It is quite unfortunate, but many Christians persist in treating God's election of His people to salvation as though it were a divinely-run crap shoot. But there is a vast difference between sovereign election, which the Bible plainly teaches, and arbitrary election, which the Bible denies.
This misunderstanding comes right to the front when Christians begin to discuss the eternal destinations of their children. Some object to the biblical truth of election, arguing that it puts the children of believers at risk. "Do you mean to say there is a good chance your children could be predestined to Hell?" Others are faithful to the Scripture's teaching on election, but accept this accusation as an accurate portrayal of the situation. "Yes, that is possible."
Now the first point we must make is that there is no ground for assuming that the children of elect believers are themselves elect. Scripture is clear on the melancholy point; David had his Absalom, and Samuel had his Joel and Abijah. There is no automatic transfer of election from parent to child. Although the parents are elect, it does not follow from this that the children necessarily are. Does this mean there is no legitimate ground of confidence for parents? Not at all.
God does not foreordain anything willy-nilly. His most wise counsel and plan for all things includes both the means and the ends. Fools and mockers try to separate the two, but if He foreordained the crop, He foreordained the planting. If He foreordained the pregnancy, He foreordained the union.
Suppose a farmer were to reason within himself in this way "If God has not predestined a crop for me, then any work I do will be to no avail. And if He has foreordained the crop, then I may as well spare myself much toil and trouble, and stay right here on the couch." Such a farmer is foreordained all right foreordained to be a hungry fool.
In the ordinary course of God's providence, Christian parents are required by God to bring their children up in the Lord. As it says in Ephesians 6:4, fathers are to bring their children up "in the training and admonition of the Lord." It does not say that the children should be exposed to biblical teaching, or that they should have a general acquaintence with it, but rather that they should be brought up in that training. This passage is not requiring fathers to attempt something, but rather to do something. As Proverbs says, when children are brought up in the way they should go, when they are old they will not depart from it.
If a child grows up in a Christian home, abandons the faith of his parents, and dies in an impenitent state, then of course that child was not numbered among God's elect. But the sovereign God uses means to accomplish His purposes. If a child has grown up without coming to a saving knowledge of the Lord, then the first place to check is how the parents brought him up. This is obvious. There is an clear and virtually universal correlation between waywardness of children and negligence or disobedience on the part of parents.
The fact is that believing parents are supposed to be, through obedience in child-rearing, God's ordinary instruments in the conversion of their children. This is clearly seen in God's requirements for elders who are to be an example to the rest of the flock (Heb. 13:7). In Titus 1:6, the elder is required to have believing children. Elders who believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation cannot shrug such a requirement off. If they reject this requirement, they are accepting as valid an argument against predestination which they quite properly reject in all other contexts the argument which separates means and ends.
Of course this all concerns the ordinary course of God's government of the world. There may be times when God does something extraordinary. He can perform miracles in the realm of nature, and He can tell Hosea to marry a women who would would be unfaithful to him. It is of course possible for God to exclude from the privileges of salvation the child of obedient parents. Such children are first and foremost children of Adam, and certainly have no claim on salvation. But even were God to do this, certain things follow from it. Such a father should not be an elder, even if it were acknowledged by all that he had been a good father. Why? Because the Bible requires that children of elders be believers.
Believing parents may therefore accept their responsibility to bring up believing children under God. They may do so with confidence, but not with presumption. To assume that children are elect because the parents are elect is presumption. God is the source of election, not the parents. But to fret and worry that children may fall away regardless of obedience to God in their upbringing is unbelief. God is the user of means, and His ordinary means for bringing children of believers to saving faith is the teaching and instruction of the parents.
So when a parent asks if his children are elect, the answer is, "We shall see." We shall see if the children are brought up in the Lord by obedient parents, and we shall see if this obedience bears its ordinary fruit.
