My Covenant View, God’s Fore-ordination

God’s Fore-ordination
In the Reformed camp most would agree that God is the One who sovereignly elects His people. From before the foundations of the world God chose for Himself a people. God chose a Bride for His Son. This election is founded upon God’s grace, and grace alone. It is not as if God looked through the corridors of time and saw that some people had earned His favor. All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. God predestined that “some” would be saved and that others would not.
But we must always keep in our thoughts that God didn’t merely predestine the “end”, He also predestined every “means” that reaches that end. When God predestines that a certain person is going to go to heaven, He also predestines every minute, detailed step that reaches that end goal.
God predestined that His Son would suffer, die, raise from the dead on the third day, and ascend into heaven on behalf of His people. God predestines that a man hears the gospel, that people are praying for him, that he receives the truth, and that he continues to receive the truth his whole life. God’s foreordained ‘means’ do not go against His foreordained ‘end’.
If a person lives their whole life in a country where there has been no missionary bringing the gospel then it is very likely that they are not one of the elect. If they have been raised their whole life to trust in idols, and have never heard the gospel, then how would they ever trust in the Lord Jesus Christ [Romans 10].
On the other side of the coin, if a child is born into a Christian home should we doubt that they are one of God’s elect? No, we shouldn’t. Should we train them in faith or to doubt? Of course we train them in the faith! The sad thing is that many Christians train their children to doubt and then wonder why their children grow cold towards the faith. God has given them these children to encourage and nurture in the faith, and instead these parents discourage and weaken the child’s faith.
One obvious way of doing this would be to never teach my children God’s word, never pray with them, never live out God’s word from Monday to Saturday before them. There is also a less obvious way that many discourage their children with. Keep in mind that God foreordains the end [a strong Christian life] and the means to that end [God’s word, prayer, fellowship, sacraments]. Many Christians put their children in the place of the hypocrite, rebellious, or unbeliever and wonder why their children grow up to be hypocrites, rebellious and unbelieving.
An unbeliever can come to church and listen to God’s word. When it comes time to pray the elders don’t come over to him and say “keep your head up and eyes open pal, this is for God’s people only.” So we see that he is allowed to pray. He can even hang out afterward at coffee time and have a nice time of fellowship with the other people. But when the Lord’s supper is given he is not allowed to partake. Do parents not think that their children do not also get this message? We baptize our children and then treat them like unbelievers for the next 14, 16, 21 years? We train our children to doubt their position with the Lord because we treat them practically like those who are outside of the covenant. We act like baptism means and does nothing.
We need to get away from trying to figure out the secret things [is the child really regenerate, do they really have faith] and need to live according to what God has revealed to us [this child belongs to God and is to receive all the blessings of the covenant, including meals].
We need to begin to practice the “means” that will bring our children to God’s foreordained “end”.