Elected Strangers
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Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ: To the temporary residents dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and set apart by the Spirit for obedience and for sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
How many of us would have made different choices if we had known what the future held in store for us? If we could have known back then, what we know today, what would we have done different? There are many times when I wish I had the power of omniscience, being able to know all-things, even the future, called foreknowledge. I believe this because I am tempted to believe that I would then make the right or proper choices to have what I deem as the ideal life.
It’s like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day. Bill plays a cynical television weather reporter named Phil Conners, who is annoyed with having to cover the annual Groundhog Day announcement and festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Being forced by a blizzard to stay in Punxsutawney, after having exhausted every option to escape, Phil, and his mobile broadcasting crew, stay the night. Low and behold, Phil wakes up in the same Inn, to the same song, to the same day, the very next day, and the next, and the next, etc… Phil is stuck in a time loop. Phil has fun with it at first, realizing there are no longterm consequences to his actions, but then realizes he may never get out of the time loop. Depression and desperation set in brining Phil to take his own life in inventive ways. A transformation begins to happen in Phil from being cynical and self-centered to loving, compassionate and self-giving. Eventually, the time loop ends, as Phil’s transformation is complete, he wins the girls heart, Rita (Andie MacDowell), and they live happily everafter in Punxsutawney.
The question is: what would you do with the ability of foreknowledge, knowing what would happen in the future before it happens? What would your reaction be to preordained events -people, places and things? Would we use “future-knowledge” to make things better for ourselves - take advantage of persons, places and things or for others? or both? I would have changed my future in a second from experiencing seven father-figures, 2 foster homes and moving from city to city, province to province, experienceing 17 schools in 12 years. I would have given my mom all the treasures in the world so that she would have avoided jail and sedated her desire for the shinny things of this world. But the world is not enough to satisfy the hearts of men, when it is a God-shaped whole.
The truth is, I would have probably done more harm than good. What would I have needed God for, or sought God, if I had all I needed and wanted? Why would I care and love others if everything I wanted could and would be mine? How would I become a better person without the loom of trial, testing and failure? How would I become strong in person and character without having to endure, persevere and suffer pain? How would I come to understand and know true love without having to pursue it? Why would I care at all about others, about anything, other than myself, if I could not suffer consequences or unexpected rewards or appreciation? The Apostle James, who went through many a trial, states:
Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
The Apostle Paul, who also was no stranger to trial and trouble, pain and toil, proclaims,
And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope.
Jesus said that He was going to the Father, “so that the world may know that I love the Father. Just as the Father commanded Me, so I do.” (John 14:31). Jesus suffered so that the world would know that He loved the Father. Do we endure suffering, for our children, so that our children know that we love the Father? Do we endure suffering, so that the world will know that we love Jesus and take notice?
What we believe to be truth is a lie. If we were King of the World, the world would be enough. Why? because man’s hearts are evil above all things, there would always be someone else with the same dream trying to dispose you and I for their dream because we cannot handle the choice between doing good and doing evil. We cannot handle free will. This was proven in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve brought the sin of curse and death upon all creation because they could not handle the temptation of choosing to be satisfied with being children of the King, instead of being King. Are you and I able to make the moral choice to be righteous all the time? Do we have the moral ability to do right all the time? No, if so we would be God. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
The fisherman Peter, upon His testimony, Jesus proclaimed he would build His church, boldly proclaimed the moral ability to make the right choice and live it out when he told Jesus that he would never foresake Him (Mt. 26:35). He failed miserably, denying Jesus three times, just as Jesus said he would (Mt. 26:31; 69-75). Peter denied his own nature, fallen and weak, as each man and woman is in the clutches of the curse of sin and death. We want to be a free moral agent denying the soverignty of God, the rule of God, even though we have been made and choosen by God (1 Peter 1:1-2; Gen. 1:27).
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ: To the temporary residents dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and set apart by the Spirit for obedience and for sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.
Choosen By God - the Doctrine of Election
Peter is writing to the Christian Community of Jews, Gentiles and recent converts from paganism. These are the “temporary residents” or “strangers” scattered in a foreign Roman land where Roman and pagan god’s are worshiped. Nero has burned and destroyed three districts of the city of Rome and blamed the deed on the young Christian church there (A.D. 64). Nero’s persecution has driven the Christian community to hide and flee Rome to the surrounding cities and towns in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia (v.1). Peter writes to the scared church community, to encourage and affirm that this affliction, time of trouble and persecution, is of God, that they are chosen by God and set apart, in this, for God, to be obedient in this affliction, according to God’s foreknowledge, the Spirit and to be sanctified by the blood of Jesus (v.1-2).
How does my free will to choose, coinside with God’s choice of election (predestination)?
As God is unchanging in His nature and character, we know that God is the same today, as yesterday, as He will be tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8). Meaning that, just as the Christian church was chosen and set apart, according to the foreknowledge and Spirit of God yesterday, we are so today, for obedience and for suffering to the glory of Jesus. Meaning, I have been chosen and set apart, as a believer and follower of Christ, by God’s will and wisdom, to be His, through loving obedience and suffering for the glory of Christ Jesus. I go through, and have went through, everything that I have as a kid, teenager and adult by the forknowledge and forordained choosing, by God, for obedience to and the suffering glory of Christ. God knew before hand, orchastrated and allowed what I would go through and deal with, good and bad, for my obedience to, and right-ness to and for the glory of Christ.
