Recently, I’ve pressed more into the subject of God’s election than I have in at least 7 years, when I first was confronted with it by a Christian mentor of mine.  At that time, I was initially reluctant to the idea of God’s choosing some to be saved.  It didn’t seem fair to me, and raised a host of derivative questions such as “why should I pray”, “why should I evangelize”, etc.  It was especially difficult for me to come to grips with because the churches I had grown up in in the 23 years prior had all preached something different.  What finally “won me over” was not the teaching of my Christian mentor, but the Bible itself.  You see the problem for me, was that I believed that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God, and I kept seeing verse after verse that on its face seemed to indicate that God was sovereign over salvation, that it was His choice whom would be saved.  To be fair though, there were also verses in the Bible that seemed to indicate that we have a choice in salvation.  So, either I had to throw the Bible out the window and say it was not inerrant and therefore could not be trusted (walk away from my faith altogether) or discern how both sets of scripture could seemingly be contradictory, yet both be true.

Here were my options:

1)  We choose God, and therefore God’s “election” or choosing us was based on his foreknowledge of all “free” decisions to put faith in Him.

2)  God chooses us, and therefore our decision to believe is truly a gift of God rather than something we would naturally choose.

Ultimately, I settled on option number 2.  The reason for this was a combination of quantity of Bible verses supporting this position, clarity of scripture (required less “reading into scripture” overall, although you have to read into scripture on some verses, either way you choose), and logic.  God gave us a mind to know Him, and so I do not want to discount the importance of logic in coming to a correct understanding of scripture.  Likewise, I had to undo 23 years of emotional attachment to a certain view of God, and ask God to have the Bible speak to me, knowing that as it is written in Jeremiah 17:9 – “The heart is deceitful above all things,and desperately sick;who can understand it”. 

I want to walk through Romans 9:15-18, specifically to address my first and second causes (quantity and clarity of scripture) for settling on a larger view of God’s sovereignty.  That said, I would commend romans 9 in general to your study as the authorative text on God’s sovereignty over salvation (although I believe the entire Bible speaks to his sovereignty in salvation as evidenced in today’s scripture referencing the Old Testament redemption of Israel out of the slavery of Egypt).  My hope is for those who currently hold a similar larger view of God’s sovereignty over salvation, this would edify you, and prepare you to discuss this (in love with patience and understanding) with your brothers and sisters in Christ who hold a different position.  God Himself reveals truth, however, so for those who read this and have not yet come to a fuller understanding of God’s sovereignty, my prayer is not against you, but for you.  I want your joy in the knowledge of God to increase.  I want you to be encouraged and your faith strengthened (even if it is pressed for a time).    My hope for those who hold a more limited view of God’s sovereignty, is that this would convince you to take a larger view, or at least spur you on to a greater study of His sovereignty in His Word yourself.

Romans 9:15-18 – “For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.  For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”  So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”  (bolded for emphasis by me)

Why did God choose Israel?  Was it because He forsaw that Israel would be a people who would choose God, or was it according to God’s own purpose?  That’s an important question to answer, because that is what Paul is getting at above.  Thankfully, as is often the case, we are given the answer from scripture.  The answer to why God chose Israel is given in Deuteronomy 7:6-9 – “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.  It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”   (bolded for emphasis by me) 

God chose Israel because they were the weakest nation.  God had a purpose to show that he was mighty to save through Israel.  Saving Israel was something they could not do on their own, and we will see later that it was also something they wouldn’t do on their own; God had to save them while they were still unwilling.  Before I move on here, I want you to see something very important.  One of the lynchpin verses for assuming that God’s “choosing” is based on his foreknowledge is Romans 8:29 – “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”  Now, if “foreknew” here means that it is based on God’s seeing into the future the “free” actions of man, then I would agree that God is not sovereign over salvation.  That is not what this word means here though.  The greek word used is proginosko.  Just like the greek word for “believe”, pistis, carries with it a much greater understanding that mere intellectual knowledge (this is why James can say faith/belief without works is dead), so also, does the word here “foreknew”, proginosko, carry with it a much greater meaning than mere intellectual knowledge of the future.  Proginosko carries with it a measure of intamacy.  Thankfully we can look to Deuteronomy 7, and see that this “foreknowledge” is best understood as “being set apart for love”.  In this way, God’s choosing of Israel, and God’s choosing of us unto salvation is consistent throughout scripture.  How amazing is it that God’s love for us, extends beyond our good and bad works, even beyond the ages, into God’s eternal purpose for His glory.  Who can separate us from this love of God?