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Understanding the Sovereignty of God – Part 3 – Balancing Love’s Sovereign Power in Action

(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 3” in one of the most essential to understand subjects found in the Bible. Our subject series is about the “sovereignty” of God. This should be one of the first studies to be taught to every new believer because it reveals one of the major qualities of God being God. Every reader so far should agree with this belief that God is Sovereign to begin our study. This means not one of us had any say in anything that was created, how it works, or why it is here. We are all simply created beings existing for God’s sovereign purpose and will. If you would like to read this series from the beginning, please go to “Part 1“.

This subject should also be important to mature believers because it has often been taught in the past embedded with many traditions of human reason and philosophy. As you should now know our subject is about God’s eternal and omnipotent “Sovereignty”. But how we define the word sovereignty and apply this word to God and His creation makes all the difference to knowing the truth. For example, look at the words of Jesus speaking indirectly about this subject:

Mat 22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

Apparently from this verse we learn that humans can possibly not understand the Words found in the Bible, yes, or no? Next, we can learn that any teacher of the Bible can also be in error, yes, or no? Jesus was speaking with the Jewish leaders that dramatically had two opposing views of this subject of resurrection. The subject context of this statement of Jesus concerns the resurrection of the dead and what happens to a wife that had multiple husbands.

We know from basic common sense, that the subject of “resurrection” from the dead is a sovereign choice of God. No human chose this to exist, nor can any angel contribute to cause it not to exist. No, this is a prime example of God’s will and purpose to create concepts called “death” first but then also “resurrection” from the dead second. Both were God’s design, and His, alone.

Remember that there were two major doctrines of belief in Matthew 22. One is from the Sadducees that was asking the questions, these believed there was not going to be a resurrection. However, the Pharisee’s believed in the resurrection. Therefore, we learn doctrinal division is a common tactic of Satan, to attempt the divide the beliefs of those that God intended for unity of knowing His truth.

Jesus obviously rebukes these educated trained people saying to them, you neither understand the scriptures nor the power of God. The Greek word G1411 (dunamis) literally means supernatural power and this reference is applied to God the author of the Bible. In fact, it was God in the flesh that was speaking with them. Jesus directly confirms humans are fallible, capable of being in error. This is true of every modern Bible teacher that can be heard, including Agapegeek. This is exactly why we better do a lot of study with the help of the Author to guide us into what He really meant for us to learn. Nevertheless, doctrinal differences on sovereignty exist, and thus the reason for this lesson is to help resolve or at least reduce some of the reasons for divisions. Let us quickly analyze some of these differences.

Sovereignty has been defined by some to mean “God can do anything He likes, whenever He likes, and to whoever He likes”. But that is an extreme definition that potentially violates God’s revealed character which could produce wrong beliefs and deception. This type of belief attributes all evil to be part of God’s all-knowing plan. This brings some to believe Satan does not exist and has never done anything without God’s direction or permission.

However, a truer definition of the word “sovereign” should be viewed as “God has the highest and greatest level of authority and power, and there is none that is above Him”. This definition does not mean He is able to do anything at any time, even if He has the dunamis omnipotent power to do it. We know this because God says in Hebrew 6:18 that it is impossible for Him to lie. This simply means if God said something, it is this way and it will not change. And this teaches us God can never violate His spoken or written Words which have placed certain limitation upon what God is able to legally do and speak by His own sovereign choice.

Therefore, we must not study God’s “sovereignty” in isolation of all other related verses or by simply using only selected obvious or favorite scriptures. All studies on any subject must balance every verse on the subject, and then combine these with the many other verses that reveal limitations to sovereignty like those that show the true nature and character of God as being, 1) Love, 2) Light, 3) Holy, 4) Righteous, 5) Patient, 6) Merciful, etc. We learned this principle in the first lesson of the series, but for added emphasis to its importance let us quickly review another list of God’s revealed unchanging character traits.

God is Sovereign
&
God is LOVE!

1Jn 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

1Jn 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

1 John 4:8 & 16 are very revealing verses, that identifies God to be LOVE! God declares that his truest and highest identifying characteristic is that He not only shows us love but He is LOVE! The Greek word G2076 translated as “is”, means “to be”. It is a very similar word to the Old Testament revelation spoken to Moses when God said, “say I AM sent you” (Exo 3:14). The Hebrew word H1961 translated as “I AM” is most often translated as “be”. In other words, God is declaring to “Be” LOVE, not just to choose to show love occasionally like humans do. Therefore, God is the Highest example of LOVE that exists. Wow! This sound important and this characteristic must be balanced with God’s true identity of being “sovereign”.

Within the 1 John 4 context, God states that if we desire to dwell in God (Love), and desire for God (Love) to dwell in us, then we must not only love God, but we must primarily love our fellow brothers and sisters, and this human choice qualifies us to be one with God. Wow, that is huge! It implies that if we are not walking in love with those that we can see in the flesh, how is it even possible for us to say we love God that we cannot see (1 John 4:20). Yet we see Christians today lying to each other, accusing each other, hating each other, etc. Yet they still claim to be a Christian, but we saw this contradicts God’s Word and this makes them hypocrites that are putting on an act for men but may be very surprised when Jesus returns.

The Greek word that God claims to be as “Love”, is G26 and this is the word “Agape” pronounced ag-ah’-pay meaning this is the type of God’s love. This type of love is not the human type or anywhere close to what humans call love. This is why this Agape love is infinitely higher and a superior type of “love” that dominates His every sovereign thought and action. Since God has sovereignly chosen to be Love, He must correspondingly also sovereignly choose not to do anything evil, mean, or unfair to anyone. This simply describes another sovereign characteristic called “Self-Control”. This means even though He has the power and ability to kill you immediately when you do evil, He will not do it because it would be unjust and not according to His chosen nature and character.

We could easily debate the definition of love. This is because how we view love is normally very biased and perverted compared to God’s definition of love. Humans say they love their cat or dog. Humans say they love eating types of food or drinking some drinks. Humans say they even love their friends and relatives. Most spouses claim they love their husband or wife, until things get bad and then they suddenly leave them without warning. No human love like these stated above, represents God’s kind of spiritual love. Therefore, it is very fortunate for us that God gives us His definition of His type of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Let’s analyze this and compare what you have heard from other preachers teach you about God’s love and His sovereignty.

1Co 13:4 Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance.

1Co 13:5 Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense.

1Co 13:6 Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong.

1Co 13:7 Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.

1Co 13:8 Love never stops loving. (TPT)

These verses are taken out of “The Passion Translation”. But they are comparable with the KJV, NASB, the Amplified Bible or any other literal translation based on the original Greek text. These are extremely challenging statements. But this should be used for a direct comparison to how we love each other. Are you able to do this list of items to everyone that you know no matter how they act or what they do or say to you or about you? Does this list confirm the great job of love we can see in your words and actions despite how they treated you?

How do these described features and qualities of God’s type of LOVE exemplify or balance with your definition of God’s sovereignty? Then imagine how God reacts when humans treat Him unlovingly, or even blasphemously with their words and actions. Do you believe God will react to evil done to Him, the same as you would when evil is done to you. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows His love for us, (proving it) in while we were yet sinners (not loving to him or others) He died for us”. That means God does good things even when no one deserves it. That is the God kind of Sovereignty and Love.

