Conditional Election or Unconditional Election

To speak about predestination is something that many people think that man is under the control of luck and man cannot do any thing for it. This is the wrong concept of predestination because in their view God is unfair and cruel who predestined some to be saved and others to be lost in hell. Whatever people’s view may be, predestination is taught in the Bible. Man cannot question God for the things God has said in His Word but in humility submit himself before Him, taking His Word as it is written.

The failure of Arminianism to understand the doctrine of Predestination has resulted in a different understanding on how God elected some people to be saved before the foundation of the world. To the Arminianism, God’s choice for certain individuals unto salvation was based upon the foreseeing that they would be responding to His call through the preaching of the Gospel. Because of the human ability to contribute to his own salvation, God chose certain individual based on the condition what man would do. God chose certain individual because He knew that that person would respond to the preaching of the gospel and choose Christ of his own free will. If God had chosen certain individual unto salvation, to the Arminianism means that man does not have any freedom and responsibility. The doctrine of election is misunderstood. Steel rightly commented that, “Election is not salvation but is unto salvation.”

On the other hand, the Calvinism states that God chose certain individual to be saved before the foundation of the world was based on His own sovereign will. This view is the opposite of the Arminianism because God chose particular sinner not because He foresaw that person to respond to the preaching of the gospel. Those whom God chose He gives faith and repentance and brings them through the power of the Holy Spirit to a willing acceptance of Christ. God was the One who chose sinners for salvation and not the other way around. Man does not contribute any virtuous quality for this salvation but rather solely the gift of God. If all men have become totally depraved and if any man selected unto salvation from among them, truly it is not the work of man but absolutely the sovereign work of God. Steel rightly said, “God would have chosen to save all men (for He had the power and authority to do so) or He could have chosen to save none (for He was under no obligation to show mercy to any) – but He did neither. Instead He chose to save some and to exclude others.”

God did show this truth through the example of Jacob and Esau. God chose Jacob and not Esau. Paul said, “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 calleth” (Rom. 9:11). Paul also said, “For by grace are ye saved though faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:4-5). In another occasion Paul also wrote, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:15-16).