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Our first scripture reading this morning comes from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter 1, beginning at the 11th verse.
For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people; so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.
But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie. Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia and I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, ‘He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy,’ and they glorified God because of me.
From there, we’re going to turn to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1, beginning at the third verse.
Paul writes, ‘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, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the praise of his glorious grace, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you have given us your word, and in your word are many truths that sometimes we find difficult to understand or to accept. But they are still true because they come from you and you are the God of truth. We ask that you open our hearts to receive, our ears to hear, and our minds to understand the truth you have for us and our lives and our eternal security. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Saul of Tarsus, the man whom we remember best as Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, was the most unlikely of converts to faith in Jesus Christ. Previously, we have considered his early persecution of the Christian faith in Jerusalem, greater Judea, and even into Syrian Damascus. His companion, the physician Luke, would later record the personal confession of Paul made to the crowds of Jerusalem before the Roman military would place him into protective custody, where he says, ‘I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day. I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished.’
As Paul writes here in Galatians, ‘For you have heard of my former life in Judaism.’ What he is doing here in this letter to the Galatian church is reminding them of his sordid past, a past which he had been turned away from, experiencing such a change of perspective and faith that he truly was a new and different person from whom he was prior to his encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.
Paul’s severely changed life was extreme evidence for the new birth and regeneration provided by the Holy Spirit to him. Going from gospel persecutor to gospel preacher, going from studying and practicing Torah at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest living rabbi and Jewish theologian of his time, to instead live out the active faith which he had learned at the feet of God the Son, Jesus Christ, the living and resurrected Lord, received by direct revelation from him.
Paul is emphasizing here the immense distinction between the ‘was’ and ‘is’ of the old man pre-gospel and the new man after a person comes to faith in Christ. Today we’re going to focus on his statement there in verses 15 and 16: ‘But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles,’ focusing on what God has done to and for him and why God has done this. The Lord set him apart, called and saved him by grace, so that he might preach Jesus Christ.
Lucky him, right? Lucky Paul! Aren’t we glad that he got this job instead of us? Guess what? Paul was not the only one who received this blessing and duty; we have as well. But while writing to the Galatians here, Paul uses himself as an example in the faith, and later when he writes to the church in Ephesians to encourage them, he again uses this very same formula and expands it to include all of the people who trust in Jesus Christ alone for their eternal salvation.
Here he is using the effect of the gospel message as applied to himself to affirm the divine origin and source for the good news that he had preached in Galatia, and later he is encouraging the Ephesians by reminding them of the very same good news of what Christ had already done on their behalf.
So we know that the reason why the gospel is such good news is that it is solely the work of God for us and upon us. Here we witness the application of the doctrine of election to the redeemed in Christ as a subset or sub-action of the Lord’s divine sovereignty over all creation. God set Paul apart before he was born; God chose us in him, Christ Jesus, before the foundation of the world.
God predestined us. Uh-oh, here we go! Preachers getting all Calvinist again, talking about predestination. Predestination—a word that many folks find to be so very scary because we think that somehow it does violence to us, to our free will, to our ability to choose God. Well, what it actually does is give us the opportunity to respond positively to our God who has chosen us. A word that causes people to think that we who faithfully affirm the teachings of Scripture, in this I refer to the doctrines of grace and mercy as received from the hand of Christ, that we are mean, spiteful, or hateful people; that we are promoting an idea which was first dreamed up in the 16th century by the Reformers as some alternative means to control the lives of church people by making them feel guilty all the time.
To doubt whether or not they have been or could even be saved; by making them feel like, since they do not deserve God’s love and forgiveness, that since they are not worthy then they must live in fear of hell for themselves and for their loved ones, because a vengeful God has damned them without any hope, forgetting about or ignoring the grace that is given to us in Jesus Christ. Predestination—a word which makes people despair, believing that nothing they do in this life matters at all because it is all somehow established and predestined or foreordained, part of God’s plan, which somehow is perceived as being a worse thing than for those who believe that nothing they do in this life matters at all because there is no purpose or reason for everything.
Believing that nothing comes next after this life, believing that life is just an accident; therefore, nothing matters at all because, well, nothing at all matters. Fortunately, divine predestination isn’t that. It is regarding the end as being determined and ordained while the means and process of getting there still comes to the Lord’s use of our human will and choices.