Let us stop and ask, can you see Jesus’ example of love shown to us, in these descriptions? Go back and reread the Gospels and notice how everything that He did was “LOVE” based. Whether he was healing sick people, raising dead people, or dying on a cross, “LOVE” dominated every action and WORD spoken. Then recall Jesus said, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. This speaks volumes, to describe God’s sovereign acts and the motivations behind them. Whatever, God sovereignly chooses to do to you, or for you, He will base His motivations on LOVE designed for our “good” (Jer 29:11).

Do you recall how the risen from the dead Jesus reacted to the evil acts of Saul of Tarsus killing Christians? Jesus took it very personally what Saul was doing to His saved body of believers (Acts 9). These are controversial thoughts to think. God permitted Saul to do evil to His people, but met with him suddenly to do what?

Jesus’ reaction was with LOVE, instead of fierce hatred, or anger. This was clearly not the normal human reaction. What would you do to someone that killed one of your children? Jesus’ heart was not to kill him and send him to hell, but rather to save Saul and change Him to Paul who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament. Wow! That was the real God’s kind of LOVE!

Many will quickly argue and say, “what about when this evil that happened to me, or my wife, or my husband, or my child, or whoever”. Why did they die, why did they get sick, hurt, and need to suffer? But did God really do evil to any of these people? Never forget there is an evil being that is a master at getting people to blame God for what he is doing to them.

Yet, this belief that God does not commit evil, raises a new question. If God did not commit the evils, He certainly permitted it all to happen as we just saw looking at Saul of Tarsus. However, don’t forget that there are too many other reasons why God “must” allow evil to happen based upon what He has said.

The number one reason for evil on the earth came when God sovereignly gave Adam the right to make his own sovereign choice to choose between life and death (Gen 2:17). Adam did this by choosing to know evil instead of rejecting it (Gen 3). It was this single rebellious action of Adam that caused evil (Satan) to enter the world (2 Cor 4:4) and gave him the sovereign right to rule our world. This single act by Adam (Rom 5:12), set everything else negative in motion in our world.

This evil continued to grow until God sovereignly chose to begin to intervene personally to judge sin (Gen 6:7). These works of God began the process of salvation. They continued until they were fully made available at the entrance of God in the flesh in the form of a man named Jesus (Mat 1:21), who came into the world to redeem man and to reverse his curse of death and hell, and to take back their keys (Rev 1:18).

Here is a major clue to knowing God in the truest way. Did you ever see Jesus kill anyone? Did you ever see Jesus make anyone sick or give them cancer? Did you ever see Jesus kill someone’s husband or wife or child? The answer to all these questions is “no”! In fact, we see Jesus doing the opposite of all these evils, healing them, and raising them from the dead. Therefore, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, have never done this either. None of these describe a loving God that is patient and kind. This literally, means God is not pre-selecting some to go to hell either, because this violates the definition of “LOVE”. Get it?

Common Sovereignty Beliefs – Review

We are moving towards balancing two subjects: love and sovereignty. Evey unbalanced Bible study and teaching on these subjects create highly controversial beliefs and they have initiated great theological wars. Brothers and sisters in Christ that should be walking in love towards each other have suddenly become hated enemies.

Each side of the debate claim victory because each believes they have the complete understanding of the subject and all others in disagreement are deceived. That is not a Christ centered resolution based upon His “LOVE” and it is not a right way to deal with any subject disagreements. Hopefully we will find a better way to study the Bible today based upon God’s kind of “Love” (Agape) in this lesson. Let us review a few of the common beliefs on God’s sovereignty next.

There are many that believe God is in ultimate extreme control of every minor detail in the universe and nothing happens without His sovereign involvement and approval. This is an extreme form of the doctrine of “determinism”. This simply states, God determines the outcome of everything, and this is also associated with the doctrine of extreme “pre-determinism” meaning nothing has ever happened without God pre-determining the outcome of every circumstance and situation. This belief clearly implies God has determined all good events as well as planned and implemented every evil event.

It further pushes the belief that there are no other factors of influence that can affect any result or ending, much less begin anything new or even help anything to develop good or evil. In other words, God is like the ultimate puppet master and only He pulls all the strings to cause anything to happen. In other words, you had no say in what time you woke up this morning, or even what you ate today. This means humans have no freewill. However, is this really what the Bible says?

There is also another position of belief for some. This belief is called “pantheism”. “Pantheism” is a belief that the created universe “is God”. Therefore, if everything created is “God”, then whatever is happening in the “God” universe whether good or evil, is also the will of God and the plan of God.

All these positions are extremes that must ignore significant scriptures in the Bible that teach us these beliefs cannot be remotely or entirely true. Therefore, what we must stop, and state plainly is that each belief type of determinism, pre-determinism and pantheism has some individual elements of truth. But none have the complete truth. To make a single or isolated truth, the only truth, is simply the exaltation of a human standing upon “isolationism” based upon the individual choice of extremism, that must ignore all contradictory truths or the attempt to balance them together to resolve conflicts. “Determinism”, “pre-determinism” and “Pantheism” are just a sampling of a “one sided” theological debate containing a position of extremism and error.

However, the other side of human belief is the extreme position that either there is no God, or God is not controlling anything just as if He does not exist. This could be called the beliefs of “non-existence” that preaches the religion of “humanism” and “evolutional creation” of life originating from non-living substances over massive time elements. We commonly call these types of beliefs “atheism” or “agnosticism”.

Then there is the belief that God is like a clock maker that created the universe as a self-winding mechanism, and He has no need to operate it but may just check on it occasionally. These types of believers represent humans that think of a God that exists, but he is not caring enough to be involved in His creation. This is a belief of “non-intervention” in all the affairs of angelic and human beings. These thoughts are called “deism”, a belief in a god but not one that is Love. It has roots in paganism, idolatry and has transitioned through variations of many gods of Greek mythology, many Roman mythological gods, and Hinduism a belief in millions of gods, etc.

This is where we must agree, only God knows all the scriptures on every subject, what they all mean, and how they are balanced correctly. Therefore, “Agapegeek” would never claim to be the expert on any Bible subject compared to God’s infinite knowledge. Every human is learning and teaching based upon our individual ignorance. This is why we should extend to each other some mercy. You may have seen verses that others have not seen and vice versa. But “Thank God” for Him living on the inside of us to help us all understand and agree, and He will guide us into all truth as Jesus promised that He would do in John 16:13.

Today we will be exploring God’s Wisdom and human foolishness but within the context of some verses that are not normally applied to the subject of God’s “sovereignty”. We would all be amazed if we search the Bible on this subject to discover that we will find the sovereignty of God being indirectly stated almost everywhere in scripture. This is why we are going to be studying chapter 15 of the book of Acts and a lot of readers will scratch their heads at first trying to figure out why we are here to learn about a “sovereign” God and how He works with humans in salvation.

Acts 15 – The Early Church
Salvation Conflict and Resolution
By God’s Sovereign Design

We are learning a very essential Bible subject that creates great theological conflicts in the body of Christ. Some believe they were “elected” to be a saved Christian by God’s sovereign selection and they personally had nothing to do with their salvation, implying there is nothing they can ever do to lose their salvation. This is a more common belief than you may think. Too many that have this belief are easily offended if there is ever someone that offers a differing thought found in the Bible.

