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If fallen man can do nothing towards his own salvation, and he can't, then God must save his people unconditionally, otherwise they would never be saved. The question therefore arises as to the role of conditional promises. May we use them?

"If you repent and believe in Christ, you will be saved." This is a true statement and can be said to any man whether elect or reprobate. As also can the statement "If you keep the Law, you will be saved." Of course, both these statements are impossible for the natural man to keep. Only God's grace intervening, giving repentance and faith to fulfil the first condition and imputing the righteousness of Christ to a person to fulfil the second, can solve these problems. Therefore when such statements are used, they must be used together with an explanation of human inability and the need for divine intervention for salvation. If these explanations are not given, then it is very likely for the hearer of either of the above two statements to conclude that he has the ability to keep the condition required in and of himself, without grace. Hence many people think they are "saved" when they are not.

The natural man in and of himself will never truly repent or truly believe, just as he will never keep the Law. The command to repent and believe is good, but if people believe they can do these things in their own strength they have got it wrong. Having said this, it is in the way of doing these things that God saves his elect by granting them the faith and repentance required. Therefore the command is good, and it is right to preach it, and for men to do what it requires.

The command of the gospel will produce three types of people:

(1) those who do not respond,

(2) those who respond outwardly, but think they can do these things in their own strength,

(3) those who respond fully, because God has given them the faith and repentance required to do so.

Group (2) above are the ones we need to discern more readily. If an explanation of inability is given with the gospel command, group (2) above will become more clearly like group (1) because they will be offended at the doctrine of inability. Hence preaching inability is a very important part of preaching the gospel.

All men are born in sin, by nature children of wrath even as others (Ephesians 2:3). God can never allow unregenerate people into his presence. God cannot save anyone without regenerating them first. Therefore there must be a moment in every elect persons life when he or she is regenerated. This could be in the womb or later on in life. This moment, is the moment when God gives faith and repentance. Indeed it is the moment when they are turned from darkness to light, i.e. justified. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states:

Q. 31. What is effectual calling ?

A. Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.

Q. 33. What is justification ?

A. Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in hls sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

To say that we are justified from eternity means that we are regenerate from eternity, which cannot be true. It is true however, that the decree to justify the elect is from eternity, as they are chosen from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), but this can only be applied in time to them.

Upon regeneration, God could have given the elect the ability to keep the Law. However, this would not have saved us in and of itself, because they still have their sins before regeneration which will still condemn them. So to say "If you keep the Law, you will be saved" is not actually a way of salvation to an already fallen person, because of their past sins. So all this statement does is convince of sin. The rich young ruler is a very good example here. He asked Christ: "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" To which Christ did not reply, "repent and believe in me", but rather "keep the commandments." That is what we must do to inherit eternal life. This was purely to convince the man of sin. Indeed he went away sad, so it must have had an effect on him. If he was not one of the elect he would have become angry, not sad. Many people think that this is an example of Jesus "loving" the non-elect, and they claim that we have no evidence that he was saved, but it is they who have no evidence that he was not saved! Anyway, the point is that no-one can keep the law even if from this moment onwards they are enabled to do so. Therefore the only way of salvation is to repent and believe in Christ, which only the elect can do because they are the only ones to whom God grants faith and repentance to keep the "condition", and also to whom God imputed the righteousness of Christ in order that they may be justified.

So God saves his people conditionally in one sense, in that he cannot save them without regenerating them and giving them faith and repentance, but God saves his people unconditionally in another sense because he gives to his elect the faith and repentance necessary to fulfil the condition, unconditionally!

Now, some may object to preaching conditional promises, because infants who die in infancy and imbeciles cannot exercise faith and repentance, even if God gives them these gifts. So, the argument goes, all the promises given by God must be unconditional. Faith and repentance are the gifts given to the elect on regeneration. God cannot possibly allow unregenerate persons into heaven. We are all born in sin and iniquity, therefore God must regenerate elect infants and imbeciles. Therefore God must, at the moment of regeneration, give them at least the seeds of faith and repentance, even if this faith and repentance does not manifest itself in outward acts or behaviour until, or if, they reach years of discernment. God cannot save anyone without regenerating them first, i.e. without giving them at least the seeds of faith and repentance first. Therefore we can say that faith and repentance are truly and properly conditions of salvation. Not that we can produce them ourselves, they are the gift of God.

