SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/27/2018 12:16 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Method—Election”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
1:4-6a
Message of the verses: “4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind
intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace,”
In
our last SD when we began to look at “The Method—Election” I forgot to mention
that this is the first sub-section under the main section entitled “The
Elements of the Eternal Forming of the Body.”
This first sub-section is a fairly long section and so it may take us a
little while to get through it.
I
promised to talk about free will in this SD and so that we will try and better
understand what this is all about. When
Adam and Eve fell as we spoke of in our last SD that plunged the entire world
into a great problem, and that problem is sin.
Why do people sin? Well people
sin because, as a friend of mine once said, “they are born wrong.” We are all born wrong in that we are all born
sinners and because we are born sinners we sin.
Sinners can only sin unless they receive the salvation that Jesus
provided on the cross, so sinners only have the free will to do sinful
things. In our last SD we began to learn
about election, that in eternity past we were elected by God and that the Holy
Spirit of God gives an effectual call to those that God chose in eternity past
and that Jesus came and died for. Some
think that this is “unfair” of God to do this, and yet it does not go against
any of God’s attributes. Let me talk
about Judas who was the one who betrayed our Lord in the garden. Jesus knew that this was going to happen
because it was prophesized in the OT that this would happen. Some may think that this was also unfair, and
yet this was not only prophesized, but it was the desire of the heart of Judas
to do this act. The same is true to all
those who turn down the salvation that Jesus has provided for them, in their
heart they do not want anything to do with it.
So does man have a free will?
John MacArthur writes “Although man’s will is not free in the sense that
many people suppose, he does have a will, a will that Scripture clearly
recognizes. Apart from God, man’s will
is captive to sin. But he is nevertheless able to
choose God because God has made that choice possible. Jesus said that whoever believes in Him will
not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16) and that ‘everyone who lives and
believes in Me shall never die’ (11:26).
The frequent commands to the unsaved to respond to the Lord (e. g., Josh
25:15; Isa. 55:1; Matt. 3:1-2; 4:17; 11:28-30; John 5:40; 6:37; 7:37-39; Rev.
22:17) clearly indicate the responsibility of man to exercise his own will.
“Yet
the Bible is just as clear that no person receives Jesus Christ as Savior who
has not been chosen by God (cf. Rom. 8:29; 9:11; 1 Thess. 1:3-4; 1 Pet.
1:2). Jesus gives both truths in one
verse in the gospel of John: ‘All that
the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will
certainly not cast out’ (John 6:37).
“God’s
sovereign election and man’s exercise of responsibility in choosing Jesus
Christ seem opposite and irreconcilable truths—and from our limited human
perspective they are opposite and irreconcilable. That is why so many earnest, well-meaning
Christians throughout the history of the church have floundered trying to
reconcile them. Since the problem cannot
be resolved by our finite minds, the result is always to compromise one truth
in favor of the other or to weaken both by trying to take a position somewhere
between them.
“We
should let the antimony remain; believing both truths completely and leaving the harmonizing of them go
God.
“Eklego (chose) is here in the aorist
tense and the middle voice, indicating God’s totally independent choice. Because the verb is reflexive it signifies
that God not only chose by Himself but for Himself. His primary purpose in electing the church was the praise of His glory
(vv. 6, 12). Believers were chosen for the
Lord’s glory before they were chosen for their own good. The very reason for calling out believers
into the church was that ‘the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known
through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places’
(3:10).”
Now
I realize that this is a rather long quote, but the reason that I am attaching
this to this SD is so that we can begin to understand what is the truth
concerning election and so that is my desire in quoting it. I want people who read these Spiritual
Diaries to understand the truth of Scripture, and although I am not saying that
I have the answers to all of the difficult questions that are in Scripture, I
do the best that I can to put out what I believe is the truth and I know that
some may not agree with me but that is not up to me. I can say that I love to study the Word of
God and as mentioned it is important, very important to me to make sure what I
write is truth so that the Holy Spirit can use what I write to bring glory to
the Lord Jesus Christ, for if it were not for the fact that Christ saved me,
and that the Holy Spirit lives within me that I would have no interest in
writing what I write.
In
our next SD I want to begin by talking about Israel who was God’s elect.
Spiritual meaning for my life: I am thankful for God’s “longsuffering” that
has been demonstrated in my life as it took me a fairly long while to begin to
understand what I understand now about man’s free will and God’s election. No human being understands all of this but
both are taught and so I must believe them both and leave the difficult part to
God. Perhaps I will find out all there
is to know about it when the Lord takes me to heaven, until now I will continue
to trust what the Lord has taught me about both.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to trust the Lord to teach me from
His Word and understand it better.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “He was taken up and a cloud
received Him out of their sight (Acts 1:9).
Today’s Bible question: “Who said “Repent ye: for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand?” (Two People)
Answer in our next SD.
10/27/2018 12:53 PM
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