The Late Bishop Newbigin on Thinking Correctly About Election

“No one can say why it is that one was chosen and another not, why it is that here the word came with power and the Holy Ghost, while there the same word carried no regenerating power. The answer to that question is known only to God. But if we cannot know for what reason one was chosen, we can most certainly know for what purpose he was chosen. He was chosen in order to be a fruit-bearing branch of the One True Vine, a witness through whom others might be saved. He was chosen in order that through him God’s saving purpose may reach to others and they too may be reconciled to God….

“While the ultimate mystery of election remains, one can see that the principle of election is the only principle that is congruous with the nature of God’s redemptive purpose. And we can also see that wherever the missionary character of the doctrine of election is forgotten, wherever it is forgotten that we are chosen in order to be sent, wherever the minds of believers are concerned more to probe backwards from their election into the reasons for it in the secret counsel of God than to press forward from their election to the purpose of it—which is that they should be Christ’s ambassadors and witnesses to the ends of the earth—wherever men think that that purpose of election is their own salvation rather than the salvation of the world, then God’s people have betrayed their trust.” ~ Lesslie Newbigin, "The Household of God"