I am a Calvinist in that I believe God providentially governs the world and the entire universe, which He created. Consequently, I believe that our salvation was determined before God created the world. God chose us; we did not choose Him. And yet God still gave us the freedom to accept or reject Christ. 

To our limited intellects, this does not make sense. And intellectuals, who proudly think themselves capable of understanding everything, make the big mistake of not accepting these seemingly contradictory facts. But they are in God’s Word (the Bible) and therefore must be true. Election and free will are thus a paradox that no one is capable of understanding.

Wise men and women realize they cannot understand paradoxes but still accept God’s Word. But Arminians do not recognize the limitations God placed on our intellects. They therefore do not accept the doctrine of election, which is clearly supported in Scripture. They believe God cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices. So Arminians deny God’s sovereignty in the world. They never have understood that there are paradoxes and other things of God that they are not able to ever understand. We have two prominent denominations today that hold to this doctrine.

However, Scripture better supports the Calvinist position, in which God is totally sovereign  and has determined all things before the world was established. He chose (elected) all who would later trust their souls to Christ and thus become His children. His choice of Christians was not a result of His foreknowledge of who would trust Christ. That idea is not supported in Scripture.

Calvinists live with far more trust in God and freedom from worry about the future. We are convinced that Paul spoke God’s truth in Romans 8:28, when he said, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

John Calvin said, “Ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries; the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it.” Arminians deny that God is able to know future choices of man. Calvinists say He not only knows but actually determined it all before the world began. Arminians diminish the wisdom and skill of God by denying that He can make creatures with real choices that God has already made. They feel this way because they never acknowledge their inability to understand paradoxes.

So many Scripture passages tell us that God chose us and yet gave us choice in the matter. For example, in 2 Thessalonians 2:13, we are told, “But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.” 

Ephesians 1:4-5 supports this when it tells us, “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”

In John 6:37, Jesus tells us, “All that the Father gives me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.” This statement of our Lord confirms what we Baptist preach as, “Once saved, always saved.”