But guess what? This pattern of disunity happened in the early church, when there were some saved legalistic believers that said every one of the Gentiles needed to get circumcised to be saved. These legalistic Pharisee type of believers had Old Covenant scriptures written by Moses that appeared to support their belief and teachings very strongly. Remember at this time of conflict there was no major compilation of New Testament writings to review or resolve theological debates.

But it is obvious that these men believed they were saved because they were circumcised believers and this position plainly disagrees with the “once saved always saved” beliefs, as well as the sovereignly selected belief. They clearly placed human decisions and fulfillments of Old Testament “law” as their position of stance for being saved. That is very interesting!

However, there was also another group of bold men in the church that included the Apostle Peter, and the Apostle Paul both who were circumcised along with others that stood against the position for the need of circumcision to be saved. We are going to read through some of these verses about this controversy to see how it was resolved.

We will also notice in these verses that there are scriptures that are indirectly describing God’s sovereign will and His works that are being exercised in combination with the cooperative and agreeable sovereign will of humans. Remember what Amos 3:3 says about this relationship saying, “How can two, walk together, except they be agreed”. These types of verses, confirm the sovereign partnership between God and humans.

Let us just read through these verses and learn what God says about His “sovereignty” working with humans not to control us, but rather to allow us to willingly choose to work with His sovereign plan as united partners. We will soon notice that God is not forcing anyone to do anything. He is simply in His infinite characteristic of love, has offered and provided solutions for every problem of human conflict before it ever occurred. These solutions are based upon His “omniscient” foreknowledge. We will be reading from the beginning of chapter 15 of Acts about the Jerusalem Council that took place to resolve a church conflict of how to be saved:

Act 15:1 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.

Notice the problem. The root of the problem occurs when saved individuals from Judaea were teaching the requirement for a “flesh” circumcision to be spiritually saved. This is based upon them following the customs found within the law of Moses, for every male to be circumcised as an 8-day old child. For these men that argued this for others to be saved, had this done to them a long time before they were a believer in Jesus.

Remember babies that are incapable of making this choice are forced by these Customs of Moses to be circumcised 8 days after being born. Jesus was circumcised this way in Luke 2:21. As you can see the baby has no voice in participating. This is identical to the fact that the child had no say whether to be naturally born into the world or not. Is this the way the new birth occurs in the New Covenant? Hopefully, you will be able to see that the New Covenant circumcision that takes place for Christians is not a forced event as we continue (Rom 2:29).

Some believe salvation is based upon the extreme doctrine of election where only some are selected to be Christians and all others have been pre-chosen to go to hell without any personal involvement in hearing the Gospel, believing the Words of Salvation, or confessing Jesus as Lord. This is a belief based upon “determinism” as stated previously. This belief, as we have seen, violates too many other verses that we cannot ignore. For example, in Acts 2:21 God says, “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be saved”. This clearly places human salvation within the court of human responsibility. Also remember in a previous lesson, we learned of the Parable of the Wedding Feast for the King’s Son. There was clearly an invitation given to everyone to determine who wanted to come to the wedding or not.

Act 15:2 When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.

Act 15:3 And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.

As we can read Paul and Barnabas were not supporters of the legalistic doctrine of circumcision to be saved. So far this is a good argument for the belief in “election” only salvation, where humans are saved only if God chooses them. But notice verse 3 places a challenge to those that believe in a sovereign God choice of salvation only.

Why is verse 3 a problem for election theology? It is because Paul went to everyone and everywhere so that he could “preach” the Gospel to them all. This means everyone that heard him preach was given the personal invitation to come to the wedding of Jesus. And, if they believed and turned away from their previous idol worship to come into relationship with the God that created them, they would be saved by their own personal choice.

Furthermore, notice how verse 3 ends. There are a lot of people in the church that are overjoyed to hear about more Gentiles being saved. Uh oh? This means they were previously not saved but became saved by what God who loved them all, was doing through Paul to get them saved. It is totally amazing to see how God sovereignly uses people to get other people saved. This is a great clue that this type of work to preach was God’s sovereign choice for the method to how salvation comes to people. It conforms precisely with the parable analogy of “servants” of the sovereign King being sent out to “invite” people to his son’s wedding. There was never a sovereign King mandate or command that required anyone to attend. Each had to accept the invitation, but many refused and gave excuses.

Act 15:4 And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.

Notice in verse 4 we must all acknowledge that it was God that was working through Paul and Barnabas to cause these salvations. Yet we still cannot deny they person that heard their Gospel message was still required to belief it to be saved. The same is true for Saul who became Paul. He always had the right to refuse to obey what Jesus told him to do, this too would have been a foolish decision.

Act 15:5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.

Act 15:6 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.

Acts 15:5-6 is a review of the problem. Again, there were certain men of the sect of Pharisees which were saved that began to teach Gentiles they must keep the law of Moses to be saved. But we now know from reading the books of Romans and Galatians, that no man can be justified by keeping the law. These books were not written at this time of meeting to deal with this matter. The church leadership during this dispute was actually a very good example of how churches today should be acting. The number one perspective to learn from in dealing with doctrinal issues, is to notice these men were attempting to be led by the Holy Spirit and were acting out of love to discuss matters in a civil and orderly manner. However, there were deep discussions with contentious times as we can read in the next verse:

Act 15:7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.

This is where we see the will of God and His sovereign plan already in progress. Please read this verse over again slowly and pay attention to every word. First notice, a dispute is taking place. This is no different than today between those that see “election” to mean they were selected, and others were not. This is like those that were fighting for the Gentiles to be circumcised to be saved. These were opposed to those that were present to argue a different view of scriptures, like we are doing today.

Then notice that after a time of argumentative discourse, Peter rose to speak and what He says is very significant and essential to understanding the truth solution to the dispute. Please do not forget that Peter walked with Jesus personally in the flesh for 3 ½ years. Then recall Peter was a circumcised Jewish male like the Pharisee sect. Therefore, Peter should have been on the side of circumcision like the others for it.

However, God knowing this dispute would arise in the church already spoke to Peter in a vision about clean (Jews in circumcision) and unclean (Gentiles in uncircumcision) beasts. God in this vision told Peter to kill and eat from all the animals explaining to Peter, “do not call unclean any man” (Acts 10:28). What we are seeing is Peter dealing with Old Covenant issues of the law. It was unlawful for him to go into a gentile’s house, yet God has sent him to Cornelius to get his family saved within the New Covenant and this is very significant. It confirms that keeping the law was not necessary for salvation to occur.

Peter continues to preach the Gospel to Cornelius and the Holy Ghost falls upon his house and they all received God’s Spirit the same as occurred on Pentecost to Jewish people. This utterly shocks Peter because God had sent him intentionally to an uncircumcised man’s house using supernatural events including the voice of the Holy Spirit, visions and even angels. In this light there could be no doubt what the God in heaven was teaching Peter and the church. God is very clearly saying what Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:6:

Gal 5:6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

We should be able to see that it was neither keeping the law that saved anyone, nor by not keeping the law that prevented anyone from being saved. This simply meant that people are saved by “faith” alone in Jesus Christ alone. This was exactly the message being taught by God in the church to help them resolve this controversial subject and difference of opinions to what and how people are saved.

