DOES ROMANS 8:29-30 TEACH UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION?March 22, 2019

1-2 minute read time

“Does Romans 8:29-30 teach unconditional election?”

Some of you are wondering what “unconditional election” is. Here’s a good definition: “Since man can do nothing in response to God, God chooses who will be saved and effects that salvation.” 

BTW, I don’t agree with Calvinism (or Arminianism). In other words, I don’t think TULIP is biblical. 

Romans 8 doesn’t support that believers are elected. In Romans 8:14-39 Paul is writing to believers who are suffering. He encourages them that they can be more than conquerors in the midst of suffering, should realize their suffering does have spiritual benefits (Rom 8:28), and also be encouraged that nothing can separate them from God’s love.

We see in Rom 8:28 that Paul is addressing believers, then verse 29 gives the reason (because, Hoti) why the statement in v. 28 is true. I like what Zane Hodges says, “We who ‘love God,’ yet suffer, are ‘those who are called in harmony with’ God’s eternal ‘purpose’ (v 28b). This ‘calling’ is the reason why our sufferings lead to what is ‘good.’

Verse 29 doesn’t teach “predestination to salvation.” Paul is writing people who are already believers and they are being predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. Paul never wrote in this verse that God was choosing to turn unbelievers into believers. I love the way René A. López (as the Grace NT Commentary words it), “God planned, before anybody was ever born, before anybody was saved, that every person who believed in Jesus for eternal life, and who suffered as a result of living for Jesus, would be conformed completely to the image of Jesus.”