we all belong. What motivates you, he asks, to be complaining to the Lord? Taking the Lord to trial will end in failure. We can imagine ourselves to be quite somebody, as if we can hold God to account. But the Lord is our sculptor. He made us from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). And then Paul uses the example of a potter. A potter makes many different objects from one lump of clay. A potter in no way has to be accountable to his vase or plate, which he made this way or that.

In the same way, the Lord has the full right to show his grace to the one person, while he shows the other his powerful anger. In short, we need to acknowledge our humble position before the Lord. We must respect the secrets of God’s rule. In the end it is the Lord himself who teaches us here that we are asking questions that are none of our business.

May a Father not respond like this to his children? Do we as children want to be content with our position as children? Are we prepared to let God be God?

In Conclusion←⤒🔗

We don’t understand everything. When you are a rebellious person and want to be able to argue everything, you’ll soon be setting this article aside.

If you want to hold on to your presumed right to call God to account, you will be left with bitterness and resentment. It does not have to be that way, this being unsatisfied, and this yielding to resentment. But then don’t forget your own misery. Whoever comes to the realization that he has no rights he can exercise with the Lord, and knows himself to be a sinner, will also know that the Lord did not have to choose him.

Whoever believes may know that he is also chosen.

You know and realize that you are the object of profound grace. You learn to comprehend: how extraordinary it is that the Lord wants to show me his mercy, that he bought me with Christ’s blood.

Your mouth falls open in wonder, and you will lose any interest in calling God to account.