MENU

election
Tag Archive

On September 9, 2023 By In Culture

Election and the Way of Obedience

Image courtesy pexels.com

The Christian does not discover his election by means of rigorous introspection. He finds it in the experience of faith and obedience as a baptized member of the Church. Peter said, “Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure” (2Pet. 1:10). Do you know that you were chosen by God for salvation before the foundation of the world? Are you sure? How can you be? Maybe your recurring temptations, frequent weakness of faith, and besetting sins are an indication that you were not chosen by God, are not born from above, and will not be acknowledged by Christ on the last day. How can you have assurance of grace when you fail so often and so miserably, and if you think you do not, how could anyone so arrogant imagine they are saved? Assurance may be theoretically possible, but a truly humble Christian would know it is practically impossible. In fact, to claim to have assurance of salvation would be presumptuous, right?

Just in case you lost the thread above, the position that assurance of salvation is presumptuous was an argument the Roman Church made against the Protestant Reformers. Contrary to this faux humility, the Westminster Confession boldly affirms: “such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace” (18.1) and that with an “infallible assurance” (18.3). Will there be hypocrites who are self-deceived? Of course, but they are not the ones who agonize over their salvation and doubt their possession of grace for grief over their sins. Only born again people do that, because Jesus takes all the fun out of sin. Hypocrites are still able to enjoy their rebellion, at least, for a time, but the believer feels overwhelming guilt and shame over his transgressions, overwhelming but for God’s mercy.

Look again at Peter’s exhortation to “make your call and election sure.” How do we do so? By a Protestant version of penance and self-flagellation? No, by exercising our faith in obedience and growth in grace. After reminding the brethren that God’s power has given to us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” and “exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet. 1:3-4), the apostle then enjoins us: “for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2Pet. 1:5-7). Then Peter thunders:

For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2Pet. 1:8-11)

Christian, you have been baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You belong to your faithful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have died with Christ and been raised with him. You no longer live for yourself; you live for the One who died for you and rose again. These are objective truths, not subjective maybes. Live in light of your covenant status and of what God says you are in Christ.

The Lord’s eternal decree with regard to your soul and mine is inaccessible. You cannot look into the Book of Life, nor can I. We perceive his electing grace by its persevering work within us. We gain assurance through the means of grace, the Word of God—as he is read, heard, learned, embraced, prayed, sung, eaten, and obeyed. “Make your call and election sure.” How? By believing in Jesus, and disbelieving the idols in which men trust. By repenting of your sins, but never of your decision to follow Jesus. By loving your wife, children, brethren, neighbor, and enemy, and laboring in prayer that the blessings of heaven might be poured upon them. By taking dominion in the Name of Christ: building, planting, watering, working, and waiting without growing weary in well-doing. By going to Church and being the Church: singing, confessing, praying, heeding, and rejoicing as the elect person you are.The Christian does not discover his election unto salvation by means of rigorous introspection. He finds it by faith, in the exercise of obedience, as a member of the covenant. Assurance does not come in a flash of prophetic insight at a moment in time, but every day in the disciple’s prayer and practice: Thy will be done, on earth, and in my life, as it is in heaven.

Read more

On October 30, 2020 By In Culture, Politics, Wisdom

Our Founding Father

 For he [Abraham] was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:10 ESV

Much has already been said about this upcoming presidential election, probably too much. All sides of the political carousel assert the importance, urgency, and historic consequences of choosing the right man for such a time as this. There will undoubtedly be more to say in the coming week as the results come in and we know, or think we know, the direction of our nation for the next four years. Even in a society inundated with words, public discourse is still a crucial element for growth and health as a people. I am thankful for the free exchange of ideas. But the ideas themselves are not free. They are always rooted to something that gives those ideas veracity and potency. As we consider the next president of the United States, we must maintain a clear vision of the nature of the presidency itself and the true foundation of a just and good society if we are to speak and respond appropriately to this election. 

