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 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 that 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
Jesus 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 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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