Elect in Christ - Evangelical Caucus/Devotional

Gracetoyou.org ^ | John MacArthur, Grace Community Church

[metmom]

"You are a chosen race" (1 Pet. 2:9).

Election is the spiritual privilege from which all others flow.

Unlike those who are destined to destruction because of their rejection of Christ (1 Pet. 2:8), Christians are an elect race of people, bound together by God's redeeming grace. That's cause for great celebration!

First Peter 2:9 is an allusion to Deuteronomy 7:6-9, which says, "You are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God."

Like Israel, the church is the redeemed community of God, "chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit" (1 Pet. 1:1- 2). Before the foundation of the world, God placed His love on you, then brought you into His kingdom by granting you saving grace. That's the doctrine of election.

Many people misunderstand election, but it's a wonderful doctrine that brings marvelous benefits. It exalts God by demonstrating His love and grace toward miserable sinners. It eliminates pride by affirming that you are totally dependent on God's grace. It should promote such gratitude in your heart that you long to live in holiness and serve Him at any price. It should also give you joy and strength, knowing that God will never let you go and His purposes will be accomplished in you. You can face any challenge with utmost confidence in His provisions.

Rejoice in your election. Worship God and yield to His Spirit's leading so His choice of you will be evident to all who know you.

Suggestions for Prayer

-What has the spiritual privilege of being chosen by God meant in your life? Express your answer to God in prayer, thanking Him for His wondrous grace.

For Further Study

-Read Romans 5. What benefits of election does Paul mention?

[metmom]

Studying God’s Word ping

[Scrambler Bob]

... It (election) eliminates pride by affirming that you are totally dependent on God’s grace. It should promote such gratitude in your heart that you long to live in holiness and serve Him at any price. It should also give you joy and strength, knowing that God will never let you go and His purposes will be accomplished in you.

= = =

I don’t quite follow this. First, I am dependent on God’s grace. Then I should long to live in holiness. Then God will never let me go.

So, if God has chosen me, can I get out of that, and how?

If I can’t get out what if I don’t long to live in holiness?

If I want out does that mean He never chose me in the first place?

I believe I have the will to choose, and my continuing to choose Him/Jesus leads to Him not letting me go, and Him accomplishing His purpose in me (the purpose He forknew for me as He forknew I would choose Him).

Maybe John and I do not agree on this. Any thoughts?

[kosciusko51]

I offer up the following link for explanation. It may be helpful or not.

https://www.apuritansmind.com/westminster-standards/chapter-3/

[metmom]

The verse about those God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His son, is often taken to mean that God chooses to save some and chooses to not save others.

But it can also read that those God knew would respond to His offer of salvation, He decided to save instead of sending them to hell.

I don’t know if that distinction makes sense to you or not.

[Scrambler Bob]

Yes, I get the difference.

I go with the second.

[metmom]

That’s my option as well.

IMO, it fits better what what God has revealed His character to be like in Scripture.

[Scrambler Bob]

I believe He created us with a will so we could choose or not choose Him.

Those who do, are not robots, but love and worship Him freely and He is not making them do that. If He did, that would be meaningless.

[imardmd1]

Jehovah Elohim, in His creating an expansion of his authority and power, has reserved a corporation called in the KJV tramslation, "the Church Of The Firstborn" (εκκλησια πρωτοτοκων), to which the entire Body of regenerated Spirit-born Company of The Committed is predestined to be transported at the moment of the "Snatching away all together" (αμα συν αυτοις αρπαγησομεθα) instantaneously, their spiritual bodies then joined with their individual spirits which had been made righteous, each one having sovereignly decided (elected) to receive God's gracious offer to give eternal life to such ones that have been fully persuaded, completely irreversibly confident on the basis of the Person, Work, and Shed Blood of The Solely God-Begotten-in-Human-Flesh Son, Redeemer, Purchaser, Proprietor, Master, Brother, and Friend of the condemned sin-infected human.

Each individual thus willing to be adopted by The Heavenly Father has made the only non-meritorious transactional decision based on The Father's unearned but wholly effective freely offered promise to any reasonable human, thus becoming His heavenly spiritual Child and therefore by inheritance a Citizen of the Savior's Kingdom, separated from earthly population of humans, set apart for the purpose of training into obedient service to their King.

That decision, that "election," was based not on their sin-bent fallible reasoning power alone, but through the conjoint logical process together as invited by Jehovah and guided with infallible certainty, with a promised outcome:

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: 
But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. ?
(Isaiah 1:18-20 AV)

=========

"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. 
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written,

How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

  But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias^(Isaiah) saith,

Lord, who hath believed our report? 

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
(Romans 10:13-17 AV)

By making not animals, but humankind in Their Image, having imparted the spirit of life into the inert but perfectly made human body, He also gave the perpetuation of that self-reproducing image the inner sovereignty over much of one's self, especially over the process of making decisions regarding opinions that effect thoughtful behaviors, but not sovereignty over the external spirit or temporal realms. Without that inner sovereignty the created individual cannot exhibit God's love to Him or to others.

When that sovereignty was exercised in such a way contrary to the will of Jehovah, depravity was the attitude, manifested in the process of sinning, with the final result of death of one's life, as well as other relationships and processes.

But depravity, usually not being naked like unreasonable and fierceness in animals, but rather is masked by good intentions/ Its presence may be hard to discern in process as happened to Eve; especially when its subtilty involves occasions when temporary goodness happens is sensed by its perpetrator.

Now, one must admit that such a situation also must permit for some of the reasoning that led to those ends is not totally depraved reasoning, therefore hearing and ingesting the Words of God and responding opens the two-way avenue of reasoning with those Words must be brought to a decision-making event that is not totally depraved, an event that when faced with absolute facts and living immutable truths, any person exercising the inner sovereignty over one's state of mind can effect the change of mind, which is repentance, a change from pursuit of depraved behavior toward Communion with God, despising one's inborn depravity. As Job became totally convinced of his disability and of Jehovah's righteous goodness, in repentance he confessed to Him:

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
  \And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite,

My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.
(Job 42:5-7 AB)

When this happens, The Mighty God is faithful and righteous to cleanse one from ALL unrighteousness, administering the cancelling Blood of Christ, and in that ever-increasing state of personal confidence in the faithfulness of Jesus Messiah, blessed with the promise of everlasting spiritual life and love that employs one's inner sovereignty that prefers God and good above self and others unreservedly.

True Godly reasoning, with Jehovah Elohim involved, is open to all, not to merely some, where God would have had to deprive one's ability to choose the convicting Better Way.

I believe that the Spiritually convinced human can elect to euther agree wholehearted with the transaction offered by God, or not.

No one, not me, not Saan, not even God, can abrogate that personal inner sovereignty to be accountable for that life-affirming life-terminating personal choice.