To be chosen is to be sanctified

A second objection to election complains that if you believe that God predestines things, and it all depends on his sovereign will, then that will promote laziness and loose living. After all, if my salvation is not caused by my own efforts but by God’s mercy, well then, what motive do I have to press on with the hard work of sanctification—turning from sin and Christian service, those kinds of things? Well, the Bible’s answer emphasizes that election promotes not license, but holiness.

Now the objection that election promotes sinful living fails to grasp the main things about Christian salvation. It does not take into account that holiness is the very goal for which we are saved. It is God’s purpose in our salvation that we should be holy. Listen to Ephesians 1:4 again: God chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the earth, that we should be holy and blameless before him. And so, to be chosen is also to be sanctified. Why? Because God has ordained them to go together. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes that, according to Paul, we are not chosen with the mere possibility of holiness—not with a mere option and route of holiness—but we are chosen to the realization of holiness. Being chosen and being holy, he says, are inseparable. God will make you holy as a Christian. Why? Because you are chosen unto holiness.

Now that teaching warrants the categorical statement that if you bear no evidence of a changed life—if you say you believed in Jesus Christ, but nothing has happened to you, you are not holy in any way, nothing has changed, you are not even striving for holiness—if that is true of you, then the thing it says is that you are not saved, and you have no reason to think that you are elect. I have had a few people—not many, thankfully—but I have had, in my years of ministry, some people come to me and say, Pastor, my doctrine is impeccable. I can recite the doctrines. I’ve memorized the catechism, and I affirm it all. But I feel nothing. And nothing really has happened in my life. I’m the same person I was before. The answer is that, my friend, you need to get on your knees and confess your sins and come before the Lord Jesus. You have never been saved, if that is true of you. God elects sinners to holiness, and the distinguishing mark of the people of God is always not merely a bare profession of doctrine, but a holiness that accompanies it.¹

Richard D. Phillips