
The doctrine of election is one of the most wonderful, foundational, and widespread teachings in all of the Bible. There are several words commonly found throughout the scriptures which express the concept. When translated into English, these include not only elect/election, but also predestined/predestination, foreordained/foreordination, called, and chosen. A quick search in any concordance will show numerous passages where these terms are found in God’s Word. Even the word grace, when understood properly, points to this truth. That is reflected in the way we often speak not merely of grace, but more particularly of sovereign grace.
Even when any of these words are absent, the twin central truths of human depravity and divine sovereignty in salvation permeate all portions of the Word of God. Because we are dead in our sins and enslaved to our old nature (as Paul taught in the opening verses of Ephesians 1), our only hope is that God would change our unwilling and undeserving hearts to enable and motivate us to reach out to Him. We need to be born again, as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3. But as human beings cannot cause themselves to be born physically, neither could any of us cause ourselves to be born again spiritually. We read in 1 Peter 1:3, “according to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again.”