Because of our inability, men can only ever cry for mercy. Maybe God will answer:

"Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph." Amos 5:15

"Seek ye the LORD, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the LORD'S anger." Zephaniah 2:3

On the other hand, maybe God will not answer:

"They cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the LORD, but he answered them not." Psalm 18:41

God is under no obligation to have mercy on anybody.

With conditional promises it is important that we stick to the bare statement. In the controversy over the book "The Marrow of Modern Divinity" in the Church of Scotland in 1720 and 1722, the book was rightly condemned because it had statements in it such as:

"Go and tell every man without exception, that here is good news for him; Christ is dead for him; and if he will take him and accept of his righteousness, he shall have him."

Similarly, in the split in the Protestant Reformed Churches in America in 1953, a minister was rightly disciplined for stating:

"God promises to all of you salvation, if you believe."

These statements are a completely different kettle of fish from what we have been discussing so far. They are no longer the bare conditional statement. They go beyond what the scripture teaches. They give the idea that salvation is available for everyone. This is the heresy thay we must avoid, because it is the first step on the road to Arminianism. The next step is "God wants all men to be saved."

Therefore there is nothing wrong as such with the bare statement of a conditional promise, but when we begin to equate them with a conditional will in God, then we go astray.

Can Anyone Be Saved?

One can object to the gospel by asking the question, "But what if I am not one of the elect? No matter what I do I cannot be saved." This is a true statement. Many churches try to get around it by saying something like, " But there is sufficiency in Christ if only you will come to him, do not delay!" However, this is very wrong because there is not sufficiency in Christ for the salvation of all men, not because God is not powerful enough to have made it so if he had wanted to, but because God did not decree it to be so in the first place. God only ever wanted some to be saved, and those only are the people that Christ came to save.

So the person asking the above question has a genuine concern. He is correct. It is true that if he is not elect he cannot be saved. However, no-one can know whether they are elect or not whilst they are in the state of unregeneracy, i.e. either one of the reprobate or one of the elect before regeneration. One can only know of one's election after having been regenerated. If one is elect, one will respond to the gospel command; if one is not elect, one will not respond to it. Of course, just because someone on a certain occasion rejects the gospel, even this does not prove that they are not one of the elect. Many of the elect reject the gospel for a time, but in the end they will respond, so we can never give up hope in this world and say about anyone, "You are reprobate, I am not preaching the gospel to you!"

All men, whether elect or reprobate, are commanded to repent and turn to Christ. This is the duty of all men, as it is the only way of salvation, because no man is now, since the fall, able to keep the Law. The command is to perform that duty. No man can do this of himself, but needs regenerating grace, so only the elect will ever respond. The command is to all men everywhere. To the elect, God will give the faith and repentance required to keep it. To the reprobate, God will not, so the reprobate will never fulfil the command.

Does God Desire the Reprobate to Repent and Turn to Him?

Of course God " desires" the elect to repent and turn to him. This can be proved from the fact that he grants them the faith and repentance necessary to do so. To say that God "desires" anything is really a misnomer because he does not have like passions as we have (Acts 14:15, Westminster Confession of Faith 2:i), but it is possible to use the word when talking about the will of God. God "desires" all that he wills. He cannot will anything that he does not "desire."

The question remains, "Does God 'desire' the reprobate to repent and turn to him?" The answer must be that he does not, otherwise he would grant his own "desire" by giving them faith and repentance as he does to the elect. God cannot have a "desire" that he does not fulfil. This may be possible with men, bot cannot be so with God. God commands the reprobate to repent and turn to him, knowing full well that they do not have the ability to do so themselves, neither is he ever going to give them that ability. Therefore the whole purpose of the command to the reprobate is purely to show, display or magnify their guilt before God. Similarly he says to them, " Keep the Law and you will be saved," knowing that they cannot and that he is not going to give them that ability either.

Many people may object by saying that this is God "mocking" men by commanding them to do something knowing that they will never be able to do it. However nothing could be further from the truth. Man is fallen and no man deserves to be saved from anything other than most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell-fire for ever (Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 29). If God sent all of us into hell it would be just and perfect and right for him to do so, without demanding anything from us. By nature we are all fallen in Adam. God created Adam upright but Adam fell and all his posterity with him (Ecclesiastes 7:29, Westminster Confession of Faith 4:ii, 6).

In fact it is the people who say that God desires the salvation of all men that are the ones who make God a mocker. If God did desire the salvation of all men then the reprobate are mocked by God because he supposedly "desires" their salvation, but knows they cannot save themselves and neither is he going to save them! The truth is that those who refuse the gospel command are not mocked by God at all because he has no "desire" to save them, neither have they any desire to be saved.

