9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
You know, isn’t it amazing that every place in the Bible where God inspires a man to write about Christians and salvation, or when Jesus talks about us and salvation, it ALWAYS talks of what God does and NEVER what we do to attain it?
Here Peter is writing of us being a chosen people, that we may declare the praises of Him Who called us out of darkness. Why did He call us out of darkness? Because we loved the darkness and had to be called into the Light. And of those who God calls, 100% are justified and glorified, i.e. SAVED!! God does not offer it to everyone, He does NOT make it available to everyone, He does NOT call everyone - He calls only His Elect, those He chose in Christ before the foundation of the World (Ephesians 1:4). And I say again, those He calls, He justifies every single one. And those He justifies, He glorifies every single one (Romans 8:30).
Not only did we love the darkness and would NEVER have come unless God saved us, we hated the Light (John 3:20). There is no one born of man who would have come into the Light if God had not FIRST chosen us, quickened us, and given us faith (Ephesians 2:8, Romans 12:3), belief (John 6:29, Philippians 1:29), and repentance (2 Timothy 2:25).
We were chosen, it was a rigged deal. Without God asking us, He put us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) and wrote our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Revelation 17:8), all this long before we were ever born. Without asking, He did a work in us making us believe (John 6:29), and without that work, we would NEVER have come to know Christ. If God did not act first, a man will always remain lost.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.