All of this applies to our lesson of the sovereignty of God. Because it is God that sovereignly chose the method of salvation through faith so that no human could glory in their flesh to how they were saved. Therefore, to even say “I was saved because God sovereignly chose me”, causes someone to look prideful that our creator God loved them more than someone else that was not chosen, and this would violate God’s law of not showing partiality to anyone. Let us continue to look at what else Peter said, and God inspired to be written:

Act 15:8 And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;

Act 15:9 And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

Here is another quality of God being described. God is being stated to be “omniscient” meaning He knows everything that can be known. Therefore, He clearly knows the heart of every human down to each thought they think about Him and His freely offered His saving gift of the preached Gospel (Rom 1:16) which brings salvation when it is specifically chosen to be believed by humans. This clearly demonstrates it is the sovereign choice of each human to believe or not to believe to be saved.

It is this quality of “omniscience” that can be synonymously called God’s “foreknowledge” since God exists outside of the limitation of time. It is this quality of being “all knowing” that could easily be misapplied to give the appearance that God has chosen some and rejected others to be saved. After all God did nothing to stop someone from rejecting Him, right? However never forget what God did in Christ to save all of us (Jn 3:16)! God sovereignly worked and planned to save every human, by becoming one of us to personally be nailed on a cross and shed the blood that was necessary to relieve us from our sins.

Therefore, we must see that humans have been sovereignly given the “freewill” right to make their own independent daily choices. These choices must be made in their hearts and minds to walk and live by faith as believing in Jesus or reject the Incarnate Word of God and be damned. Now let us view the next verses which represent another human comparison between two sovereign choices on the way they choose to think, live, and act.

Act 15:10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

Act 15:11 But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.

Act 15:12 Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.

Act 15:13 And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me:

Act 15:14 Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.

Act 15:15 And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,

Act 15:16 After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:

Act 15:17 That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.

Act 15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.

Act 15:19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:

We are not going to go through every verse in this passage for the sake of time.

But remember God’s key subject in this chapter is about the internal church’s fight on doctrinal issues concerning how to be saved. Is human salvation:

only God’s sovereign choice, or is it,
man’s sovereign choice, or could it be,
both choices working and cooperating in agreement together?

From studying the Bible attempting to balance all known verses on this subject equally, it appears searching with the help of the Holy Spirit leads us to the answer of option 3. Never forget the parable of the “Wedding Invitation for the King’s son” (Mat 22:2). All were invited to come but only those that chose to come and were prepared were “selected”. This is the same place Jesus said, “Many are called, but few chosen”. Therefore, the Gentiles choosing to “Turn” to God are exactly like those that came to the King’s feast.

In Acts 15, this is a dispute between two groups of saved Christians about their personal “salvation” as Jews being circumcised and those that were Gentiles not having been circumcised, and if either of these external choices mattered to their salvation. The basic battle came down was salvation by “faith only” or by “faith combined with external humans works to keep the law of Moses” to be saved. So, we are learning about conditional or unconditional “salvation”. Are there conditions placed by God upon humans to receive His invitation to salvation? And worse yet, some believe God has already determined who will be saved by only His sovereign choice, regardless of the human participation, cooperation, or agreement? In other words, some believe in a “forced salvation” for the lucky and for the unlucky others “forced damnation”. Clearly this should be a problematic belief based upon learning what the Bible really says.

The book of Acts chapter 15 answers the early church’s dispute about whether to circumcise or not to circumcise. And it is a key clue to resolving our modern fight on “election”. We should see this same battle pattern is taking place between those that believe in “divine sovereign election” without any human participation of belief or faith, opposing another view that believes in a “salvation” offered by God’s sovereign Grace to everyone, but salvation is only completed through the “human freewill choosing to believe and have faith in Jesus” to become saved. Both the Acts 15 debate and the modern “election” debate are very similar subjects having practically identical answers. Let us look at some of the verses that we just saw.

We can see in verse 14 of Acts 15, that Simon Peter helped them in the church to resolve their salvation conflict by reminding the elders how the sovereign work of God had sent him to Cornelius’ house a Gentile. Don’t forget that Peter was sent there to preach the Gospel so that they could hear, believe, and be saved. Also remember that Peter broke the law of Moses by entering Cornelius’ house as God had instructed him to do. Wow, God tells Peter to break the Mosaic Law to save Cornelius? Is this the right God? Or is there some Christians that are just confused?

What if Cornelius had chosen to not believe the message of Peter? The answer is plain, he would not have been saved and the Holy Spirit would not have fallen upon this Gentile house. However, God supernaturally gave the Jewish man Peter a vision to help him offer the invitation to Gentiles. But before this God had previously sent an angel to Cornelius, instructing him to send for Peter. This certainly was God extending great Grace and mercy to get the process initiated for Gentiles to take the invitation.

After God did all of this by His design, God had already simultaneously answered the questions that Gentiles were not required to get circumcised to be saved, neither was keeping all the law of Moses necessary for saved Jewish men to preach the Gospel invitation. Both acts only required obedience in “faith”.

It is highly recommended that you read the books of Romans and Galatians to see how Paul compares the Old and New Covenants. He goes into detail about Christians that are required to walk and live by Faith. He counters this New Covenant lifestyle, comparing them with people that are still trying to live by the Law. He at one point calls these people to be foolish.

Conclusion

1Co 13:13 And now belief, expectation, and love remain – these three. But the greatest of these is love.

We will end this lesson with the conclusion that LOVE plays a huge role in the salvation of everyone. God is LOVE and God is sovereign, and both must be balanced together. It is very clearly stated in John 3:16, that because God loved everyone in the world, He sent Jesus Christ to die so that if anyone believed, they would not perish. It is very obvious that the most popular verse known from the Bible reveals God’s Love and human choices to accept His invitation. I don’t know about you personally, but I am now and will always be eternally grateful to God for saving me. Thank you, Jesus!

Hope and pray that every reader has already made that personal choice to believe in Jesus and ask Him to be your LORD! But if not, please click the link below to go to a page that will help you choose to believe. God bless you all during this time of our celebration of the birth of Christ into the world. If it was not for what God’s Love sovereignly chose to do, we would all be going to hell.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, election, God, Jesus, Religion, Sovereignty, Truth

Understanding the Sovereignty of God – Part 2 – Who is the Sovereign Elect of God

Sep 6

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.0) This is Part 2 in the series of lessons teaching us about the amazingly revealed subject of the “sovereignty of God”. If you have not read “Part 1“, it is highly recommended that you go back and start with this introduction. Too many Christians have manmade traditions or reduced doctrinal views of what “sovereignty” represents when teaching about the application of this word to God. Some of the popular mindsets that have been dominating a lot of these religious thoughts on sovereignty, align with the following types of Christian beliefs and confessions:

You just never know what God will do next?
Sometimes God heals some of us and other times He makes us sick to humble us, teach us, or to get some glory for Himself to help save others.
God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, to whoever He wants because He is God.
God will open the doors to what I should do, be, or go into, and shut the doors that I should not do, be, or go, into.
If God wants me to have it, He will give it to me!
If God wants me saved, He will save me!
If God wants me healed, He will heal me!
If God wants to bless me, He will bless me!
Lord, if it be your will for my friend, my family, my child, etc., to be healed, delivered, or saved, we ask for your will to be done.
God loves me so much; He won’t let anything bad happen to me…
If God made me this way (poor, sick, gay, crippled, blind, lame, etc.), therefore He loves me and wants me this way.
If God allowed evil to happen to me, He has a purpose for it.
God took my child to heaven because he wanted another angel.

