The glorious consolation of the doctrine of predestination...

This is how much of the mystery of predestination is revealed to us in God’s Word. If we abide by this teaching and cling to it, is a very useful, saving, consoling teaching. It establishes very effectively the article that we are justified and saved without any works and merits of ours, purely out of grace alone, for Christ’s sake. Before the time of the world, before we existed, yes, even before the foundation of the world was laid--when, of course, we could do nothing good--we were chosen by grace in Christ to salvation, according to God’s purpose. Furthermore, all opinions and erroneous teachings about the powers of our natural will are overthrown by this. God in His counsel, before the time of the world, decided and ordained that He Himself would produce and work in us by His Holy Spirit’s power. Through the Word, He would do everything that belongs to our conversion.

This doctrine also provides the excellent glorious consolation that God was greatly concerned about the conversion, righteousness, and salvation of every Christian. He so faithfully provided for it that even before the foundation of the world was laid, He considered it, and in His purpose ordained how He would bring me to salvation and preserve me in salvation. He wanted to secure my salvation so well and so certainly, since through the weakness and wickedness of our flesh salvation could easily be lost from our hands or through the devil’s and the world’s craft and might it could be snatched and taken from us. Therefore He ordained in His eternal purpose what cannot fail or be overthrown. He placed salvation for safekeeping in this almighty hand of our Savior, Jesus Christ, from which no one can snatch us. Therefore, Paul asks in Romans, because we “are called according to his purpose” (8:28), who “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”? (8:39).

Furthermore, this doctrine provides glorious consolation under the cross and amid temptations. In other words, God in His counsel before the time of the world, determined and decreed that He would assist us in all distresses. He determined to grant patience, give consolation, nourish and encourage hope, and produce an outcome for us that would contribute to our salvation. Also, Paul teaches this in a very consoling way. He explains that God in His purpose has ordained before the time of the world by what crosses and sufferings He would conform every one of His elect to the image of His Son. His cross shall and must work together for good for everyone, because they are called according to God’s purpose. Therefore Paul has concluded that it certain and beyond doubt that neither “tribulation, or distress,” neither “death nor life,” or other such things “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our lord.”
~BOC, FSD, XI 43-49