This is the outcome of one of the most subtle devices of Satan, either to keep awakened souls in misery, or to leave hardened sinners hugging their chains, and blaming God Himself for their remaining in sin and unbelief. The enemy falsifies the truth by misapplying it.
God speaks to a sinner as a sinner, and to a saint as a saint. Man may distort and twist until he brings them together, but God doesn’t.
God has righteous claims on every sinner, and He will never give up those claims. Man is responsible to God, nor can he by any clever device shake himself loose from that responsibility.
Are you a sinner? Then God will have to deal with you on that ground, either in time or in eternity. Think of the messenger of some king or queen visiting a murderer in his cell with an offer of pardon and liberty, and that, instead of gratefully accepting the grace held out to him, he coolly stands parleying with his sovereign’s herald, as to the limits of the royal right to grant pardons or sign death warrants! Among men the very idea would be counted as monstrously audacious; and he would prove himself to be quite the criminal who dared do it! What business is it of his what his sovereign may elect to do, or not do? It is enough for him that he is a criminal, justly condemned to die, and that in honor of a marvelous victory which the Heir to the throne has won, a free pardon has been sent to every prisoner in the jail, himself included.
When at last the day of execution comes, where will he find the person to pity him? He dies with four distinct charges against him:
He has, broken his sovereign’s law by a capital offence.
He has proudly refused repentance and the offered pardon.
In doing so he has refused to unite in honoring the Heir, through whom the pardon was held out.
He has had the audacity to interfere with the rights of the throne, when his own right to live had been criminally forfeited.
Here is a sad but by no means exaggerated picture of many today. Instead of honoring Christ by accepting the offered pardon (for Christ is honored in every soul that is saved), they will stand and coldly discuss the doctrine of God’s electing grace; they are, in reality, taking shelter behind what they profess to know of God’s sovereignty in order to continue a course of hardened iniquity (Matthew 25:2424Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: (Matthew 25:24)).
Beware! If you are a sinner, God’s sovereign right to elect you for eternal blessing, or to damn you for your sins, is no business of yours. But that the Spirit has written, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” that “every mouth” must be stopped, and “all the world” pronounced “guilty before God;” that God has commanded “all men everywhere to repent;” and that His servants are now commissioned to go “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” and that “he that believeth not shall be damned ” — this does concern you. (See also, 1 Timothy 2:4,4Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:4) 2 Peter 3:99The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9).)
Can you say that “all the world” doesn’t take you in? that the expressions “every mouth” of “every creature,” “everywhere,” do not include you? You can’t. But then there is another sentence which fell from the Lord’s own gracious lips, and which concerns Him as well as you. “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:3737All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37)).
Now with such scriptures before you, let us earnestly entreat you to leave the doctrine of election with God, and think of His gospel of salvation. No one ever knew he was one of the elect until he was saved. Every saved one is an elected one. As long as you are unsaved, God will speak to you as unsaved, and never in any other way until, as a sinner under responsibility, you have humbled yourself before Him, bowed at the feet of Jesus as your worthy Saviour, and submitted to Him as your rightful Lord.
When the Spirit of God, in the Epistles, addresses the saints (or saved ones), He has a lot to say to them about election. But be sure of this, He will never speak to you as a saint until you are one. It has been well said that election is like a family secret. You aren’t supposed to know it until you are part of the family.
As to the objection, “I can’t believe unless God gives me power”, it must be kept in mind, that while it is the Spirit of God who so sets Christ before us that the confidence of our hearts is drawn out towards Him, and we feel that such a blessed Person we may safely trust, yet that the Spirit doesn’t believe for us; we believe on Christ for ourselves. “With the heart, man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”