“As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.”
who called us
The word “called” indicates our election. Our election is God’s plan from eternity past that set aside everything we need to live before Him.
God’s plan took place before He created man. This event is the meaning of predestination. Predestination is pre-design. Logically, God’s plan of salvation came before God created man. God’s program for man came from eternity past. A perfect plan came from a perfect God. This program has no place for anyone to take the credit. All of it rests upon God because this plan took place in eternity past.
God made the provision of Christ before He decided to create. God’s plan comes from His decree. His decree comes from eternity past. In eternity past, God took cognizance of everyone who would ever live.
Ro 8:28-30, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”
1 Co 1:9, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Ga 1:6-7, “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
Eph 1:3-5, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”
PRINCIPLE:
God anticipated every contingency we may face.
APPLICATION:
God called each believer, whether they succeed or fail. We share the election of Christ. There never will be a time when we do not share this election with Christ. God must be perfectly consistent with His plan because He is immutable. He cannot change His election. God cannot change. If it were possible for Him to change, that would mean that He is not absolute but finite in some sense.
Billions of years before creation, God decided to elect Christ to resolve His own perfect righteousness. The death of Christ satisfied the demands of God’s absolute being, His perfect character. Jesus propitiated the Father’s righteousness by His death on the cross. Christ’s placating God’s holy being is how God can love us despite our sins. God is free to love us because Jesus met the demands of His absolute being. God cannot by-pass His absolute righteousness.
No matter how we may fail God, He cannot fail us. God must remain faithful to what Jesus did on the cross. No matter what we do, God must keep on loving us. Why? Because election describes who and what God is. We change every hour on the hour. God has never changed, and His character is forever consistent.
We cannot change God’s plan. Once in that plan, even God cannot change this plan because He must be true to Himself. There is no sin too great for God to handle. There will never be a problem, catastrophe, or disaster too great for the plan of God. His program provides for any contingency. No one can commit a sin too great for this plan.
It is the epitome of human pride to believe that there is some sin that God did not anticipate from eternity. Do you think that God did not examine every possible contingency for man? This thinking assaults the essence of God and implies that He is not perfect in everything He does. God overlooks nothing.
God’s immutability stabilizes everything (He 13:8). He is not about to change anytime, anywhere, under any circumstance. That is hard for many people to swallow, especially if we think we have something to offer Him. We will never measure up to an absolute being if we depend on who and what we are to gain God’s acceptance. If we assume that we are special because of our righteousness and that God is under obligation to love us because we measure up, then we miss the principle. The principle is that we cannot change the love of God by what we do. God’s love for us comes from Christ and what He did on the cross.
