The doctrine of reprobation “illustrates and recommends” to the elect the necessity of humble thanksgiving and complete self-abnegation before God. In Pauline fashion, it teaches us to beware of all self-exaltation, either before God or in contrast to the reprobate. Consequently, Cornelis Trimp rejects the idea of calling reprobation “the dark shadow of election,” for its positive thrust “shows us very clearly that our salvation is only a matter of grace,” and “by this doctrine we learn to fear God, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling,” and “we thus know Him as the eternal enemy of sin.” Most detailed, however, is [Loraine] Boettner’s list of reprobation’s benefits to the elect:

“In beholding the rejection and final state of the wicked, (1) they learn what they too would have suffered had not grace stepped in to their relief, and they appreciate more deeply the riches of divine love which raised them from sin and brought them into eternal life while others no more guilty or unworthy than they were left to eternal destruction. (2) It furnishes a most powerful motive for thankfulness that they have received such high blessings. (3) They are led to a deeper trust of their heavenly Father who supplies all their needs in this life and the next. (4) The sense of what they have received furnishes the strongest possible motive for them to love their heavenly Father, and to live as pure lives as possible. (5) It leads them to a greater abhorrence of sin. (6) It leads them to a closer walk with God and with each other as specially chosen heirs of the kingdom of heaven.”

Joel R. Beeke, Debated Issues in Sovereign Predestination: Early Lutheran Predestination, Calvinian Reprobation, and Variations in Genevan Lapsarianism, 68-69.