Can we pray that people be saved? (Rom. 10:1)

Peter Paul Rubens Landscape with the Shipwreck of Paul

If there is one unmistakable truth that Romans chapter 9 teaches, it is that the ultimate reason why anyone is saved, why anyone is a vessel of mercy, is because they have been prepared afore by God to glory, chosen by him to be saved through Christ without any consideration of their good or bad works.  In other words, this chapter teaches the doctrine of election, that before the foundation of the world, God chose a definite number of people to be saved through Christ, and that this choice was unconditional, it was of individuals, and it was to eternal life. 

It is therefore right to say that if we are saved, it is because we were chosen in Christ.  This choice was from eternity and so from all eternity the salvation of the elect was sure and certain.

However, the choice of God the Father to save is not in itself salvation; it is unto salvation (2 Thess. 2:13).  It results in salvation – necessarily, certainly, effectually, for all who are embraced in the purpose of election.  But election itself is not salvation.  For the salvation purposed in the Father’s election had to be purchased by God the Son’s death on a cross, and then the redemption purchased by Christ had to be applied by God the Holy Spirit.  It is not until the application of the benefits of Christ’s atonement to a person through faith in him that they come into the personal possession of salvation. Hence, we cannot call a person a “saved person” – even the elect – until they personally receive the benefits of Christ’s atonement.  This happens when they are born again and given faith in Christ through the gospel.  We are justified – that is, we are forgiven of all our sins and accepted by God as righteous in his sight through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ – by faith.  The moment a person is enabled by God to put their trust in Christ is the moment that they are personally saved.

Now the fact that salvation comes through faith (isn’t this explicitly stated in Eph. 2:8?) does not make the salvation of the elect uncertain or a matter of works.  This is because faith itself is a gift of God (again, Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 1:29).  God effectually draws those whom he gave to the Son to trust in Christ (Jn. 6:44).  The sheep of Jesus will hear his voice and follow him (Jn. 10:27).  And they will be finally saved.  No one who comes to Christ in true faith will ever be turned away or lose their salvation (Jn. 6:37-40; 10:28-29; Rom. 8:37-39).  We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed at the last time (1 Pet. 1:5).

Now I begin this way because in verse 1 of Romans 10, Paul says that he is praying for the salvation of his kinsmen.  Some people want to say that he is not praying for their eternal salvation but for some temporal blessing.  However, the fact of the matter is that Paul is praying for the eternal salvation of his fellow Israelites.  He can do this because at the moment of his praying, they are unbelievers, and until a person comes to faith in Christ, as we’ve seen, they cannot be said to be saved. He’s not praying that they become elect.  He’s praying that they come to faith, be converted, and received the benefits of the redemption purchased by Christ.

Others will say that Paul is just concerned here with ignorance (2-3).  Of course he is, but there is an ignorance which is characteristic of being unsaved and unconverted (cf. Eph. 4:18).  Those who have this ignorance do not submit to the righteousness of God (3).  They are seeking to establish their own righteousness (2) which is exactly what Paul was talking about at the end of the previous chapter (9:31-33).  This is a description of unbelieving Jews, who stumble over Christ instead of trusting in him.  This is not a description of those who are saved but of those who are lost.

However given that Paul is praying for the eternal salvation of people here at the beginning of chapter 10, the question that this presents to us, and which I want to primarily deal with, given the reality of election, is this: does it make sense to pray for the salvation of anyone? If it is true that all the elect will be saved (and it is), then why pray for them to get something which they are sure to get anyway?  Now I ask this question because I know that the wrong answer to this question can lead to spiritual paralysis.  It can go beyond that and kill any meaningful evangelism.  It can lead to fatalism.  Nor is this a merely theoretical question.  It gets asked a lot.  And I’ve had someone tell me that for years their commitment to God’s sovereignty in salvation kept them from praying for the salvation of unbelievers.  So this is a real and live question and problem.  What then is the Biblical answer to it?  How do we keep from being paralyzed and frozen into this kind of theological fatalism?  Let me suggest three broad Biblical answers.  I will give you an argument from the pattern of Paul, from the purpose of God, and from the practice of piety.

An Argument from the Pattern of Paul

First, we know that we should pray for the salvation of the lost because we have the example of the apostle Paul.  Even if we had nothing else, this would be enough.  We not only have his example, but this is an example which is given to us by divine inspiration.  Paul prayed for the lost.  Here was an apostle, the man who just wrote the ninth chapter of the book of Romans.  He surely believed in the sovereignty of God and yet here he is telling us that he prays for his unbelieving kinsmen to be saved!  