These are just some of the examples of wrong ways people think about God and His sovereignty trying to explain why bad things happened to them. People take a part of the total known or unknown sound doctrine of balanced sovereignty and then only magnify a small section of it to an extreme position that leaves everything that happens to us in the world totally up to God’s will and power. When this happens, God can easily be held responsible for every evil work that anyone, including Satan or any evil person does or makes happen.

In other words, people believe that God causes, commits, or permits all the liars of the world, in politics and of governments to happen, and they must all be doing their evils by the will and purpose of God. This would include mass murderers and genocide in the world blaming it all on God’s will. This would include all the starvation occurring in the world is also God’s will. This would include all terrorism is God’s will, and we could fill up a book with other examples of evil to blame them all on a loving God? This just does not match the revealed character and nature of God in the Bible.

Today, we will only address one part of the subject of sovereignty that is taught in a lot of Christian churches. We are delivering this specific topic only because we believe the Lord desires us to respond to a comment that was received asking a question from the previous lesson. This questioned sovereign position holds the belief of Sovereign Election of certain chosen individuals to receive salvation by His Divine selection only.

This belief of course, strongly implies that all others not selected by God were “chosen” to live on earth, die and go to hell by God’s sovereign design and right of choice. This extreme belief disqualifies the view of any human freedoms to choose whether to be saved or to be lost. This position places all responsibility for salvation only upon God who they claim has sovereignly chosen them. There are also other variations of this belief, but all of these must attempt to explain the other Bible verses that appear to conflict or contradict with this doctrine. We will see several of these conflicting verses in this lesson, and then attempt to balance them all together equally.

If you are aware of another variation of your belief to how this God choice of being Elect is defined, feel free to share it in a comment. But please only comment after reading the entire lesson first, so that we can compare all your Bible verses with the Word of God that will be shared here today. Also, if you are unable to leave a comment containing a belief with Bible verses, please do not bother sharing any personal opinions, they will not be given any value or time to be responded to.

For those readers that have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of your spirit to be saved, what does the Spirit of God say inside to you about this belief so far? Does the Spirit of God inside you give you any witnessed assurance that this belief is correct? Or does He cause you to feel that there is just something not right about God electing to make your choice for you, without your participation to go to hell? The Holy Spirit is the only guide to all truth that we can depend upon. Therefore, stop here and now and ask Him these questions, and let us see what He says to you and then let the Spirit inside’s judgement be your guide with what will be taught today to see if there is any agreement.

There will be no disagreement from Agapegeek, that there are certainly scriptures in the New and Old Testament that seem to imply this belief of “Election” is on the surface accurate. But with deeper study, it just might change our opinions and views to show us that it can be understood to mean something completely different and even to an opposite position. This does not mean anyone ignores the verses taught on election or disagrees with their inclusion in the Bible. It only means once balanced correctly, the interpretations of these verses can be shifted to see something amazingly missed before.

Our primary goal today is to find the truth! We are only desiring to see God’s view on this subject of sovereignty. Therefore, we promise the Holy Spirit to approach the subject with an open-minded position of rest, to be led by the Spirit of God, to go wherever He desires to go and show us whatever He sovereignly chooses to teach us, and we will choose to receive it with a thankful heart and mind.

Could this position of God sovereignly choosing some for salvation and other for hell’s separation, be another example of someone taking a partial truth and exalting it beyond its scope of application to be the only truth, excluding all other truths? Remember this practice of one truth independence can usually lead us into error. This is too often caused when we do not balance all scriptures equally together. Let us dig into this subject to discover if there is something that we may have omitted or missed. Here is a list of the sections that will be covered in our lesson:

Election Confirmed
God’s Wedding Invitation
Jesus the Only One Chosen?
How and When was the Church Chosen?
Resolving Scripture Conflicts for Being Called “Elect”
Conclusion

Election Confirmed!

Let us quickly go over a few of the key verses on the doctrine of “election”. We will begin with the red-letter words of Jesus speaking in prophetical terms about the end of the world that is beginning to happen now.

Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

It is obvious that Jesus is calling a potential person or a group or “set” of “like people” by qualifying and defining them using the term “elect”. This Greek word translated as “elect” is G1588, and it is defined by Strong as “select”, “favorite”, or “elect”. But it is also important to know that this single Greek word is translated as “elect” 16 times and “chosen” 7 times. Therefore, if we are only looking for verses that were translated as “elect” we will miss those that were translated as “chosen”.

This verse and God’s usage of the Greek word becomes our initial confirmation with the potential for somethings we could call “sovereign election”. It is important to note that the Greek word G1588 translated as “elect”, occurs 3 times in chapter 24 of Matthew. Therefore, this chapter seems to have an especially important emphasis on this subject. Here are the other verses in Matthew 24:

Mat 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

Mat 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

What we are observing is a new challenge to define being called “elect”. Most “elect” doctrines of being chosen for salvation, claim they were chosen by God and there is nothing they or anyone else could do, or anything that could happen on earth to not be saved. This means God’s sovereign election stands strong and unchanging, because He is God and He gets His way.

But notice verse 22 of Matthew 24. There is a timing of significant events that occur on the earth, where God describes the time must be shortened, or no one in the flesh was going to be saved. Therefore, God is speaking of elect people as those being saved, with the exception that it is not guaranteed salvation based upon something we are not told yet.

Now let us go back to verse 22, to see something that the translators may have missed in their KJV interpretation. The KJV translators must have believed in a form of the doctrine of guaranteed election, because of the way the verse was translated, and because they added specific italicized words that appear to support guaranteed election. But these italicized words do not occur in the verse. Here is what Dr Robert Young translated the verse to say in his very literal translation:

Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (KJV)

Mat 24:24 for there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and they shall give great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, also the chosen. (YLT)

There are three major differences between these two translations. First, the omission of the italicized words; “it were”, before the word “possible” in the “Young’s Literal Translation”. The changing of the word “very” to “also” as it should be in the “Young’s Literal Translation”. The revision of the word “elect”, to the word “chosen” in the “Young’s Literal Translation”. All these changes help us to see some things much more clearly.

For example, what we are observing is how in these verses of Matthew, whoever these elect ones are, they could possibly be deceived as others were “also” deceived in verse 24 by the false Christ. And in verse 22 these “elect” ones, may not be saved unless God shortens the time of tribulation. What we are observing is a major discrepancy to viewing these “elect” to have a guaranteed salvation.

Therefore, many Christians must be assuming from these three verses in Matthew that these are speaking about the guaranteed pre-selected Christian church as being called the “elect” by Jesus. Yet that belief is even contradicted by what Jesus said in the entre statement, so which is it? Are they guaranteed saved or are they potentially saved based upon not being deceived by the false Christ and time being shorten for their sake to be saved?

What should be cautionary is that many times in the Bible, God uses the exact same word to refer to multiple like related beings. If you did not know yet, these “Elect” could be angels (1 Timothy 5:21), Israel (Isaiah 45:4), the church (1 Peter 2:9), or Jesus Christ (Luke 23:35, 1 Peter 2:6). Therefore, to be a wise Acts 17:11 type of Berean Bible student, we better do a lot more homework to study what is God really talking about.

