Chosen

I want to take you back to a moment in college when I was studying abroad in Paris. I arrived early to my church – St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Paris if any of you have ever been. Something was going terribly wrong for the worship team – slides or sound equipment or missing singers. Stuff our wonderful worship team probably had to deal with before you all got here this morning! And my new friend on the worship team shouted out as she hurried through us earlybirds, “God is in control!” I loved it. It was good news, reassuring news to me as a student adventuring across the globe yet nonetheless needing an anchor. Do you find comfort in the notion that God is in control and that he has a plan for good? Maybe you have one of those mugs that has a quote from God on it saying, “Your problems are too big for you, I am going to carry them today - God?” Or something like that? Do you have a tattoo that says “chosen” or “grace”? Then you have been shaped by the good news of Romans 11:13-24, which is taken from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

We are right in the middle of the section on being chosen, on how God is in control, on how he works all things together for good. It spans from chapter 8 to 11. This is a tremendous word of comfort for those who have faith in Jesus. But it is an all-out attack on the notion that we bring something to the table by our good choices with God. Did Israel do anything to deserve God choosing them? Did the Gentiles? Did you or I? Did I choose God or did He choose me?

Behind the welcoming word “grace” is an implication that

1. You need it.

2. You did nothing to deserve it, otherwise grace would be based on works, not on grace, Paul says earlier in the chapter.

3. There is Someone outside of you who must give you grace, it is not from within you, it is a gift. The good news of grace deals inherently with the truth of election, of being chosen. It’s a whopper of a topic, but we are going to take a bite! First, we will have a good wrestle with God in our soul about who is in control; we will wrestle with the concept of predestination, which comes with grace. We will see the pastoral and evangelistic lens that predestination gives you, which forms humble and bold Christians who have a word of grace for others.

First, a good wrestle in the soul - A wrestle to the death. If you have not yet met the God of mercy in the face of Jesus, then the notion of God’s sovereignty is harsh. I recommend that you watch a movie for a secular view on predestination called The Adjustment Bureau starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. Or consider the three fates in Greek mythology; they are usually depicted as 3 very ugly women, who are uncaring and aloof yet your string of life is in their hands. Is God aloof? Uncaring? Unless you know him through Jesus, he is. You will see all the pain in your life as a curse from him, if he is there at all. The secular world only has this notion of God. But God has not left us guessing who he is. He gave us Jesus to fully reveal Himself to us. And Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Like a picture coming into focus, the whole Old Testament hurdles us at the feet of Jesus and his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. The entire New Testament brings us back to this point in history, applying Jesus’ forgiveness to you again and again where you need it most.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8)

Grace is God’s action upon you. His main purpose is to have mercy.

I grew up a Christian without consciously wrestling with this. The way grace was talked about it was a doorway, a gateway to get in, but it was actually my decision that brought me in, and up to me to not fall away or backslide. I had always heard that we aren’t robots. It’s a mystery – our choice and God choosing us. Practically, it boiled down to my choices or free-will. Add being perfectionist and a people-pleaser to this and you have a punishing taskmaster. If it is my choices that please God, then any little demand you give me becomes 10,000 pounds. Just love other people. Let God take this. You have to let him in. Pray unceasingly. These little commands in the mind of someone more sane than me might not go where they did. It was all about what I do for Jesus. There was no power or emphasis on what Jesus has done for me. The way God makes you a Christian affects how he grows you as one. The pastoral consequences of emphasizing our free will over God’s grace is that my sin isn’t that bad; I have the ability to choose the good. My need for a savior goes down. It also makes me compare my sin to others as if some are less in need of grace than me. Finally, it’s up to me to “let God be God.”

I wrestled under this heavy weight, trying very hard. Sometimes Christians would give me grace but it was always both-and: God is in control and you do your part, which really ends up with your choice being the focus. There is no both/and. Either God is in control or He is not. However, I had heard otherwise. I think in large part this is because Christians who believe in free-will are better evangelists and missionaries than Anglicans. And Anglicanism is a big tent… though not at its roots. Plus, we have a natural bent towards anything other than grace. I remember defending free-will and choice in seminary. My father, who had been the Dean of Trinity, mentioned to me afterwards, oh I believe in predestination. I was so shocked! And ticked that I hadn’t heard about this before. In the business of raising me, it just hadn’t come up yet. I began to wrestle with the Word.

So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.” (Romans 11:5-6)

I wrestled with my own agency. I also looked back at big things, like my eating disorder. I was so stuck in that distorted mindset. Using others, and at the right time, God plunged his grace into my pain. It was a grace that I wanted to get help. Secondly, I wrestled with the good things God demands, all the if-you-obey-I-will-bless-you stuff in the Bible. If I relate at all to God through his commands, they are death to me. If I focus on them, they totally take over. They are cocaine to my perfectionism. And then I get self-righteous and I get exhausted. There is no end to the demand to love. If you feel otherwise, then you haven’t tried hard enough. Every little moment is intentional, conscious, weighty. You are meant to break under it. “I have laid in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense…” (Romans 9:33, 1 Peter 2:8). The commands are for the sin still hanging on… for the old nature saying you can do this God stuff on your own. Some would say the commands become a joy to a Christian. Well not a perfectionist in recovery. They continue to convict me, which I need daily. The commands are for your sin. The Spirit is for the son and daughter of faith. The Spirit calls forth the free you into real and better life in Christ. The commands convict of sin: do not steal. The Spirit says, what kind of Christmas present are we going to give? He fans your gifting and love and faith into flame. The gift you give is different than my gift, but they are all from faith, for building others up, and by the power of his Spirit.

