YOU ARE CHOSEN BY GOD
Paul goes on and he says "you were also chosen by God. This word is "Eklektos" and it means "to elect" or to choose which gets us into the really challenging doctrine of election and free will. Now if you know anything about those two doctrines, it promotes a lot of controversy at times especially like in Bible colleges and seminaries. Sometimes even in churches.

What I want to do is take just a minute to explain it and then make some comments on it as it relates to this passage.

The one thing that we know about the doctrine of election, known as Calvinism, is that it teaches that man is basically so corrupt and utterly sinful that he's incapable of responding to the Gospel unless God it previously selects a person and chooses them. In other words, they can't even respond to the Gospel if they wanted to because they're so wicked and corrupt and sinful.

The other view is the free will view where again they recognize the corruption of man, and that man is marred by sin but yet any and every man or woman who so desires is capable of responding to the Gospel, being forgiven of their sins, and being assured of eternal life.

Those two views are both taught in the Bible. The Bible says that he chooses and elects and then simultaneously it says anyone that wants to come to Christ can, that Christ died for all, not a select few. God sent his son to make salvation possible for all mankind, so we have both of these apparent contradictory statements being made in the bible and there's actually a word for it: it's antinomy and it means that you've got in essence, you have the appearance of a contradiction between principles and conclusions that are equally necessary and true.

All I can say about this is, though I can't after 30 years come to a conclusion that makes complete sense to me, I've come to the point of accepting both as valid and Biblical, so I don't try to unwind it anymore. You know what the biggest mistake people make when it comes to election and free will is landing on one or the other. That's a terrible mistake in my opinion because the Bible teaches both though my finite my mind can't grasp it and fully comprehend it, that doesn't give me permission to change the word of God.

So what I do when I come to a passage that says someone's chosen, I preach you're chosen, elected by God. Can you believe that before time began God knew your name and he chose that you would have eternal life. And yet when we come to those passages that that indicate very clearly that Christ died for all and anyone who would come and respond can receive eternal life, I preach that and say you can do this if you want to it's in your power God has enabled you to have free will to be able to make that choice. So, I think it's an important thing to realize that that God is comfortable with both.

Predestination is clearly taught in the Bible, but God has also made it clear that salvation is available to anyone who would so choose.

What we do know, while we may not be able to untangle those doctrines completely to our satisfaction, what we do know is the evidence of someone who's either been chosen and elected by God, or someone by their free will has received that message the evidence is the same. Evidence of a New Life.

If you've enjoyed this short clip, be sure to watch the entire sermon here https://youtu.be/OY8Gu6vNfQg

blessings,
The Epic Life
Bob and Becky Hallman
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