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How Do You Know if You are One of the Chosen?
Question: I'm curious.. if you don't believe everyone has a chance to be saved.. what makes you believe you yourself might be one of god's "chosen" and those not chosen to get into god's nightclub.. do they just get to go to hell?
Response: We can know if we are chosen if we believe the gospel. That is a clear sign that God has done a work of grace in our heart. Salvation is all of Christ and you must obey the command to believe. But you do cannot attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, prudence, sound judgment, or good sense. Give glory to God for all that you have, including those things...
Further, we must remember that all of us without exception are justly deserving of hell. So God is not obligated to save anyone. It would be just if he passed us all over. But he has mercy on many and it does not depend on man's will but on God's mercy (Rom 9:16). If God were obligated to save everyone it would no longer be mercy. Salvation is by Christ alone, who does everything we need for salvation including giving us a new heart to believe. God's love is unconditional for his people. It is not conditioned upon something he sees us do, or it would no longer be grace.
Consider this: If two parents were standing outside and their disobedient toddlers ran out into oncoming traffic, which one shows love to his child? 1) the parent who stands at the curb and calls out to the child to use his will to get out of traffic or 2) the parent to, at the risk of his life, runs out into the street, scoops up the child to make certain he was safe regardless of the toddlers will at the moment. We all know #2 represent parental love. If this is the case here then how much more with God. He is not concerned first about our will, because he knows better than us. Like these children he saves us in spite of ourselves. Praise God for his great love to us in Christ. - John H
Comments
"We can know if we are chosen if we believe the gospel. That is a clear sign that God has done a work of grace in our heart"
I know people who believe the Bible but do not want to submit to it, and do not claim to have Christ because they would rather have "fun" than do what God asks. I don't consider someone "saved" who may also claim to believe and call themselves a "Christian", yet lives like the devil...
You may say, "Well, they obviously don't believe the Bible, because they aren't doing what it says to do.." Well, what about things you do wrong in your life? Is it because you don't "believe" God's word, or do you know the Bible is true, but you want to do what you want to do anyway. It's called our "free will", and even tho you may be "Saved", you exercise your free will negatively every day, ---if you are human like most of us, and you make mistakes. Non Christians get to also. They would rather do what they want than to submit to God.
Posted by: H | July 26, 2011 02:06 PM
We dont work backwards. When a sinner comes to salvation its not because he knows the deep mind of God and has found within the secret things of God his name written in the book of life and found himself the Elect of God. No, that is not the way. The sinner comes to see just what kind of person he is, he hears the gospel and its offer of mercy from a God who will judge him in the afterlife. The sinner looks and depends upon Jesus Christ to satisfy God's justice and deliver him from the wrath to come.
The sinner starts with the revelation of forgiveness in Christ and goes forward into the gospel and the kingdom of God and eventually comes to understand his election through Christ. The sinner sequentially learns to enter the 'door' of the Sheep, and finds himself in the sheep fold.
Posted by: marvin torgeson | July 26, 2011 03:35 PM
@H
The word "faith" carries with it more than simply assent to a proposition. The work of the Holy Spirit within creates a new new heart which loves Christ.
In order for someone to have faith God must have wrought a work of grace in them which means that the Word of God has come in divine power to our soul in such a way that our self-complacency is shattered and our self-righteousness is renounced. It means the Holy Spirit has convicted us of our woeful, guilty, and lost condition and has revealed to us the suitability and sufficiency of Christ to meet our desperate case. and by a divinely granted faith He causes us to lay hold of and rest upon Christ alone as our only hope. Next Christ gives us a love for God; an appetite for spiritual things; a longing for holiness; a seeking after conformity to Christ. But it is not the eradication of sin, but a mourning over it that reveals a divinely granted faith within.
That does not sound like someone who "who believes the Bible but do not want to submit to it," An impossible supposition for one who has been regenerated.
J
Posted by: John H. | July 26, 2011 03:43 PM