As you can see this topic of study has suddenly become more complicated than most have thought. We have just been introduced to the potential of multiple identities as a condition to be determined for being called the “Elect”. Also, we have just observed two qualifying conditions that must be met to be in this group called the “elect”. Therefore, to assume each verse is about any single group or identity, is an assumption and must rather be proven with facts of scripture truth to reveal their identity.

However, we have identified and confirmed that Jesus spoke of someone as being the “Elect” that “if possible” could be deceived. And in another verse, He said “those days should be shortened, or no flesh would be saved, but for the elect’s sake, those days will be shortened”. Nevertheless, in the last verse with this Greek word we find the angels gathering the elect (chosen) ones off the earth. Therefore, there is someone that is called by this title.

Let us move to the next section to help us narrow down what this calling of someone as “Elect” means. Because God’s definition of the word will overrule man’s definitions 100% of the time.

God’s Wedding Invitation

Jesus teaches us a parable that could radically shift our focus on what being called “Elect” could be defined as. This parable is an amazing part of our study subject “sovereignty” even if you do not see it automatically at first. Let us please read carefully the story given by Jesus (God’s Son).

Mat 22:2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,

Mat 22:3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

Mat 22:4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.

Mat 22:5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:

Mat 22:6 And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.

Mat 22:7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

Mat 22:8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.

Mat 22:9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.

Mat 22:10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

Mat 22:11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:

Mat 22:12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

Mat 22:13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.

We will notice in verse 2 that Jesus is speaking about the “Kingdom of heaven”. This simply means these coming statements are about God’s sovereign government within the spiritual realm of existence apart from the earth. But then Jesus reveals this hidden spiritual reality is said to be “like” a normal story of a king that could have lived upon the natural earth. Parables always use natural parallels to teach unseen spiritual concepts so we can understand it.

Then Jesus gets started revealing the spiritual kingdom is like a “certain king” and this is a reference to God the Father in heaven that sits on His sovereign Kingdom throne. Therefore, we have the “Most High” as the Sovereign ruler that chooses to have a Son, and then arranges a marriage for His Son. This certainly matches our subject of God as “Sovereign”.

This should be obvious to who the son represents. This can only be Jesus that was God’s Son, who was born of the natural woman named Mary in Bethlehem. Isaiah 9:6 says, “Unto us a child is born, and a son is given” and this was written about the coming Messiah named Jesus (Yeshua).

The next key word in the parable to understand is “marriage”. This is a radically misunderstood concept for a lot of Christians, not knowing how to define this word.

In the eyes of God, a covenant is a marriage and God defines this to us in the Old Testament in Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 31:32 and Malachi 2:14, to only name three verses. Therefore, if a covenant of God is a marriage in His eyes, the marriage of this parable’s son is Jesus’s New Covenant, to His bride (Mat 9:15).

Guess who the bride is. If you said the church is the bride, you are correct (Eph 5:32, 2 Cor 11:2). So far, we have defined the parable subjects of the king as the Sovereign God the Father in heaven, and the son as the Lord Jesus Christ the bridegroom. How then does His church bride fit into this parable of a sovereignly arranged marriage by the Father God in Heaven?

In this parable, those that are the servants going out to spread the king’s invitations are symbolic for those that have already believed on the Lord Jesus and are working for God as His Kingdom servants to spread the Gospel (Rom 1:1). These servants represent the bride. They are working for God to get more into the wedding. These believing ones, are going out all over the world (Mk 16:15) preaching to those that are not yet saved. The invitations being given out represent the words of the Gospel of the kingdom (Mat 4:23, Rom 1:15-16), which is the good news of the free gifts of forgiveness, healing, deliverance, and salvation.

Those that are being invited to the wedding, represents all the people that are in the world that have not heard the Gospel. Notice in Matthew 22:5, that many of these receiving the invitation make light of it and offer excuses like they did in Acts 2:13 and Acts 24:25 to name two examples of this type of world’s behavior.

Then next notice how Jesus says in Matthew 22:6 that others in the world will take more extreme hate filled positions against the Gospel good news, to even beat and kill God’s servants (Acts 5:40-41, Acts 7:51-57, Acts 8:1). God very clearly in this parable says these people that rejected His invitation would be destroyed and their city burned down, and this literally occurs for the first time in 70 A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem.

In Matthew 22:8 Jesus said, those that were invited were not deemed worthy to receive the gift of the invitation to the wedding, so the king sends out his servants again in Matthew 22:10 telling them to go out into the highways and invite everyone. This again is the great commission of the church to go into the entire gentile world to preach the Gospel to everyone that is living on the earth. This is the heart of God to save all that are receptive to the invitation.

Hopefully, you do understand this parable better now being a representation of spreading the Gospel and how this works. If not, we can read about the process in detail in Romans 10:

Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Rom 10:14 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?

Rom 10:15 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!

Please pay very close attention to the words selected by God. The first key word is “whosoever”. This represents everyone in the entire world, not just a few people that some Christians believe are the “elect” of the kingdom. This is very clearly our first confirmation that the Parable about being invited to come to the king’s son’s wedding feast is for everyone. But the choice to come is personally left completely in the hands of each one that heard the invitation to decide whether they would value the invitation, to choose to come to the wedding.

Romans 10 is a list of personal choices. None of these personal choices are the forced will of the Sovereign God. Please go and read the entire chapter. The first 4 verses are written about many people that were in the natural nation of Israel that corresponded to people that killed the kings’ servant men in the Matthew 22 parable about being invited to a wedding feast, by those that were sent to them preaching the Gospel.

But then in Romans 10:5, Paul begins to write the message of salvation is for “all”, by God’s sovereign choice to send forth the Gospel to the entire lost world and “only” those that “believe” and “confess” Jesus as Lord in Romans 10:9-10 will be saved. Wow, this is what Jesus was speaking about in the Parable. The invitations are spoken to everyone they encounter, and they must believe the good news message by faith and get dressed and go to the king’s palace for the feast (Rev 19:9).

We get the confirmation again in Romans 10:11-12 that this invitation to believe in Jesus is open to everyone in the world. Paul writes very clearly that it is to both the Jewish and the Gentile nations. This is amazing information about God’s sovereign choices and His gift of invitation is always given to anyone that will choose to come. But how do we balance this with the original “Elect” verses? That is a good question. We begin to understand the answer in Matthew 22:14, the last statement of the Parable of the wedding feast invitation:

Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.

This is our key linked verse about the sovereign election of God. First, notice the Greek word G2822, that is translated as the word “called”. This word is defined and can be translated as “invited”. Therefore, to call someone to attend is an invitation. Next, notice the Greek word that was translated as “chosen” is the exact same word G1588 that was translated as the “elect”. Change the words “called” to “invited” and the word “chosen” to “elect” and reread it. “For many are invited, but few (choose to become) “chosen”. The italicized words are legally added because this is exactly what was taught to us in the parable. The entire parable is about those that choose to receive the wedding invitation, and it is them making this choice that causes them to be called “elect” (chosen).

Now let us shift to a totally new perspective that has been almost ignored by countless ministers.

Jesus the Only One Chosen by God

This is where we are going to potentially lose more readers. But this is what the Bible teaches us when we see it. If you do not understand the subject of “covenants” this is probably why you do not understand the title of this section. A covenant is between two parties or individuals. Any covenant is a lasting bond of unity exactly as a marriage was designed to be by God in Genesis 2.

