Your Journey to Eternity – Chosen as a Child of God ??

As I begin this lesson, let me ask you a question about your Salvation decision. Did you choose God or did God choose you to be saved? For some, you may have never really thought about it. But, my friend, this is a very important Biblical truth you need to understand. Like last month’s topic on the Trinity, this month’s topic, Chosen as a Child of God, will be just as difficult for some to understand and believe.

As I’ve explained from the start of this series, “Your Journey to Eternity,” our goal, yours and mine, is to become mature Christians so that our lives become more like our Lord Jesus Christ — a living example for all of the world to see and be attracted to.

Listen to what the author of Hebrew’s wrote to the Jewish Christians with the intention of keeping them from slipping back into the rites and legalism of Judaism. 

There is much more I would like to say along these lines, but you don’t seem to listen, so it’s hard to make you understand. You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you have dropped back to the place where you need someone to teach you all over again the very first principles in God’s Word. You are like babies who can drink only milk, not old enough for solid food. And when a person is still living on milk it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life, and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian! You will never be able to eat solid spiritual food and understand the deeper things of God’s Word until you become better Christians and learn right from wrong by practicing doing right. Hebrews 5:11-14 (TLB)

In order to grow in our faith and become more mature believers, we will need to go deeper into the Word of God by studying and learning things about the Sovereignty of God — the God of the Universe that you may never have been exposed to in your local Church.

We’ll journey there together. But, let me warn you, some things about the Sovereignty of God will be hard to understand and some things you will struggle to believe. But, that’s OK. I will keep reminding us of what the Prophet Isaiah said about the God of the Universe.

My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.  For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NLT)

God never really expected us to fully understand His Sovereignty, a concept only He understands. The simple fact is that with our limited human intelligence, we will never fully understand until we join Him in Heaven. He only asks that we simply believe and trust in Him.

The Sovereignty of God

What exactly do I mean by the Sovereignty of God? \”The sovereignty of God means that He has total control of all things past, present and future. Nothing happens that is out of His knowledge and control. All things are either caused by Him or allowed by Him for His own purposes and through His perfect will and timing (Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 8:6). He is the only absolute and omnipotent ruler of the universe and is sovereign in creation, providence and redemption.\” *

So how did you answer my question at the beginning of this lesson? Did you choose God or did God choose you to be saved? The answer is God chose you. Let’s turn to God’s Word and understand the decision that He made before the foundations of the earth were ever laid and what it meant for you and me.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. Romans 8:28-30 (NIV)

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Ephesians 1:4-5 (NLT)

Listen to what the Apostle Paul said to the Galatians

15 But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. Then it pleased him 16 to reveal his Son to me so that I would proclaim the Good News about Jesus to the Gentiles.Galatians 1:15 (NLT)

* GotQuestions.org

I’ve underlined two examples of God’s sovereignty. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Then it pleased him. Remember the definition of the Sovereignty of God I just gave you. He is the only absolute and omnipotent ruler of the universe and is sovereign in creation, providence and redemption. God chose whom He would adopt as His children because he wanted to and has every right to do so. It’s as simple as that.

In today’s world, every sovereign nation or country has the right to do whatever it wants without being told by another country what they can and can’t do. That’s what sovereignty means. Listen to the example Paul gives in Romans concerning this topic;

When a man makes a jar out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar beautiful, to be used for holding flowers, and another to throw garbage into? Romans 9:21(TLB)

My dear friends, you need to understand that God looked down through time at all of the generations past, present and future. He saw you and me before we were born and chose us through His Grace out of all of the billions and billions of children that would be born. What an awesome, indescribable, all praise to God for His mercy and grace privilege you and I have been given.

For some, you may be crying foul at this point. How could a loving, caring God who has said “For God So Loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16) choose whom He wants to save and say forget it to all the rest of the unborn children of the world? What about my free will to choose what I want?

Before I go on to discuss these important questions let’s go back to my first series on “Who Am I Really” and remind ourselves of who we truly are in the eyes of God.

The Depravity of Man and Woman

Paul in his letter to the Romans put it best.

“23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23

Once God had started to selected His children, He had also determined or predestined at that time the type of character He would develop in each of us. Once we became believers, His Holy Spirit took over our lives with the goal of conforming us to the character of Jesus Christ. He brought with Him the fruits of God’s Spirit to begin the long process of sanctification.