Simply...Everything that is, that was, that will be is known and willed by God. What God decrees is what He has decided. This is what foreknowledge and forordination is. Election is being choosen (foreordained, predestined) by God, set apart by Him, for Him and His purpose(s). Jesus was...
Though He was delivered up according to God’s determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail Him to a cross and kill Him. God raised Him up, ending the pains of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.
The Bible records in John 6:64-65 that Jesus knows from the beginning who would believe in Him and who would betray Him.
But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who would not believe and the one who would betray Him.) He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted to him by the Father.”
If man can only come to Jesus, by the permission, or drawing of the Father, how is this free will for man? Seems like the roulette table is already rigged by the house. The key word is “can”. No one can come to Jesus on their own, but one may come to Jesus, if granted, or drawn by the Father. May suggests permission, can suggests the ability to do so. No one has the ‘moral ability’ to come to the Father on their own because we all have sinned, are dirty, and unable to pay the debt required to satisfy God’s wrath because we rebelled against Him. But we may come to the Father, through Jesus, because of His perfect life and sacrfice, to satisfy the wrath and requirements of God and His law. We are to be spotless perfection before Him.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance. But as the One who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.
Man is incapable, by one’s own free will, to come to God because our internal hardrive has been corrupted, our hearts, as the Apostle Paul has said (Romans 3:23). Meaning, we have the inability to make the God-choice without being drawn by God Himself; the Holy Spirit’s work. Why? Because all of creation was subject to futility and corruption. Our hearts lead us astray and that is why Jesus did entrust himself to men, because they would lead Him astray (John 2:24-25).
For the creation was subjected to futility —not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it —in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.
Jesus, however, would not entrust Himself to them, since He knew them all and because He did not need anyone to testify about man; for He Himself knew what was in man.
Man, tends to believe that free will equals a free choice, free from corruption, intent, pre-determinism. That free will equals free choice spontaneously without conditions of prejudice. This is the humanist view of free will. If free will is free choice without influence, then how does anything matter if it is just spontaneous? How does anything have meaning? How do you have purpose in anything you say or do? My life becomes dictated by “impulses”. If so, then our God is a god of impulses, because the Bible says we are made in His image - physically, spiritually and emotionally (Gen. 1:27). We know God is a God of order, not chaos therefore not of impulses (1 Cor. 14:33). Meaning He is a God of purpose and plan.
For I know the plans I have for you” —this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.
Do we live our lives without a purpose or a plan? God has a purpose and plan for us: to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus. He wants to give us hope, peace, love and a real future with Him, even through suffering of trial and testing. Joseph knew that God had a plan for His life, even in the midst of the suffering and the pain of His brothers foresaking him and selling him into slavery (Gen 50:19-20). Joseph trusted God.
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people. Therefore don’t be afraid. I will take care of you and your little ones.” And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
Is it possible for man to make a pure, right choice without a cause, motivation or influence? Is there a reason for every choice we make? We believe free will equals the free choice to choose what we want and God allows us to do so. And in regards to God, we can choose to accept Him or reject Him through belief in Jesus Christ. And in regards to God, He allows us to receive the results of our choice in full, either good or bad. The kicker is we try to hold God responsible, blame Him and attack His character when our choice does not work out as we planned or liked (i.e. Well if God really cared or existed He would not have allowed this to happen.).
The Bible says man is not able to come to God because God alone can only draw him to Jesus. One needs to be “wooed” or “compelled” and this is the work of the Holy Spirit called “regeneration”. This is why Paul writes to the Ephesian church that it is only “by grace that you are saved…the gift of God!” (Eph. 2:4-5; 8).
Jesus answered, “I assure you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Without the Spirit of Quickening, one of flesh, remains flesh and stuck in sin (Jn. 3:6-7). Fallen man cannot obey God, nor His law, because those of the flesh, in the flesh, living by the flesh “cannot please God” (Romans 8:8). Fleshly people cannot please God because the Spirit does not reside within (Romans 8:9).
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God lives in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
The believer, the “elected strangers”, are chosen by God, through the work of the Holy Spirit who...
Convicts (Jn. 16:7-11)
Regenerates (Jn. 3:3-8) “draw, woo or compels”
Sanctifies (Rom. 10:9-10) justification (Jn. 3:16-17)
Glorifies (Rom. 8:26-30)
The Trinity in Election
The Father thought it (2 Sam 14:14)
The Spirit wrought it
Jesus bought it (Jn. 3:16-17)
By Jesus blood, we have entered into the Holy Place, having been obtained by Jesus sacrifice on the Cross. His blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, making atonement for all man’s sin, appearing before the Father, fully accepted and elected (Heb. 9:11-12).
Why is the teaching of election difficult for some of us to accept? Because we want to be fully free; we want to be master’s of our own lives. Election does not mean, God directs everything you do, but it does mean He already has the knowledge of what we will choose to do and He can choose to influence and draw us in our decisions.
Ultimately, knowing what the world has become, would Jesus still have given up His life for ours? Yes, I believe Jesus would, because it was the plan of His Father’s and Jesus did everything His Father instructed Him to do because His desire was to please His Father (John 8:29).