SalvationTier 2UnsureStarted by Matthew Ward - July 10, 2025 - 4 comments
How does God choose who will be saved?
Discussing:
“God chooses who will be saved before they believe.”
Thread starter's perspective:
My main question here is “how”… is it arbitrary based on nothing? Can God choose somebody who ultimately doesn’t choose him? Romans 9 may be helpful to reference for discussion. :)
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JP
683
You can say that God doesn’t arbitrarily pick certain people for salvation while leaving others out. Instead, God gives everyone the opportunity to respond to Him, and salvation is offered to all. In this view, God’s choice to save is tied to His plan for humanity and His desire for all to come to Him (1 Timothy 2:3-4: “God our Savior… wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”). Salvation is not about God predetermining who will believe; it’s about offering the chance to choose Him freely. When people respond in faith, God works in their lives to bring about growth and obedience, but the initial choice—believing in Him—is a decision He allows every person to make.
MR
977
God chooses His elect unconditionally from before the foundation on the Earth, not due to any quality in them but of His own mercy and goodness. This is often interpreted as being arbitrary, but it's only arbitrary on the side of the creature. That is, there is nothing about the creature that made God want to choose them. Even if there were, those attributes are purely the result of God's grace, so it logically collapses to the same position. The answer as to why one is chosen and another not lies only in the divine will. If a creature made a choice this way, it would be arbitrary, as it does not appeal to higher reason, but there is no higher reason than the divine will, or else it would not be divine, but a subject to something greater.
BH
792
I believe that those whom God chooses will choose God, and that God chooses all people. After all, Romans 9-11 is a single drawn-out argument from Paul that starts with the "problem" of election that ends with Paul confidently declaring that God will be merciful to all people and immediately following that up with a doxology about the riches of God's wisdom.
