Grace Fellowship 08/23/09 God's People are Chosen Colossians 3:12
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Colossians 3:12 Put on then, as God's chosen1 ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
In recent months, we all have had a heightened sensitivity toward all things political. I recently attended our local Town Meeting with Senator Arlen Spector, but because of the venue, about 1500 people were turned away, of which I was one.
One of the most prominent complaints we’ve heard in the news reports regarding these meetings is the complaint from constituents that their representatives are not listening to them. Men and women who were elected to speak for the people instead seem determined to speak at the people. Instead of being the voice for the people in Washington, many have become the voice of Washington to the people in order to impose the will of Washington upon them, rather than vice versa.
Most government officials in America, and all of our congressmen are elected officials. That is how we have set up our system of government. We choose men and women to be our representatives so that our government is, presumably, of the people, by the people and for the people. We have a Constitution and we hold regularly scheduled elections in order to accomplish that. It is a good system of government when it works. When it doesn’t, it is an intolerable nuisance at best, and dangerously oppressive at worst.
In Afghanistan, national elections were held this week in the face of violent opposition from the Taliban who would impose Islamic Sharia law upon the country once again, if not for our military intervention. In that country, elections are seen as a wonderful alternative to the other option which includes things like having your fingers removed if you disagree with them. People went to the polls to vote for their leaders with the threat of death hanging over their heads. But they voted anyway. It is better than the alternative. Far better.
In the Bible, we see the greatest form of government. It is even better than a democracy or a republic. It is a Divine Monarchy (lit. "ruling of one," from monos "alone" (see mono-) + arkhein "to rule." 2). In the Bible, there is one government Figure that rules over all with perfect wisdom, and with all power, in order to carry out His own flawless will. His government is not a democracy. The Monarch of the Universe does not consult with advisors. He does not have, or need cabinet officials. He doesn’t feel the need to hold press conferences in order to keep everyone informed about His actions. He does not listen to political action committees, nor is He swayed by public opinion polls or the nightly news. And, thankfully, He will never, ever leave office.
God, in His infinite wisdom, has created all that is, for Himself. In the beginning, God determined within Himself (since there was no one else around) to create all that exists: Rocks and trees, and skies and seas, His hands the wonders wrought. The stars and galaxies, the protons and electrons, the holy and the fallen angels, every animal of every kind, both those that are extinct as well as those that are still alive today, . . . as well as the human race . . . ALL that has existed, ALL that currently exists, and ALL that might exist in the future, . . . it ALL belongs to and is created by God, for God.
He is the sole owner and ruler of everything, both in Heaven and in Hell, in eternity past as well as in eternity future. Everything is and has been and will be, solely because of God’s own will and power and purposes. Consequently, everything is at His disposal. He may or may not create, according to His good pleasure. He may or may not allow things to continue, depending upon His Divine Counsel. All is His to do with as He pleases because it is all His. He is the owner of His universe and He rules over all.
God chose to create a world filled with creatures of nearly infinite variety. He wasn’t compelled to do it that way. He just did. From bacteria to pachyderms, from amoebas to great white sharks, from earthworms to humans, all the things God has made according to His own infinite wisdom has been made for one primary purpose: For His own glory.
The heavens declare the glory, the greatness, the majesty, the wisdom, and the power of God. Sub-atomic particles do also. As scientists peer further and further, deeper and deeper with their telescopes and their microscopes, we see more clearly than ever the hand of an incomprehensibly magnificent Ruler over all. His creation cannot be measured. His wisdom is inscrutable. His power is infinite. His Person is worthy of worship and adoration and obedience.
It is that same truly awesome God who has exercised His complete free will to do whatever He wants to do, by holding His own election. But in His election, He is the only one who votes. God has informed us by means of the Bible that He elects rulers for kingdoms and nations and He also removes them. All the kings and presidents and patriarchs and prime ministers of all of human history have been, and are presently owned by the God who created them and raised them up. All of our elected officials are ultimately elected by God.
1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Romans 13:1-2)
Not only are they His property, but God also tells us “the king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov. 21:1). God owns the governments He has chosen, and He controls them for His own purposes. That immediately raises a lot of legitimate questions in our minds, but for our purposes today, suffice it to say that God does not need us to inform Him that some of His rulers are not nice people and they don’t rule well. He knows that.
God, without consulting anyone else, created a world in which to make good and evil known to moral beings like ourselves. He made a world that has become filled with evil people. We read in the Bible the troubling words, “None is righteous, no, not one; No one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:11). The entire human race has become the enemy of its Creator, down to the last man. This raises even more questions in our minds: Why would an absolutely holy God bring into being a world of people who hate Him and each other? If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t He put an end to everything that is bad? Why did He allow it in the first place?
Once again, we are fallen wormy creatures trying to understand the ways of a Being that is infinitely beyond us in every way possible except in the practice of sin. It should not surprise us that we hear questions that are difficult to answer. But how we ask the questions is most important. It is arrogant presumption at best, and infinitely dangerous at worst, for us to pose questions to or about God that cast doubt upon His goodness or His motives. While the questions may be legitimate, the motivation for the questions needs to be weighed carefully. Do we presume to judge the King of Glory because we cannot fathom His ways in a manner that satisfies our sense of justice? We should tread very carefully here.
