Article 15 | Election
When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him.
C.S. Lewis
How can we faithfully follow Jesus?
Not,
Who is chosen?
The concept of election is one of the primary themes throughout Scripture. It begins in the Old Testament where verbs like “to choose” and “to elect” occur over one hundred sixty four times. In the New Testament, the terms are used with the same type of frequency, always denoting the general sense of choosing among two or more possibilities. It begins with Christ choosing the apostles, and then moves to the fuller sense, where Christ chooses the members of the community that will represent Him during the interim period prior to His return.
Two wonderful Scriptural presentations of this concept are located in Colossians and Ephesians.
1 Corinthians 1:27-29: But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
Ephesians 1: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy blameless before him in love.
Unfortunately, much of the controversy surrounding the doctrine of election and predestination has been upon those who might not be elected. Although these questions concerning the nature and methodology of God’s election are valid, they are largely ignored by the apostolic authors of Scripture. Their focus is on God’s calling of people who steadily have the character of Jesus developed within them through the process of discipleship.
A person can know Jesus is calling them, when they see the Magnificence of Christ and desire to follow, learn from and worship him.
Recommended Reading: The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard, Resident Aliens, by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, The Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder, The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Agenda For Biblical People, and Call to Conversion, by Jim Wallis.