Chosen

Part 2 of the Stronger series study of Ephesians

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Unless you were a first-class athlete, you probably experienced a little anxiety when teams were choosing sides. Please don’t let me be chosen last. There is nothing more embarrassing than to be standing on the sideline waiting to be chosen, especially when it falls down to you and the most uncoordinated, frail, nearsighted, kid that is at least 2 years younger than everyone else that has been chosen. And if he happens to get chosen before you, well, there is no way that could happen because there is no way on God’s green earth that you could possibly be worse than he is, right? Whew!

As we continue our series, Stronger, we see tonight that followers of Jesus don’t have to stand on the sidelines feeling anxious, because the Bible tells us that we have the choice. God offers us His free gift of forgiveness and salvation, yet we must choose to accept that free gift.

We Choose to Be Like Jesus

Scientists know that ducks tend to imprint soon after birth. To “imprint” means that they attach themselves to the first thing they see after they hatch, thinking they are “that” thing. This is supposed to work for the duck, since, when they hatch, the first thing they normally see is a mama duck.

This phenomenon backfires, occasionally. Once, for example, a duckling was hatched under the watchful eye of a motherly collie dog. The baby duck took one look at the collie and decided that the dog was its mother. It followed the collie around, ran to it for protection, and slept with it at night. It spent the hot part of the day under the front porch with the collie. When a car pulled into the driveway, along with the dog, the duck would run out from under the front porch quacking viciously, trying to peck the tires.

Some things could not be changed, however. The duck still quacked, enjoyed the water, and flapped its wings. Sometimes it acted like a duck, and sometimes it acted like a dog.

Followers of Jesus often experience a similar confusion in identity. We have been born into and grown up in a fallen world, so we have learned the ways of the world. We have become like it. When we accept Jesus, we are in Him. We die to the world and are born again, so that, spiritually, we are no longer who we once were.

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Too often, however, we don't see ourselves correctly. We act like the thing we think we are, rather than what we really are. We believe and try to do the right things; but for the life of us, we cannot get it exactly right. When we least expect it, a car pulls into the driveway of our life; and we explode from underneath the front porch, quacking viciously and pecking at the tires.

God Chose Us First

What we need to understand in our Christian walk, is that we are not merely ducks that have chosen to follow God, because God first chose us. He imprinted Himself on us long before we were even born.

³ Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. ⁴ For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵ He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, ⁶ to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6, HCSB)

There are many Christians who have trouble with verse 5, because it says that we were predestined to become Christians. It seems that this takes away our own free choice to choose Jesus. As if God, before creation made a decision that only certain people would be allowed to accept Him and that they would have no choice but to do that.

The problem is that this does not fit with the rest of scripture. There are many verses in the Bible that tell us that God sent His Son for all people, that He desires all to come to Him. There are also many passages in the Bible that teach us about free will. We all have the choice to accept God’s free gift of grace. God has not created us as robots that have no will of our own.

But how do these verses about being chosen, being predestined, fit with other verses about free will and God’s desire for all to come to Him? Theologians could spend years debating that, and, in fact, have, and still have not come to an agreement on how these can be fit together. Rather than try to fit two seemingly contrasting ideas together, perhaps it is best that we strengthen our understanding of God first.

⁸“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.”
This is the Lord’s declaration. ⁹ “For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

If we begin by recognizing a fundamental principle that God’s ways are beyond our reach, it follows, then, that we cannot and should not expect to understand the Bible exhaustively. If we could, the Bible would not be divine but would be limited to human intelligence. The Bible contains some things so simple that even a child can understand them and some things so complex that the brightest minds will never understand them.

When the Bible presents seemingly irreconcilable information, such as human free will and divine sovereignty, rather than trying to force the two ideas together, it is more helpful to understand them as antinomies.

Webster defines an antinomy as “a contradiction between two equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles.” More simply, we might say that an antinomy contains two apparently mutually exclusive truths which must be held simultaneously. The sovereignty of God and free will of people represents an antinomy. It is not intellectual suicide simply to believe them both. Here is why.

An infinite revelation will always take a finite mind beyond its intelligence. That is the case with antinomies in general, and this truth in specific. With an infinite revelation, we are simply not able to understand everything we know.

Antinomies exist outside Scripture. Take light, for example. The laws of science tell us that matter cannot be energy, and energy cannot be matter. Yet light has properties of both energy and matter. That’s impossible, yet it’s true. The character of light is an excellent example of an antinomy because while the inherent contradiction within light cannot be resolved with our present laws of physics, every morning the sun comes up.

If we are to know anything about God, He must reveal himself to us because He exists in a realm beyond our five senses. God did reveal Himself through miracles, visions, dreams, direct conversation, and then, through Jesus.

Therefore, I can accept that God is sovereign and has the right to choose me as one of His chosen followers, that I have the free will to choose Him as my Lord and Savior, and that He desires that all will choose Him. There is no contradiction even though this understanding may infuriate those who demand that we choose between them.

Remember also that our ability to comprehend God's truth has been radically affected by the fall of man.

For now we see indistinctly, as in a [poor reflection], but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

When we stand before God in heaven, we will smack our foreheads and say, “Oh, now I understand.” Until then, we suspend judgment: we hold the truths in tension, understanding who God is and who we are.

When we do that—when we accept both truths fully, without letting one diminish the other—we can rise up in glory at the fact that we have been known and chosen by God from before the creation of the world; and, at the same time, we can commit ourselves to the spread of the gospel message, knowing that among those who hear the gospel some may choose salvation.

Understanding that there are some things we just cannot comprehend is not weakness. It actually helps to strengthen our understanding of God: almighty, all knowing, ever present, sovereign creator, King of kings, and Lord of Lords. To become strong in mind, we must accept that God knows best and that some of the things He teaches us will be beyond our understanding.

One way to be stronger, is accepting our own limitations and not beating ourselves up because of it. Just think how special we are in God’s eyes: He loves us so much that before time began He chose us to be His and then sent His Son so that we would have the opportunity to choose Him as ours.