“The Christian is the Product of an Act of God’s Free Will to Love.”
Hello and Welcome again to Powerful God – Practical Faith, and our blog series entitled, “Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian”.
Several weeks ago we completed Part 8 of this blog series, as we are working through the details of the 14 Statements that we outlined at the beginning of this study, which give us a biblical summary of what it means to be a Christian.
Since we are nine blogs into this series, it may be good just by way of remembrance to list the 14 Statements we are learning about here again:
Statement 1:
A Christian is a person who has submitted himself to the truth and authority of the Bible as the Only Inspired and Infallible Word of God, in which God has revealed Himself to man and is the means by which God introduces, provides and sustains the Christian life to whomever he so chooses.
Statement 2:
A Christian is a former slave to sin and enemy of God.
Statement 3:
A Christian is a person who was under the judgment of God for his sin.
Statement 4:
A Christian is a person who would never of himself have a desire to know God.
Statement 5:
A Christian is a person whom God, by an act of His own free will, extended His love towards, even though, at the same time, that person remained a sinner and God’s enemy.
Statement 6:
A Christian is a person who has had God’s love shown to him by having the penalty for his sin, paid for by the death of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
Statement 7:
A Christian is a person who has had the righteousness of the Son of God, which is necessary for salvation and eternal life, applied to him through the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
Statement 8:
A Christian is a person whose sinful and rebellious heart has been changed by a miraculous act of the Holy Spirit of God, and upon hearing the message of what Jesus Christ did on his behalf, placed whole-hearted faith in Jesus Christ, and in sincere sorrow, confessed his sins to a Holy God, and turned away from all of his sins in genuine repentance.
Statement 9:
A Christian is a person who has received the Holy Spirit into his heart, giving him the ability to live a righteous life, as he submits to God and His Word in everything he does.
Statement 10:
A Christian is a person who has an awe and reverence for God and His holiness.
Statement 11:
A Christian is a person who is aware of the sin in his own life and seeks personal holiness through confession of sin, repentance, growing in the understanding of God’s Word, and learning to be led by the Holy Spirit in his everyday life.
Statement 12:
A Christian is a person who desires others to become Christians, and is willing, because of the love God has given him, to become a means by which God brings others to faith, repentance, and eternal life, through sharing the redemptive message of Jesus Christ, which the bible calls the gospel.
Statement 13:
A Christian is a person who will faithfully confess Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior, even to the point of death if necessary.
Statement 14:
A Christian is a person who is in expectation of the return of Jesus Christ.
As of our last post, we concluded Statement 4 and discussed how those who are truly Christians today never on their own had a desire to know God. We discussed in detail how the Apostle Paul told us in the book of Romans how evil mankind is apart from God and how our fallen nature causes us to violently rebel against Him.
We also ended our last post with a very important question:
“If there is nothing in the Christian himself that desired God, How did he then…..desire God?”
The answer to this question, although very often criticized in many Christian circles today, is very biblical but also very profound and humbling when understood correctly.
This answer, honestly, only begins to be summarized in Statement 5 of this study, which we will begin in this blog post.
Statement 5 says….
A Christian is a person whom God, by an act of His own free will, extended His love towards, even though, at the same time, that person remained a sinner and God’s enemy.
The Christian desires God because God, by his own free will, chose to set his love on him, causing him, through the work of the Holy Spirit, to change his desire for evil and sin to a desire for God Himself.
What is very important to understand in this statement is that a true Christian is one who has been “chosen” by God and God alone to be a Christian. From a biblical standpoint, the only way that anyone is a Christian is because God set his love on them in eternity past, way before they were born, to be Christians.
To understand all of this, let us, as always, go to the Scriptures.
In Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, He begins with a declaration of the believers union with Christ as a result of God’s work of salvation. When reading the beginning of this letter, Paul makes repeated references to this concept of being chosen by God. Paul writes…..
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on 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 on us.
In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 1:3-12 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Now I would encourage you to pay attention to the language Paul uses here. Paul states that God “chose” us in Him “before the foundation of the world”. Note that this phrase, “before the foundation of the world”, means pretty much what you would think it means. It means before the world was created. Paul is telling us that God has chosen specific people to set his love on in order for them to be Christians before he even created this world for us to inhabit.
Paul further explains God’s action in choosing us by stating that God “predestined” us to the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. The term “predestined” or “predestination” is very important to understand. Predestination is the biblical teaching or concept that events in time, particularly those that result in the salvation of the Christian have been foreordained by God’s decree in eternity past, wherein God has predetermined an outcome in advance of it happening. This truth is crucial to the understanding of how Christians have come to know God.
