The Church Formed By God – The Method – Election (Part 1)

"...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,..."  (Ephesians 1:4)

These next few verses reveal the past part of God’s eternal plan in forming the church, the Body of Jesus Christ. His plan is shown in seven elements: the method, election; the object, the elect; the time, eternity past; the purpose, holiness; the motive, love; the result, sonship; and the goal, glory.

The Bible speaks of three kinds of election. One is God’s theocratic election of Israel. “You are a holy people to the Lord your God,” Moses told Israel in the desert of Sinai; “the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7:6).  That election had no bearing on personal salvation. “They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel,” Paul explains; “neither are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants” (Rom. 9:6-7). Racial descent from Abraham as father of the Hebrew people did not mean spiritual descent from him as father of the faithful (Rom. 4:11).  Election is not the issue in the form of election, rather, use by God in the physical world of men and kingdoms was the issue.

A second kind of election is vocational. The Lord called out the tribe of Levi to be His priests, but Levites were not thereby guaranteed salvation. Jesus called twelve men to be apostles but only eleven of them to salvation. After Paul came to Christ because of God’s election to salvation, God then chose him in another way to be His special apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15; Rom. 1:5).  This also has nothing to do with getting saved.  In fact, this kind of election can happen only, properly speaking, and in its fullness, to those who are already redeemed.  God calls and uses believers to do His will and participate in His plan.  He does, sometimes, use unbelievers, but that is always unwitting, that is, unknown to them and never seen as a positive thing. 

The third kind of election is soteriological or salvational, the kind of which Paul is speaking in our present text. “No one can come to Me,” Jesus said, “unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44).  The Greek word for “draws” carries the idea of an irresistible force and was used in ancient Greek literature of a desperately hungry man being drawn to food and of demonic forces being drawn to animals when they were not able to possess men.  Salvage yards use giant electromagnets to lift and partially sort scrap metal. When the magnet is turned on, a tremendous magnetic force draws all the ferrous metals that are near it, but has no effect on other metals such as aluminum and brass.

In a similar way, God’s elective will irresistibly draws to Himself those whom He has predetermined to love and forgive, while having no effect on those whom He has not.  From all eternity, before the foundation of the world, and therefore completely apart from any merit or deserving that any person could have, God chose us in Him, “in Christ” (v. 3). By God’s sovereign election, those who are saved were placed in eternal union with Christ before creation even took place.

Although man’s will is not free in the sense that many people suppose, he does have a will, a will that Scripture clearly recognizes. Apart from God, man’s will is captive to sin. But he is nevertheless able to choose God only because God has made that choosing possible. Jesus said that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16) and that “everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die” (11:26). The frequent commands to the unsaved to respond to the Lord (e.g., Josh. 24:15; Isa. 55:1; Matt. 3:1-2; 4:17; 11:28-30; John 5:40; 6:37; 7:37-39; Rev. 22:17) clearly indicate the responsibility of man to exercise his own will.

Yet the Bible is just as clear that no person receives Jesus Christ as Savior who has not been chosen by God (cf. Rom. 8:29; 9:11; 1 Thess. 1:3-4; 1 Pet. 1:2). Jesus gives both truths in one verse in the gospel of John: “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

God’s sovereign election and man’s exercise of responsibility in choosing Jesus Christ seem opposite and irreconcilable truths—and from our limited human perspective they are opposite and irreconcilable. That is why so many earnest, well-meaning Christians throughout the history of the church have floundered trying to reconcile them. I truly believe that a significant part of the problem is one that rests with our finite minds.  We are simply incapable of thinking the thoughts of God in any more than a limited fashion.  Since the problem cannot be resolved by our finite minds, the result is always to compromise one truth in favor of the other or to weaken both by trying to take a position somewhere between them.  Both of these are unacceptable and ought to be avoided.  We must maintain both truths in all of their fullness and not exert our own mind over the clear statement of the Bible.  We should let the antimony remain, believing both truths completely and leaving the harmonizing of them to God.