Paul not only prays this way himself, but he also encourages us to pray this way as well.  Listen to his words to Timothy: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (1 Tim. 2:1-6).  This is not just a prayer that the church be left alone in peace, but that the church would be able to live out its life in the world so that the gospel would go out (cf. 1 Thess. 4:11-12).  Paul’s words show that the real concern here is that men be saved, because that is God’s concern.  And note how extensive our prayers ought to be! For all men – that is, for men of every rank, from the top to the bottom of society.  Look around you, those are people to be prayed for!

In some sense, Paul himself is the fruit of another man’s prayer for his salvation.  Do you remember that Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was killed by men while Paul (then known as Saul) watched and approved (cf. Acts 8:1; 22:20)?  And yet, Stephen prayed for his persecutors: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (7:60), just as Jesus prayed for those who killed him.  Paul must have remembered that, and one wonders how much it helped to shape his own attitude towards his kinsmen.  For like Stephen, the Jews persecuted Paul.  Most of his trials came from fellow Israelites who hounded him and stirred up crowds against him.  They hated him.  And yet Paul prays for them!  

Here is a lesson for us, not just to pray for the lost in general, but even for those who don’t like us.  And who knows when God will take a rabid persecutor like Paul himself and turn him to the way of faith and repentance.  My friends, let’s pray therefore for all around us.  Let’s pray for their salvation.  Let’s do it because we have the Biblical pattern of the inspired apostle.

John Gill, who certainly believed in the sovereignty of grace in salvation, makes this remark about prayer, in terms of who we are to pray for in his Body of Divinity: “… yet those who are dead in sins, unconverted sinners, may be prayed for, Rom. x.1. we may pray for unconverted friends and relations, for our children in a state of nature, as Abraham did for Ishmael; and especially we may pray in faith for the conversion of God’s elect, as our Lord himself did, John xvii. 20.”  This last passage that Gill mentions is instructive.  Here is how our Lord prayed: “Neither pray I for these [apostles] alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn. 17:20-21).  When our Lord asked, “that they all may be one,” this is another way of praying for the salvation of those who believe.  The union our Lord is asking for here is not just the union of fellowship between believers, but union and communion with God, which is the essence of salvation.  So here we have our Lord praying that people believe and be saved.  These are the elect: not the world, but those whom the Father gave to Christ (9).  Here again we see the consistency between election and prayer for the lost.  Maybe if the example of Paul doesn’t suffice, let the example of the Lord convince us!

And many other saints throughout history stand as an example for us in this.  Do any of you know about John Warburton?  He was a Baptist minister in the early 1800’s in England.  His book Mercies of a Covenant God is a book that will stir your soul.  God called him to preach and pastor, but for many years his wife was not a believer.  Warburton was a much a believer in the sovereignty of God and of his grace as any, and I would say was probably even guilty of a bit of hyper-Calvinism, but even that did not keep him from praying for the salvation of his wife.  Listen to the way he describes how he prayed for her:

“And O the blessings that broke through these clouds that I had so much dreaded [his youngest child, a daughter who was three years old, had just died]! I never can tell a thousandth part of them, for there broke forth a blessing that I had prayed for for nearly twenty years; I mean the salvation of my dear wife. When the dear Lord first set my soul at happy liberty, how her soul was laid upon my mind! O the wrestling that I had with the Lord that He would be pleased to open her eyes; and sometimes I received such blessed testimonies from His dear Word that my poor prayer was heard, and that the Lord would answer my request, that my soul rejoiced in the blessing, believing I should live to see it, and prove my God to be a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering Jehovah. But, again, at other times it all appeared completely overturned, and fear would arise that she was a vessel of wrath, fitted for destruction. I wanted her to go and hear the preaching when she had an opportunity; but sometimes she would answer me very crossly, that I went after preaching and prayer meetings enough for twenty people; and she thought if people would mind their families, and do their duty, and trust to the mercy of God, it was quite enough. O how these speeches used to enter my heart like a dagger! Then my soul would go out again with such wrestlings that I felt as if I could sooner die than be denied the blessing. . . . And here I was crying that the Lord would save her soul . . . . O the many times for the space of twenty years that my soul has believed that I should have the blessing! yea, and have thanked and blessed His dear Name for it many years before I saw it manifested. Sometimes I thought it was nothing but flesh and blood, and that all my tears and prayers arose from nothing but natural affections; but, blessed be God, I have lived to prove that they were prayers that were indited by the Holy Ghost, and I have had them blessedly answered to my soul’s satisfaction. . . . I blessed Him, I thanked Him, I told Him He had well rewarded me for waiting’ twenty years, and I told Him that the blessing appeared too great for so worthless a wretch as I.”

Twenty years of prayer!  My friend, don’t give up praying for your son or your daughter, your spouse, your friend, or your co-worker.  Wrestle with God for them in prayer that they might be saved.  God is still a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God.