The founders, at least as much as I understand them, never intended the presidency to ascend to such great heights of power and influence. They were very aware of the dangers, as well as the blessings, of monarchical rule. A good king can do much more good for his people than a good president. But that same principle applies to bad kings as well. Therefore, these men set in place certain restraints and protections. There were really two dangers through which they had to navigate. They had the danger of overt tyranny on the one hand and mob rule on the other. The tyrant says that the king is law. The mob says that the majority is king. The Christian must say that there is a King of all kings and a Law of all laws; and They cannot be disregarded or reinterpreted without consequences. Or as the Scottish presbyterian, Samuel Rutherford, argued so beautifully in his great work, Lex Rex, “the Law is King.” Once you separate justice or lawfulness from a Divine Lawgiver, you will always be drifting toward tyranny- either a tyranny of the few or the many. 

One of the reasons, though certainly not the only one, that we have a 200 year history of a transfer of power through free elections without violent revolution or the shedding of blood is because of the relatively limited power which transfers hands every two or four years. Things tend to go badly in the end for royal lines and dictators. Elections should not generally be the catalyst for broad change. The right and privilege to vote should rarely become the urgency to vote. Rather, elections ought to be smooth transitions without the need for much anxiety from either side because most of the power would rest at the local levels. Most of the reform would have to happen from the bottom up not the top down.

We have experienced something much different in recent history. The power at the top is great. The President is considered by many as “the most powerful man in the world.” The Supreme Court just may be even more powerful behind the scenes. Recent headlines provide examples of both. First, listen to the questions and concerns directed at Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court. The underlying expectation driving all of the objections is judicial legislation. They fully expect her to use her authority as judge to legislate from the bench. They almost seem not to have a category for a judge who would do otherwise- despite Judge Barrett’s words or record to the contrary. In their minds it is not a question of if but how.

Second, listen to the criticisms leveled at the president concerning his handling of Covid-19. Implied within their comments is the expectation that the president should exercise a tremendous amount of authority. It’s not the overuse of power that they lament but its restraint. One would be tempted to think that there are no such things as duly elected governors to make decisions for their own states or duly elected mayors to make decisions for their own cities. To permit such diversity of rule concerning the pandemic is inexcusable in their eyes. One ring to rule them all. 

There is no doubt that this election is a crucial point in our country’s history. One of the things I hope will continue to change after the dust settles is a move back to the center of what a good federal government should look like. It is the rule of law subservient to its Foundations that makes a just society. Untethered from this authority, government inevitably becomes a rule of the few, a rule of the majority, or a rule of the oppressed and marginalized. America indeed has a King and no amount of campaigning or voting or court rulings can change that.  As He himself definitively proclaimed, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…” a

All this leads me back to the issue of public discourse. The Church must lead the way if there is any hope of true liberty and justice for all. During such times, Christians would do well to take an internal poll of their own motives and desires. How do our opinions and concerns line up against the clear and indisputable authority of Scripture to govern all of life? Do our visions of justice, mercy, authority, and submission have their roots in the deep, rich soil of Truth or the shallow, hard dirt of modernity? One vision will sprout up quickly and look impressive for the Instagram post; the other will bear fruit for generations to come. A sense of urgency will always invite compromise.

This election is important. There are real implications in the choice we make for our next president. But the president is not our savior; he is not our sovereign. We must venture clear-minded and patient-hearted into the public square. Whatever the outcome of this election, we know that “when the tempest passes, the wicked is no more, but the righteous is established forever.” b

There lies within us a divine longing to see goodness flourish and love abound in society, but we must advocate for these things as Christians. The good of society cannot grow apart from the Supreme Good of the universe. A common weal c is built most surely upon the summum bonum. d Whether that means preserving certain founding principles or progressing beyond others, our Founding Father must be the beginning and end of it all. His supreme Good rightly orders our common good, starting with self-government and working outward. Christians who desire social justice must first seek to rightly order their own lives. e Again Augustine is helpful here. He argued that a true love for someone is the desire for their greatest good and fullest happiness. Since God alone is the source and object of this goodness and joy, then to truly love your neighbor is to speak and act in a way that seeks to bring them closer in conformity and communion with God. Anything less is not love. Period. Only with this truth firmly in view should a brother or sister venture into the realm of politics. Social media would never be the same. And neither would we the people.  