Following on from this, the gospel is not good news to all men. It is not "a gracious offer of salvation to man, if he will perform his duty." (Ref: K. Stebbins, "Christ Freely Offered" pub. 1978). It is not a gracious offer of anything to the reprobate, otherwise God would be mocking them. The gospel is sent to them to display their inability. Otherwise God would be saying, "Here is grace for you," knowing that God would then not follow the gospel up by giving them the faith and repentance required. If the reprobate performed their duty they would indeed be saved, so they can be commanded to do so, but it is impossible for them to perform their duty. The command does not imply the ability to keep it.

Therefore God does not "desire" the reprobate to actually repent and turn to him, neither does he "desire" that they perform good works. This is because all the seeming "good works" of the reprobate are not actually good works at all because they are never done with the right motive, namely the glory of God. They are therefore all sinful. Neither indeed was God pleased with the attempted "good works" of the elect before they were regenerated. Good works only are good if they proceed from a heart purified by faith.

Westminster Confession of Faith 16:vii: "Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands; and of good use both to themselves and others; yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word; nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God; and yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God."

The reprobate trying to please God in their own efforts is more abominable to God than if they did not bother, even though it is always their duty to perform good works. The Pharisees were good examples of this. Good works can only truly be done from a heart purified by faith. The natural man is incapable of doing them. So for them to even try to do them in their own strength is abomination in God's sight. So God commands them to do good works, but their trying to do them in their own strength is even more abominable to God. The gospel is indeed the savour of life unto life for the elect but death unto death for the reprobate (2 Corinthians 2:16). It certainly is not good news to all men. Rather it serves to display the contrast between the elect and the reprobate more.

So many people today when they preach the gospel think that they are only preaching "good news" and do not consider that it is "bad news" as well. It always has a twofold purpose. If ever they knew this, they probably would never preach again for fear of giving bad news to some! However, it is clear that we are commanded to "preach the gospel to every creature," (Mark 16:15), so God has ordained it to be so. Many preachers who go into the ministry because they feel some sort of "compassion for souls" would probably think again if they knew this!

So God does not "desire" that the reprobate turn to him or do good works yet he still commands them to do these things even though they cannot do them, so how are they still responsible? The answer to this is that God loves the thing that he commands them to do, namely repentance, faith and good works. These are what God "delights" in, or is "pleased" with, so he commands all men everywhere to do them. But the fact they cannot do them only goes to display God's hatred for them more. God cannot "delight" in, or be pleased with, their fallen ways at all, neither can he be pleased with them trying to do good works in their own strength, them being unaware of their own inability. He must hate them with a perfect hatred, just as we should (although we do not know who the reprobate are, so whilst we are in this world we do good to all men and leave vengeance to God). Whether they have the ability to amend their ways or not is irrelevant as long as they continue in sin..

No Love for the Reprobate

A popular objection to the position of sovereign election by grace is the one which stays that "Because God can hate the elect for a time in this world, so God can love the reprobate for a time in this world." This line of reasoning is false for two reasons:

(i) Firstly, God does not hate the elect even for a time in this world. God loves the elect whom he has chosen from eternity. Of course, they are born in sin, by nature children of wrath even as others (Ephesians 2:3). In their unregenerate state there was nothing lovely about them that God may choose them over and above anyone else. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Therefore salvation is all of grace. But God knows which ones he has chosen from the foundation of the world, and whom he will in time regenerate to the praise of his glorious mercy. Therefore even whilst they were still in their sins, between their conception and their regeneration, God still loves them because he knows that he has always had a plan to regenerate them. However, we can say that in their unregenerate state, God was not pleased with them, and could not have loved them at all if God had intended to keep them in that state. But God was pleased to save them from that state, which was in and of itself, without grace, always liable to condemnation. So God always really loves his elect because he chooses them from eternity to save them, and in time performs just that.

(ii) However, even granting our opponents the right to call this " displeasure" of God at the unregenerate elect, " hatred," their argument still does not stand. God does not "love" and "hate" for no reason. In and of themselves both elect and reprobate have no good thing in them for God to love. God chooses some to love for a purpose and he has to change them from their unregenerate state in order for this purpose to be achieved. He cannot choose, or love, an elect person and then let that person spend all his life carrying on in profligacy until the time of his death. That would be against the justice of God. Antinomianism is a very wicked heresy. God chooses the elect, not because anything good can be found in them, but he chooses them unto good works. He regenerates them in order to do the good works which he has before ordained that they should walk therein (Ephesians 2:10). So whilst originally there is no reason for God to choose one above another, once God has chosen one, he has to regenerate them unto good works, otherwise his justice is violated.

