Chosen

  • Jake Chambers
  • Feb 7, 2010
  • Series: SDSU

Chosen

Ephesians 1

 

Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him

 

We continue on in our exploration of Ephesians. Last week we looked at verse three and we studied it through the lens of verses eleven through fourteen. This section of scripture is a lofty, God-centered, doctrinally rich, and profound section. We looked at some of it as a whole last week so we would have a clearer picture of the magnitude of God. Why he is blessed and how the gospel flows out of his blessed character... It is important for us to look at these eleven verses together so we do not lose the mosaic of the gospel. But as we continue it will be good for us to take a God-centered look at some of the smaller tiles that make up this larger mosaic. We want to marvel at the beauty of each tile that points to God and the gospel and do this without losing awe of the entire mosaic. Another way to look at it is like a white-hot light shining through a prism. We are examining the light of the gospel through a prism so we can marvel at the multiple colors and shades that make up this light. So today in verse four we will be looking at one of these colors and tiles!

 

1:4a even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

 

Right out of the gate we see that God chose us. What we see here is unconditional election or the doctrine of election. A beautiful doctrine that points to God’s grace and his goodness that he would choose us without any merit of our own. This is the prism and tile we will try to examine closer today. We must confess before we examine the mysteries, questions, and objections to this doctrine that this is impossible for us to fully grasp. How God chooses us before the foundation of the world will never really be grasped by us, just as we cannot grasp an infinite, eternal God who creates something from nothing. I want to confess my inability to even fully explain this doctrine to you today. Some of the greatest minds have studied, debated and wrestled with the doctrine of election and there are areas of it that are still a mystery. Today we will try to answer some of the questions surrounding this prism of the gospel, examine our own hearts in relation to this prism and then worship the God who embodies and gives us the whole gospel, including all of the beauty of election.

 

I also want us to start with repentance as a community. For those who, in pride, may walk in arrogance regarding their grasp of election, I call you to repent. It is foolish to think that you fully grasp this, and if you are arrogant over your understanding of it, you only illuminate how little you understand the doctrine - since in its very form it is a doctrine that says nothing you have done has allowed you to understand it. So repent of your pride. For those who have bitterness when hearing the term doctrine or election, perhaps because you have seen those terms wrongly used, causing division or arrogance. I ask you to forgive those who sinned against you, and to forgive sinners who take knowledge and use it for pride. I apologize for the church and academia who have polluted something as beautiful and precious as doctrine, election and the gospel. I also ask you to repent of being close-minded, to hear what God says about choice, free will and election.

 

Deuteronomy 7:6 – 8 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

 

Isaiah 45:4 For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I name you, though you do not know me.

 

Malachi 1:2-3 ….Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated…”

 

Matthew 22:14 For many are called but few are chosen.

 

Mark 13:20 And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.

 

John 6:37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

 

John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you…

 

John 15:19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

 

1 Corinthians 1:26-29 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

 

1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

 

1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.

 

Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

 

This verse is saying that it is all by God’s will and doing and choosing that we belong to him. It is saying that God chose us before the foundation of the world that he chose us before without us doing anything or having any say in the matter. This is grace. It is a color in the prism that further illuminates grace. The gospel is always about God. It is about God and who he is and what he has done and what he is doing. It is not about us it is about God and we get to be a part of it because he is that kind of God. Grace is getting a gift we have not earned. Being chosen to receive grace before we even existed is a powerful reminder of how we have done nothing to earn it.

 

I want to address a few objections and questions regarding the doctrine of election. That God chooses some and not others.

  1. How can I not have a say in my salvation?

  2. What about free will?

  3. This is not fair

Universities today will hound students with teaching that ethnocentrism is wrong. This is the view that one's ethnicity or culture is dominant, right, and the center of the world. And it is good that they teach this. But we must confess that we have an anthropocentric world view - a view that is equally disturbed and more rampantly prevalent. This is the man-centered view that places “me” as the center, judge and God. Look back at our verse. God is God-centered. The bible is God-centered from beginning to end, so we will never be able to understand it, worship the author of it or be transformed by it, if we hold to an anthropocentric view of a Theo-centric book.

 

Look at these questions. “How can I not have a say in my salvation?” What is really being said here is, how can I not have the final say in my salvation? How am I not in charge of this decision? Why am I not God? Right? If I have a man-centered view then I should be the ultimate decider in my salvation.

