“Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Similarly Psalms 84:11 states: “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” That being said, if we pray for someone’s salvation, but they are not one of Calvinism’s elect, then how can God give us the desire of our heart by answering that prayer?
Perhaps some Calvinists might wish to suggest that we should not indiscriminately pray that the lost will become saved, in case we may be found wishing for the salvation of someone that God has created absent of a desire to share eternity in Heaven with and subsequently excluded from a Limited Atonement. In fact, one Calvinist suggests that Christians should not randomly tell the lost that Jesus died for them, in case He did not:
Jay Adams: “As a reformed Christian, the writer believes that counselors must not tell any unsaved counselee that Christ died for him, for they cannot say that. No man knows except Christ Himself who are His elect for whom He died.”695
So, from the Calvinist perspective, if no one knows who God had secretly chosen and died for, then to be on the safe side, one might think that Calvinists would only pray that the elect would become saved, which of course must necessarily happen anyway, regardless. However, that is not how Calvinist, Charles Spurgeon, indicated that he would pray:
“Lord, hasten to bring in all Thine elect—and then elect some more.”696
That’s the problem with Calvinism, though, as there can be no “more.” In other words, Spurgeon’s prayer is not in sync with his theology. For this reason, Spurgeon was known to say:
“I fear I am not a very good Calvinist because I pray that the Lord will save all of the elect and then elect some more.”697
The good news is that God, for His part, does in fact desire that everyone become saved (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), and thus we can be encouraged to keep on persistently praying for lost loved ones.
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695 Competent to Counsel (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1970), 70.
696 W. Y. Fullerton, A Biography of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Chapter 8: An Intimate Interlude. http://www.reformedreader.org/rbb/spurgeon/fullerton/bioch08.htm.
697 Jerry Harmon, The Soteriology Of Charles Haddon Spurgeon And How It Impacted His Evangelism. http://faithalone.org/journal/2006i/5_harmon.pdf.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