Firstly, the doctrine of election or predestination is not a late or recent invention; it is very biblical. So very biblical that our English Bible translators have been using the word itself in every major English translation ever since the authorized King James Version was released in 1611—in the NIV, ESV, NRSV, and so on. The Lord predestining people for salvation or for condemnation is found on nearly every page of sacred Scripture, at least everyone between Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12 or 22:11-12.
Scripture records the predestination of Jacob and all future Israel in Genesis 25:23, where it’s written, ‘And the Lord said to her, Rebecca, two nations are in your womb and two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other; the older shall serve the younger.” And this was interpreted by the prophet Malachi, saying, ‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord, ‘but you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.’
Isaiah also speaks of this predestined salvation and restoration of God’s chosen people, Israel, well in advance of its occurrence, writing, ‘Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen; for I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my spirit upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. They shall spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams.’
The prophet Jeremiah also spoke of his prophetic call as being established before his birth: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ Now there’s John the Baptizer, who is described as being filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb. Predestination is everywhere in the Bible, both for individuals and for whole peoples. It is always for God’s purpose, according to his divine sovereign will, according to his grace, and always for his glory alone.
Nobody ever takes any offense at those examples, yet somehow when Paul mentions this—that only some people that we are predestined to salvation while some other people are not—then they take offense. They argue that it is somehow unfair, that it is unjust, that a loving sovereign God who desires all to be saved must surely and therefore save all, ignoring the very real differences between desire and will.
I may desire another bowl of chocolate ice cream, but that does not mean that I shall will to have another one. There is no requirement for God to always will and gratify his desire; it is always his choice. These people forget that mercy is not justice and that mercy is not injustice either. Mercy and grace are concepts outside the requirements of justice; they are by definition non-justice because they are both undeserved and unwarranted.
Justice is getting that which is deserved. God is just, and God is also merciful. God is both just and merciful, but he is not only just nor is he only merciful. Therefore, he cannot deny his justness by refusing to punish the wicked. And because he is merciful, then he may and will choose to show mercy to those whom he wills, and only those whom he wills. God is under no obligation to save anybody except by his own self-imposed obligation according to his eternal will.
Even though the word sounds similar to our ears, predestination is not what we think of as destiny, and truthfully, it has no real relation to the concept as it is ordinarily used and understood by our current culture. Predestination is not determinism. Predestination does not make us into mindless automatons or puppets dancing at the end of a string. When our Bible says that Paul was set apart before he was born, and that God predestined us for adoption to himself, the core Greek word underneath this ‘set apart’ and ‘predestined’ is the word ‘orizo,’ which is coupled with a prefix indicating direction. Orizo is a word which becomes our English word “horizon,” which here has the intended meaning of a boundary, of a defined limit.
So when Paul says that he was set apart, he means that he was taken and brought away from the boundary of his human sinfulness. And when Paul says that believers are predestined, he means that we are brought across this same boundary to sonship with Christ Jesus. Believers are set apart by God, away from our inherent sinfulness, to now possess righteousness in Christ. This understanding of divine election or predestination is only ever regarding a person’s status as being condemned in Adam or being redeemed in Jesus Christ; as being the children of wrath or being the children of God.
Predestination is the consequence of God’s eternal sovereign plan of salvation for us. For by it, he alone changes our eternal destination by his divine and sovereign grace. He changes it from the damnation that we justly deserve, that we have earned by our choices made according to the fallen sinful nature we have inherited from Adam, to the redemption which Jesus freely gives to his chosen people—to those who are given to him by our heavenly Father—diverting our terminal destination from the lake of fire to the new heavens and the new earth.
The reason why so many people take offense at this idea of predestination is because of an old expression which is often used to describe it: ‘double predestination,’ an idea understood as that God first determines to save some and then determines to damn the rest—that God damns and God saves. However, the plain biblical truth is that collectively, as mankind found in Adam and as our individual selves, we are damned by our sin and our wickedness.
Sinful humanity damns itself. Thus, God does choose to rescue and save some, predestining them for something better, while the rest who are not so chosen are then predestined for their just condemnation according to God’s holy law which they have willfully transgressed. Therefore, God does in effect predestine the damnation of the reprobate by not predestining them to salvation.