In spite of all our questions about right and wrong, or the origin of good and evil, and our ignorance about God’s intentions in doing what He has done in the way He has done it, we must always temper our questions by this fact:
Into this fallen and sinful world, filled with everything unholy and opposed to the nature of God, God sent His Son.
That was His plan, his good, wise and perfect plan, before the foundation of the world. The plan was to send His Son into a world which hated Him in order to save His people out of the world from their sins.
In this world of woe, there are certain people designated as “His people.“ Out of this entire world of human beings, God determined by Himself to choose some of them to give to His Son (John 10). He can do that. He made all of us. We all belong to Him. He can do with us as He pleases. That is what a Monarch does. He rules as He pleases.
But in the course of giving some of humanity to His Son, in order to make them fit and suitable to be His people, the Son must become their Representative to the Father. Even these chosen ones are inherently unacceptable to a holy God. As lovers of all that is evil, as haters of our own Creator, we all stand condemned by a just King who loves righteousness and holiness. Therefore, the Son of God was elected by the Father to be the Perfect Representative for His chosen people. Jesus becomes for them before God, their holy and acceptable substitute. Everything that condemned them, Christ has taken upon Himself.
The Son, as their Representative, has been held accountable by God the Father and has been condemned by the Father in their place. Everything that disqualified these chosen people to be citizens of God’s righteous kingdom has been removed. The King is satisfied by the work of His own Son on behalf of those He represents, and they are therefore welcomed into the royal family, not based upon their own merits because they have none, but they are welcomed as the chosen and redeemed people of the Lord Jesus, based upon the merits of Christ who stands in their stead. God’s chosen people are welcomed, not as constituents, not merely as citizens of a heavenly country, but as children of their Heavenly Father.
These people, whom the Lord Jesus came for, in order to save them from their sins, these are the people described in Colossians 3:13 in these words: “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved.” Chosen, holy, beloved. There are no words that human language can create that are of greater value to us than these three. If you belong to Christ, if you are in Christ, if you have trusted in the Person of Christ and in His work upon the cross to save you from your sins, then you are among those precious people God describes here in the Scriptures by the pen of the Apostle Paul as chosen, holy, and beloved. These are the most beautiful, the most valuable, the most precious words any sinful, fallen, human being could ever hear: Chosen, holy, beloved.
Are you a Christian? If so, you are so because God has chosen to save you. From eternity past, God formulated this magnificent plan to include you as part of a special race, a nation of people who would be rescued out of a doomed race of people and a condemned world of sin. As a Christian, you are a member of that chosen, redeemed, rescued people. You were chosen by God, in Christ, for Himself. In His wise government of his creation, He sent His own Son to do all that was necessary to make you and me clean and acceptable in His sight. God Himself formulated that plan before He created the first atomic particle. He elected you, Christian, to be a recipient of every spiritual blessing He has in His celestial treasury to bestow. You. Chosen by God. What Jesus said to His disciples applies to every true disciple: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Many people take great offense at this biblical doctrine. The justice of God is called into question. They say it isn’t fair that God would choose some and not others, or that He would choose some and not all. They are offended that God is exclusive and makes the way of salvation so narrow, so confined, as to make it dependent upon faith in Christ alone. They often raise the issue, “Well what about those who have never heard? What about my parents? What about my children? I cannot accept a God who would reject innocent people simply because they did not believe in Jesus.”
“Simply because they did not believe in Jesus?” You mean the Jesus that came from Heaven, became a human being, lived a perfect and sinless life, suffered rejection, persecution, and crucifixion for those who believe so that they might be cleansed from innumerable sins against a holy God? You mean that Jesus?
Beloved, the last people who should be posing such questions, and making such foolish statement s as “My God would never do that!” are those who are actually among the chosen. It speaks to the great longsuffering of God that He tolerates those whom He has redeemed when they question His goodness in choosing to save some. Why would those who are chosen, holy, and beloved people of God complain to God about anything?
Can you imagine hearing the last rescued survivor of the Titanic complaining about all those dead people still floating in the freezing water who weren't rescued? Why would anyone who has been chosen by God for rescue from an unavoidable Hell complain that God does not rescue all? Why did He rescue you? Why would a pardoned murderer object to the fact that all murderers are not pardoned? Why do the chosen have a problem with God’s choosing if they themselves were saved solely because of the mercy of a holy God whom they themselves had infinitely offended?
It is the height of stupidity and repulsively ungrateful for the saved to question the motives of their own Savior in anything! Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not yet dawned upon you that God’s choice to save anyone at all was totally His prerogative? And that He has chosen to do so by means of the incarnation and crucifixion of His own Son should shut our mouths permanently from any semblance of questioning God’s justice! We who are the chosen will question the justice of God because He doesn’t choose all? Have you forgotten what you were chosen and saved from?
