Weekend, May 7, 2022
Chosen in Advance
“God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5 NLT).
Before your parents were born, before their parents were born, even before there was a Planet Earth, in the councils of eternity God Almighty chose you. He chose you to be His child.
That’s mind-bending if you stop and think about it because God knows all things. God is omniscient, which simply means that He’s all-knowing. Can you imagine if you were omniscient and knew everything about everything and everyone? You knew who would win the big game, who would medal in the Olympics, and which horse would win the race. If that were the case and you were a betting person, you would bet on a winner, wouldn’t you?
In the same way, we know our own shortcomings better than anyone, yet God chose us.
So why would God choose us? What merit or goodness or quality did God see in us that caused Him to choose us? It wasn’t based on anything we did. We don’t deserve it.
I think the reason God chose us is the same reason He chose the nation Israel, the Jewish people. Moses said to the Israelites, “The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8 NLT).
But how did God choose us? On what basis did He choose us? And do we have any say-so as to who gets chosen and who isn’t chosen? The greatest theological minds have debated this for centuries, and there are good people on both sides of this theological debate.
However, I think what we need to do is all agree on this fact: We have been chosen by God Himself. And we should rejoice in that.
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