22 Minutes
In the calling of the chosen is the redemptive design revealed by God
purposefully that there is full legitimacy to the question “who then can be
saved”? God is revealing to us an unbreakable fetter that starts in eternity
past, goes through time, and on into eternity future. This bond is forged by
God Himself, and has five unbreakable links: God foreknows, predestinates,
calls, justifies, and glorifies.
As God's faithful people struggle through difficult times it helps to look back
on the way He has led in the past. When we see His faithfulness and
recognize over and over again that He is in complete control over the affairs
of planet earth, we marvel and feel greater confidence as we look to the
future. Who are the called, the chosen?
We are God's true and loyal followers in every age whose love for Him. We
are committed to Him. We are too strong in the truth and too deep in the faith
to be shaken. God has always had a people, a people called to stand
separate from error and compromise and lies and counterfeits. God has
always had a people, a people chosen to show and tell the world what He is
really like and to defend and proclaim His truth. And God still has a people
standing in an unbroken line of the faithful to every word of God. God has a
called and chosen remnant today. And to His remnant people, God has given
the urgent task of reaching out to the world with His good news of winning
them to Jesus Christ so that when He returns soon to this earth, they will
know Him and be ready to meet him. Who is called? Who is chosen? By
God’s determination you are called to a cause, you are chosen to a purpose.
God makes the choice to chose you. Your being chosen is based on His
choice. The called are not always the chosen, but the chosen hear and
accept the call. Those chosen are those who have humbled themselves and
obeyed through faith the gospel of God. It is God's will to choose those of
faith who follow His commandment of the gospel. We are elected by God on
account of our faith, by His grace.
Israel was selected by God to be God’s witness to the world. Our calling
indicates a relationship with Him.
Deuteronomy 7:6-8
Isaiah 43:10-12
One’s calling is an act of God. And the true blessing is to be called out of the
confusion of erroneous teachings that are so extant in this world into the light
of God’s truth.
John 6:44
I Peter 2:9
To be chosen, a person must accept his or her calling, be grateful for it and
move forward in serving God and His Son. The combined decision by God
to both call and choose His people, indicates these are to hold fast to what
they are taught, whether it came from God’s Word or from one whom God
uses for His glory. These must be and remain obedient to God.
Ephesians 1:13
We have to make a decision after we hear the word of truth. We are to be
obedient to God. We cannot just accept the wonderful calling of God and
continue to live a life following our own desires. We are to be the elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the
Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Being called is to embark on the life changing path to become more and
more like Jesus and to be converted. The called are to play a vital role in
aiding in the saving of humanity from total annihilation in the crisis at the
close of this age. The called-out ones must be spiritually prepared and be
clothed with righteousness.
Job 29:14
I Peter 5:10
It is the will of God to open our minds to His truth. He wants us to remain
faithful to Him after our calling, so that we can be His chosen, His elect. There
must be an effectual calling based upon truth. There is a calling that is a
general appeal.
Matthew 22:13, 14
Romans 8:29, 30
John 11:43
And the dead man was given life by the call. The call creates the obedience,
the call creates the life, and, the called will be glorified. It is true that Jesus
died for all people and all people have the ability to choose out of their own
free will whether or not they will accept God’s grace, God’s calling and be
saved. Yet, on the other hand, it is also true that there is a sense in which
each person is predestined. God has determined to place each person He
will create into a unique circumstance in history. By placing each person into
certain circumstances and knowing how each person will freely choose in
those circumstances, one could say that God “predestines” those who are
“elect.” Is God’s Sovereignty to be questioned? God purposefully orders the
world so that, by the end of human history, as many people as possible are
placed into circumstances in which they will freely choose to be saved. God
orders the world the way He does for good reasons. And God knows that
everyone who is lost is a person who would reject God and be lost under any
circumstances. Predestination applies to each individual individually
responding to God’s necessary grace by their personal response in faith.