  1. Matthew 28:18  (back)
  2. Proverbs 10:25 ESV  (back)
  3. Lit. “the common good that binds a multitude of people by a mutual recognition of rights. Famously put forth by Cicero and later taken up with great insight by Augustine, the question becomes, “What is the common good that builds a society from a crowd or mob into a just society of men?”  (back)
  4. Lit. “the supreme good.” Augustine argued that Rome was never a just society because the “will”of the people is never a sufficient foundation for the “weal” of the people.  (back)
  5. “If a man who takes away a farm from its purchaser and delivers it to another man who has no claim upon it is unjust, how can a man who removes himself from the overlordship of the God who made him and goes into the service of wicked spirits be just?” – Augustine, City of God, XIX. 21  (back)

Read more

On May 6, 2016 By In Politics

Scholars Speak on Trump’s Nomination

Ted Cruz’s departure from the Republican race, and most recently, John Kasich’s, catapulted long-time front-runner, Donald Trump, to become the national representative of the GOP in this election cycle. Trump’s remarkable rise has shocked the media and many of the conservative voices of our day. Many of these conservative voices have made it abundantly clear that voting for Donald Trump will precipitate the end of the party and the end of the conservative ethos of the party of Ronald Reagan.

This entire process has left conservative evangelicals asking the question: “How shall we then think?” Kuyperian Commentary asked several Christian scholars to offer their answers to such a profound question.

Andrew Sandlin
Founder and President, Center for Cultural Leadership

More troubling than Trump the candidate are the cultural forces that have propelled his success. That long list is topped by the erosion of classical liberalism ( = modern conservatism). Its chief features include the dignity of the individual, the separation of powers, the priority of reasoned discourse, the protection of private property, and the universality of moral standards. The cultural Marxism that gradually captured the Democratic Party since the late 1960’s undermines every tenet of classical liberalism. The truly shocking development has been the more recent and swift adoption of  Trump’s populism, which also abandons classical liberalism:

He champions his own form of identity politics that mirrors cultural Marxism.

He considers Congress an obstructionist institution that should be bypassed.

He shouts down thoughtful opposition, just like campus neo-Marxists.

He disdains reasoned discussion in favor of ad hominem denunciations.

He advocates trade policies that raid the wallets of middle-class American consumers.

He employs almost any gangbanger tactic — just like the neo-Marxists — as long as it accomplishes his sordid political objectives.

The most ominous aspect of this development is that classical liberalism, the political theory of the Founding and rooted in Christianity, is no longer represented by a major American political party.

This development is unprecedented in American history.

Brian Mattson
Senior Scholar of Public Theology, Center For Cultural Leadership

Vote your conscience. Some musings:

My loyalty and obligations are to the truth, not a political party. The GOP electorate has decided it will no longer be a welcome home for classical liberalism, and therefore it is no longer my home. Political realignment is now a full-scale reality, whether I realize it, like it, or even participate in it.

One approach: vote for Donald Trump and hope for the best. Stack a final, tiny, leaky sandbag on the pile, hoping and praying it stops the torrent of radical leftism while not producing something even worse. But with the distance between two evils so slight (in my view), I think subsidizing this ideological decline with our votes might be the real abdication of our civic responsibilities.

Another approach: Reject Donald Trump. Energetically participate in the political realignment. Congress is the levee wall: support solid down-ballot candidates. Bolster institutions that stand for the truth, strengthen alliances, and plant long-term seeds that will flourish when (if) our national nightmare recedes. I am sitting here looking at my daughters, and I owe them better than a sandbag and a wish.

