If you believe in Jesus with all your heart and know and love God, you are one of His because he foreknew, predestined and elected you to believe. So, rejoice in this day for what God has granted to you!
Let’s see how all three of these works of God lead to our salvation.
Paul teaches in Romans 8–9 that God’s saving work begins long before a person ever believes and perhaps before they were born. Those whom God foreknew, He predestined; those He predestined, He called; those He called, He justified; and those He justified, He glorified. Salvation, Paul writes, rests not on human will or effort, but on God who shows mercy.
To illustrate this profound truth, Paul points to Jacob and Esau—twins not yet born, who had done neither good nor evil—so that God’s purpose of election might stand. Jacob became the heir of the promise not because he was better, but because God had chosen him in love. Grace, Paul insists, is God’s initiative from beginning to end.
Jesus teaches the same truth in John 10. When the Pharisees refuse to believe, He tells them, “You do not believe because you are not My sheep.” Faith is not what makes someone a sheep; being His sheep is what produces faith. The Father has given a people to the Son, and those people, like lost sheep inevitably hear His voice, come to Him, and follow Him. Their belief is the evidence of God’s prior work in their hearts. The Shepherd’s call creates the response it commands in His sheep.
And nowhere is this more vividly displayed than in Acts 9: Saul of Tarsus, breathing threats and murder, is stopped in his tracks on the Damascus Road by the risen Christ. Jesus’ words reveal a hidden story: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” Long before Saul saw the light, Christ the Shepherd had been pressing on Saul’s conscience—through Stephen’s prayerful witness, through the Scriptures he knew so well, through the quiet ache of seeking truth, but still he resisted. Saul was one of Christ’s sheep, though he did not yet realize it. And when the Shepherd finally called him by name, Saul did what every sheep does: he heard, he answered the call and he followed.
Dear brothers and sisters, these truths are not meant to trouble us but to reassure us. If we believe in Christ today, it is because God first loved us, drew us, and opened our hearts to the gospel. Our faith is not the cause of God’s choice — it is the fruit of it. And because our salvation rests on God’s eternal purpose, nothing can separate us from His love because we are His sheep.
In the end, knowing this doctrine leads not to pride or fear, but to humility, gratitude, and reverent worship of Him who saves. We love because He first loved us. We believe because He called us. And we persevere because He holds us fast.
What about those in the world who do not believe? Are they forever lost and we should avoid bringing the good news of God’s Salvation to them? God forbids it!
In Romans 10, Paul shows that God brings the people He elects to faith through the preaching of the gospel when he writes: “How will they believe unless they hear? And how will they hear without someone preaching?” God ordains not only the salvation of His people, but also the means by which they come to faith—our prayers, our telling of God’s salvation, our witness to the truth (John 3:16), and our love. These are the very means God used to bring salvation to the Ethiopian official on the desert road, to Cornelius the centurion in Caesarea, to Lydia by the riverbank in Philippi, and to countless others throughout the ages.
This means no unbeliever is ever beyond hope. Those who reject Christ today may yet believe tomorrow, just as Paul once did. We never know who God will draw to Himself, so we share Christ Crucified with everyone, trusting that His word never returns empty.
But what His Word does depends on God’s purpose:
• For those God elects, it awakens faith and belief leading to salvation
• For others, it exposes the heart, reveals unbelief, and leaves them without excuse.
Either way, the gospel is never wasted.
In the end, the story of God’s foreknowledge, predestination, and election is not a puzzle to be solved but a comfort for us believers to rest in. It tells us that long before we ever sought God, perhaps before we left our mother’s womb, He had already set His love upon us; long before we spoke our first words or ever heard His voice, He had already called us His own; long before we ever believed, He was already pursuing us with mercy. Oh, what a wonderful God who loves us!
The God who chooses is the God who calls us, the God who calls is the God who saves us, and the God who saves us is the God who keeps His people forever. His sovereign grace does not make us passive, it makes us confident, hopeful and prayerful because the same God who ordains the end also ordains the means. And just as He found Jacob, just as He found Saul, just as He found us, He will gather every sheep the Father has given to the Son.
And no, not one will be lost! AMEN