 

We have never had any say in anything that God is doing. We have to realize the ridiculousness with which we question God. We did not have a say in when we were conceived, where we were conceived, who our parents are, we did not have a say in creation and when the world will be created or ended, we do not have a say in Christ being rose from the dead, we have no power to have a say in any of these things and yet we think we have the power to have a say in our salvation. We had no say in whether or not we would even exist because we are not God! God chooses whom he saves and whom he brings to life. If you are drowning you don’t choose who swims to you and rescues you. You don’t even have a choice of whether or not they use an inner tube, boat, hook or swim out to you. You are lucky if you can cry out for help. Not only that but when you are drowning if you try and save yourself by flailing you actually are working against those that are trying to save you. They have to wait until you relax before they can pull you out, or wait until you start to go under, or punch you in the face to knock you out, and then they can save you.

 

I want us to look at the whole of scripture and stop flailing against the doctrine of election and flailing against grace, trying to choose ourselves or save ourselves and instead to fall into this doctrine and let God rescue you by his will. We have to see things as God-centered and repent of our man-centered view. I am not the center of the universe, the world does not revolve around me, it revolves around God. God is the center of the universe.

 

Look at the rest of this verse, that we should be holy and blameless before him. This is a vehemently Theo-centric view. There is something inside us that wars against this with every fiber of our being. You see this is not what we choose in our free will. We do not choose to make ourselves holy and blameless before him. We choose momentary happiness. We choose what we think will make us happy. What I want, when I want it, where I want it and I want it now. God chooses to make us holy and blameless. He chooses sanctification. We stand across from God who has asked us to choose to be good, right and holy and we say “hell no” and choose our own way. The bible talks of us having a sinful nature. This is where we get to that free will question. We have the freedom to choose, but since we war against being good, right and holy, what we choose is not what God chooses. We do not choose holiness and blamelessness. We do not choose to be made into that. We are too man-centered for that. Our very nature rebels against the one in charge, thinking “we as man should be god.” This is pride. This is the mother of all sins and is what got Satan kicked out of heaven, and Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden. My sinful nature and free will would choose me to be God 10 times out of 10. If we are honest we know it is in our nature to think we should be our own gods and would make the best gods. We choose it in our lives when we decide not to listen to God about what is right, good and holy, but decide we know what will make us happy because we believe we are god. When God chooses us he gives us a new nature, a nature that both acknowledges God as God and desires God to be God over our lives. So yes, we have free will and are free to choose what we want, but what we want is to be God. It takes God’s divine intervention by the Holy Spirit to change our hearts to want him to be God.

 

Consider a lion. If you took a huge bowl of oatmeal and covered it with honey and sugar and put it in a lions cage and you also placed in that lions cage a slab of meat ... the lion, in his own free will, will choose the meat a thousand out of a thousand times. A zoologist will tell you that a lion is perfectly capable of choosing the oatmeal. He has mouth, teeth, and a tongue that could help him eat it. But it is in his nature to want meat. We are like that lion. We have the free will and capability to choose to worship God with all of our life and decisions. We have free will to choose to be holy and blameless before him, but it is in our nature to choose sin, selfishness and rebellion, so we worship ourselves instead of him. The beauty of election is that God comes and changes our nature. We are now hungry for oatmeal. We are now hungry to be made holy and blameless before him. He has chosen to change our nature.

 

This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that some are chosen for heaven and eternal life and some are not. There are a lot of questions that branch off this “isn’t fair” question that are legitimate questions. How can God allow evil? Why sin in the first place? And how can he choose some for hell? How is election fair? Again I think we need to confess some of this as a mystery ... and when we are struggling with one attribute of God we lean on the other attributes. We know from last week that God is loving, sovereign, rich in grace, holy and blameless. We know he is without blame. He is a just, holy and perfect God and we need to make sure we rest in that, and believe that when we struggle with understanding his ways. God is good and just.

