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His Doing

             He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, (II Timothy 1:9)

 

            Someone once asked me why God picked the Jews to be the Chosen people. Throughout the Old Testament, God clarifies that He didn’t choose the Jews because of anything they did. I explained that He didn’t choose Israel because Israel was a limo or a muscle car. Israel was a Nova[1] with a broken axle. I explained that if God had called the Celts, or the Jutes, those nations would have become Israel, and the people who think of as Israel would have been some ancient Middle Eastern group that we’ve probably never heard of.

            The same is true for Christians. We aren’t Christians because we’re good. We’re Christians because God is good. We were given the grace known as the possibility of a holy life and salvation because God decided before anything existed how He was going to work things out so there was hope for us. So once again, the point is not that we’re a limo but that we’re a Nova with dents and scratches, the axle of which has been repaired.

            This leads me to a question. Many people claim that when we go to heaven, we get a new body that has no scars. We're told that the only scars we will see will be Christ’s. And it’s probably true, But I find myself thinking that would rob of us of the opportunity to point at a small blemish and say, “This is from when Jesus healed my __________, and this one is where Jesus removed bitterness from my heart….” Again, I expect it to be true that there will be no scars, but I won’t be heartbroken if there are.

                Getting back to the issue of the day. God’s choice of us isn’t because of who we are or what we do, but because of who He is. And that’s a good thing because we change. If our being chosen depended on us, we would gain and lose salvation a thousand times per day. Because it is dependent on God, it is secure. And we can grow into holiness.


[1] I didn’t pick the Nova because I have anything against the  car. I picked it because its name means No Go in Spanish.

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