What is the positive benefit of the doctrine of sovereign election in your life, in our lives? Well, the electing love of God speaks of certainty. You will never be lost if you are truly converted because this was something which was enacted and determined in the mind of almighty God before the world was even created. This is part of God’s eternal decree. What an astonishing thing, that I, a lost sinner deserving of nothing, should have been in the mind of God for mercy and salvation before the foundation of the world. But if it is something that God determined, well, what a comfort. In spite of my many falls and foolishness and sin, God will see me through to the end. What security and certainty there is in that. This grace washes out of my mind entirely the idea that there was some merit in me, that I must have been smarter than the general run of people ever to see my need as a sinner and turn to the Lord and repent and embrace him. No, says the electing love of God, you would never have moved a muscle. I did it, says the Lord, even in eternity. It should also stir my committedness. If Almighty God in his astonishing mercy and kindness thought of me before the foundation of the world, how can I give priority to my business or to my well-being in this world and neglect the house of God and prayer and the study of God’s word?
Is it not a contradiction of all that that so much even Bible Christianity even these days is very worldly. People go back to the world and join hands with the world. Sometimes a young couple gets married, and if you went to the reception you would find it very little different from what was going on in a worldly reception. Rock music, dancing, the lot. It is the world, as if they have forgotten they were separated from the world, and made entirely different, and given different tastes and inclinations and aims and hopes. And have now stepped back into it.