God always hates sin. He is displeased with the elect in their unregenerate state and he also must be displeased with the reprobate all the time, because of their nature. God is displeased with the elect when they sin, but he cannot love the reprobate because they cannot do any good. So God " hates" (if you want to use that word) the elect in time in their unregenerate state ( because there is nothing in them for God to love) for a time in this world, until such a time as he regenerates them. But it does not follow that the opposite is true, indeed it cannot be. God cannot love the reprobate for a time in this world because (a) there is nothing lovely about them ( just like the elect), and (b) God is not going to grant anything lovely about them either, he is just going to leave them in that state. God has got no good works to ordain them unto, so God cannot possibly love any of them even for a time in this world. There is an never will be anything lovely about them, they are just like the devils - the only difference being that the devils are more powerful, not more evil. God has ordained the elect unto good works, whereas he has ordained the reprobate unto evil and destruction, whereunto they were appointed (1 Peter 2:8). For God to love the reprobate he must either see something lovely in them ( which there is not), or ordain them to something lovely, which he does not. God can only love that which is lovely or that which he decrees to make lovely. God loves the elect not because they are lovely in and of themselves, but because God has ordained them to something lovely, namely regeneration, sanctification, good works and eventually glorification, the latter of which cannot take place without the other three.

The Reprobate Similar to Devils

Westminster Larger Catechism Q.13.: "What hath God especially decreed concerning angels and men?"

A. God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of his mere love, for the praise of his glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, hath elected some angels to glory; and in Christ hath chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof: and also, according to his sovereign power, and the unsearchable counsel of his own will, (whereby he extendeth or withholdeth favour as he pleaseth,) hath passed by and foreordained the rest to dishonour and wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of his justice.

To say that God has some kind of love for the reprobate is like saying that God has some kind of love for the devil and the fallen angels. It is nonsense. The reprobate, the fallen angels and the devil himself are all in the same boat, namely with no hope of salvation at all, ever. They are eternally under God's curse. There is no hope for any of them, yet they are all bound to keep the Law and are damned because they do not. The only difference between the reprobate and the fallen angels is that the fallen angels all sinned and fell as individuals, whereas the reprobate all fell in Adam as a federal head. Indeed all men fell in Adam, but God was pleased to save his elect from the consequences of that sin, and leave the reprobate with those consequences.

Salvation not revealed to Everyone

Westminster Confession of Faith 1:i: "Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation......"

Westminster Larger Catechism Q.2: "How doth it appear that there is a God ?"

A. The very light of nature in man, and the works of God, declare plainly that there is a God; but his word and Spirit only do sufficiently and effectually reveal him unto men for their salvation.

God has given to all men, by the light of nature, creation and providence, no excuse for their sins but that they may be justly damned for them. However, a way of salvation is not revealed by any of these means. Therefore God cannot want all men to be saved. He only propagates the way of salvation through the visible church, and then only actually reveals it effectually to some of those by the Holy Spirit revealing truth to men's hearts through the Scriptures. There is therefore, justly and ordinarily, no salvation outside of the visible church (Westminster Confession of Faith 25:ii).

Westminster Confession of Faith 1:v,vi: "V. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverend esteem of the holy scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, (which is to give all glory to God, ) the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth , and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.

VI. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word; and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed."

These sections of the Confession of Faith show that unregenerate men with a copy of the scriptures available to them to read have less excuse than men without, and will be judged more severely. Yet still they cannot be fully persuaded and assured of the truth unto salvation unless God decrees to save them.

All the reprobate and pre-regenerate elect know is the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as made clear by the light of nature, creation and providence. This includes some sense of right and wrong. However, only the regenerated elect, through the Holy Ghost witnessing through the Scriptures, know unto salvation what God is, the persons in the Godhead, his decrees and the execution of his decrees (Larger Catechism Q.6). The reprobate and pre-regenerated elect who have a copy of the Scriptures in their hand can know these things as well in some sense as bare facts, but not unto salvation, unless God chooses to grant this to them. They can know intellectually that this is what the Bible teaches, but not know as truth, which would then subsequently have an effect on their lives.

"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." John 17:17

What a terrible state the reprobate are in. Repent and turn to Christ as your only hope. If you do, you will prove your election of God.

"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." John 6:37