RomansSample

Whose Choice?

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. – Rom 9:15

Did we choose God because He chose us first? Or did God choose us because we chose him? If you’re a Calvinist, you’d say it’s the former. If you’re Arminian, you’d say it’s the latter. But maybe the takeaway is that both have to choose.

What governs God’s choice? It is not what we do, since the choice may have been made before we were even born. Rebekah was told, while she was pregnant, that her older son would serve the younger (Gen 25:23). Jeremiah was told that God knew him even before he was formed in the womb and that he had been consecrated to be a prophet before he was born (Jer 1:5). So being chosen is not a cause of pride as it doesn’t indicate deservingness. Rather we are chosen simply because God elected to do so (Rom 9:11) and we should be grateful to Him for that. 

But God’s sovereignty doesn’t mean that we have no responsibility. The Israelites were told to choose – choose Yahweh and enjoy his blessings or turn to other gods and lose Yahweh’s protection. And the Old Testament stories show how their choices affected their circumstances. God promises in Jer 29:13, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” The only way to have a relationship with God is to choose him above all else. Our hearts have to be wholly his.

Since God is sovereign, we can’t force him to choose us. Rather, he has already prescribed what we should do if we want to be accepted by him – that is, we are to turn away from the world and put our faith in him. It is still an expression of his grace, not our worth, that he accepts us when we do so. 

So, in the end, we don’t know why God did choose us. We’re just happy that, on our part, we did choose him.

How can you express your gratitude to God today for his grace in your life?