Can an Elect Person Die Without Hearing the Gospel?

00:00:02.000 | Can an elect person die without ever having heard the gospel?

00:00:09.080 | Or is this impossible? It's a question from a listener named Christy.

00:00:13.400 | "Hello Pastor John, can someone who is elect die without ever hearing the gospel and believing?" I suspect not.

00:00:20.680 | I understand that people are born elect, but they are not born saved.

00:00:25.720 | 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

00:00:33.600 | himself.

00:00:34.920 | However, if people die without getting the chance to hear and respond to the gospel, I suspect they were never elect. Is that right?

00:00:42.600 | I am a seminary student and will be going overseas as a missionary upon graduation.

00:00:47.860 | I feel the missionary urgency and yet I cannot shake this question.

00:00:53.560 | If the people who don't hear were not elected,

00:00:56.800 | what is the urgency of sharing the faith? Do you see how that logic would deter the missionary impulse?

00:01:05.620 | Yes, I do see how that logic would deter

00:01:11.100 | the missionary impulse.

00:01:13.760 | But it's a faulty logic and

00:01:18.000 | it is

00:01:20.620 | unbiblical. So let's begin

00:01:23.620 | by just making sure our listeners know what we're talking about. I mean, Christy is referring

00:01:29.740 | to the crucial

00:01:32.020 | biblical doctrine of election. For example,

00:01:34.880 | we see it in Ephesians 1, 4, "God chose"—

00:01:39.840 | that's the word where we get election—"He elected." God chose us

00:01:44.840 | in Christ before the foundation of the world.

00:01:49.080 | So that's the doctrine of election, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. He predestined us—

00:01:55.920 | there's election and then there's the destining of the elect—

00:02:00.460 | He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will,

00:02:08.640 | 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.

00:02:19.300 | "For consider your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards,

00:02:25.060 | not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose"—

00:02:29.460 | so there's election—"God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God

00:02:35.940 | chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose

00:02:41.500 | what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are, so that

00:02:47.500 | no human being might boast in the presence of God." So the point of God's

00:02:54.340 | choosing

00:02:56.460 | before we existed and

00:02:58.460 | choosing against all ordinary human expectation is to prevent us from boasting in anything

00:03:06.100 | but God's free grace.

00:03:08.180 | That's why it's called

00:03:10.980 | unconditional

00:03:13.580 | election.

00:03:14.700 | God doesn't look into the future and choose people on the basis of

00:03:20.540 | their meeting any conditions. We see that in Romans 9, 11,

00:03:26.260 | where Paul describes

00:03:28.620 | Jacob's election over Esau when he says, "Though they were not yet born and had done nothing,

00:03:34.700 | either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might

00:03:42.300 | stand, might continue, not because of any of their works, but because of him who calls." So God's

00:03:49.620 | sovereign

00:03:51.420 | choice and call is the basis, not anything we do or perform.

00:03:56.620 | Now Christie is asking

00:03:59.540 | why this might not lead to fatalism with regard to missions.

00:04:04.980 | Specifically,

00:04:07.540 | since everyone must believe on Jesus in order to be saved,

00:04:13.020 | so she gets that right. You have to hear and believe the gospel, and that's based on Romans 10,

00:04:20.340 | 13. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,

00:04:24.420 | but how can they call on him of whom they've not believed, and how can they believe in him whom they've never

00:04:30.380 | heard, and how will they hear without someone preaching? So she's right to draw out of that the

00:04:37.060 | inference, and so she's asking, since everyone must believe on Jesus in order to be saved,

00:04:43.580 | and since there's

00:04:46.660 | no salvation without hearing and

00:04:50.060 | believing,

00:04:52.260 | anyone who dies without hearing—she's right in saying—

00:04:56.620 | without hearing and believing the gospel,

00:04:59.580 | we may assume we're not among the elect,

00:05:05.060 | because there's no second chance after death for them to be saved. So you have to hear the gospel and

00:05:12.500 | 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

00:05:17.780 | don't go to heaven, you weren't among the elect. So Christie asks,

00:05:21.980 | "If the people who don't hear were not elected,

00:05:26.540 | what's the urgency of sharing the faith with them?"

00:05:31.780 | And I said it's faulty logic to let this deter

00:05:36.740 | aggressive world

00:05:39.660 | evangelization. Now why? Why is it faulty logic?

