The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Before we even said yes to Jesus, He knew us and chose us to be the recipients of His love.
Our positions as Christians began with God’s eternal plan for each of us. We were foreknown, elect, predestined, chosen, and called. The Apostle Peter begins his first epistle with this reminder to his readers: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied” (1 Pet. 1:2). The Apostle Paul uses a similar greeting, confirming this aspect of a believer’s position in Christ to his readers: “Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness” (Tit.1:1).
Paul extends this idea in Romans 8:28-30 and 3: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.”
Ephesians 1: 4-5 and 11 explains this in terms of the results of adoption: “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of His will… In Him, also, we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
Rejected by the world for the same reason as the world rejected Christ, we have the affirmation of God’s approval, so much better than worldly approbation because it is of God and it is eternal:
- “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God…Faithful is He that calls you, who also will do it” (1 Thess. 1:4, 5:24).
- “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious” (1 Pet. 2:4).
How do we then live, knowing that we were, in fact, created to belong to God? “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, who are holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a quarrel against another, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col. 3:12-14).