However, a marriage like God’s covenants were completely dependent upon the weakest link in the bound contract. It only takes one party of the contract to break the covenant and if there is any imperfection in one, the covenant can be easily broken. This is what happened to the natural nation of Israel for 1500+ years. They were the weakest link in their covenant with God. They repeatedly went and worshipped other idols instead of the true and living God. God called this infidelity becoming a “whore” and God divorced these people in Jeremiah 3:1-8.

However, with God, He has no imperfections and is the strongest covenant partner possible. Israel in the Old Covenant was in a contract with God almighty, but they continually broke it making them the weakest link. This is why the New Covenant was not established between God and the church directly. Instead, our Father God sent His Son named Jesus to become a human and because He was equally God, He could become the God to man mediator.

Because the New Covenant was between God the Father, and God the Son who are both manifestations of God, they will never break this New Creation covenant that was first revealed to us in Genesis 15. Therefore, this covenant is eternally bonded between two ever living beings capable of not sinning to break it and it will never end (Heb 13:20).

If you go and read this story in Genesis 15, you will find Abram taking 5 animals and splitting three of them into two pieces and he places the bodies on the ground. Abram goes to sleep and sees a “smoking furnace” and “burning torch” walking through the covenant pieces. These two symbols represent God (the all-Consuming Fire Heb 12:29) and His Son, Jesus Christ (the Light of the World, John 9:5).

This information about Jesus being the one that is in covenant with God as the human representative, is very important. This makes Jesus the only one that was “chosen” as God’s “elect”, simply because He would remain faithful even when humans fail to remain faithful. We need to establish these assertions with more scriptures that claim Jesus is the only One God has chosen to be in direct covenant with Him. We will begin with Psalms first:

Psa 89:19 Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people.

If you read the next verse, God is directly speaking of David, but by God’s repeated usages of double references between the natural and the spiritual realms, this verse is also speaking of Jesus. Remember Jesus is called the Son of David multiple times.

What God is saying is that He chose David to be King, and the future Son of David, named Jesus to sit upon his throne forever and ever in the future. Let us look at another verse that also points to the coming Messiah:

Isa 42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

God calls the future Messiah, His “elect”. This is very amazing. But was this fulfilled in Jesus? We can discover this is what the Jewish people were expecting reading in Matthew:

Mat 12:17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,

Mat 12:18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.

God writing through Matthew, claims these Isaiah patterns of Messiah were all fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, again calling Him the “chosen”. If you can see this, why are you calling yourself the chosen and elect one of God? Can both of you be the chosen one and the Messiah? The answer to that question is “Yes” and “No” but we will need to learn more. But we will look at one more verse about Jesus being the chosen one:

Luk 23:35 And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.

This is a verse written about the time Jesus was hanging on a cross and all the people were watching and mocking Him. These people wanted Him to prove that He was the Messiah by coming down off the cross. But Jesus told them very clearly, no sign will be given you, except the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly for 3 days and nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for 3 days and 3 nights (Mat 12:40, Mat 16:4).

Do you see how these statements are moving in parallel to the prophecy of the wedding invitation parable? Yes, the parable is a prophecy about what is happening to Jesus. These Jewish leaders hated Jesus so very much, that they incited a riot mob to demand His death, but this was the plan of God all along.

The main point from Luke 23:35, proves that the Jewish population was expecting the “Chosen one of God, called Messiah” to appear, and Jesus did not match their expectations because of their ignorance of the scriptures. Most were seeing a “conquering Messiah”, while ignoring the “suffering Messiah” in Isaiah 53. Finally, we are going to talk about the church next and all the references that call us “elect”, “chosen”, etc.

How and When was the Church Chosen?

We have observed verses in the Bible that place the titles of “chosen” and “elect” upon Christians, and this is a great hidden mystery to the how and when we were given these names. How did the church achieve this title, if God’s Son Jesus was the one that He prophesied would be chosen? The answer is not that complicated, but it may be resisted because some have never heard of it before. Let us look at scriptures that reveal how we made a choice that qualified us to be chosen by God:

2Th 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

As we can plainly see, the church was “chosen” from the very beginning. The beginning of what? Is this the beginning of time, creation, the world, the church, or what? In Ephesians 1:4 we find where God has chosen the church before the foundation of the world. Therefore, this is long before humans existed and could go back to the beginning of time, and creation. So, we have established the “when” this plan to elect us was established.

Now for the “How” question. We have previously mentioned this reason of “how” it was planned to be accomplished for us to obtain being called His “elect”. But now we are seeing it from a God perspective teaching us how we became chosen even before we were created. Please recall the “wedding invitation” parable of Jesus because this is being restated and expanded here in this verse written to the church.

God writing by the hand of Paul to the church says very clearly, we have been “chosen” to (receive) salvation because God sanctified us (made pure) by His Spirit, and this occurred because we chose to believe God’s words (invitation) which was the (Gospel) truth. Wow! This is just further confirmation that what we did to receive and believe caused God to cleanse our sins and define us as His “chosen”. But this is further confirmed in the next verse that follows:

2Th 2:14 Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is just more of the confirming process of what we just read about in verse 13. Remember this was God’s sovereignly chosen process for our salvation, that was planned even before the world began. Did you notice the word “called”? Paul says very clearly that God “called” (literally invited) us by our choice to hear the Gospel. This is the same parallel that we have been observing from the parable of the “wedding invitation”.

God has again connected the facts of Romans 10 with the parable of the wedding invitation to how we have been chosen to be called God’s “elect”. To be called God’s “elect” was designed by Him for us to first qualify to be called this by any human hearing the preached good news Gospel and to believe it. Yes, there is more to it than just that over simplified statement, but that is the basis for all salvation. Let us investigate this a little further to confirm it is true:

Eph 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

This is a new way to say the same things that we have already learned. But specifically notice the new revelation that is being offered to us to help explain what is happening when we choose to believe the Gospel of Christ. This very plainly states that Christians were “chosen” only because we were placed “In Him” and this Him, is Christ Jesus. But remember who Him is again? He is the “chosen” one that God could depend upon to keep His eternal covenant. This is why we need to be placed “In Him” spiritually, to insure we never break the covenant by sinning.

Again, God says this was His designed plan of salvation before humans were even created. We must get a hold of what is being taught to us and what God has done to us and for us.

2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

This is one of the many (over 150) verses that claim we as believers have been placed “in Christ” by God’s sovereign choice after we choose to believe. Based upon the number of verses that describe this reality, this appears to be a major accomplishment to achieve our “salvation”.

Why was being placed “In Christ” so essential to God’s plan of salvation? This is important for at least two reasons. The first reason is that we were all “In Adam” when he rebelled and sold us into Satan’s kingdom of darkness. Because we were “In Adam” when he sinned, we all sinned, and we were all given the same “death” penalty (1 Cor 15:22).

But by believing in Jesus through faith we were saved out of the darkness of death to be placed “in” the living kingdom of God’s dear Son called Light (Col 1:13). Wow, now reread 2 Corinthians 5:17 to see the new light that is shining upon us being placed in Christ. According to this verse God has caused us to become a brand new, and a never existed before creation that has also made us a completely new person “In Christ”.

