Can an elect person die without ever having heard the gospel? Or is this impossible? It's a question from a listener named Christy. "Hello Pastor John, can someone who is elect die without ever hearing the gospel and believing?" I suspect not. I understand that people are born elect, but they are not born saved.

So the hearing will happen, it must happen, and our sharing of the faith is essential because God uses human means to bring people to himself. However, if people die without getting the chance to hear and respond to the gospel, I suspect they were never elect. Is that right? I am a seminary student and will be going overseas as a missionary upon graduation.

I feel the missionary urgency and yet I cannot shake this question. If the people who don't hear were not elected, what is the urgency of sharing the faith? Do you see how that logic would deter the missionary impulse? Yes, I do see how that logic would deter the missionary impulse.

But it's a faulty logic and it is unbiblical. So let's begin by just making sure our listeners know what we're talking about. I mean, Christy is referring to the crucial biblical doctrine of election. For example, we see it in Ephesians 1, 4, "God chose"— that's the word where we get election—"He elected." God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

So that's the doctrine of election, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. He predestined us— there's election and then there's the destining of the elect— He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace.

That's Ephesians 1, 4-6. Here it is again in 1 Corinthians 1, 26-29. "For consider your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose"— so there's election—"God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God." So the point of God's choosing before we existed and choosing against all ordinary human expectation is to prevent us from boasting in anything but God's free grace.

That's why it's called unconditional election. God doesn't look into the future and choose people on the basis of their meeting any conditions. We see that in Romans 9, 11, where Paul describes Jacob's election over Esau when he says, "Though they were not yet born and had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might stand, might continue, not because of any of their works, but because of him who calls." So God's sovereign choice and call is the basis, not anything we do or perform.

Now Christie is asking why this might not lead to fatalism with regard to missions. Specifically, since everyone must believe on Jesus in order to be saved, so she gets that right. You have to hear and believe the gospel, and that's based on Romans 10, 13. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but how can they call on him of whom they've not believed, and how can they believe in him whom they've never heard, and how will they hear without someone preaching?

So she's right to draw out of that the inference, and so she's asking, since everyone must believe on Jesus in order to be saved, and since there's no salvation without hearing and believing, anyone who dies without hearing—she's right in saying— without hearing and believing the gospel, we may assume we're not among the elect, because there's no second chance after death for them to be saved.

So you have to hear the gospel and believe in order to go to heaven. If you don't hear the gospel and believe, you're not going to go to heaven, and if you don't go to heaven, you weren't among the elect. So Christie asks, "If the people who don't hear were not elected, what's the urgency of sharing the faith with them?" And I said it's faulty logic to let this deter aggressive world evangelization.

Now why? Why is it faulty logic? Because the logic contains a mistaken inference. It infers that God did not correlate in eternity his election of a person and our evangelizing of that person. But in fact, God always correlates in his eternal decrees the election of a person and the evangelization of that person, just like he correlates events that he has decreed and the necessary prayers for those events.

Now that correlation means that the decreed event won't happen without our decreed prayers. "You have not because you asked not," James says. "And the elect person won't be saved." Now get this, the elect person won't be saved without our decreed evangelizing of that person. The correlation is fixed in God's mind, and when we contemplate the urgency of our witness, what we should feel is this, "It is absolutely essential for the sake of the elect that I do my evangelism." Now if you think that's an odd way to think, listen to the Apostle Paul.

Here's what he said in 2 Timothy 2.10. "I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." Isn't that amazing? He did not say, "Well, they are either non-elect or elect, and so nothing I do will make any ultimate difference." That's totally not the way he thought.

Instead he said, "I do everything I possibly can to get the elect to eternal glory, because God has ordained the means as well as the end, and without the means the end does not happen." That's the missing piece in the logic that becomes fatalistic. And just briefly, I said that letting election deter evangelization is not only bad logic, it's unbiblical.

Now we've already seen that in 2 Timothy 2.10, but one other observation. Paul saw the doctrine of election as not hindering his evangelism, but emboldening it. For example, in Acts 18.10, Jesus says to him, "Don't be afraid, for I am with you. No one will attack you to harm you, for I have many people in this city." In other words, my elect are here.

Keep preaching. My sheep will hear my voice. I will bring them. Or Acts 13.48, he says this, Luke says this when he's writing about their evangelism, "When the Gentiles heard the gospel, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed." This was the ground of the success of the preaching of the gospel.

As many as were appointed unto eternal life believed, and if there had been no gospel, there would have been no salvation. Paul knew that he had been sent to do what only God could do. He said in Acts 26, "I am sending you," he's quoting Jesus, or Luke is quoting Jesus, "I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me." Only God can open the eyes of the spiritually blind, but Paul is sent by God to do it.

God knows whom he will save. He knows whom he's chosen, and he knows whom he has appointed to be his instrument for the impossible opening of the eyes of the blind. So, oh, how I hope that there will be hope-filled, bold, yearning emissaries who follow the Lord into world evangelization.

Amen. Really good. Thank you, Pastor John. Keep sending your excellent questions to us. Do so by going to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And there you can ask your question, or you can browse our most popular episodes, or search the archive of now nearly 1,400 episodes to date. I am your host Tony Reinke.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here on Monday.