Chosen By God Part II
“CHOSEN BY GOD,” AN ABBREVIATED INVESTIGATION OF THE DEEP DOCTRINE of election in two parts from Ephesians 1:4… “Chosen by God” and “election” are synonymous terms; they both refer to the same biblical doctrine…
NAS Ephesians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love..
LAST WEEK, I ENDED PART I BY EMPHASIZING THE WORD “SOVEREGNTY”… It is all but impossible to fully grasp the meaning of being chosen by God without understanding God’s sovereignty.
ANOTHER WORD ALONG THESE ESSENTIAL LINES of defining and comprehending the interrelated terms of election is relationship… Inherent in the deep doctrines of election, predestination, adoption, and foreknowledge is relationship. One of the wonders of the world is that Almighty God desires to be in relationship with sinful human beings. Oh, to be sure, He cannot be in relationship with sinful human beings – His holiness will not permit it – until they have been transformed by salvation, but His desire is real and continuous. In all these deep doctrines of salvation, one thing that can be said of all of them is that they speak of relationship. In all of these deep doctrines, God is seeking relationship with man…
IN SPITE OF THE DIFFICULTIES, THERE IS A GREAT BLESSING that awaits the believer willing humbly to be taught by this great doctrine that teaches such deep truth about God and His workings with mankind…
IT IS NOT AN IRRESPONSIBLE EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT in the 12 verses of the introduction to the book of Ephesians (vv. 3-14) one finds the deepest truths about God to be found in all of Scripture… If we can get a grasp of these deep truths, our lives cannot help but be immensely enriched…
THE MORE WE KNOW ABOUT GOD, THE MORE WE CAN APPRECIATE HIM – to know Him is to love Him. The more we love God, the more we will want to serve Him. The more we serve Him in obedience to His Word, the richer our lives will be, for our very purpose here on earth is to love, serve, and glorify God. True satisfaction lies not in serving the self as the world insists, but in serving God as the Bible commands…
THE BIBLE INARGUABLY STATES THAT GOD CHOSE BELIEVERS to be saved. Regardless of how difficult or even unfair it may seem to some Christians, this is the Word of God and must be accepted and believed…
GOD THE FATHER HAS ELECTED A NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO be given to God the Son for the purpose of building His church. If you are a Christian you must believe this because it is the clear teaching of Scripture…
“TO CONTEND AS SOME HAVE THAT GOD, TO BE FAIR AND IMPARTIAL, must bestow His greatest riches of blessing upon all alike is, as we have said, to sit in judgment upon the Creator, to deny God’s sovereign right to order his creation as He will, and to deprive God of His freedom to bring about His perfect plan as He wills.” – Chafer/TAR…
BEFORE ANY CONDEMN GOD FOR BEING UNFAIR, ONE MUST FIRST acknowledge the fact that all human beings are spiritually bankrupt…
NKJ Romans 3:11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.
THE PERSON WHO ARGUES THAT GOD IS UNFAIR FAILS TO REALIZE THAT God is under no obligation to save anyone. As many scholars have rightly said…
THE QUESTION IS NOT “WHY DOES GOD NOT JUST SAVE EVERYONE?” but “why does He save anyone?”…
NAS Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
IF GOD HAD NOT TAKEN THE INITIATIVE TO SAVE SOME, no one would have been ever believed…
IN THIS MESSAGE THIS MORNING THERE IS VALUABLE TRUTH that can enlighten us as to the mind of God, teach us lessons that will prevent us from wrong thinking about God and His dealings with us, humble us as to the sovereignty of God, and comfort us in the midst of our struggles in this life…
GOD DID NOT CHOOSE EVERYONE BECAUSE IT WAS NOT HIS PLAN to do so. He has a perfect plan and He is not obligated to consult anyone or to explain Himself. He is sovereign. He is God…
I WILL DISCUSS THESE DEEP THINGS FURTHER IN A COMING BLOG on “Predestination”…
ONE OF THE ENGLISH DEFINITIONS OF “CHOICE” IS “the power, right, or liberty to choose”… Only God has the power, the right, and the perfect freedom to choose…
NAS Daniel 4:35 …But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What hast Thou done?’
