Predestination: Can I Be Sure I Am Chosen?

Once we begin to talk about the subject of predestination, inevitably someone will ask, “Am I elect?” This is the question of assurance. In the sixteenth century the Roman Catholic Council of Trent declared that believers who said they could know they were elect were guilty of rash presumption:

“No one, moreover, so long as he is in this mortal life, ought so far to presume as regards the secret mystery of divine predestination, as to determine for certain that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate.”

Then in the seventeenth century the theologians known as the Arminians said something similar:

“there is in this life no fruit and no consciousness of the unchangeable election to glory, nor any certainty, except that which depends on a changeable and uncertain condition” (CD 1.RE 7).

There is only one thing, they say, that we can be certain of as believers—uncertainty.
Can you be sure you’re chosen? Before we answer that question, be assured that to ask the question is not to question your faith and salvation—it is not intended to cause despair or fear. It is a very practical question that we all ask. Read more