The doctrine of God’s election of some people to salvation is no reason to condemn God’s apparent lack of fairness toward all, but rather it is the cause of eternal rejoicing! When Jesus says, “For many are called, but few are chosen,” He does not mean for that to be a discouragement to those whom He has saved from their sins. The response of the saved to the One who has saved them should not be, “Well, what about everybody else?” That sounds remarkably like what Peter said to Jesus:
20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who had been reclining at table close to him and had said, "Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?" 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?" 22 Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!" (John 22:20-22)
Some Christians seem to be so concerned for the salvation of others that they are in danger of being ungrateful for their own salvation! They consider this doctrine of election to be beneath the character of a just and fair God, and replace deep thankfulness for their own salvation with a superficial zeal for global evangelism. They consider the salvation of the masses to be more important than their own deliverance by God.
It is a dangerous attitude for the Chosen to have, especially when it is expressed with hatred for a perceived lack of justice on the part of a God who chooses one for salvation and not another. They cannot fathom a God who does not treat everyone in the world in absolutely equal terms in regard to salvation. My friends, the Divine Monarch of the Universe can do whatever He pleases. Who are we to say back to Him, “I don’t like your discrimination. Why don’t you choose ALL to be saved?” It is the greatest of miracle of mercy that He has not already condemned the entire world and sent us all to the Hell we so easily deserve.
Look at the text, Colossians 3:12. Look at that phrase, “God’s chosen ones.” Paul is saying to these people to whom He is writing, “If then you have been raised with Christ, you are among God’s chosen ones.” The saved are chosen by God for salvation. How is it that we are believers in the Lord Jesus? We’ve been chosen, elected, and called by God to be His people.
This concept of God choosing people is not a difficult concept. How is it that Adam and Eve were the first persons on the planet? How did those two particular people wind up being the first people? Did God ask them if they wanted to be first? Were they the parents of the entire human race because they volunteered for that position? They were first because God said so. God exercised His divine free will and determined it to be so. They were first because He chose to create them in particular as the first couple.
How is it that Abraham became the father of Israel? Did he, back when he was Abram living in Ur among the Babylonians and worshipping idols like all the rest, suddenly decide out of the blue to start a new race of people along with his bride of many years, Sarai? Did he figure out that the idolatry of the Chaldeans was false, and the God of Israel was really the true God? But wait . . . There was no God of Israel because there was no Israel! How did all of this happen? Because God chose Abram and called him and made him the Father of the Jews.
How is it that the nation of Israel became “God’s chosen people”? Because God chose them as His peculiar people of all the nations of the Earth. How is it that the particular person Judas Iscariot became the betrayer of the Lord Jesus? Because Jesus chose that particular man and said to him, “Follow Me.” How is it that the Apostle Paul is an apostle of Christ? Because Jesus chose him, slapped him off of his donkey one day, saved him, and told him to go to the Gentiles and start preaching the Gospel.
How is it that you are a Christian, if indeed you are one? Because from before creation, God chose you for Himself. He didn’t choose everyone, because He chooses people to be saved, and obviously not all people will be saved. But He did choose you. He picked you. That is what the word means. He picked you out of the world for Himself. How do we know this? Because you are a Christian. Because you are a member of the Body and Bride of Christ.
This choosing of God for salvation is not a random event. People are not saved simply by some cosmic luck of the draw, or the rolling of the celestial dice. God is not sitting in Heaven with some kind of Redemption Daisy, plucking the petals off one by one saying, “I choose you, I choose you not, I choose you, I choose you not.” God is not capricious.
But He is sovereign over everything, particularly redemption. Why He has chosen some and passed over others, we may never know in all eternity. Why did God choose Israel and not Egypt or Iran or the Incas? Why did the Angel of Death pass over Israel and all their firstborn, but killed all the firstborn of the Egyptians? Why were Rahab and her family the sole survivors from Jericho? Why were Lot and his daughters the only ones to escape Sodom? Why only Noah and his household out of the entire population of the world? Why does God choose to save some, but not most, not all? We don’t know.
But it is obvious that that is exactly the case: "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.” (Matthew 7:13). Be grateful to God that, regardless of who else may be on that broad way to destruction, you are not. You and I both know that it is only by the sheer mercy and grace of God that we aren’t in the way of destruction. For reasons we cannot know, He chose some, you and me and all who believe in the Lord Jesus, for eternal life.
He has also chosen others who have not yet trusted in Christ. There are those who are among the elect who just don't know it yet. It is our task as His followers to tell others of Him. It is through the message preached that God’s elect are granted faith to believe. So we preach and teach and share the good news with those around us. And we wait to see who it is that God will, in His great mercy, deliver from the destruction that we all know we deserve. May the Lord grant this saving mercy to many, and use us to seek them out.
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1. 1588 eklektos ek-lek-tos' from 1586; TDNT - 4:181,505; adj KJV - elect 16, chosen 7; 23
1) picked out, chosen
1a) chosen by God,
1a1) to obtain salvation through Christ
1a1a) Christians are called "chosen or elect" of God
1a2) the Messiah in called "elect", as appointed by God to the most exalted office conceivable
1a3) choice, select, i.e. the best of its kind or class, excellence preeminent: applied to certain individual Christians
2. "monarchy." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 20 Aug. 2009. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monarchy>.