YOU PROBABLY DON’T NEED ME TO TELL YOU THAT GOD IS SOVEREIGN. Although we use the word in common language, especially to describe kings and presidents, courts and countries, but in one immediate sense, there is only one to whom the word should be applied. Only God possesses absolute authority and has complete independence…
SOVEREIGNTY MEANS THAT GOD IS THE BOSS AND THAT WE ARE not…
BECAUSE OF THAT FACT, THIS MESSAGE MAY CONFRONT MANY READERS’ sensibilities. This message may present a side of God you may have avoided understanding – or maybe you have understood it all too well and have chosen to live as if it were not a fact… an undeniable fact, a changeless, eternal fact…
SOME, INCLUDING MANY SOUTHERN BAPTISTS, BELIEVE THAT election should be explained as God in eternity looking down the corridors of time, seeing that we would choose Him, and then choosing us… With all due respect, that is wrong. That view is wrong for more than one reason. Not only does such a theology go against Scripture (cf. John 15:16; Rom 3:11), but in such a view man then becomes sovereign. Man first makes the choice; God is only responding to man’s choice. This is not the biblical view of election. This view elevates man, makes him responsible for his own salvation…
BUT MAN DOES NOT CHOOSE GOD FIRST; GOD CHOOSES MAN FIRST…
NAS John 15:16 “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain…
IS THAT NOT CLEAR? If you believe the Bible is God’s Word, you cannot ignore this central point. It is God who does the initial choosing…
GOD CHOSE US BEFORE WE WERE BORN. The Bible says God chose believers before the foundation of world! Listen to these beautiful words from Ephesians 1…
NKJ Ephesians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,
THAT IS PROBABLY THE DEFINITIVE WORD IN SCRIPTURE ON ELECTION. That is the essence of existence. That is the wisdom of the world in summary. These words in Ephesians 1:3-4 are some of the most wonderful, most challenging words in the entire Bible. They tell us of our reality in Christ, and they tell us of the privilege and responsibility we have as believers…
BUT SOMEONE SAYS, DIDN’T I ALSO CHOOSE GOD? What about man’s free will? I must be brief, but will take these questions up again in the following weeks, Lord willing. For now, let me give you a studied answer in a quickly drawn image…
IMAGINE TWO SIDES OF A MOUNTAIN AS YOU ARE STARING AT IT from a distance. You see the two opposite sides of the mountain ascending at convergent angels toward the top. Imagine one side being God’s sovereignty and the other side man’s free will. You look up to see the point where you imagine and anticipate the two sides meeting, but that point is lost in the clouds. Can you say that the two sides do not meet simply because you cannot see them meeting? God does not tell us how they meet. Man’s free will and God’s sovereign may seem like they cannot meet, but somehow they do. God simply does not tell us how…
GERMANLY, LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO A GREAT WORD, one with which you may not be familiar… The word is antimony. It is the best word I have found to address this seemingly incompatible dilemma. Here’s a dictionary definition: antinomy – 1 : a contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles 2 : a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction *antinomies of beauty and evil, freedom and slavery…
“ANTINOMY” DESCRIBES A SITUATION WHERE TWO SEEMINGLY OPPOSITE truths collide. It is a kind of paradox. A paradox is a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true… Paul uses this kind of literary device in 2 Corinthians 12, where he says…
NAS 2 Corinthians 12:10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH: TWO OPPOSITE CONDITIONS, YET BOTH BEING descriptive of Paul… Antinomy is really not as complex or unusual as it may at first sound…
BUT LIGHT IS THE BEST PHYSICAL EXAMPLE OF ANTINOMY: it is scientifically acknowledged as being both a wavelength (nnon-material) and a particle (material)… Scientifically, in the world of physics, this cannot be; it must be one or the other. Yet it is both. Jesus Christ – who is light (John 9:5) – is the ultimate spiritual example as He is both man and God…
THERE IS A SENSE IN OUR SALVATION IN WHICH GOD CHOOSES US AND we also choose Him…
WE WILL TAKE UP THIS IMPORTANT TOPIC AGAIN WHEN WE LOOK AT predestination in a coming message…
EACH PERSON HAS THE ABILITY TO BELIEVE, BUT JUST DOESN’T… Not believing is choosing not to believe. Ultimately, man makes the choice about God he wants to make…
GOD CHOSE US IN CHRIST TO BE HOLY AND WITHOUT BLAME…
WHEN YOU BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THE DOCTRINE OF ELECTION, can you also not begin to see how ludicrous it is to believe you can lose your salvation? God chose you from eternity past, before you were born, and yet would allow you to lose your salvation? That does not make common sense, let alone theological sense…
HOW CAN WE NOT BE HUMBLED BY THE DOCTRINE OF ELECTION? Put another way, we should be humbled by the doctrine of election…
I PERSONALLY THANK GOD FOR THE FACT THAT HE IS THE BOSS – NOT I… GOD HEALS IN THE BIBLE, BUT HE DOES NOT HEAL EVERYONE. God loves the world but He does not chosen everyone to be saved. Contrary to what our current culture in America has decided without regard to Bible, not everyone goes to heaven when he or she dies. Salvation is not universal. It is clear and inarguable in Scripture that not all of humanity are chosen. Not everyone will go to heaven, in spite of what the media tell us…
ELECTION IS GOD’S SOVEREIGN CHOICE OF SOME TO BE SAVED, and that is a difficult pill for many people, even Christian people, to swallow…
IT IS ONLY DIFFICULT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF OUR PRIDE… Our human natures (still with us even after salvation) are prideful, and in this they are satanic. Listen to these familiar words of the pride of Satan in Isaiah…
NAS Isaiah 14:13-14 “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14 ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’
IN ORDER TO EMBRACE GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND HIS CHOOSING us, we must humble ourselves. Lord, help us to be humbled this morning in our study of election…
WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO AREN’T CHOSEN? God allows them to chose their own destiny. That is probably the best, most biblical answer. But I wouldn’t deny that straightforward and simply answer does not answer all the perplexing questions our minds naturally manufacture. I humbly point you fist to John 3:16…
NAS John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. 18 “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
PLEASE NOTE THE BOLDENED WORDS WELL. It is the person who does not believe who is judged and damned, the person who knows the truth about God through Christ but rejects that truth…
GOD DOES NOT SEND UNBELIEVERS TO HELL; unbelievers send themselves to hell. “Whosoever believes” in Jesus need not suffer condemnation. God’s love and salvation are always available…
HUMBLY AGAIN, HERE IS HOW I SEE IT… God chooses some in order to build His church. If He didn’t first do this, no one would come to Him of his or her own volition. That’s sad, to be sure, but observably true. Remember Romans 3:11 from earlier?…
NKJ Romans 3:11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.
