What Is Predestination? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

However, the first objection remains: If predestination is true, why evangelize? One answer is simple: God, in His Word, has commanded us to evangelize. How can a person believe in election but not believe in the sovereignty of God? More specifically, how can a person believe in the sovereignty of God and despise the mandate of a sovereign God? God is sovereign not only in His grace but also in His commands, and He commands us to preach the gospel to every living creature. This command is not based on the assumption that we are desperately needed by God, and that without our contribution, His salvific purposes couldn’t come to pass. Rather, the efforts we employ in the preaching of the gospel and the work of evangelism can only be fruitful by His sovereign grace. The Apostle Paul made that clear when he said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6). Of course, God could have brought the growth without Paul’s planting or Apollos’ watering, but with respect to predestination, God not only foreordains ends, He also foreordains the means to that end. What is the chief means that God uses to bring about salvation for His elect? According to Scripture, God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save the world. Paul himself, the great advocate of predestination, declared, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). He later says that “fai...