 

Having questions is good. It is good to wrestle through things and ask tough questions but we must believe the gospel and not become questioning. We are so quick to put God on the docket and question him. This is us trying to be God, this is our man-centeredness coming through. We make ourselves the judge and tell God what to do. The world we live in is so anthropocentric that we will believe in God only after he passes our quiz, or becomes a god that is centered on us. We think we should be God. Repent. Like Martin Luther said “Let God be God.” Some people say that when we get to heaven we will get to ask God all of our questions. As if heaven is filled with a bunch of people testing, quizzing and questioning God. That is such a ridiculously man-centered, small view of God. We don’t see that in scripture. Our picture of heaven is not questioning God: it is Revelation 19:1-5.

 

Revelation 18 is all about the utter destruction and judgment of the city of Babylon. In Revelation 19 we do not see the saints asking God what he is doing and why he is doing it or telling him it is not fair. Why not save some in that city, why torment forever and ever? No way. They worship God and give him the glory. They don’t judge him, they worship him. Remember Revelation 4. The elders with their crowns ... what do they do when they see Jesus on the throne? They fall on their face and cast him their crowns. This is what we will do. We will worship the perfect, righteous judge forever and ever. Be careful you are not questioning and wanting to be God in your questions. It will not be you on the judgment seat questioning God in the end, rather, it will be God in the judgment seat questioning you.

 

The reason we question if this is fair or not is that we believe we have the right to grace and mercy. We have the right to be chosen. How silly is this? No one in America can commit a crime and go to the judge and demand mercy. Mercy is not their right. We tell God he is a good God only if he gives us mercy. But a good judge is not one who lets crime go unpunished and gives everyone mercy. A good judge sentences with the appropriate judgment. We can plea for mercy but we certainly cannot demand it and certainly cannot say God is unfair if he does not grant it. We must realize the crime we have committed. We have sinned against an infinite and eternal God so our punishment's value must be infinite and eternal. What is fair would be eternal and infinite consequences. This is our right - that is what is fair. In order for the judge to let us off and still be just, someone would have to take our place. Jesus is a perfect, infinite and eternal being, so his death is of equal value to our offense.

 

Want to ask a question about fairness? Want to ask a question that should wreck your mind? Why would God choose to save even one human being if he knew it would mean killing his own son? This is unbelievable. God knows the cost of choosing one of us for salvation and maintaining his just character, and yet he chooses some for salvation anyhow. Incredible!

 

And God does make this choice. He chooses a people to be holy and blameless before him. Why? So we can be holy and blameless before the world. Just as he chose Israel to be his nation to show his glory we are now his chosen nation. To show the world his glory, to be lights to the world. This is a missional doctrine. God does not save a people to be a Christian bubble but to shine forth his glory and invite others in. No one chooses God, but God has chosen some. This is our motivation for mission: there are some out their that will respond to gospel word, gospel love, and gospel life. Without a new nature, none would ever choose the way of the cross.

 

I want to go back to the first question about having a say in your salvation. The doctrine of election, if misunderstood, can seem scary because we always wonder if we are chosen. But look how comforting it is in John 6:37. How do you know if you are chosen? You have a new nature that wants to come to him. You want to be saved so you come. You would not want Jesus without this new nature. Take comfort. I invite you today to come to him. Maybe you don’t feel holy and blameless, but you are in his eyes, and he is not finished with you. Feed your new desire to become holy and blameless, and feed your new desire to be holy and blameless before the world.

 

The doctrine of election is beautiful because it is the doctrine of the Old Testament, Jesus, Peter, Paul and John. It is beautiful because it is a truth. And it is beautiful because our salvation is not in our own hands. If you ask yourself why you are saved and you come up with any sort of “because I” response, you are missing out on the gospel. The gospel is not “because I” it is always “because He!” Never “because I am good, because I chose Jesus, because I go to church, because I am nice,” rather, always because “Jesus is good, because Jesus chose his church, because Jesus defeated sin and death, because God is love.” Amen. A gospel that has us taking any part in our salvation is not the gospel. The doctrine of election is beautiful in that it is a Theo-centric doctrine that radically humbles man and exalts God.

 

Rejoice in the God who chose you, loved you and brought you to him self. Humble your self and repent of your anthropocentric mind. Praise God, who chooses to make the unholy and blamed holy and blameless. Rejoice that he has chosen us, even when it meant death to the one he loved most. And finally let us live God-centered, holy and blameless lives amongst the world, pointing to God so he could receive glory for all he has done and is doing for his church. After all, this is what we have been chosen to do. Amen.

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