I think part of the reason for people’s resistance to
placing God’s will over human will is our innate desire for independence. Even
though Paul makes it clear that salvation
is a gift of God’s grace, through faith with no work on our own, some of us
insist on taking credit. If the elect of God were chosen before the foundation
of the world as
Scripture declares, it is hard for me to see how my will had much to do
with it. In addition, I think many Christians have a lopsided view of what
salvation is. Salvation is not about going to Heaven when you die; it is all
about bringing Heaven to earth while you live here.
I like the way Carmen Joy Imes put it in her book, Bearing God’s Name:
Why Sinai Still Matters. “Too often we think of ‘election’ as a
matter of ‘being picked to be saved.’ But in Scripture, election is more like a
game of blob tag, where if I’m ‘it,’ and I tag you, then we’re both it. We run
around together and try to tag as many others as we can, who join hands with us
and continue tagging others until everyone has been tagged. In this game, the
essence of ‘it-ness’ is to tag others. So, too, the essence of election, and
therefore the essence of the believer’s vocation, is to represent God by mediating
his blessing to others. Once we are ‘it’ we don’t lean back in our recliners,
glad that someone picked us. No, to be ‘it’ is to tag others. And to be elect –
to be His – is to bear His name among the nations, to demonstrate by our lives
that He is king and to mediate His blessing to others. That is the whole point
of being the elect.”
I said earlier that I have adopted a somewhat Calvinist view
of election to salvation. The hardline view speaks of irresistible grace – I
cannot not be saved if I am elect by God. I temper that thought with
this: as God’s chosen one, I must surrender to His choosing. Like the game
analogy Imes uses, many of us were running from God when He “tagged” us. I
would like to say that once I was tagged, I joined hands with Jesus and ran
with Him consistently. I cannot say that. I run; I fall; I get up to run again.
Falling is okay in this analogy. If I trip involuntarily, God
is there to give me a hand up.
If I purposely let go and run off on my own, a different set
of rules apply. Either I was never really tagged in the first place, and I
pretended to join the game. Or, and here is where I depart from pure Calvinism,
I was tagged, but something caused me to tire of the game, or something
bothered me so much that I rejected the whole idea of the game and walked away
of my own “free will.” I don’t see a way to read the admonitions of Paul or
Hebrews chapters six and ten without accepting that as a possibility. In the
either scenario, going back to Bible language, I must assume that I was not
“elect” at all. God will never lose one of His own.
I think the reason it is so hard for us to wrap our minds
around this concept is because our minds are finite; God’s mind is infinite. I
put “free will” in quotes before because I believe in a totally sovereign God: He
numbers my days; He knit me together in my mother’s womb; He knows
the end from the beginning. I only know what my five natural senses can
tell me plus whatever the Holy Spirit shows me supernaturally. When I get up in
the morning (if God grants me another day), I must decide what to wear, where
to go, what to do, and that feels like I am exercising my “free will.”
But the Scripture says my
steps are “ordered” by God. God allows me to make choices, but everything I
“decide” is already programmed into His will for my life. This is how I can
harmonize the total free will of humans with the total sovereignty of God. Back
to the subject of election. The elect are revealed by their actions. “By their
fruits you shall know them,” Jesus
once said. The New Testament writers could speak to “the elect” because
their fruit was obvious. In his first epistle, John
said that some people had appeared to be elect, but their actions
ultimately proved that they were not.
This makes being elect a matter of ethics; we reveal our
ethos through our behavior. In his book, How Should I Live
in This World?, R.C. Sproul reminds us that “The purpose of
divine commandments is redemption. The law of the Old Testament and of the New
Testament is fundamentally person-oriented. To isolate this law from its basic
concern for people is to fall into the abyss of legalism. Christian ethics is
built on the obedience of people to a personal God.” The elect will embrace
that ethos and willingly choose to obey its demands. Those who are not among
the elect will chafe at having anyone tell them what to do. This is how you can
know whether or not you’re it.
Related Posts: Election:
God’s Choice; God’s
Choice or Man’s; More about Calvinism: Understanding
the TULIP Doctrine; On sovereignty: Disrespecting
God’s Sovereignty