An Argument from the Plan of God

Second, we should pray for the lost to be saved because prayer is a means that God uses to establish his eternal plan for the salvation of the elect.  We should not think that God’s sovereignty over all things means that we are just robots or that what we do each day doesn’t matter.  It is true that when God ordains something, it will happen.  It is certain to happen.  But it is also true that God not only ordains the end but also the means to the end.  And that makes the means just as necessary as the end.  

Let me illustrate what I mean here from an episode in the life of the apostle Paul himself.  In the book of Acts, we have this stirring narrative of Paul’s shipwreck on his way to Rome (according to 2 Cor. 11:25, this must have been at least his fourth time to experience this!).  While this is interesting in itself, there are some profound lessons about the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man stitched into the fabric of the story.  After they had set sail against Paul's advice and encountered the storm, Paul confronts the centurion and ship's captain:

“But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island” (Acts 27:21-26)

Note what Paul says: no one will die because God has promised.  But later on, after Paul had received this assurance, the sailors tried to escape from the boat and leave everyone else in the sinking ship.  Paul notices this, and warns the centurion in charge of the prisoners:

“And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off” (30-32).

Note the following things:

God is sovereign over the physical elements.  The storm was perfectly under God's control.  Accordingly, God was able to save the lives of all the men on the ship.

And Paul believed that the promise of God would not fail: “I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told” (ESV).  Evidently, Paul believed that once God promises something, it must come to pass.  (This is, of course, the testimony of the entire Bible.)

Yet, Paul tells the centurion, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.”

At first, this looks like a contradiction.  Why would Paul imply that unless the sailors stayed in the ship, people would die?  After all, God had already promised they would all live.  God's promise seems both contingent and non-contingent at the same time!  The following considerations may be made:

1.  All the lives on the ship were saved:  “And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land” (Acts 27:44).  God's promise was fulfilled, just as He said, and just as Paul believed.

2.  God's absolute promise did not eradicate the responsibility of those on the ship doing what they could to save their lives.  That is to say, God's sovereign promise did not nullify human responsibility.  Even though God had promised that they would live, it was not a contradiction to say that unless they did X, they would die.

3.  But neither did the responsibility of the sailors and soldiers negate the reliability and sovereignty of the promise of God.  God's promise must be fulfilled.

What is the point I am trying to make?  It is this: why do we have a problem with God's sovereign choice of a people to be saved and the simultaneous requirement that we ought to pray for their salvation?  Some people say that to tell someone to pray for the lost to be saved is to contradict God's election.  After all, what if they are elect - then you are praying for an elect person to be saved from their lostness when they will certainly be saved!  Contradiction!

But is it?  I think not.  The way the narrative in Acts 27 points us is that it is not in fact a contradiction.  Both are true.  Even though God has promised that the elect will be saved, it is not a contradiction to say that God uses our prayers as a means by which the elect are brought to faith and repentance and that our prayers are essential for that.  We may not understand how these things fit together.  However, this is what the Bible teaches, and to set one set of texts against the other is simply to try to silence the Bible with the Bible.  If someone is saved, they must finally put it down to the sovereign grace of God.  But this must not keep us from praying that the lost will repent and trust in Christ to be saved.  Far from it!  Knowing that a prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit is, as Spurgeon put it, “a decree escaped out of the prison of obscurity, and come to life and liberty among men,” we ought to be even more determined to pray with confidence and hope and faith and courage.  God’s sovereignty over all things, far from paralyzing us with inactivity, ought to cause us to persevere in prayer.

An Argument from the Practice of Piety

What is Christian piety?  What does it mean to live the Chrisitan life?  Well, in many ways it can be summed in the words faith and love.  Paul talks about the breastplate of faith and love (1 Thess. 5:8).  Writing to the Colossians, the apostle writes, “We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints” (Col. 1:3-4).  What I want to point out here is that our praying for the lost is an expression of Christian faith and love and therefore is essential if we are going to live out a life of Christian piety.

First, we should pray for the lost to be saved because such prayer is the expression of our hearts that only God can save the lost.  This is the faith part of the piety of prayer, and in some sense it connects to what we have just said about God’s sovereignty over all things.  Often, people will claim that a belief in God’s sovereignty stifles prayer for the lost.  But I think the opposite ought to be true.  Because if you don’t believe that God is sovereign over the salvation of the lost, if you really do believe that at the end of the day it’s the human will which is determinative and ultimate and not God, then what are we asking God to do?  Those who believe that can’t ask God to effectually draw anyone to Christ because they don’t believe God does that!  What are we really asking God to do that he hasn’t already done?  If someone has heard the gospel and seemed utterly hardened to it, from an Arminian perspective that is completely discouraging.  But not so if we believe that God is omnipotent even over the human will and heart!  And so, believing this, we pray!  