Maybe you can do both. But I can’t and won’t.

Peter Leithart
President of the Theopolis Institute

Andrew Sullivan has determined that the Donald’s candidacy is a blast from the last trump, announcing the end of democracy. Sullivan underestimates the federal government’s blessed capacity for gridlock, and Trump’s capacity for compromise, change, and moderation.

The real worry is less that, if elected, Trump will make good on his promises; he won’t. The real worry lies elsewhere. Trump’s campaign has been a masterpiece of scapegoating, blaming our economic stagnation on China and Mexico and our decline in global prestige on feckless political and media elites. You can be morally certain he won’t accept responsibility for his failure. And then who will the Trump tribe find to blame?

If Trump isn’t the end of the world or American democracy, he may be the end of the GOP as we know it. To that, we can say a hearty Good riddance. It’s become difficult to see what the conservative party still conserves, other than the wealth of its donors and the lifestyle of its Beltway elites.

What we’re hearing is not the last trump, but Trump may be an agent of divine judgment against the Party that has been most promiscuous in invoking God’s name. Here’s hoping He shakes the GOP down to the foundations, and keeps shaking until only permanent things are left standing.

Thomas S. Kidd
Distinguished professor of history, Baylor University

I’ve said for months that I could never vote for Donald Trump for president. Trump becoming the presumptive GOP nominee has not changed that. I will not vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton, assuming she becomes the Democrats’ nominee. Christians will argue about which of these two options is worse, and I’m honestly not sure how I would distinguish between the two. In any case, I can’t vote for either of them.

What to do in November, then? I will wait to see if there is a reasonable choice for a third party or write-in candidate. If not, I won’t cast a vote for president. I do believe that we have a civic obligation to participate, however, so I will vote for the down-ballot offices. I generally won’t vote for Democrats, but this time, I also won’t vote for GOP candidates who actively support Trump. I may have a relatively incomplete ballot!

We Christians should remember that as we express dismay about election 2016, we are hardly without hope. American Christians have too often put too much importance on politics, anyway. It’s a great time for us to remind ourselves that our ultimate citizenship is in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

George Grant
Pastor of Parish Presbyterian

During that particularly distressing post-Nixon, pre-Reagan period in American history, Francis Schaeffer prophetically declared,

“This is our moment of history and our responsibility: not to just to write and talk of far-off ideals, but to struggle for Scriptural and practical means of doing what can be done in a fallen world to see people personally converted and also to see what our salt and light can bring forth in the personal life and the political and the cultural life of this moment of history.”

His exhortation is as apt today as it was then—and perhaps, even more so.

Faced with the prospects of a desultory presidential electoral cycle, many Christians today have given vent to handwringing jeremiads. In truth, this election affords us a tremendous opportunity:

We have the opportunity to stand courageously for Biblical truth severed from the compromises of political partisanship. The Republican Party has long disregarded us. Now, it has altogether discarded us. We are thus morally, culturally, and politically unencumbered by their half-measures, empty promises, and feeble entreaties.

We have the opportunity to mobilize a groundswell of support for principled and purposeful reformation at a time when the two major parties have little more to offer than revolutionary fantasies.

We have the opportunity to model ardent prayerfulness. It was John Bunyan who quipped, “You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” We have acted as if the opposite were true. We no longer have the luxury of that foolhardy project.

Finally, we have the opportunity to display an unwavering confidence in the Gospel hope. When all about us are despairing, we can reaffirm that the throne room of the Most High has not been vacated, that the Ascended Christ still has His iron scepter and the earth remains His footstool. As Chuck Colson asserted, “Thankfully, hope doesn’t ride on Air Force One.” We need not set our hopes upon either Tweedledee or Tweedledum.

This is our moment. It is past time for us to roll up our sleeves and go to work. It is high time for the church to be the church.

Read more