In eternity past, God desired and chose a specific people that he would demonstrate grace and mercy towards, and from whom he would receive glory and praise. This act of God’s choosing and predestinating, which are also harmoniously linked with God’s acts of “electing” and “foreknowing” us, saturates the Scriptures.
Listen to these words of 1 Peter chapter 2…….
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:9-10 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Please pay attention to God’s activity in this passage. Peter says that we, meaning those who have become Christians, are a chosen people. We have been chosen by God to be a royal priesthood, holy, set apart, and a people belonging to God alone. Peter demonstrates in this passage that there is specificity and exclusivity in God’s act of choosing. That means that if you are a Christian, you have been chosen by God to be His apart from those who will never become Christians.
This choice by God is “solely His” for two reasons. First of all, he made the decision to choose you before he even created you or the world. We learned this earlier in Ephesians 1. The plan for this people of God, known as “Christians”, was made long long ago in eternity past. The Christian has always been a part of God’s overall purpose in this story He is writing in history.
The second reason is because, as a sinner, we had no capacity to come to God on our own based on our rebellious and corrupt sin nature as described in our previous post when discussing Romans 3. Not only did God choose us before we ever physically existed in time, He also chose to use redemption from sin and regeneration from spiritual death to spiritual life as a means of acquiring us to himself….in time.
Now you may be scratching your head at this moment right? You may be asking when reading this….”What in the world is he talking about?”
Well, I hope to provide some “Clarity” on this truth as we move along here.
Remember at the start of this post, we focused a lot on Ephesians 1 and the Apostle Paul’s idea of God’s eternal purpose and plan, and this concept of God choosing and predestinating us as a people set apart for him before he created the world. The first 12 verses in Ephesians 1 make very clear to us that God has… prepared something….. In eternity past, God has created this almost indescribable blueprint for history that He alone has full knowledge of and He alone controls. In the first half of Ephesians 1, Paul uses terms like; “His purpose”, “His kind intention”, and the “Counsel of His Will” to explain that this is God’s work and operation and that He has so graciously allowed us to be a part of what he is bringing to pass. Note that God’s purposes and intentions in predestinating us and choosing us are all done from eternity. These decisions that God made about us and the world existed before time itself did. In other words, God established our end before time began.
The prophet Isaiah says it best:
“Remember the former things
long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one
like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; Calling a bird of prey from
the east,
The man of My purpose from a far country.
Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.
I have planned it, surely I
will do it.
Isaiah 46:9-11 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
It is undeniable, if one believes the scriptures that God has a predetermined, thought out plan for us and the world that “Will” be done. This is an emphatic truth and speaks of the awesome sovereignty of God.
Then Paul, after explaining these events in eternity, brilliantly transitions to God’s current activity in time.
Listen to verse 13…..
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 1:13 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Now think about this truth for a moment. Although God chooses Christians to be Christians from eternity, Paul here in this passage and through the rest of the chapter gives to us God’s “means” by which we become Christians in time. God’s decree, plan, purpose, intention, or “blueprint for history”, He has chosen to execute in this segment of eternity we call “time”.
Paul, speaking to the Ephesian Church about their current union with Jesus Christ, articulates the “means” by which this union with God, also known as salvation, or becoming a Christian, takes place.
In this verse Paul is saying that “all” those who have been chosen by God in eternity past, have done, or will, in”time”, do the following:
- Those chosen by God will listen to the message of truth which is the Gospel of their salvation.
- Those chosen by God will Believe the Gospel message (which also results in repentance from sin and a heart toward God)
- Those chosen by God will be sealed by the Holy Spirit as a pledge or guarantee of their redemption in Jesus Christ.
Every true Christian, then, is a product of God’s eternal intention. How incredible is that? When I consider having been born in sin, with no love for God and no desire for him, and then to find out that all the while, God was extending his love to me specifically, before I could ever know that he did is beyond amazing to me. Because of His eternal intention to make me his son through Jesus Christ, He performed a miraculous change in my heart and made my heart “right” toward Him. This is the true story of every believer in Jesus Christ.
As a Christian myself, reviewing and thinking through these passages of Scripture, I am simply in awe of the grace of God. What He has done for those whom He has called to himself is too incredible and too undeserved. All I can do is just thank Him for giving me the opportunity to know him and to be a part of his everlasting family.
I sincerely pray that this will become the testimony of everyone reading this blog series.
I would like to end with a summary of what has been said throughout this post. This summary is often called in Christian circles, “The Golden Chain of Redemption”. It is perfect in its conciseness and theological soundness… so… you know it didn’t come from me! This summary of our redemptive origin and status as Believers was given by none other than the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes…..
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
Romans 8:29-30 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
I hope you have learned something with us today and I hope to see you back at Powerful God- Practical Faith as we continue with Part 10 of…
Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian.
God Bless.
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