Here is the beautiful approach to being the called, the chosen...God
foreknew. He did not know something about particular people chosen, He
knows them in the individually equivalency as of living out their entire life in
Him. Is their faith the cause or the results of their being chosen? All are not
foreknown by God in the sense spoken of. Jesus saying “I never knew you”
was because he knew the choices you’d make to foster an evil character so
as not to be regarded as an object of his favor. Few are called according to
God’s purpose. These are His. God needs no other compelling reason to
differentiate what is presupposed. Foresight of faith is in accord with every
determinative action of God. It is not the foresight of difference but the
foreknowledge that makes the difference to exist, not a foresight that
recognizes existence, but the foreknowledge that determines existence. It is
a sovereign distinguishing love.
Amos 3:1, 2
These are qualified in the mind of God to be conformed to the image of
Christ. God knowing particular individuals, it often means that He has special
regard for them, that they are the objects of His affection and concern. God
had a special regard for Jeremiah before he was in the womb. Now with this
God shares His determining power. And determining power can bring you to
salvation. The faith that God gives is the effectual limiting of the number
chosen. Understand what trust in God means. God does not in the spiritual
content decide who will be saved. He rather refers to the destiny appointed
for those who are chosen. He unconditionally sets His favor on whom He
will, then, He destines them for their role in life. It is in His chosen that aims
at and secures the end which God must have in order to be God and the end
which we must have in order to be the preeminent glorification of Christ.
II Timothy 1:9
Believers are chosen in grace before the eons, before sin, before creation
and before any decision. This great faith and confidence in the sovereign
God is gratuitously granted to some now without cause except that it is God’s
choice beforehand according to what pleases Him to accomplish His
purpose. Foreknowledge and the human will are propositions of faith. God’s
foreknowledge is not in time. And God knows the truth of every event before
it occurs. This is where human will intersect God’s foreknowledge. The will
carries maximal causal force due to the necessity that we must make
choices. But the truth or the falsity of that choice is in knowing the past, yet
the sufficiency of that choice is in knowing that God knows what is going to
happen. This is “the ordering of the times”. There is no changing truth about
where the future is headed. Faith fills the gap between divine knowledge and
human will. God knows of all the evidence and other knowledge-conferring
factors that human beings are aware of in all situations. God’s knowledge
makes present all future contingents in the same way that our discernment
can know them. Circularly, God knows. He knew whether our every choice
would lack truth or accommodate His determined future.
Too many misrepresent God’s knowledge because they wrap God in time.
God is not in time and God has no temporal properties. All temporal events
are before the mind of God at once. To say “at once” is to think of the whole
of reality as being before God’s mind in a single presence. It is a presence
in which God has a single complete grasp of all events in the entire span of
time. God knows who His are because God sees who His are in the faith of
their doings. God’s presence to each and every moment of time is compared
to the way in which the center of a circle is present to each and every point
on its circumference. God is the very center and the circumference of all
creation. This is why and how free will is never threatened. This is why and
how God knows those who are His. We are in Christ’s infallible
foreknowledge and the freedom of his created will is in us. It is as though we
are choosing to be chosen by our faith in Christ. And in that truth there is no
accidental necessity. We are God’s foreloved. Understood to be equivalent
to those who are the objects of God’s love, marked out for salvation.
God’s forelove is in agreement with the efficient and determining action
which is so conspicuous in every other link of the chain; it is God who
predestinates, it is God who calls, it is God who justifies, and it is He who
glorifies. Foreknowledge, with reference to God, connotes foreordination.
The doctrine of election affirms that God chose those whom He would save.
It also occurs in the same kind of construction and where the thought of
election is manifestly present. The doctrine of election affirms that for
purposes known only to Himself God chose those whom He would save. He
did not choose them because of anything about them but for His own “good
pleasure”. Election is grounded in foreseen faith. This is a divine initiative by
God, not a response. Election is according to grace, the outworking of His
purpose.
Romans 9:11
II Peter 1:10
Romans 11:5, 7, 28
On one level we respond to the call of Christ and in that sense “chose” him.
What the word plainly indicates is that it was not, in fact, our choice of him
that determined his choice of us; it was, rather, his choice of us that
determined our choice of him. Sovereign election comes first.
John 15:16
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