We can pray like Augustine’s mother prayed for him when he was enslaved by lust and deceived by the ancient heresy of Manicheanism.  Listen to the way Augustine describes his mother’s prayers for him and be encouraged:

“And now thou didst ‘stretch forth thy hand from above’ and didst draw up my soul out of that profound darkness [of Manicheism] because my mother, thy faithful one, wept to thee on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children. For by the light of the faith and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead. And thou didst hear her, O Lord, thou didst hear her and despised not her tears when, pouring down, they watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed. Thou didst truly hear her.”

At the same time, it took nine years of praying before her prayers were answered.  Again, we must remember that God is sovereign in his timing too.  We must not forget that!  It’s not our prayers that are sovereign.  They are directed to the God that is.  But neither time nor hardness of heart is a barrier to the work of God in the hearts of his elect.  We pray in faith, trusting in him for the outcome.

Second, we should pray for the lost to be saved because it is an expression of our love to God.  It is an important way we fulfill the first great commandment.  The first great commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind.  If we love God, then we ought to love what God loves.  And God loves to save sinners.  We’ve already seen this from Paul’s words to Timothy: “Who will have [the words “will have” translate the Greek verb “desires”] all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”  You don’t have to deny the doctrine of particular redemption or buy into the argument that Paul means all men without exception there in order to share God’s concern for people to be saved.  The fact of the matter is that God desires sinners to be saved.  We should share a desire for sinners to be saved, and that should show up in our prayers.  The atonement is in fact the greatest expression of God’s love to us.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16).  Again, since God loves to save sinners, our prayers ought to reflect that.  

“But,” one may respond, “what if I’m praying for someone who is not elect?  What if I’m praying for someone who is not loved with an everlasting love?”  You don’t need to worry about that!  We’re not praying that God would change his mind.  And there is nothing wrong or unbiblical with praying for a person hoping that they are elect and that God would save them.  I remember hearing a pastor in another city say that no one believed in limited atonement more than he did.  At the same time, he was trying to reach a rough crowd with the gospel.  His attitude was that he just assumed that Jesus died for them and that they were of the elect!  Of course, we don’t know.  But God has given us a commission to bring the gospel to all men, and we sow the gospel in hope that the seed will find its way into the heart of one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  In doing so we are reflecting the heart of God.

Third, we should pray for the lost to be saved because it is an expression of our love for them.  It is an important way we fulfill the second great commandment, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And of course when we hear that word “neighbor” we should never forget the parable of the Good Samaritan where Jesus teaches that anyone can be our neighbor.  Anyone who needs our help is our neighbor.  And surely the best thing that anyone could have is a relationship with the living God through Christ!  How can we say that we want our neighbors to be blessed and not want to see them in a right relationship with God?  Of course we should want that.  

On the other hand, it is not loving for us to harden our hearts against them out of a commitment to God’s sovereignty in salvation.  The apostle Paul believed in unconditional election to eternal life.  But he also was burdened for the salvation of his brethren and prayed for them to be saved.  You don’t have to close your hearts to the lost in order to hold onto the doctrines of grace.  There is definitely something wrong with that.  The fact of the matter is that we don’t know who is elect and who is not.  God has not given us that knowledge.  We can only observe God’s secret decree of election as it is evidenced in the life of a believer through faith and repentance.  So God clearly does not want us to calibrate our prayers based on a knowledge of who is elect and who is not.  Instead, out of love to our neighbor, we should want everyone to have what we have.  We should hope that everyone we meet with is elect and we should pray for them with the expectation that they will come to faith and repentance and be saved.  Pray that way!  Don’t stop praying for someone on the assumption that they aren’t elect.  You don’t know that.  Assume the best and pray that way.

A Closing Exhortation to our church

Brothers and sisters, let Paul’s prayer life challenge our own.  Do you pray for the conversion of the lost?  Do you pray that we in this church might be instrumental in God’s hands and by God’s power and grace in bringing about the salvation of unbelievers?  If we can’t even pray for that, how can we expect God to bless us in this way?  

Of course this isn’t the only thing we pray for.  I’m not saying that.  We are to pray for food and clothing; we are to pray for the saints; we are to pray for our families, the government, for God’s daily protection and blessing and direction.  We are to pray for personal holiness and for the life of the church.  We are to pray for revival.  There are a million things to pray for.  But in the multiplicity of things to pray about, let’s not neglect this thing.  Let’s not neglect to pray the way Paul prayed.

So I want to challenge all of us to pray like Paul prayed.  Include in your prayers and in your prayer requests to the church, prayers for your unbelieving friends, that God would save them.  In other words, though I’ve given an argument in this sermon for praying for the lost, let’s not leave here today without putting shoe leather on that, so to speak, and put this into practice.  May the Lord make us a praying people, a people through whom his kingdom comes and his will is done.