00:05:42.940 | Because

00:05:44.660 | the logic contains a mistaken inference. It infers

00:05:49.860 | that God did not

00:05:52.700 | correlate in eternity

00:05:55.580 | his election of a person and our

00:06:00.380 | evangelizing of that person. But in fact, God always

00:06:04.340 | correlates in his eternal decrees

00:06:08.780 | the election of a person and the evangelization of that person, just like

00:06:15.060 | he correlates events that he has decreed and the necessary prayers

00:06:20.940 | for those events. Now that correlation

00:06:24.700 | means that the decreed event

00:06:30.020 | won't happen

00:06:31.780 | without our decreed prayers.

00:06:33.900 | "You have not because you asked not," James says. "And the elect person

00:06:40.620 | won't be saved."

00:06:43.180 | Now get this, the elect person

00:06:46.980 | won't be saved

00:06:49.540 | without our decreed

00:06:51.780 | evangelizing of that person. The correlation is fixed in God's mind, and

00:06:58.780 | when we contemplate the urgency of our witness, what we should feel is this, "It is

00:07:05.940 | absolutely essential for the sake of the elect that I do my evangelism."

00:07:12.540 | Now if you think that's an odd way to think, listen to the Apostle Paul.

00:07:17.700 | Here's what he said in 2 Timothy 2.10.

00:07:21.140 | "I endure everything for the sake of the elect,

00:07:27.340 | that they

00:07:28.860 | may also obtain the salvation

00:07:32.380 | that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." Isn't that amazing? He did not say, "Well,

00:07:39.300 | they are either non-elect or elect, and so

00:07:43.940 | nothing I do will make any ultimate difference." That's totally not the way he thought.

00:07:50.180 | Instead he said, "I do

00:07:54.460 | everything I possibly can to get the elect to eternal glory, because

00:08:01.540 | God has ordained the means as well as the end, and without the means the end does not

00:08:10.740 | happen."

00:08:12.220 | That's the missing piece in the logic that becomes fatalistic. And just briefly, I said that letting election

00:08:20.880 | deter

00:08:23.060 | evangelization is not only bad logic, it's unbiblical.

00:08:25.900 | Now we've already seen that in 2 Timothy 2.10, but one other observation.

00:08:31.820 | Paul saw the doctrine of election as not

00:08:37.060 | hindering his evangelism, but emboldening it. For example, in Acts 18.10,

00:08:44.500 | Jesus says to him, "Don't be afraid, for I am with you.

00:08:49.940 | No one will attack you to harm you, for I have many people in this city."

00:08:56.140 | In other words, my elect are here.

00:09:00.460 | Keep preaching. My sheep will hear my voice. I will bring them. Or Acts

00:09:07.220 | 13.48, he says this, Luke says this when he's writing about their evangelism,

00:09:13.140 | "When the Gentiles heard the gospel, they began

00:09:18.060 | rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life

00:09:24.860 | believed."

00:09:27.220 | This was the ground of the success of the preaching of the gospel. As

00:09:33.060 | many as were appointed unto eternal life believed, and if there had been no gospel, there would have been no

00:09:40.820 | salvation. Paul knew

00:09:43.620 | that he had been sent to do what only God could do. He said in Acts 26, "I am

00:09:50.420 | sending you," he's quoting Jesus, or Luke is quoting Jesus, "I am sending you

00:09:56.020 | to open their eyes,

00:09:58.340 | so that they may turn from

00:10:00.340 | 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

00:10:07.340 | sanctified by faith in me." Only God can open the eyes of the spiritually blind, but Paul is sent

00:10:13.740 | by God to do it.

00:10:16.260 | God knows whom he will save. He knows whom he's chosen, and he knows whom he has

00:10:23.500 | appointed to be his instrument for the impossible opening of the eyes of the blind.

00:10:30.300 | So, oh, how I

00:10:32.780 | hope that there will be

00:10:36.620 | hope-filled, bold,

00:10:38.620 | yearning

00:10:41.220 | emissaries who follow the Lord into world

00:10:44.260 | evangelization.

00:10:46.420 | Amen. Really good. Thank you, Pastor John. Keep sending your excellent questions to us. Do so by going to our online home at

00:10:53.420 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:57.100 | And there you can ask your question, or you can browse our most popular episodes, or search the archive of now nearly

00:11:03.860 | 1,400 episodes to date.

00:11:06.740 | I am your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here on Monday.

00:11:11.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Can an Elect Person Die Without Hearing the Gospel?

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