The truest and greatest miracle found in this doctrine of election is that God chooses to save anybody at all, for as King Solomon professed, ‘For there is no one who does not sin,’ and as Paul reaffirms in his letter to the Romans, ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’
We all deserve death and damnation because Adam sinned first, and we have each followed suit ourselves. We are all guilty of transgressing God’s holy law. Yes, even we who are redeemed in Christ still cannot help but continue to rack up this debt of sin, although we are contrite and we repent and we beg forgiveness for our sins. And we are reassured by the Holy Spirit within us that our sins have been washed away in faith. We still, unfortunately, sin.
Grace and mercy are not what we deserve, so thank and praise the Lord that he has chosen to give this gift to us, to you and to me. Please understand that the doctrine of election should be a comfort to every believer because it is what changes us from what we were to what we now are.
Yeah, I know. It’s bad grammar. It’s a change which we could not effect ourselves, a change which we did not and would not have wanted to effect for ourselves while we were still dead in our trespasses. We thought we were happy and satisfied in the midst of all our sinfulness. It was not until Jesus pulled us up out from our filth and cleaned us off that we realized how truly miserable we were and are whenever we sinned. It was not until we first heard the good news of Jesus Christ with our ears and then received it deep down in our hearts and were regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit that we even understood that there was another option—that there was any other possible final destination.
Divine election and predestination is such a comfort because now God has given us hope in his promises. The children of God have something to look forward to which the children of Adam do not—something which the wicked and the reprobate find to be so repugnant and offensive that they will actively flee from it and from those who are like us.
The choice of salvation in Christ is so very important, eternally important, that I am glad and grateful that it was not left up to me. I know myself; I know how I was and how I still can be. I would not trust myself with making the right decision. Would you? Can you honestly answer to yourself that if it were entirely up to you— the you as you once were—I mean—that you would choose Jesus without any hesitation, any qualms, or any doubt?
I cannot. I would hope so, but I’ve also known too many people who have seen and tasted what Jesus has to offer them and said, ‘No thanks, not interested,’ and then just walked away from the church, walked away from the faith, without ever looking back. But we still have hope that some of them may one day return.
The joy we believers feel because of this predestination, because of this doctrine of election, is because by this assurance of faith which the indwelling Holy Spirit gives to us, we are confident of our eternal security. For as Jesus said, ‘My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.’
If you are ever concerned about losing your salvation, then you may actually be assured of having it. That doubt you may feel is the Holy Spirit convicting you, sanctifying you, and restoring you from the sinfulness of your flesh. However, if you are not worried about having salvation or are not ever concerned with losing it, then you may not have it yet, and so you’re not going to worry about it unless or until the Holy Spirit causes you to.
You will never worry about losing something which you do not have, and truthfully, nobody ever gets that worked up about not having something which they cannot ever get— which they have no hope of getting.
But I’ve digressed too much. Let’s return to Paul in Galatians. Why is Paul using this example of his dramatic personal and radical life change here in the midst of his defense for the gospel that he had preached to the Galatians—the gospel which they had received and believed? He is underscoring the divine origin of the gospel as opposed to merely being a human construct or philosophy that such a drastic change as was found in him could only be the result of the work of God.
He is opposing the addition of any form of works-based righteousness from being added to the good news of God’s grace and mercy upon sinners. He is reminding them that the line of holiness between the sinner and the righteous—which he showed to them through his preaching and across which the Holy Spirit had carried them through the regeneration of their hearts—was not traversed by any effort on their part but solely by the sovereign work of God.
That the gospel which brings salvation is a gospel of divine grace and mercy, not of men or works. He is reminding them that they, and we, like him, have been predestined according to God’s will for God’s purposes and glory alone, and not for their own glory or for the glory and praise of men.
To remove the thought that they might or that they were saved because of anything which they might have done or might ever do to somehow deserve saving. The gospel of Jesus Christ comes from God alone; our election unto salvation comes from God alone.
And it is because of God’s sovereignty over this matter that we believe and should remain faithful to the true gospel—the gospel which is testified to our souls by the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. For in him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
So thank the Lord that we are saved by his grace alone through our God-given faith in Jesus Christ alone. Praise his holy name and live for his glory alone. Do not turn away from believing the gospel that transformed your life. Continue to be transformed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and give God the glory forever and ever. Amen.