Election: How do sinners escape their sin?
Ephesians 1:3-6
3 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, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
Is God glad you chose him?
You may have heard the description of
a corridor of time and God looking down it seeing sinners choose him, and
therefore God choosing them on the basis of being chosen by sinners. I grew up
my whole life believing that and hearing that, and I can tell you
just from my own study, that it seems to me by what we read
in Ephesians 1, that's hardly the picture the Bible paints.
My wife and I were flying back from
Chicago on a pedal-jumper airplane, you know, just everyone being crammed
into a tube in the sky. Just before take off, I leaned over and asked
Tammy, "Is there a baby on the plane?!?" She said, "What do you
mea....OHHH...", and from there the smell just intensified. I have a
very weak sensitivity for such things, and my gag reflex was so intense people
around me thought my heart was stopping. Meanwhile, I'm shooting my
glance around between coughs and chokes trying to find the culprit letting them
know that I am gaging in utter revulsion. Folks, that's more like God's view
down the corridor! If you believe what the Bible says about God and his
holiness, that he dwells in unapproachable light, that his eyes are too holy to
look upon sin, that if you start with God's nature and see what he sees when he
looks at sin, if you see what Christ sees when he looks into the cup of God's
wrath and has to drink it down in it's fullness, it's REVULSION.
Because of God's holy nature, not only
is he utterly, perfectly, and infinitely, revolted by sin but because
of his righteousness and justice he has no choice in the matter except to exact
punishment.
Can God do anything? No. Can
God make a rock so big even he can't pick it up? No. Can he let sin
go unpunished? No. He is limited only by his own excellencies and
they will not let him NOT be revolted by sin.
I would think it would cease to be an
amazing grace if God were at our mercy to execute his own plan. Grace
will not be hijacked.
-Jim Umlauf
To listen and wrestle for yourself this challenging passage in scripture, click here
