Through quite a number of good quality conversations with my brother Rob, I have decided to write for myself a 'position statement' for predestination. I wonder how long this will stand before I'm forced to rewrite:
First and foremost, God chooses some to be his people. The means by which his Chosen are received, is by them hearing the message of our Saviour and Lord Jesus preached, and then responding by a real decision. So God works through real decisions, in which we fully have the power to say yes or no.
It would stand then, that if God has chosen you, you WILL say yes, but because God works through real life and real choices, your acceptance was totally what you wanted to do, that is, you willed it, desired it, yearned for it. At this point, it's important to remember that God's 'mind' is infinitely about our own, and ultimately his 'decision' will come to pass. That is to say, our mind is not (at all) on the same level or above God's, so in no way is it possible to override His 'decision'.
Finally, if God chooses you to be His, you will always be His and never fall away. But the only true sign of having been chosen is by the perseverance of faith. In effect: if you die having still believed, you could say with surety that you are chosen (so until then, stand-fast!).
It's late now, but hopefully soon I'll add some Bible references. Also, I'm assuming there's a WHOLE lot more to cover in regards to predestination... but this position stand satisfies the extent of my knowledge at this point in time.
If you read this and disagree or have any thoughts or something important to add, please comment... otherwise I'll just (naively) rest assured that I've solved what was the perennial dividing-line between Christians of yester-year :)
Im starting to like this view quite a lot. I have a question though which may be venturing into dangerous territory haha. We know that God is not random and that God does not show favoritism. How then are we chosen? If it is not on works, on what basis does God call His elect?
ReplyDeleteyeah hard question! i think it's got something to do with the fact grace has no basis. There's no reason on our end of the deal for us to be saved, but on His end it would be just because He's gracious. If there was any reason for which we (and not others) should be saved, it would no longer be grace... does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteWell grace has no basis on our end, but it clearly does on Gods; as we know he is not random, he chose to give grace to some; otherwise he would have saved everyone! Or no one... Yet he chose purposefully not randomly; this we know. So on what basis does He choose?
ReplyDeletegood we both agree there's no basis on our end. Yes, to ask why he chose us as opposed to other people is asking to go inside the mind of God ,which we do when we read his Word, and i'm pretty sure there's no asnwer in his Word to this question. So we come to the same conclusion we reached at cricket... :)
ReplyDeletehang on, Eirian wasn't at cricket....who is this imposter!! haha i guess we'll have to wait till we get there.
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