1.
Predestination/Election
As you sit reading
this, think of all of the countless coincidences and decisions that have led
you to be who you are and where you are. Even your conception at the beginning
of life was unimaginably improbable – what were the chances of your parents
meeting and that you would be the result! (That’s to say nothing of the
improbability of their being this kind of universe with life in it!) Are you
the result of happenstance? If you are
reading this as a Christian, why are you a Christian? There are basically two
answers:
Firstly, people
did it!
“I’m a Christian
because my family, those around me, my culture influenced me in that direction.”
Or “I’m a Christian because I examined
the evidence or had an experience that convinced me that it was true...” Both of
these are emphasise the place of people influencing or deciding; they presume
that one has some sort of capacity or moral ‘goodness’ so as to be able to make
a decision to believe and follow Jesus. It treats Christianity as any other
choice, like: do you want an ice cream?
This brings me to the second response
to why you might be a Christian,
Secondly,
God did it!
Christianity is
not a primarily an intellectual choice! It is God raising one from spiritual
death. We are dead and repulsed by God ruling us and so it takes the gracious
imposition of God the Holy Spirit on our hearts in order to be a Christian!
A couple of great quotes
‘Election is an act of God before
creation in which he chooses some people to be saved, not on account of any
foreseen merit in them, but only because of his sovereign good pleasure.’
(Wayne Grudem)
‘Election may be defined as
that eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on
account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of men to be the
recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.’ (Berkhoff, theology,
Page 114)
To memorise and meditate upon
Romans 8:30 ‘Those he predestined, he also called; those he called,
he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.’
Ephesians 1:4-5 ‘For he chose us in him before the creation of the
world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus
Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.’
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