God is bringing together His family, each with a different personality, but all with the same, basic, fundamental characteristics of His Son, the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. These very characteristics of His Son, Jesus Christ, are revealed through each one of us — characteristics of a loving, gracious, gentle, wholesome, helpful and compassionate spirit. These characteristics are to be demonstrated in a thousand and one different ways in our human lives for all the world to see.

Called

So God through His Foreknowledge selected His children from among the sinners before they were born. He then determined the Christ–like characteristics that would be developed in them once they were saved.

So God’s next step is to call His children to the saving grace offered through His Son Jesus Christ. We need to go back to the depravity of men and women to understand the highest privilege and honor imaginable ever to be bestowed on man — to be called.

Man in his natural sinful state has no capacity whatsoever to choose God, nor does he want to. You’ve already read God’s description of man and woman in Romans 3:9-18.

In our natural sinful state, it’s impossible to love, please or even obey God. Why? Because our hearts are so fixed against Him.

The heart is the most deceitful thing there is and desperately wicked. No one can really know how bad it is! Jeremiah 17:9 (TLB)

So it is impossible that anyone who has not been chosen will ever say, well, I wish I could know God, I wish someone would tell me about Jesus Christ so I can be saved. Romans 3:18 answers that question; “18 They care nothing about God nor what he thinks of them.”

So if we can’t do it on our own, how then does God call His chosen? The Holy Spirit begins to draw us, to woo us, opening our minds, creating interest in our hearts.

You’ll start to become interested in spiritual things, for some you become interested in going back to church. If you’re in a church that doesn’t teach salvation through Jesus Christ, you’ll start to get restless and begin searching for a church that does. You’ll seek out someone you know who is a Christian and begin questioning them about their belief. You’ll start to seek God in a different way. Even though we are not aware of the Holy Spirits drawing or wooing us, and we think it is our choice, it is really God working in your life. He makes Christ irresistible to us, so it is not by force or obligation that we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but through the desire of our heart.

Listen to what Jesus said to Saul soon to be the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus; 

We all fell down, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is useless for you to fight against my will. Acts 26:14 (NLT)

God will use whatever means necessary to gather up those He has chosen to become His adopted children. Even though we do not understand it, it is true.

Justified

God’s Word goes on to tell us that those he called, he also justified. I discussed the Justification of God in my series “The Next Step, Living Your Life through Jesus” in How to Dress for Success. But, let me review it with you.

When you asked Jesus to forgive your sins and accepted Him as your personal savior you were saved. That means you were justified in God’s eyes. Simply put, justification is God’s declaring those who receive Christ as their personal savior to be righteous (saved). Through God’s justification you now have been freed from the penalty of sin, which was death and total separation both physically and spiritually from God. 

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. Romans 5:17-19 (NIV)

There is nothing now or in the future that will ever change, threaten or separate you from the love of God or the salvation decision you’ve made (Romans 8:38-39). I’ve also addressed this process in depth in my study “Who Am I Really.”

Glorified

Those he justified, he also glorified. What is glorification? Glorification is God\’s final removal of sin from the life of every one of His children. This will become the ultimate achievement of every believer when our Lord Jesus Christ appears again in the sky.

For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Romans 8:16-19 (NLT)

In a sense though, glorification has already begun in the life of every believer. This is the sanctification process by the Holy Spirit I’ve discussed before in my lessons on “Rewired to Love.”

Each one of us takes our Journey to Eternity at a different pace. Some mature quicker than others, and that’s OK as long as you’re allowing the Spirit to renew your thoughts and attitudes daily.

As you become a mature Christian following the lead of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and listening to the Holy Spirit as He renews your thoughts and attitudes, you will find that the Fruits of the Spirit will begin to blossom inside of you without any effort. The world around you will begin to see those fruits; you will become more loving, kind, patient, forgiving, and caring of others. You will truly begin to surprise yourself. You will now begin to attract others who are hurting because they see something in the way you live your life that they want for themselves. New friendships will begin to blossom.

You will begin to lose interest in the things of the world that used to excite you and hold your attention — movies and television shows you once loved, jokes you used to love to hear, and addictions you once thought impossible to break. Without any effort on your part, priorities in your life will begin to change. Old interests will be replaced with new, and Your Journey to Eternity will become very exciting as you get involved in the plans the God of the Universe had laid out for you long before you were born.

Join me next month as I continue my discussion on Chosen as a Child of God. Once again we’ll turn to God’s Word and answer the questions many of you now have about salvation, free will and the word “whosoever”. We’ll also uncover why the God of the Universe doesn’t fit into the parameters of our human thinking, reasoning or understanding. 

Until then, may His mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you.