It is this sovereign new creation, that places us “In Him” by faith, that is the chief part of God separating Himself and us from the evil influence of Lucifer/Satan and all his angels that have sinned. Let us consider a verse that maybe some have not understood before now:

Joh 10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

Notice what Jesus is saying here. He is claiming to be a “door” for someone that is going somewhere. In John 10:7 we find that He is saying that He is the door for the “sheep” and being a “sheep” is a symbol for the saved Christians. What is Jesus saying them? Could it be that to be saved, you better enter in this door named Jesus? Could this be another way of saying that by us choosing to “enter” Christ the door, we will be saved by being “in CHRIST”? I believe it is. There are too many verses that confirm what we are learning, but we will end this section with this one:

Rom 16:13 Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine.

As you can see Paul writing about a random saved man in the church name Rufus, confirms again that anyone in the church is also chosen by God in the same way of choosing to enter the door of salvation named Jesus Christ. Because we that are saved, have chosen to get out of (exit) the first Adam and enter into the Christ by faith, we were all chosen and have become His elect “in Christ”. We accomplished this, not because we were God’s individual choice that was chosen for our personal salvation, but rather it was because we chose Him by believing the invitation of the Gospel, then we were placed “In Him” who was “the Chosen”. Wow! Praise the Lord!

Resolving Scripture Conflicts for Being Called “Elect”

There are countless scriptures in the New Covenant writings that conflict with a “sovereign God election” theological position where only a few people will be saved by a God only sovereign choice. If there were only 2 or 3, that would be enough to raise serious concerns that somebody was in error. But because there are literally dozens of verses, that is too many to ignore. We will only select a few to help limit the size of this lesson.

There must be a balanced approach to interpreting every scripture that God inspired to be written to ensure any confidence that we have found His intended truth. Remember according to God in 2 Peter 1:20, there is no private interpretation of the Bible that is allowed. This simply teaches us that the Bible will always interpret itself.

Also, it is impossible for God to lie, therefore, if we find any apparent contradictions in scripture, we are in need to hear from God to find how to resolve the conflicts using His Word as the only solution source. To do this we will apply what we have learned in the other sections to find out how they resolve the dispute with the “Sovereign God” only salvation belief.

It is only this interpretation of scripture about a human acceptance and belief in a divine invitation, that balances with all the other verses of the Bible on this subject of being called “elect” to represent our union with God’s plan of “salvation”. This was sovereignly chosen for us to believe in what He has done, to be placed in Christ, His chosen one. Here are just a few verses that would directly contradict with only a select few humans being chosen to be saved and all others in the world rejected to go to hell by God’s will:

Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

This is the most popular verse in the entire Bible, and more Christian can quote this verse than any of the others. Yet this verse contradicts with the sovereign God only choice of human salvation. God says very plainly that He loved the entire human race in the world and wanted to save them all. But again, we see the problem it is only for those that “believe” the invitation of the Gospel that will not perish. Belief is a sovereign human choice. This again confirms that only that choose to believe that become the “elect”. Check out this verse:

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

First, notice that God is called “long-suffering”, this is a divine characteristic of God. It strongly suggests that God is still waiting for humans to “come” to not perish. This places the responsibility for humans not perishing upon those that choose to repent, and not God.

Also, notice that this verse says, God is not willing that any should perish. Why then if God is sovereign, isn’t everyone saved? If God is waiting for some to repent, this means, they were not first chosen either. If we believe that it is God’s will that he has “chosen” some to go to hell, this makes this verse totally false. It is a major conflict of too many scriptures to believe in only a select few that are chosen by God for salvation, and God is not the one that is confused and needs to change His Word. Therefore, it can only be some Christians that have not seen God’s truth that need to change.

1Ti 4:10 For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.

God is very clear in this verse that it was His desired intention to save “All humans”. But then God clarifies that it is only those that “believed” the Gospel invitation that will be saved. This is only what fits the parable of the Wedding Invitation. In this parable, the king’s servants went out to invite “everyone”. But it was only those that chose to receive the invitation that went into the wedding feast for the king’s son. Remember many were “called”, but few chose to attend to be called the “elect”.

Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

There are too many verses to include them all that say the same thing. This verse claims “whoever” calls on the name of the LORD will be saved. So, either God is forcing someone chosen to call upon Him, or humans have the choice to call and if they do, they will be saved and chosen of God as His “elect” being placed “in Christ”.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible here with us. We are a fast-growing family of believers that are hungry to know and learn the truth. If you are struggling to believe this lesson over your teachings of your denominational doctrines, it is strongly suggested for you to study the subject of “Human Freewill”. Go through the Bible and look for verses where God gave humans’ choices. Notice the first human choice sovereignly given, was to Adam eating from two selected trees. One choice brought Adam life, and the other choice brought Adam death. Adam disobeyed God and chose death, and we all died because of it.

There are so many verses that represent choices being sovereignly given by God to humans in the Bible that they should overwhelm you and help overcome your sovereign only belief that God is forcing all human decisions. There is a great need to balance the sovereign God given human freedoms to choose, with His desire to save everyone, and potentially your belief that He only selected some to be called His “elect”.

What we should have learned today, is that God gave us choices to make. He has sent His servants and His Son to make a way of salvation out of the automatic penalty of death and hell. We accept this way out of the world, by hearing about His Good News (Gospel) invitation to come to the wedding of His Son. Here is another example of God’s two choices being offered:

Deu 30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

God has placed a binary choice before every human of two possibilities and outcomes. One is a human choice for life and good by accepting His invitation, and the other is a choice for death and evil by rejecting His invitation. Could it be any simpler? You can live by believing and saying the right words.

Pro 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Yes, this verse is true and is literal. There is nothing misleading in the verse. It is plainly stated and is accurate to the infinite degree. Please don’t ignore it anymore. Memorize it and think about it every chance you get. Then apply it to your life. By us believing the Gospel we can do what God has invited us to do and be saved from our death to live eternally “with Him”, “In Him” and “Him in us” as part of His creation strategic plan of salvation:

Rom 10:8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

Rom 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Rom 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

These are not difficult instructions for beginning your journey of salvation if you have never done this. If you do this for the first time, please leave a comment and this will help place you on the path with the Lord as your lead Shepherd to help you and guide you each and every day. Jesus is the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:14) and He said, “if you confess me, before men, I will confess you before my Father” (Mat 10:32). This is why it is important to leave a comment before the world, to read.

What we have learned is that God has sovereignly chosen the method of salvation, but not the ones that were to be selected. Yes, God is all knowing, all seeing, and understands the end from the beginning. Therefore, He knows who will be saved and who will not. But this does not mean that He chose them to be that way. God has sent out His servants with a wedding invitation to the entire world. Therefore, every human must make their own choices to attend. If you are too busy for Him, you may regret this decision, eternally. However, God wants a bride that wants Him as much as He wants you, not one that is forced to be with Him.

Thank you and again, and we will pray for you all. Jesus could be coming back any day now. Hopefully you are all prepared and ready to meet Him. When this coming occurs this will be when the bridegroom Jesus, comes and gets all of those that accepted the invitation to the “wedding feast” and have made themselves ready by putting on His wedding garment of the “Robe of Righteousness”. This will take place in heaven for seven years. Ready or not it will happen much sooner than you think. God Bless you.

If you would like to read the next lesson, select “Part 3“.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!

Posted in Bible Basics, Bible Study, God

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Freewill, God, Jesus, Religion, Sovereignty, Truth, understanding

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