With this idea of God choosing us, of predestination, we have wrestled with our own free will and found that sin is too strong. We have found that we relate to God’s commands differently. The good things God commands us to do are not because we can do them but because they show we cannot and we need grace and forgiveness. Finally, you wrestle with fear in this doctrine of predestination. If it’s not my choices and it’s God who intervenes… then what if he doesn’t? This became a matter of life and death with my eating disorder recovery or the 10,000 pounds of perfectionism which kills creativity or codependency which steals your life because you take responsibility for someone you shouldn’t. What if God doesn’t act, what if he leaves me stuck? Surely I must do something! But everything I’ve tried to do—my best thinking—has gotten me here!

And that is the final cry of sin as the Holy Spirit holds it under the waters of baptism until it can’t breathe anymore.

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for all who believe (Romans 10:4) and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame (Romans 9:33).
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Romans 8:15-16)

The good news of predestination is for dead people. It will attack the sinner that lives in you until it gets buried with Jesus in baptism (Romans 6) or plunged into his wounds on the cross (Isaiah 53) or left in the tomb as Jesus and the new you walk out in the power of the Spirit (Romans 7,8).

This was a game changer for me. I hope it is for you too. There are 39 statements of faith in the Anglican Church. The guys who wrote them were martyred for their stance on God’s grace. You can find them at the back of every Book of Common Prayer. Article 17 talks about how Predestination is “full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ,” which convicts us of sin in order to take us deeper into God’s forgiveness and the freedom it brings. Article 10 speaks about our free will and how we don’t have it. Our sin is too strong but our Savior is stronger. It talks about God’s prevenient grace, or “grace prevents us” which is old English for “going ahead of us,” preparing our path, giving us the will and desire to want him and his way.

This is the evangelistic implication of predestination: every person on earth is in the same boat. Sin is worse than you think. None of us are better than others. Every single one of us needs a Savior. We have one. Christians are no better than anyone else but we are forgiven. We are never alone. We have an advocate. We have a God who won’t leave us alone who wants our freedom more than we do. We belong to Jesus; he never fails. That’s the certainty of faith that the doctrine of election, of being chosen gives you. Faith gives certainty. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

There is a pastoral application to predestination and it has to do with pride. Hypocrisy and self-righteousness are the number 1 turn off to Christianity. Paul deals with it in his new converts using predestination: “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles” (Rom 11:13). They were looking down on the Jews who had rejected Jesus. Paul reminds them of the grace they had been given: you were a wild olive tree and you have been grafted in miraculously.

“Do not become arrogant toward the branches” (11:18); “Let you be wise in your own sight”
(11:23); and “So do not become proud but fear” (11:20).

The Gentiles did nothing to deserve this grace. Thus they have no reason to look down on others who are not there yet. I was a “grace pharisee” once – what do you think happened once I learned about grace and election! I looked down on other Christians who didn’t agree! It took time, but the Lord convicted me of that. There is no place for spiritual pride in the family of Christ. Paul uses the Law to convict his new converts of spiritual pride and of anti-Semitism. He holds that pride under the waters of baptism until the Gentile Christians hate that pride too. He says curtly, remember where you came from. This can apply to any Christian who look down on non-believing Jews or people in other faiths or people who are dealing with sins that they aren’t. Don’t think you’re better, says Paul. That’s not the Spirit’s response to your salvation. The right response of the Gentiles is to “glorify God for his mercy” Paul says in Romans 15:9. The Spirit will lead you to say, thank you for invading my unbelief with Jesus’ love. You had mercy on a sinner like me. If you can do that to me, you can do it for them. Please do.

The other fruit of salvation is to long for others to know Jesus. Paul longs for his fellow Jews to be saved. He even wishes he could trade places with them (Romans 9). That convicts me! The fruit of God’s grace is intercession and longing for others to know it too and bearing witness to them out of your weakness that God is for them in Jesus. “For God has the power to graft them in again” (Romans 11:23).

Paul is exhorting the Gentile Christians that they are in the middle of a cliff hanger with the Jews. This is the family of faith, not the nation-state, he means (Romans 9:6,7; Galatians 6:16). Imagine you are in the movie theatre when the release of Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back came out! Han Solo is trapped in carbonite! What’s going to happen to him?! What about Princess Lea who just said she loved him! What’s going to happen between Luke and Darth Vader? I am in the middle of an excruciating cliff hanger right now! I love the animated Spiderman movies: Into the Spider-Verse. Two have come out and the second one ended on a horrible cliff hanger! In fact, it shows a secular view of predestination – one without a God of mercy at the center. I’m in agony! It’s taking forever for the 3rd to come out. That is the feeling of prayer and intercession for those who do not have faith yet. Or for those who do and are in a far-off country. They are in the middle of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The Lord is playing the long game with the Jews and with all those who seem far off. You are a part of it - to long for them to come in, to rejoice when they do, to praise God for his mercy, and to share how he’s had mercy on you. He has plans for mercy for them and is making them jealous with you.

The doctrine of predestination shapes your message to a hurting world. There is suffering and selfishness and brokenness that is pervasive in all of us. It’s too much for any of us. But grace is real and I know the One who gives it and can redeem anything. He doesn’t wait for you to clean up to come to him, he is after you right now, in fact he’s dragged you into this room, he’s put a Christian in your life, He’s tugging at your heart.

There is a pastoral implication for predestination: Spiritual pride has been crucified in Christ. It must die in you too. Paul uses the law to convict in order to drive you to mercy. You belong to Jesus now and he won’t let you go. No sin, no death, no angel, no demon, nothing can separate you from Jesus and his love. He is the one who could judge you for your sins but he has given you mercy. You belong to Jesus. He gives you a longing that others – those who do not know him or those who are stuck – he gives you a longing that He might invade their lives with grace too. May they belong to Jesus too.

Recommended Reading

I’m So Needy

Dandelion Ministries