THE MANDATE THEN GIVEN THE CHOSEN IS TO EVANGELIZE THE UNCHOSEN, to respectfully and compassionately tell the unchosen about the grace of God. The hearts of the unchosen are then convicted by the Holy Spirit and they have the free choice of coming to Christ…
NKJ Romans 10:13 For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”
WHEN UNBELIEVERS COME TO CHRIST AND ARE SAVED, then they may glory in the revelation that they too are chosen. You can be chosen before you are saved. As a matter of fact, all of us here today were chosen before we were saved. It is when one is saved that he or she may know that he is chosen…
WE NEED TO REMEMBER THAT ALTHOUGH NOT ALL ARE CHOSEN, there is nevertheless a universal call or drawing of all mankind…
NAS John 12:32 “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
ESV John 6:37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
NAS 1 Timothy 2:3-4 This (vv. 1-2) is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires (not coerces) all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
GOD CALLS, BUT NOT ALL ANSWER HIS CALL…
ISRAEL WAS CHOSEN OF GOD COLLECTIVELY IN THE O.T.; CHRISTIANS ARE chosen of God individually in the N.T. God did not choose Israel because it was the best nation in the world, and God did not choose us because we were better than other people…
I DON’T KNOW WHY GOD CHOSE ME, other than to believe that He chose me in some way I do not now understand to bring Him glory. We are saved in order to glorify God…
PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!
NO, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT ELECTION. I studied hard all week, and I have studied hard for years, on election, but I do not have all the answers. I don’t believe anyone does but God…
BUT I BELIEVE THE DOCTRINE OF ELECTION BECAUSE IT IS, IN THE BIBLE and I am glad there is a doctrine of election because it makes me feel secure that I am His…
WE DO NOT KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ELECTION… BUT we can know we are elect. We know from the Bible God has chosen us, and we know why He has chosen us: to be holy and blameless in His sight. We know that God has a sovereign right over His creation. We know that His character is perfect, that He is entirely loving and just. We know that He has a rational plan for the world and for us. These facts bring us great comfort. They should inspire us to live lies pleasing in God’s sight…
OUR STUDY TODAY: “CHOSEN BY GOD.” Chosen…. What a tremendous thought! Chosen by God Almighty…
OUR RESPONSE TO ELECTION?… We should humble ourselves beneath His omnipotent, sovereign hand and thank Him profusely and continuously for choosing us – and we should strive to live lives that are “holy and blameless” in His sight…
EPHESIANS 1:3-4 TEACHES US THAT BEING “CHOSEN BY GOD” IS BOTH an awe- inspiring privilege and a responsibility…
GOD’S SOVEREIGN CHOICE AND OUR FREE WILL, the two converging sides of the mountain whose summit is obscured by clouds? I for one don’t worry too much because I don’t have all the answers on how the two seemingly contradictory sides eventually meet…
NAS Isaiah 55:8-11 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. 10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth, And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; 11 So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
I DILIGENTLY STUDY ALL THE TIME AND I ZEALOUSLY STRIVE TO KNOW as much as I can about my dear Lord and His ways, but I am daily full of joy to know what I do know from the Bible is sufficient to instill within me a lasting peace that “passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) and an enduring incomparable love that brings me to my knees in gratitude and adoration. All because of Him! All glory belongs to Him! I don’t have to worry because of Him! I am chosen; my salvation is secure! All because of Him!…
– Professor Thomas A. Rohm
